Egyptians seemed a definite and disastrous change for the worse.
Throughout the forty years of our occupation we have most carefully
preserved the theory of Egyptian independence. We have occupied and
administered the country, but we have never annexed it or claimed it to
be part of the British Empire. We intervened in 1882 for the purpose of
restoring order, and five years later we offered to withdraw, and were
only prevented from carrying out our intention because the Sultan of
Turkey declined, at the instigation of another Power, to sign the Firman
which gave us the right of re-occupying the country if order should
again be disturbed. In the subsequent years we gave repeated assurances
to Egyptians and to foreign Powers that we had no intention of altering
the status of the country as defined in its theoretical government by
Khedive, Egyptian Ministers, and Egyptian Council or Assembly. And
though it was true that in virtue of the army of occupation we were in
fact supreme, by leaving the forms of their government untouched and
refraining from all steps to legalise our position we reassured the
Egyptians as to our ultimate objects.

In the eyes of the Egyptians the proclamation of the Protectorate and
the conversion of the "Agent and Consul-General" into a "High
Commissioner" armed with the weapons of martial law seriously prejudiced
this situation, and though they acquiesced for the period of the war,
they were determined to have a settlement with us immediately it was
over, and took us very seriously at our word when we promised to review
the whole situation when that time came. The truth about the
"Protectorate" was that we adopted it as a way out of the legal
entanglement which would otherwise have converted the Egyptians into
enemy aliens when their suzerain, the Sultan of Turkey, entered the war
against us, and we did it deliberately as the preferable alternative to
annexing the country. But we have neither explained to the Egyptians nor