The despatch continued that "Her Majesty's Government were aware of the great value which the French Government had attached in the past to the Dual Control. They did not deny the practical advantages which for a time attended the system--advantages which were owing to the common wish of this country and of France to promote the prosperity of Egypt; but they were convinced that this feeling on the part of France would not extend to thinking it possible that an arrangement of a temporary character should be continued after two of the three parties to it had become desirous to be freed from the obligation for reasons which they considered to be of grave importance."
It was scarcely to be expected that France would accept the arrangement, at all events, without a struggle, and M. Raindre, the French Consul-General in Cairo, was instructed to deny the right of the Egyptian Government to annul the existing arrangement. This in no way altered the programme of Cherif Pasha, who, assured of the support of England, proceeded with the measure; and on the 18th of January, 1883, a Decree was issued, stating that the dispositions of the various Decrees relating to the Control were repealed. The next day the Decree was published in the "Moniteur Egyptien," and the Control became a thing of the past.
On the Decree appearing in print, the French Consul-General addressed a despatch to Cherif Pasha, in which the former stated that his Government declined to recognize the right of the Egyptian Government to upset an arrangement which he maintained was part of an agreement between the French and the Egyptian Governments, and which, he said, formed an essential security for French interests. The despatch concluded with a formal reservation of the rights of the French Government.
The abolition of the Control excited a burst of indignation from the French Press; the action of the Egyptian Government was loudly condemned, and there the matter ended.
M. Brédif, the French Controller, obtained leave of absence; and on the 5th February, Sir Auckland Colvin, who, in the meantime, had resigned his post as English Controller, was appointed to the post of "Financial Adviser," created as a substitute for the defunct Control.