[Illustration: THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL, KENSINGTON.]
Egypt furnished the Opposition with many opportunities for embarrassing the Ministry. Lord Hartington had seriously damaged the _prestige_ of the Government by his pusillanimous declaration at the opening of the Session that the English troops would be recalled from Egypt in six months. Though Mr. Gladstone, on his return from Cannes, was compelled to throw his colleague over and explain that this statement was purely conjectural, the distrust which Lord Hartington had inspired could not be completely eradicated. A more serious difficulty, however, arose out of the exorbitant tolls which the Suez Canal Company levied on the shipping trade. Yielding to the pressure of shipping and commercial interests, Mr. Gladstone sanctioned an agreement by which M. de Lesseps was to provide additional accommodation by digging a second canal. He was also to reduce the tolls gradually, and admit a few Englishmen to his Board of Management. In return the British Government were to procure him the concession of the land for the second canal, and enable him to raise a loan of £8,000,000 at 3¼ per cent. A storm of opposition was raised to this project, on the ground that it recognised M. de Lesseps’s monopoly to the canalisation of the Isthmus of Suez. The agreement, which was announced on the 28th of April, was abandoned on the 23rd of July.