For a number of years after it was fairly started the canal had to struggle with financial difficulties. The English had subscribed very little towards its completion, and the French appeared to have some doubts as to its ultimate success. M. de Lesseps then, as since, was full of enthusiasm as to the future of the enterprise, and predicted that it was to be an assured and notable success. Not so, however, his friends and allies. On the contrary, Prince Napoleon, in presiding at a banquet given to M. de Lesseps on the 11th February, 1864, declared that in his opinion “the canal would not be finished, the works would go to ruin, and nothing would be done.” And then followed this remarkable prediction: “In fifteen or twenty years, when the Viceroy shall have shown his powerlessness, there will be some one all ready who will constitute a new company and make the canal. Do you know who it will be? It will be the influence, the capital, and the workmen of the English.” Napoleon was partly right. Egypt found the greater part of the money required, but it is the shipowners of England who pay the dividends that enrich the owners of the canal, and enable M. de Lesseps and his friends to regard their triumph with so much complacency.
The Act of Concession for the construction of the Suez Canal was granted by the Viceroy, Said Pacha, to M. de Lesseps on the 30th of November 1854, and was followed, on the 5th of January 1856, by a second Act, to which were annexed the Articles of Association of a company for working the concession. The charter thus granted to the Suez Canal Company gave it a ninety-nine years’ lease (counting from the date of opening), to dig and work—
1. A maritime canal from sea to sea, with a northern port on the Mediterranean, and an inland port at Lake Timsah.
2. A fresh-water canal from Cairo to Lake Timsah, with branches north and south supplying the two canal seaports.
For the carrying out of this undertaking the Government of Egypt granted the company:—
1. The lands necessary for the company’s buildings, offices, and works on the canal, gratuitously, and free from taxation.
2. The lands, not private property, brought under cultivation by the construction of the fresh-water canal, gratuitously, and free from taxation for ten years.