ABSTRACT
Ismail’s approach to the horrors of the corvée was directed by both his heart and his brain. Nothing will be said, for the moment, about this first aspect; attention will be riveted upon the latter. We have already emphasized the fact that the viceroy was a great landowner and a practical agronomist. It was his common sense, born of his intimate contact with the soil, which told him that the corvée, as applied by de Lesseps in the Isthmus of Suez, was as stupid as it was immoral.
