Between January 1876 and June 1879 elected Egyptian delegates attempted to constrain the country's ruler, Khedive Ismail, by linking domestic revenue extraction to national authority. Efforts to fuse representation with taxation were no more romantic or cynical than kindred experiments in Western Europe and the Americas. Delegates to Egypt's first representative parliament, the Assembly of Representatives, hailed from a narrow electorate comprising landowners and local headmen. Although their methods were quasi-constitutional their motives were material. Nonetheless, the clash between economic stakeholders and the Court constituted a milestone in the development of Egypt's modern political institutions. Ismail had created the Assembly of Representatives in 1866 to impress foreign governments and garner larger loans. As he and the notables wrangled over taxes and the repayment of Egypt's mountainous foreign debts, however, they opened the prospect of anchoring the nascent Egyptian state to the country's landlords, merchants, and workers. The khedive eventually accepted a proposal from an expanded assembly (the National Assembly) for lowering domestic taxes, which were crushing the peasantry, and rescheduling—but not reneging on—payments to European creditors. This National Program (Al-Laiha al-Wataniyya), hailed an unprecedented exercise of power by a previously symbolic body. What could have been a promising step toward constitutional monarchy ended abruptly in June 1879 when Germany, France, and England compelled the Ottoman Sultan to depose Ismail. They, like the Egyptian elites whose project they thwarted, were driven by fiscal considerations more than ideological ones. Simply put, the Assembly's plan for repaying Egyptian debt was less profitable for lenders than the alternative advocated by European appointed administrators. The pliant prince Tewfiq succeeded his father and opposition grew. When Egyptians rose up against the weak monarch and his foreign patrons in 1881-1882, British forces occupied the country, where they would remain for the next seven decades. Using French, English, and Arabic primary materials, this paper asks: To what extent did the moment Egyptian notables turn the Assembly into a meaningful parliament that could resist foreign economic pressure and constrain the royal Court? The project informs debates in political science and sociology on statebuilding and revenue while also addressing the historiography of constitutionalism in Egypt.