not with them a character, either from their family, or from their last place.'

Oddly enough, this repulsion extends even to parties. Take the public in general, and they are the last to contemplate as a probability the advent of an Opposition to power. Even though they may dislike the Ins, they never seem heartily to adopt the Outs. What a mountain of this inert prejudice had not Mr. Canning to bear up against! Who calculated (we speak not of partymen in party secrets) on the coming in of the Whigs immediately before the events of 1830? Or of Sir Robert Peel in 1834? Or of the

And, at the

Whigs again in 1846? present day, although the only successful resistance to the ministerial majority last session was made by Mr. Disraeli, when he ran them down to fourteen, will any candid man deny that the notion of a Tory administration, as a solid impending fact, as a necessary consequence of the system on which our parliamentary warfare is conducted, has been almost the last thought of by the. mass of the public? The most absurd and impossible combinations float in men's minds, to the exclusion of the most obvious results.

This habit of the national mind offers peculiar and special obstacles to a man in the position of Mr. Disraeli. A still more serious difficulty existed in the peculiar position of parties at the time when he commenced his tactical manoeuvres.

Look back at the state of things in 1846. The first sentiment of the Tory party was one of indignation at what appeared to them rank treason to political ties and traditions. Their first policy was one of revenge; of which Lord George Bentinck supplied the moral, Mr. Disraeli the mental agency; Lord George was its originator, Mr. Disraeli its instrument. We all know with what success these two champions of a surprised interest wreaked its natural vengeance on Sir Robert Peel. If they could not avert the storm, they at least overthrew the master who had raised it. Even then, the bond of cohesion among the representatives of the owners and occupiers of land was little better than mere hatred to a name; and

the public had too much faith in the newly-inaugurated system, to suppose that any more philosophical or germinative principle could lurk behind so barbarous a standard. The parliamentary successes of Mr. Disraeli, brilliant although they had been, were not of a character to render him a favourite with any portion of the public, but those of a stern, stanch, and steadfast nature, who continually fed the flame of a retrospective animosity. Mr. Disraeli's own abstinence from any further attacks on the fallen minister withheld the stimulus even from this passion.

The sudden death of Lord George Bentinck produced, however, a total change in the position of the Tory, or Country Party. Whether Mr. Disraeli seized on the leadership of that party, or whether he was elected to it,-whether, at first, he did or did not enjoy the confidence of those who were seemingly following his lead, or whether, like another adventurer' of our time, he first seized on it vi et armis, and afterwards obtained, by a sort of half-compulsory vote, the sanction of those whom he had taken by surprise,-these are questions which much agitated the public at the time, but which have now lost their interest. Still, their contemporaneous discussion, while it consolidated, in one sense, the position of Mr. Disraeli, by stripping it of its fabulous or mythical character, also tended to the spread of prejudices against that gentleman in the public mind. To a policy of mere revenge had naturally succeeded a blind impulse of mere reaction. 'Deep-mouthed Boeotians' commenced a noisy agitation for a restoration of protection to native industry;' they called aggregate meetings of the ultras and the discontented of all classes, and they organized associations with very big names and very little aims,-bodies whose threats were all sound and fury, signifying nothing.' The same Baotian orators, flushed with success, became pilgrims, apostles of the new reaction; they stirred up the agricultural mind in its clayey homes and fenny fastnesses; the whole island rang with the indignant growl of a responsive chorus. Every success of this kind was a

new obstacle in the path of Mr. Disraeli. The new agitation tended to the planting of a fixed idea, and added to the difficulty of managing the unmanageable. The press used it as a means of annoyance to Mr. Disraeli, who was now made responsible for all the vagaries, all the statistical and economic blunders of his insubordinates; now threatened with deposition from his giddy and uncertain elevation, whither were to be raised the rampant Boeotians aforesaid. If a Nemesis had guided him to the destruction of the temporary ascendancy of Sir R. Peel, so now a like spirit of fatalistic justice dictated his own punishment, and the means thereof. The ridicule, the sneers, the sarcasms, the damnatory quizzing, that had formed his weapons, were now employed against him in his turn. Get flogged with scorpions, put your head in a hornet's nest, turn Turk and try to increase the degree by adding to the quantity of your marital happiness, or be the premier of a falling party, -do anything rather than provoke the attacks of the witty and malicious satirists who furnish the public with their diurnal thoughts. Mr. Disraeli became the standing target of these gentlemen, who sought their weapons in a well-stored armory-in the extravagances of his past public life. Nor, in the divided state of his own party, did his as yet unrecognised claims obtain for him a timely support from their organs. Earnest, manly opposition he might have borne, as bringing with it an admission of his strength; but the harassing warfare of bush-fighting tactics taxed his utmost self-possession and courage. If the belief that he was born to be the leader of a party had not been strong within him, it would have been impossible that he could have withstood such assaults. The real strength of his tormentors lay in the absurdity of the idea (that is to say, in the public mind) that protection' could ever be restored. Mr. Disraeli was not yet powerful enough to destroy this lever by a bold disavowal of any such intention; and thus, while, from motives of prudence, he remained silent, he was successfully saddled with all the ridicule attaching to the peripatetic Baotian ora

tors, the purblind red-tapists, and the mummy financiers of a bygone and buried system. He was like the man with the Turned Headobliged to look behindwards when striving to go forwards.

The effect of all this quizzing was to implant in the public mind a notion of the utter absurdity of Mr. Disraeli's Leadership, retrospectively strengthened by the still greater absurdity of his ever obtaining office, or being entrusted with the conduct of any, even the most trifling, portion of the nation's affairs. The most muddle-headed relicts of squatting Toryism, men guiltless of an original idea, and who had passed their days in utter respectability,' were preferred to the brilliant and successful debater, the subtle and ingenious tactician. Mr. D.sraeli's reputation for extraordinary talent very nearly ruined him.

The session of 1849 opened for Mr. Disraeli, under these circumstances, with no very cheering prospects. A man less sublimely self-confident would have shrunk from a position so doubtful and a duty so dangerous. But Mr. Disraeli is gifted in a remarkable degree with the quality of perseverance. The greater the apparent obstacle, the more determined his resolve that it shall be overcome. If the public mind was prepossessed with the idea that a great interest, once the predominant one in the country, was so utterly destroyed as even to be unable to stipulate for any conditions, but must still lie prostrate at the feet of its successful foe-if the notion of a leader of such a party was, as a matter of course, hailed with ridicule and contempt, whether that leader were a man distinguished in the literary and political world, or the inheritor of one of the highest and most ancient titles in the countrythe only adequate antagonists of such impressions must be countervailing facts. When such a party, and such leaders, had risen up from their supposed bed of death, and struck a blow, then, and not till then, would the public begin to believe in their continued existence. Mr. Disraeli set about his work with a tact and skill worthy of the most honoured parliamentary

leaders, carefully avoiding to commit his party to any course of conduct for the sake of temporary triumph, which might necessitate subsequent retractation or tergiversation. The example of the fate of the last leader of a Tory Opposition was enough to warn off less powerful and popular chieftains from so dangerous a precedent.

Mr. Disraeli

laid his plan, and commenced his approaches, with much caution and prudence, and with a foresight which already presaged success. He saw in what lay the weakness of his party. He saw that the commercial policy of the country alone was not in question, that his adversaries had gained their victory and maintained their ground, by associating with the name of Tory and landlord the imputation of sordid self-interest, and that, under the influence of this prejudice, the aristocracy were deprived of the advantage of the prescriptive claim which they derived from superior education and position. The first thing necessary was to destroy all foundation for such prejudices; for the rest, he might trust to the good sense of the British people.

And here, whatever result we may at last arrive at in this inquiry, let us do Mr. Disraeli the justice to say, that the tactique by which he managed his party in the Lower House, and ultimately regained for it a position which, in 1846, was supposed to have been lost for ever, was all his own; that it was promulgated, though cautiously and sparingly, amidst ridicule from opponents-even from friends; and that, whether it be wise or unwise, statesmanlike or charlatanic, sound or flimsy, successful or unsuccessful, to Mr. Disraeli is due the whole and sole merit, if there be any, of having persevered in it with all the courage and self-abandonment of one who leads a forlorn hope.

It was, however, in March, 1848, that Mr. Disraeli first opened on the Manchester School' the battery which afterwards did so much execution in the ranks of their parliamentary disciples. It was in a debate on the proposal to renew the Income Tax (on March 10th of that year) that he first taunted Messrs. Cobden and Bright with

having created a permanent deficiency in the revenue by forcing the new commercial system on the country. It is observable that Mr. Disraeli had not even then got over that tendency to high-flown forms of rhetoric and mere mechanical antithesis which characterised his earlier speeches. The unfortunate failure of Mr. Cobden's 'universal peace' prophecies, made but a few weeks before the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848, furnished the champion of the Tories with an excellent theme for quizzing such millenarean statesmen. 'You the representatives of Peace and Plenty!" he said. 'Yes; Peace and Plenty amid a starving people, and with a world in arms.' And then he demanded, where was the boasted 'reciprocity' with which England was to have been met? A hit on the same subject in the same speech was peculiarly apposite at the time, because the exaggerated predictions of Mr. Cobden and his friends were recoiling on themselves, and injuring the cause which had been adopted by the nation. Another point in the same speech told well with the Whigs, as well as the Tories, and prepared for Mr. Disraeli much acrimonious attack on the part of the representatives of the manufacturing and trading interest. He reminded the House that the great cry of the Anti-Corn-Law agitators had been against class legislation;' and yet they now, in their speeches both in and out of the House, boasted that the recent legislation had been fought for and won by the middle class. This allusion, although it seems of no great power now, happened to be very apposite at the time. The successful Tribune of the late popular movement had not yet subsided from the dictatorial position to which he had been elevated by the homage and eulogy of Sir Robert Peel. Although he had signally failed in his late prophecies, his prestige had not then quite departed from him; and he was furious at the boldness with which Mr. Disraeli, amidst the cheers of the House, assailed the very basis of his power and influence.

In June of the same year (1848) Mr. Disraeli also took a very prominent position in the debate on the

proposed repeal of the Navigation Laws. He sought to elevate the subject above the dead level of ordinary Opposition oratory. The House had been wearied with dreary and unintelligible statistics, and dull, stereotyped prophecies of national ruin. Mr. Disraeli touched a chord that vibrated with many who remembered the days of the elder orators, and even those when some now living giants in debate were young. Deploring the danger that our commercial marine would be impaired by the measure, he exclaimed that he, at least, would not incur the responsibility, by his vote, of endangering that empire, gained by so much valour, and guarded with so much vigilance-that empire, broader than both the Americas, and richer than the farthest Ind-which was foreshadowed in its infancy by the genius of a Blake, and consecrated in its culminating glory by the blood of a Nelson-the empire of the seas! The peroration to the speech in which this passage occurred was one of the most powerful Mr. Disraeli had yet delivered, and, although dashed a little with the bombastic vein of Alroy, it contributed much to raise him, not merely with his party, but with the House.

It was not, however, till the opening of the session of 1849 that Mr. Disraeli stood forward as the avowed leader of the Opposition. The fact seemed so strange and improbable, that men could not bring themselves to believe it. But there could be no mistake when Mr. Disraeli rose to move the amendment to the address, which he did in a singularly powerful speech, formed on the old parliamentary models. But a short time had passed since the death of Lord George Bentinck. Feelings of friendship, delicacy, and subordination had led Mr. Disraeli to act as the lieutenant of that noble lord, even while his insight told him that a mere policy of revenge or reaction could never be advantageous to his party. But with the assumption of the leadership, Mr Disraeli adopted a bolder tone and a more practical policy. He was now, too, officially recognised by Lord John Russell as the accredited person with whom he, as

Leader of the House, could make arrangements for the conduct of the public business. But Mr. Disraeli did not forget in his speech to pay a tribute to the memory of his departed friend. Alluding to Lord George's plans for promoting reproductive labour in Ireland, he recalled to the House that the promoter of that policy was no longer among them. At a time when everything that was occurring vindicated his prescience, and demanded his energy, his party no longer had his sagacity to guide or his courage to sustain them. In the midst of parliamentary strife, that plume could soar no more round which they loved to rally. But he had left them the legacy of heroes-the memory of his great name and the inspiration of his great example.' The hyperbolical tone of this rhetorical flourish will seem less incongruous with the prosaic nature of the subject, when we reflect that the chivalrous character of the deceased nobleman, and the painful circumstances attending his sudden death, had produced a wide-spread sympathy among the public, while by his own party Lord George had for some time been regarded with an almost romantic admiration.

In the same speech, Mr. Disraeli made a desperate onslaught on the Manchester School and their measures. He took occasion to lay the first stone of his new tactics by insisting on reciprocity' as being the first principle of tariffs.' 'Reciprocity,' he maintained, was the only principle on which a large and expansive system of commerce could be founded.' He denounced the existing system as wrong, because based on a different principle. You go on fighting hostile tariffs,' he said, with free imports-a course most injurious to the commerce of the country.' Thus far Mr. Disraeli by implication condemned the policy of reaction,' contending, not for the restoration of Protection' as a principle, but for what he conceived to be a measure of common justice and common sense, justified by the law of self-preservation. Mr. Cobden's system of agitation was attacked with unsparing hand. Turning to his party, the new leader apostrophised them in words of comfort,

which two years after were proved to be prophetic. Let us not despair!' he exclaimed. 'We have, notwithstanding all that has occurred-we have the inspiration of a great cause. We stand here, not only to uphold the throne but the empire; to vindicate the industrial privileges of the working classes, and the reconstruction of our colonial system; to uphold the Church, no longer assailed by masked batteries of appropriation clauses, but by unvisored foes;-we stand here to maintain freedom of election and the majesty of Parliament, against the Jacobinmanœuvres of the Lancashire clubs. These are stakes not likely to be lost. At any rate, I would sooner my tongue were palsied before I counselled the people of England to lower their tone. Yes; I would sooner quit this House for ever, than I would say to the people of England that they overrated their position. I leave these delicate intimations to the fervent patriotism of the gentlemen of the new school. For my part, I denounce their politics, and I defy their predictions; but I do so because I have faith in the people of England, and in their genius, and in their destiny.' Here, it must be confessed, we have a kind of defiance to which our later politicians had not been accustomed. The agency called 'public opinion' in this country is the safest guide for legislators when that opinion is legitimately expressed; but when it is manufactured by agitating demagogues, it ceases to be public opinion, and it loses its immunities.

Mr. Disraeli denounced the spurious article when, complaining that ministers had too much yielded to what was called public opinion, he said that Public opinion on the Continent had turned out to be the voice of secret societies; and public opinion in England was the clamour of organized clubs.' It is not here that we would test the truth of these assertions. Our task is confined to the fitness of such a course of leadership for the then exigencies of the Tory Opposition; because we are here only trying Mr. Disraeli's claims, without involving ourselves in vexed political questions. In the language of these passages there is still something too much of the am

bition of the rhetorician-too much of what we have called mechanical antithesis; but we must remember that the adventurous orator, from sentence to sentence, was spurred on by the exultant cheers of a party powerful in numbers, and still more in their new instinct of subordination; that a little hyperbole might be allowed, if only to mark a contrast to the bald commonplace with which the party had been regaled by their accustomed staff of orators; and that, on the other hand, the tone assumed for some time past by the chiefs of the late agitation had been sufficiently democratic (not to say unconstitutional) to justify and demand that the ground of contest should be shifted from an alleged struggle for rents and dear bread' to some principle more worthy the efforts of an ancient aristocracy. It is in this respect that we are led to concede to Mr. Disraeli the merit of having elevated the position of his party, and of having placed it above the range of the sneers of the smaller fry of antagonists.

Mr. Disraeli's next movement was of a more practical character. Ridiculed, as a matter of course, by the self-sufficient doctrinaires who had possessed themselves of the public ear, and who appeared to act systematically on some mot d'ordre, it proved in the end a most formidable mode of attack. It was, indeed, remarkable how soon the flippancy of studied contempt was changed into the insolence of apprehension, as Mr. Disraeli, who had hitherto been held up as only a flashy orator and meretricious adventurer, proceeded from step to step in developing his plan of campaign-a plan (it may be observed, en passant) by which he reduced the ministerial majority from 140 in 1849, to 14 in 1851.

Assuming that the Leader of an Opposition must be prepared, not only with the purely strategic policy which is to gain votes, but also with some distinct and sound propositions on which he may rest the claims of his party to legislate hereafter, it

will be useful to examine the nature of the motion made by Mr. Disraeli on the 8th of March, 1849, which ultimately changed the attitude and prospects of parties. So long as