the last fortnight; and I think we must come to the conclusion that in a country free and enlightened as in England there are limits to party feeling which the most dexterous managers of the passions of mankind cannot ever pass, and that in the great bulk of those who sit in Parliament, and in the great bulk of the people of England, there is a genuine spirit of patriotism which will always eventually triumph. That such is the case may be seen from the late debate. A motion was brought forward about a fortnight ago by a right honourable gentleman who sits for the city of Oxford which was to terminate the existence of the Government, and during the debate which ensued, protracted as it was, you may, perhaps, have observed that the Government very reluctantly advanced to take part in it, although, being as we were upon our trial, we were prepared, if necessary, to defend our conduct on every point, and to vindicate with a becoming spirit our deeds, our duty, and our position. But instead of that, here was a bill of indictment preferred against the Government, which commenced as a vote of censure, and which upon the last night of the debate was expanded into a general vote of confidence.

Now, who conducted that debate in defence of the Government and in opposition to the motion? Why, not members of the Government, but independent members of the House of Commons-some of them gentlemen of great eloquence and authority not connected with the Government in politics, but, on the contrary, not professing those general principles which form the basis of our policy. They yet saw through the flimsy web, and despised the authors of so perfidious and pernicious a movement. We, gentlemen, refer to that debate with confidence and triumph that we can fairly ask for a verdict at the hands of the people of this country. In point of fact, that verdict has been already given. Until that vote of censure was brought forward we were receiving from the people of England a fair and unimpassioned trial. We were accepted as a Government which, having taken office under such difficult circumstances as I have described, and after the peculiar exercise of the prerogative of the Crown, was deserving of a fair chance, and we were having a kindly trial. I do not believe that the great body of the people of this country had any feel

ing but one, and that was a general feeling for those who had acceded to office under great difficulties, and who had sedulously and with devotion endeavoured to perform their duty.

The moment, however, that this motion was brought forward and introduced in the speech which was made upon that occasion by the right honourable member for Oxford-from the moment that the debate took place, the enlightened and indignant mind of the people of England declared at the moment, and in a manner which could not be mistaken, what its sense was of the conduct of certain public characters in those transactions; and if we had gone upon the hustings-which there is very little doubt we should have done before we should have fallen-I believe that the overthrow of the cabal would have been one of the most signal in history. Now, this danger has been overcome by no unworthy management or concession on our part. It has been overcome, not by the united efforts of friends in a division, but, upon the contrary, it has been overcome by the intrinsic and internal sense of wrong-doing which prevailed in the ranks of our enemies.

There is nothing like that last Friday evening in the history of the House of Commons. We came down to the House expecting to divide at four o'clock in the morning-I myself, with my armour buckled on, prepared to deliver an address two hours after midnight-and I believe that, even with the consciousness of a good cause, that is no mean effort. Well, gentlemen, we were all assembled, our benches with their serried ranks seemed to rival those of our proud opponents, when suddenly there arose a wail of distressbut not from us. I can only liken the scene to the mutiny of the Bengal army. Regiment after regiment, corps after corps, general after general, all acknowledged that they could not march through Coventry with Her Majesty's Opposition. It was like a convulsion of nature rather than any ordinary transaction of human life. I was reminded by it of one of those earthquakes which take place in Calabria or Peru. There was a rumbling murmur-a groan-a shriek-a sound of distant thunder. No one knew whether it came from the top or the bottom of the house. There was a rent, a fissure in

the ground, and then a village disappeared, then a tall tower toppled down, and the whole of the Opposition benches became one great dissolving view of anarchy. Are these the people whom you want to govern the country-people in whose camp there is anarchy-between whom there is discord on every point, and who are not even united by the common bond of wishing to seize upon the spoils of office?

What we have done I have, I hope, placed before you with no undue arrogance-but what they intend to do no one has had the audacity to intimate. They say that we have no policy when we are building up an empire, and yet they shrank from giving any opinion upon the document which was the subject of nights of protracted discussions. Under these circumstances my meeting you here to-day, having, as I before stated, accepted the invitation as a private member of Parliament, and not as a member of a Government, is to me a source of great congratulation, for it gives me an opportunity after these remarkable occurrences of addressing a large body of my countrymen connected with me by close and ancient ties of public confidence and private friendship, and of giving them an account of my stewardship as a minister for three months. I again ask you, then, and I ask the people of this countryWill you stand by the Queen's Ministers against a cabal?' If the country decides to stand by us, and to extend to us permanently that generous confidence, which perhaps has temporarily arisen from a sense of the injustice which we have experienced, we shall endeavour, with all the means at our command, to retain that confidence by introducing such measures as in our opinion are demanded by the necessities of the State, and our study will be constantly to promote the welfare of the people of this country.

With regard to our foreign relations, we shall still pursue that determined, but yet prudent and conciliatory system' which, while it will in our opinions maintain peace, will do so with honour. We shall endeavour in the management of our finances to reduce taxation, while at the same time our measures will duly respect the maintenance of public credit. We shall pursue in India that policy with which I believe the late debate

1 Peace with honour.

has made you familiar, because we believe that it is the only policy by which we can retain that empire, and we ought to wish to retain it by considering the happiness of those 180,000,000 of persons who have in spirit long been subjects of the Queen, and who now by the literal letter of the law will owe her an undivided allegiance. We shall endeavour to obtain and to retain that confidence by temperately addressing ourselves to the solution of all those difficult questions which have too long agitated and disunited the commonwealth in which we live. We hope by the measures which we shall bring forward, whether relating to legal reform-and upon that head our measure is prepared-or to social reform, which demand the attention of any minister, or whether relating to those constitutional improvements which all wise men who are lovers of their country would wish to see effected in such a manner that they should be improvements and not mere changes-whatever may be the character of those measures, we will not shrink from bringing forward such as we shall conceive to be the best adapted for the solution of the difficulty.

But, gentlemen, we shall not be able to do so unless we are supported by the confidence and good feeling of the people of England. We have been honoured by the confidence of the Crown in a manner not merely formal, and we have accepted the responsibility of office at a great emergency, and after the deliberate expression of opinion on the part of our gracious sovereign that our acceptance of office was a public duty from which we could not shrink. Having employed the brief period during which we have been a Government in managing public affairs in the manner I have indicated, I think that we have a right to appeal to the public and to the country generally to sanction the selection of Her Majesty and to support us by the influence of public opinion. To that opinion, after the late stirring scenes in the House of Commons, upon the part of myself and my colleagues, I appeal with diffidence, and yet at the same time with confidence-with diffidence because I know that the present difficulties may require for their solution powers greater than those which we possess; but with confidence, because I have the greatest reliance on the generosity and justice of the people of England.

SPEECH ON REFORM BILL OF 1867,

Edinburgh, October 29, 1867.

[This speech may be regarded as Mr. Disraeli's final liberation of his

He speaks not to any particular The representation had to be

own mind on the question of Reform. audience, but to the whole world. reformed, and the mere fact that the Whigs had reformed it once, so far from being an argument why such work should always be entrusted to them, was rather a reason why any second reform should be undertaken by their opponents, as men more likely to redress the balance and appreciate the weak points of the existing system. The world could not stand still, nor parties either. And the Tory party indig nantly repudiated the rôle sketched out for it by its adversaries of perpetual protestation and perpetual opposition. The following speech should be read together with one delivered by the late Lord Derby at Manchester on October 17, 1867. The two combined are the vindication of the Tory party from a strictly party point of view, and therefore I have inserted this one among the party speeches rather than among the reform speeches, though it must be owned that it travels over a good deal of the same ground.]

R. CHAIRMAN, my Lords and

Gentlemen :-I know

Mnothing more gratifying in the life of a public man

nothing in its toils and in its asperities more satisfactory and soothing, than an expression of sympathy from a body of his countrymen-nor is that gratification diminished if the sympathy comes from those who are not connected with him by any local sentiment. However much we may value the kind feeling of our neighbours, we are conscious that their estimate of our conduct may not be free from partiality.

In thanking you, Mr. Chairman, for the too kind manner in which you have introduced my name to this assembly, I cannot for a moment forget-for you have yourself expressed it with frankness-that it is chiefly to be attributed to the passing of