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of manly vigor, your fathers were first and foremost there. The aristocracy of England were not like the noblesse of France, the mere minions of a court; nor were they like the hidalgos of Madrid, who dwindled into pigmies. You have been Englishmen. You have not shown a want of courage and firmness when any call has been made upon you. This is a new era. It is the age of improvement, it is the age of social advancement; not the age for war or for feudal sports. You live in a mercantile age, when the whole wealth of the world is poured into your lap. You cannot have the advantages of commercial rents and feudal privileges; but you may be what you always have been, if you will identify yourselves with the spirit of the age. The English people look to the gentry and aristocracy of their country as their leaders. I, who am not one of you, have no hesitation in telling you that there is a deep-rooted, an hereditary prejudice, if I may so call it, in your favor in this country. But you never got it, and you will not keep it, by obstructing the spirit of the age. If you are indifferent to enlightened means of finding employment to your own peasantry; if you are found obstructing that advance which is calculated to knit nations more together in the bonds of peace by means of commercial intercourse; if you are found fighting against the discoveries which have almost given breath and life to material nature, and setting up yourselves as obstructives of that which destiny has decreed shall go on,-why, then, you will be the gentry of England no longer, and others will be found to take your place.

And I have no hesitation in saying that you stand just now in a very critical position. There is a wide-spread suspicion that you have been tampering with the best feelings and with the honest confidence of your constituents in this cause. Everywhere you are doubted and suspected. Read your own organs, and you will see that this is the case. Well, then, this is the time to show that you are not the mere party politicians which you are said to be. I have said that we shall be opposed in this measure by politicians; they do not want inquiry. But I ask you to go into this committee with me. I will give you a majority of county members. You shall have a majority of the Central Society in that committee. I ask you only to go into a fair inquiry as to the causes of the distress of your own population. I only ask that this matter be fairly examined. Whether you establish my principle or yours, good will come out of the inquiry; and I do, therefore, beg and entreat the honorable independent country gentlemen of this House that they will not refuse, on this occasion to go into a fair, a full, and an impartial inquiry.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI (1805-1881)

GLADSTONE'S RIVAL IN ORATORY AND OFFICE

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N speaking of Disraeli as a rival of Gladstone in oratory, it is meant only to indicate that these distinguished men came frequently into conflict in speech-making, not that there was any equality or resemblance between them as orators. As one writer says of Disraeli, "In almost every thing he was the very opposite of his great adversary, Mr. Gladstone. He was a master of epigram, a splendid debater, rather than an orator; he possessed that first-rate requisite of statecraft, lack of zeal." His maiden speech was not wanting in cleverness, yet was so lame in delivery that it was greeted in Parliament with shouts of laughter. He cried out in response, “I have begun several things many times, and have often succeeded at last; ay, and though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me." The time indeed came. Before many years he was a prominent debater in the House of Commons, and the leading Conservative orator in the Corn Law agitation, while by his talent as a speaker and his spirit and persistency under defeat he compelled the admiration of his opponents. From 1868 onward he was the rival of Gladstone for the highest office under the British Government. In that year he became Prime Minister, and alternated with Gladstone in this post of honor and power till his death, his terms of Premiership being 1868 to 1869, and from 1874 to 1880. Many of the great questions of public policy and the management of the Empire were before parliament and in their discussions Disraeli shone as a speaker of rare powers. In 1875 he conferred on the Queen the title of Empress of India, and was himself rewarded by the rank of Earl of Beaconsfield. In addition to his parliamentary labors, he found time to devote himself somewhat to literature, writing several novels which attracted much

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attention at the time, alike from their literary power and their authorship. While out of office in 1870 he wrote his novel of "Lothair,' work which was very widely read, and was exposed to much severe criticism.

THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY

[The question of electoral reform and extension of the suffrage, which had been so prominent in England about 1830, was renewed at a later date, being supported by Gladstone and Russell, and opposed by Disraeli and Derby. Yet in 1867, finding that the people were thoroughly in earnest, Disraeli changed front suddenly, posed as a reformer, and brought in a suffrage reform bill which conceded all that Gladstone had demanded, giving the right to vote to every householder in a borough, every fortyshilling freeholder, etc. He had shrewdly accepted that which he had bitterly opposed before. We give some of his reasons for opposing suffrage, from a speech made by him in 1864.]

That tremendous reckless opposition to the right honorable gentleman, which allowed the bill to be read the second time, seems to have laid the Government prostrate. If he had succeeded in throwing out the bill, the right honorable gentleman and his friends would have been relieved from great embarrassment. But the bill, having been read a second time, the Government were quite overcome, and it appears they never have recovered from the paralysis up to this time. The right honorable gentleman was good enough to say that the proposition of his Government was rather coldly received upon his side of the House, but he said "nobody spoke against it." Nobody spoke against the bill on this side, but I remember some most remarkable speeches from the right honorable gentleman's friends. There was the great city of Edinburgh, represented by acute eloquence of which we never weary, and which again upon the present occasion we have heard; there was the great city of Bristol, represented on that occasion among the opponents, and many other constituencies of equal importance.

But the most remarkable speech, which "killed cock robin," was absolutely delivered by one who might be described as almost a member of the Government-the chairman of ways and means (Mr. Massey,) who I believe, spoke from immediately behind the Prime Minister. Did the Government express any disapprobation of such conduct? They have promoted him to a great post, and have sent him to India with an income of fabulous amount. And now they are astonished they cannot carry a Reform Bill. If they removed all those among their supporters who oppose such bills by preferring them to posts of great confidence and great lucre, how can they suppose that they will ever carry one? Looking at the policy of the Government, I am not at all astonished at the speech which

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the right honorable gentleman, the Secretary of State, has made this evening. Of which speech I may observe, that although it was remarkable for many things, yet there were two conclusions at which the right honorable gentleman arrived. First, the repudiation of the rights of man, and next, the repudiation of the £6 franchise. The first is a great relief; and -remembering what the feeling of the House was only a year ago, when, by the dangerous but fascinating eloquence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, we were led to believe that the days of Tom Paine had returned, and that Rousseau was to be rivaled by a new social contract-it must be a great relief to every respectable man here to find that not only are we not to have the rights of man, but we are not even to have the 1862 franchise. . .

But I think it is possible to increase the electoral body of the country by the introduction of voters upon principles in unison with the principles of the constitution, so that the suffrage should remain a privilege, and not a right—a privilege to be gained by virtue, by intelligence, by industry, by integrity, and to be exercised for the common good of the country. I think if you quit that ground; if you once admit that every man has a right to vote whom you cannot prove to be disqualified; you would change the character of the constitution, and you would change it in a manner which will tend to lower the importance of this country. Between the scheme we brought forward, and the measure brought forward by the honorable member of Leeds, and the inevitable conclusion which its principal supporters acknowledge it must lead to, it is a question between an aristocratic government in the proper sense of the term-—that is, a government by the best men of all classes-and a democracy. I doubt very much whether a democracy is a government that would suit this country; and it is just as well that the House, when coming to a vote on this question, should really consider if that be the real issue between retaining the present constitution-not the present constitutional body,but between the present constitution and a democracy.

It is just as well for the House to recollect that what is of issue is of some price. You must remember, not to use the word profanely, that we are dealing really with a peculiar people. There is no country at the present moment that exists under the circumstances and under the same conditions as the people of this realm. You have, for example, an ancient, powerful, richly-endowed Church; and perfect religious liberty. You have unbroken order and complete freedom. You have estates as large as the Romans. You have a commercial system of enterprise such as Carthage and Venice united never equalled. And you must remember that this peculiar country, with these strong contrasts, is governed not by force;

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it is not governed by standing armies; it is governed by a most singular series of traditionary influences, which generation after generation cherishes and preserves because they know that they embalm customs and represent the law. And, with this, what have you done? You have created the greatest empire that ever existed in modern times. You have amassed a capital of fabulous amount; you have devised and sustained a system of credit still more marvelous; and, above all, you have established and maintained a scheme so vast and complicated, of labor and industry, that the history of the world offers no parallel to it. And all these mighty creations are out of all proportion to the essential and indigenous elements and resources of the country. If you destroy that state of society, remember this--England cannot begin again.

There are countries which have been in great peril and gone through great suffering. There are the United States, which in our own immediate day have had great trials. You have had-perhaps even now in the States of America you have a protracted and fratricidal civil war which has lasted for four years. But if it lasted for four years more, vast as would be the disaster and desolation, when ended the United States might begin again, because the United States would be only in the same condition that England was at the end of the War of the Roses, when probably she had not even 3,000,000 of population, with vast tracts of virgin soil and mineral treasures, not only undeveloped, but undiscovered. Then you have France. France had a real revolution in our days and those of our predecessors—a real revolution, not merely a political and social revolution. You had the institutions of the country uprooted, the orders of society abolished-you had even the landmarks and local names removed and erased. But France could begin again. France had the greatest spread of the most exuberant soil in Europe; she had, and always had, a very limited population, living in a most simple manner. France, therefore, could begin again. But England-the England we know, the England we live in, the England of which we are proud-could not begin again. I don't mean to say that after great troubles England would become a howling wilderness. No doubt the good sense of the people would to some degree prevail, and some fragments of the national character would survive; but it would not be the old England-the England of power and tradition, of credit and capital, that now exists. That is not in the nature of things, and, under these circumstances, I hope the House will, when the question before us is one impeaching the character of our constitution, sanction no step that has a preference for democracy, but that they will maintain the ordered state of free England in which we live.

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