accomplished, and high-minded members of the House of Commons, Mr Drummond, the member for West Surrey. “It appears to me that our taxes have been laid on upon no general principle, as money was wanted, and that they are not in the satisfactory state they ought to be. Let the Minister be who he may, this must be put in a better state; and I believe that Mr Disraeli is more likely, and the persons now in office are more likely, to do this than others.—I must be permitted to say, that I think Mr Disraeli a man of very great genius. He has risen by his own merits alone; and never having been tried in office, he is not a man who ought to be sneered at by persons who pretend that they wish ‘to extend the basis of the Administration!’” This dignified rebuke might have been uttered by the speaker on listening to Mr Cobden’s gross vituperation on the occasion to which we are referring. Such was Mr Cobden—in Yorkshire; such will not be Mr Cobden—in the House of Commons, when standing face to face before that same formidable Chancellor of Exchequer, behind whose back he has spoken offensively with such virulent vulgarity and presumption. Passing over these smaller matters, however, it is impossible not to note the recently lowered tone of Mr Cobden, whilom so loud and confident on the subject of a “Protectionist Ministry” as a thing to be only “laughed at,” and which would “fly like chaff before the wind before a General Election.” On the ensuing day, the _Times_, in commenting on Mr Cobden’s speech, pronounced to be “not wholly worthy of his theme”—and in a “tone hardly elevated enough for the occasion”—“recommended to the consideration of the future Parliament the advice of Mr Cobden with reference to the manner in which Ministers should be dealt with.”—“It is only fair and wise to hear from them the principles on which they intend to act, and the measures which they mean to bring forward.... By precipitating matters, we are quite sure either to prevent the Ministry from showing conclusively the hollowness of their abandonment of Free Trade, or from bestowing upon us a great public benefit. It is much easier to turn out a Government than to form its successor; and the besetting sin to which heterogeneous Oppositions are liable is, that they are apt to place themselves in a situation in which they may be called upon to act in concert, when concert, except against the common enemy, is impossible; and thus, by the exertion of their strength, to render their weakness more apparent and more fatal.” These were prudent counsels, and probably influenced by the same causes which had emboldened the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a few days previously,[17] thus to speak out concerning the position and prospects of the Government: “It is my firm conviction that the Government of Lord Derby will meet Parliament in the autumn with an absolute majority. To me that is not a subject of doubt.” Two days afterwards—the election