These wholesale changes I cannot but feel that Disraeli would have withstood. Many features in Mr. Chamberlain’s plan would have enlisted his sympathy, but in their entirety he would have thought them hazardous. Some protection for the grazier he might have upheld; he always laid stress on the importance of home markets. A moderate duty on corn, in partial, though most inadequate, aid of agriculture, he might have favoured as a necessary lever for colonial reciprocity; especially as it would be spread over the untaxed colonial, the foreign dutiable imports. It would scarcely much affect the price of bread, and the very Peelites forewent the fallacy of the dear loaf; although, as in 1852, he would show that even a four shilling duty on imported corn could never restore the land to its former footing. “We ought,” he would again argue, “to go to the country on principle, and not upon details. We say we think there should be measures brought forward” (as since have been brought forward) “to put the cultivators of the soil in a position to allow them to compete with foreign industry.” What, however, he then urged with all his force was that the fiscal revolution had confessedly caused vexatious taxes. “Sir,” he said in 1852, “I do now and ever shall look on the changes which took place in 1846, both as regards the repeal of the Corn Laws and the alteration of the Sugar Duties, as totally unauthorised. I opposed them ... _from an apprehension of the great suffering which must be incurred by such a change_. That suffering in a great degree, though it may be limited to particular classes, has in some instances been even severer than we anticipated. But I deny that at any time after those laws were passed, either I, or the bulk of those with whom I have the honour to act, have ever maintained a recurrence to the same laws that regulated those industries previously to 1846.” He then showed the difference between Lord Derby’s proposed “fixed duty” and the old state of affairs; while he continued: “... When we come to this question of fixed duty, ... I must say now what I said before in this House, that I will not pin my political career on any policy which is not after all a principle, but a measure. Our wish is, that the interests which we believe were unjustly treated in 1846,[84] should receive the justice which they deserve, with as little injury to those who may have benefited more than they were entitled to, as it is possible for human wisdom to devise. _Sir, I call that reconciling the interests of the consumer and the producer, when you do not permit the consumer to flourish by placing unjust taxes upon the producer; while at the same time you resort to no tax which gives to the producer; an unjust and artificial price for his production._...”