It may not be generally remembered that only two years after Disraeli entered the House of Commons he delivered himself of a remarkable speech in this connection. He was opposed, he said, at that time to a strictly State system, for he was opposed to “paternal government, which stamped out the sense of independence in man, and caused him to rely upon others.” Society should be strong, and the State weak; order should not be disturbed by national injustice, nor liberty by popular outcry. “_It is always the State and never Society--always machinery and never sympathy._” But though he did not change the principles of his outlook, he came by experience very materially to change his view of the machinery by which they were to be applied. He detested the interferences of centralisation; but a doubled population and the overgrowth of cities rendered State measures imperative, and their absence a disgrace. In his Edinburgh speech, twenty-eight years later, he thus handled this national need: “... Ever since I have been in public life I have done everything I possibly could to promote the cause of the education of the people generally. I have done so because I always felt that with the limited population of this United Kingdom, compared with the great imperial position which it occupies with reference to other nations, it is not only our duty, but ... an absolute necessity, _that we should study to make every man the most effective being that education can possibly constitute him_. In the old wars there used to be a story that one Englishman could beat three members of some other nation. But _I think if we want to maintain our power, we ought to make one Englishman equal really in the business of life to three other men that any other nation can furnish_. I do not see otherwise how ... we can fulfil the great destiny that I believe awaits us, and the great position we occupy.” It will be noticed that he forecasts the practical and technical requirements which, at a period of comparative commercial decline, we are only now beginning to take to heart. “Therefore,” he resumed, “so far as I am concerned, whether it be a far greater advanced system of primary education--whether it be that system of competitive examination which I have ever supported, though I am not unconscious of some pedantry with which it is associated--or whatever may be the circumstances, I shall ever be its supporter.”