Under Governments, of which Disraeli was the leading spirit, a constitution was framed for New Zealand in 1852, and in the summer of 1858 the colony of British Columbia was established. It was not more than a few months afterwards that disturbances arose; and the _Times_, in its review of the year 1859, found in these elements only the “incubus” of ubiquitous colonies and commerce. To this standing snarl about “the millstone of the colonies and India” Disraeli adverted thirteen years afterwards, when he said: “... It has been shown with precise, with mathematical demonstration, that there never was a jewel in the Crown of England that was so truly costly.... How often has it been suggested that we should emancipate ourselves from this incubus!” It was Disraeli’s Government that in the ’sixties was to confederate Canada, and in the ’seventies to devise a scheme for confederating South Africa. In his earliest pamphlets Disraeli had announced that the genius of the age was one of a transition from the “feodal” to the “federal.” In his whole outlook throughout he sought to reconcile the higher spirit of the one with the material interests of the other. And yet, astounding to relate, it was stated in a speech some seven years or so ago, that Disraeli himself had endorsed such melancholy and shortsighted pettiness. The sole foundation that I have been able to find is a stray sentence in a light letter to Lord Malmesbury; just as in 1863 he made merry in Parliament over those who regarded the “colonial empire” as an “annual burden.”