Strepsiades in the Attic burlesque, had only “mislaid his cloak, not lost it.”[115] Ten years later he could advocate our colonial empire with effect and authority. The colonies had become--as the Crown had become--a popular institution, and a requisite for the fresh air, fresh vents, and fresh health of an expanding population cramped by now overcrowded towns. They might still prove a recruiting ground for labour. Peel’s adoption of the “physical happiness” principle, which postulates unlimited employment of industry, had not settled that problem by his “liberation of commerce.” And, as Disraeli pointed out in 1873, if it were only to be settled by natural forces, the “unlimited employment” of labour made for the erasement of the national idea. To the theoretic Radical, however, the colonies, like all our institutions, were still obstacles. “... To him the colonial empire is only an annual burden. To him corporation is an equivalent term for monopoly, and endowment for privilege....” Together with Disraeli’s name, in the mention of early colonial aspirations, that of the then Sir E. Bulwer Lytton should assuredly be commemorated. He, too, treated colonial concerns, during his brief period of secretaryship, with firmness, insight, and adroitness. Nor should it be forgotten that between the two was a link of romantic imagination as well as of long-standing friendship. Years before, they had both contributed to the _New Monthly Magazine_. Both were men of striking originality, untempered by a public school education; and it is amusing to note that the fantastic strain, enabling both to view the prospect spaciously, and censured as “un-English”[116] in Disraeli--often when he was really quoting from our classics[117]--was only criticised as “extravagant” in Lytton, or, at a later period, as “ornate” in Lord Leighton. Both were students and interpreters of Bolingbroke. They had each the faculty of regarding history as a whole, and from a high vantage-ground, instead of perverting their vision of progress by the paltry rancours of the moment. Such an instinct is invaluable in attaching new settlements to the nest of their nurture.