It was signally evinced in his treatment--his exceptional treatment when Opposition leader--of the Indian Mutiny. At that time Disraeli alone seemed to grasp the significance of the outbreak in its initial stage, which was viewed as a mere military rebellion, and regarded as lightly, and with as little reason, as the beginnings of the Boer War. “It is remarkable,” he urged, before the crisis became recognised, “how insignificant incidents at the first blush have appeared which have proved to be pregnant with momentous consequences. A street riot in Boston and at Paris, turned out to be the two great revolutions of modern times. Who would have supposed when we first heard of the rude visit of a Russian sailor from a port in the Black Sea to Constantinople, that we were on the eve of a critical war and the solution of the most difficult of modern problems?” It was, he contended, a national revolt, not a military mutiny. In our policy of the immediate past we had forcibly destroyed native authority for the sole object of increasing revenue. “In spite of the law of adoption, which was the very corner-stone of Hindoo society, when a native prince died without natural heirs, though a son had been adopted as a successor, the Government of India annexed his dominions. Sattara, Berar, Jeitpore, Sumbulpore, Jhansi, were monuments of ‘nefarious’ acquisition. And Oude, of ‘a wholesale system of spoliation,’ for it had been annexed even without the pretext of a lawful failure of heirs.” We had also disturbed the settlement of property by “a new system of government.” He analysed the popular law of adoption as the basis of Hindoo property, and as contrasted with its misuse in the hands of princes as a source of succession. He gave many instances, distinguishing each. “What man was safe, what feudatory, what freeholder who had not a child of his own loins, was safe throughout India?... The Government determined to exact all it could, not only from princes, but from the people.” The exemptions from the land tax--“the _whole_ taxation of the State”--had, under pretences, been continually taken away. The resumption of estates in Bengal alone had yielded the Government half a million of revenue; in Bombay alone £370,000 a year. Moreover, hereditary pensions had been commuted into personal annuities. These disturbances had naturally fomented these discontents.