[46] Canning’s ideas on variety of representation influenced Disraeli. [47] It must be remembered that in 1833 the Radicals were a very small band, and differed vastly from their successors of the Manchester School. They were thoroughly discontented with the middle-class legislation of the Reform Bill, and they were violently opposed to the Whig pretensions to popular emancipation. Disraeli shared these feelings. [48] It should be remembered that in the brilliant characterisation of Bolingbroke in Disraeli’s _Letter to Lord Lyndhurst_, he says, “that despite the Whig affectation of popular sympathies, and the Tory admiration of arbitrary power, Bolingbroke penetrated appearances, and perceived that the choice really lay ‘between oligarchy and democracy.’” [49] A sentence from his appeal to Mr. Gladstone in 1859. [50] _The Press_, June 11, 1853. The whole series is full of great strokes; and there is also a critique on the dividing periods of English history, which is most bold and original. [51] _Vide_ “Chartism,” p. 35. [52] _Contarini Fleming._ For a like passage of about the same date, _cf._ _ante_, p. 48. [53] And _cf._ _post_ at the opening of Chapter VI. [54] _The Spirit of Whiggism._ [55] _Cf._ his fine speech on “Agricultural Distress,” April 29, 1879. He urged the same, almost in the same words, on February 17, 1863. [56] Letter to Lord Lyndhurst. So, too, in his early _Spirit of Whiggism_. In a speech of 1865 he defines an Estate as “a political body invested with political power for the government of the country and for the public good,” and “therefore a body founded upon _privilege_ and not upon _right_,” and “in the noblest and properest sense of the term an _aristocratic_ body.” Under the Plantagenets it was at one time mooted whether the _Law_ should not be raised into such an “Estate.” He says the same in a letter of explanation to Lord Malmesbury. [57] “Our constituent body should be _numerous_ enough to be independent, and _select_ enough to be responsible.” In 1865 he distinguished between the constitution, absorbing the best from each class, and a “democracy”--“the tyranny of one class.” [58] _Runnymede Letters._ [59] In 1733 Walpole objected to the repeal of the Septennial Act precisely on the grounds that it would involve over-confidence in the people, and democratise England. [60] “... He (Pitt) created a plebeian aristocracy and blended it with the patrician oligarchy. He made peers of second-rate squires and fat graziers. He caught them in the alleys of Lombard Street, and clutched them from the counting-houses of Cornhill....”--_Sybil._ [61] The motion was designed to throw the burden of taxation on land. Disraeli showed that land was no monopoly, while it remained a security for good government; and that the rental of property in Great Britain, if equally divided among its proprietors, would only amount to £170 as an average annual income per head.