[101] This idea is, among other speeches, worked out in that delivered at Amersham, December 4, 1860, where he says: “The parish is one of the strongest securities for local government, and on local government mainly depends our political liberty.” He points out that the Church is not oligarchical, and does not claim those exclusive privileges which the Nonconformists often do. It is national in its comprehensive ties with the country and its inclusiveness. The abolition of the parish system would alone prove a national and social upheaval. [102] This policy was pressed by Peel in the early ’forties, and led to the fine work of the National Schools. [103] That of Strauss. [104] In the Croker Papers will be found a masterly letter from Sir Robert Peel on the importance of the Church rising to her educational opportunities. It was Peel’s foresight that produced the National Schools. Peel, though latitudinarian, was a Church statesman. [105] I may add that what Disraeli resented in Gladstone’s thwarted proposals for his Catholic University scheme was that it sought to exclude theology and philosophy--an exception unworthy of any “Universitas rerum,” and deeply repugnant to the Catholics. [106] Letter to D. O’Connell, 1835. [107] This has been elaborately developed by Bolingbroke in his “Philosophical Works.” [108] How true this has now proved itself in France! [109] Elsewhere Disraeli said that Paris always remains a republic. [110] It will be noticed that Sir Robert goes beyond Disraeli’s ideas of direct kingship. [111] In 1872, Disraeli said, after stating that Lord Derby’s successor was no enemy to Russian aggression, “... I speak of what I know, not of what I believe, but of what I have evidence in my possession to prove, _that the Crimean War would never have happened if Lord Derby had remained in office_....” Lord Derby’s error in resigning in 1853 he always deplored; just as he regretted equally his rash acceptance of office during the previous year, and his more fatal timidity in shrinking from assuming it in 1855. [112] This passage was written before the events of 1903. [113] This was realised some ten years later by the repeal of the Sugar Duties. [114] The speech about Income Tax, which contains another masterly analysis of the displacement of labour. Previously, in 1845, he had said of Canada, “... I am not one of those who think that its inevitable lot is to become annexed to the United States. Canada has all the elements of a great and independent country, and is destined, I sometimes believe, to be the Russia of the New World.” [115] “Ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀπολώλεκ’ ἀλλὰ καταπεφρόντικα.” [116] It will be remembered that in _Coningsby_ “Rigby’s” election speech called everything with which he disagreed “un-English.” Dickens’s satire of the misuse of “un-English” in the person of “Podsnap” may be compared.