“As it is not the interest of the rich and the powerful to pursue popular principles of government, the wisdom of great men and the experience of ages have taken care that these principles should be cherished and perpetuated in the form of institutions. Thus the majesty that guards the multitude is embodied in a throne; the faith that consoles them hovers round the altar of a national Church; the spirit of discussion, which is the root of public liberty, flourishes in the atmosphere of a free Parliament.” These, in the rough, are some of Disraeli’s ideas as to the new democracy. From the first, as we shall see, he compassed the renewal of the English democratic idea--that of democracy as an _element_--in opposition alike to the State tutelage of the French, and to that form of democracy which means the undue power of one _class_ in the nation. His Reform Bill of 1867 was the accomplishment of his earliest hopes, and the realisation of principles distinct from the spasms of doctrinaire “Liberalism.” He regarded our Constitution--the quintessence of the English character immanent in English institutions--as a real though limited monarchy, tempered by a democracy which is in effect neither more nor less than _a natural aristocracy_. “Aristocracy,” as a universal principle and not the badge of a particular class, is the committal of political privilege far more to representative influence than to powerful interests. A “natural” aristocracy must comprehend and absorb the superiors of every class in all their varieties.