Before the Reform Bill of 1832, Disraeli wrote, musing on Athens, and contrasting the strong simplicity of Greek literature with the imitative splendour of Rome, “... A mighty era, prepared by the blunders of long centuries, is at hand. Ardently I hope that the necessary change in human existence may be effected by the voice of philosophy alone; but I tremble and am silent. There is no bigotry so terrible as the bigotry of a country that flatters itself that it is philosophical.” In introducing the great Act of 1867, he observed: “... The political rights of the working classes which existed before the Act of 1832, and which not only existed, but were acknowledged, were on that occasion disregarded and even abolished, and during the whole period that has since elapsed in consequence of the great vigour that has been given to the Government of this country, and of the multiplicity of subjects commanding interest that have engaged and engrossed attention, no great inconvenience has been experienced from that cause. Still, during all that time there has been a feeling, sometimes a very painful feeling, that questions have arisen which have been treated in this House without that entire national sympathy which is desirable.” The Reform Bill and its sequels transferred the immemorial franchise of toilers to the middle classes, who were to be further aggrandised by the repeal of the Corn Laws.[65] They raised the revolutionary bitterness of Toil in England and Religion in Ireland, both of which they provoked to physical force. The Act proved rather a measure for the House of Commons than for the Commons themselves. It was the makeshift and stop-gap of oligarchy in distress. Its immediate effects were to wipe out that parliamentary opposition on which the health of party government depends,[66] to encroach on the independent influence of the House of Lords, to end, it is true unintentionally, the “Venetian Constitution” of those who enfeebled their cause in 1837 by resolving to continue as oligarchs when the weapon of oligarchy had vanished; while none the less it left the monarch a doge, and the multitude a cipher; a crown still “robbed of its prerogatives, a Church controlled by a commission, and an aristocracy that does not lead.” Such were the joint results of the two large and once great parties that had lost principles in their search after organisation, the one by thwarting, the other by tricking the popular voice. It sharpened the warfare between rich and poor, afterwards aggravated by the acceptance of the principle of unrestricted competition; it precipitated a plutocracy, it helped to set class against class, and it became a prop of that calculating materialism which exalted “utility.” On the other hand, its indirect benefits were many. “It set men a-thinking” (I quote from _Sybil_); “it enlarged the horizon of political experience; it led the public mind to ponder somewhat on the circumstances of our national