And, again, this from the close of _Coningsby_: “... he looked upon a government without distinct principles of policy as only a stop-gap to a widespread and demoralising anarchy; ... he for one could not comprehend how a free government could endure without national opinions to uphold it.... As for Conservative government, the natural question was, ‘What do you mean to conserve?... Things or only names, realities or merely appearances? Do you mean to continue the system commenced in 1834, and with a hypocritical reverence for the principles and a superstitious adherence to the forms of the old _exclusive_ constitution, carry on your policy by latitudinarian practice?’” His lifelong purpose as a statesman was to refresh institutions with reality, and to show by practice, as well as by precept, that, in all classes, an aristocracy without inherent superiority is doomed. De Tocqueville, in his famous treatise on “The Old Régime and the Revolution,” does the same. Eighteenth-century Toryism, a smitten cause espousing popular privileges, taught that unless the Crown ruled for the people as well as reigned over them, unless the nobles led them independently to high issues, unless the people themselves recognised that they were the privileged order in a nation, and that their representatives should form “a senate supported by the sympathy of millions,” the traditional principles of England had dwindled into a sham. “No one,” says Disraeli in _Coningsby_, again adverting to the critical issues of 1834, “had arisen either in Parliament, the Universities, or the Press, to lead the public mind to the investigation of principles; and not to mistake in their reformations the corruption of practice for fundamental ideas. It was this perplexed, ill-informed, jaded, shallow generation, repeating cries which they did not comprehend, and wearied with the endless ebullitions of their own barren conceit, that Sir Robert Peel was summoned to govern. It was from such materials, ample in quantity, but in all spiritual qualities most deficient; with great numbers, largely acred, consoled up to their chins, but without knowledge, genius, thought, truth, or faith, that Sir Robert Peel was to form ‘a great Conservative party on a comprehensive basis....’” Even Sir Robert’s single-mindedness and supremacy over Parliament failed to secure strength of Government. By universal consent, including his own avowal, he wrecked a great party in a country where great parties form the main pledge for the due representation of political opinion, and under a system where they remain the chief preventive against public corruption.