This purpose he had sought to accomplish two years before, when, in 1848, he proved by a speech which, it is said, won him the eventual leadership of his party, that the breakdown which Carlyle was at that time preparing to denounce, was due to an incapable ministry, and not to an effete Parliament. He always held Parliament to be neither a municipal vestry nor a chamber of commerce, but a national temple of embodied opinion; nor can the wisdom of his view in those dark and despondent times be better tested than by comparing, in the light of what has since occurred, than by contrasting Carlyle’s fulminations in this regard with Disraeli’s discernment. “... There is a phenomenon,” says Carlyle, in his “Chartism,” “which one might call Paralytic Radicalism in these days, which gauges with statistic measuring-reed, sounds with Philosophic Politico-Economic plummet, the deep, dark sea of trouble, and, having taught us rightly what an infinite sea of trouble it is, sums up with the practical inference and use of consolation, That nothing whatever in it can be done by man, who has simply to sit still and look wistfully to ‘Time and General Laws;’ and thereupon, without so much as recommending suicide, coldly takes its leave of us....” Disraeli, on the other hand-- “... ‘In this country,’ said ‘Sidonia,’ ‘since the peace, there has been an attempt to advocate a reconstruction of society on a purely rational basis. The principle of Utility has been powerfully developed. I speak not with lightness of the labours of the disciples of that school. I bow to intellect in every form; and we should be grateful to any school of philosophers, even if we disagree with them.... There has been an attempt to reconstruct society on a basis of material motives and calculations. It has failed. It must ultimately have failed under any circumstances; its failure in an ancient and densely peopled kingdom was inevitable. How limited is human reason, the profoundest inquirers are most conscious. We are not indebted to the reason of man for any of the great achievements which are the landmarks of human action and human progress. It was not Reason that besieged Troy; it was not Reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world, that inspired the crusades, that instituted the monastic order; it was not Reason that produced the Jesuits; above all, it was not Reason that created the French Revolution....” I may compare with this the light episode of the travelling Utilitarian in the much earlier _Young Duke_-- “... ‘I think it is not very difficult to demonstrate the _use_ of an aristocracy,’[68] mildly observed the Duke. “‘Pooh! nonsense, sir! I know what you are going to say, but we have got beyond all that. Have you read this, sir? This article on the aristocracy in _The Screw and Lever Review_?’ “‘I have not, sir.’