for the exercise of political rights.” In 1852, he again dinned into unappreciative ears the necessity for a genuinely industrial franchise, though he was not satisfied that Lord John Russell’s £5 franchise would so operate. In 1859 and 1867, Disraeli tried hard to confer franchises on education and thrift, but Mr. Bright sneered at them as “fancy franchises,” Mr. Gladstone scoffed at them, and in forwarding the great measure of labour suffrage by the compelled co-operation of both sides of the House, Disraeli had to surrender safeguards he never ceased to desire and to regret, for they are founded on the State recognition of individual excellence, instead of on the State manipulation of mere party mechanism. “Is the possession of the franchise,” demanded Disraeli in 1851, “to be a privilege, the privilege of industry and public virtue, or is it to be a right--the right of every one, however degraded, however indolent, however unworthy?... I am for the system which maintains in this country _a large and free Government, having confidence in the energies and faculties of man_. Therefore I say, make the franchise a privilege, but let it be the privilege of _the civic virtues_. Honourable gentlemen opposite would degrade the franchise to the man, instead of raising the man to the franchise. If you want to have a free aristocratic country, free because aristocratic (I use the word ‘aristocratic’ in its noblest sense--_I mean that aristocratic freedom which enables every man to achieve the best position in the State to which his qualities entitle him_), I know not what we can do better than adhere to the _mitigated monarchy of England, with power in the Crown, order in one estate of the realm, and liberty in the other_. It is from that happy combination that we have produced a state of society that all other nations look upon with admiration and envy.” In all these considerations, the social results of measures and formulæ were ever uppermost in his mind. What he had ever been resolute to secure was, as he avowed even in 1850, “the industrial franchise,” which the resettlement of 1832 had thrown to the winds.