Again, in 1865, “... It appears to me,” urged Disraeli, “that the primary plan of our ancient constitution, so rich in various wisdom, indicates the course that we ought to pursue in this matter. It secured our popular rights by entrusting power, not to an indiscriminate multitude, but to the estate, or order, of the Commons. And a wise government should be careful that the elements of that estate _should bear a close relation to the moral and material development of the country_. Public opinion may not yet, perhaps, be ripe enough to legislate as to the subject, but it is sufficiently interested in the question to ponder over it with advantage; so that, _when the time comes for action_, we may legislate in the spirit of the English Constitution, _which would absorb the best of every class_, and not fall into a ‘democracy’ which is the tyranny of one class, and that _one the least enlightened_.” Long before 1867, these continuous utterances culminated that typical speech of 1859, which mooted a comprehensive plan of enlarged representation of political power, yet undisturbed balance, and which would have made “a representative assembly that is a mirror of the mind as well as of the material interests of England.” I shall quote largely from this unfamiliar speech. It illustrates how far his lifelong principles applied to a juncture before the artisans were wholly free from agitation against monarchy, and those institutions which fence it round. All Radical schemes, compassing “manhood suffrage,” all Whig schemes, merely delaying its day by seeking to reduce rental or property qualifications to an arbitrary minimum, were his aversion. Set, as he always was, against including whatever at the moment formed the dregs of ignorance, or the sediment of an unentitled populace, he already favoured that “rating” basis which Lord John Russell, always constitutional, had himself propounded in his abortive plan of 1854, and which Disraeli was to carry out in 1867 as a safeguard of stability in the boroughs. But in 1859 Lord Derby did not consider its application feasible. Disraeli had, therefore, now to forego it. Refusing to make any reductions in the franchise, or yield an inch to “detached” democracy, he now proposed to attain steadiness, to vary the vote, and to represent enlightenment contrasted with mere property by recommending the creation of the “compound householder” (“dwellers in a portion of any house rented in the aggregate at £20”)[72]; by a new suffrage for several small ownerships of property in the funds and savings banks; and for education, by enfranchising graduates, ministers of religion, physicians, barristers, and certain school-masters. He thus both forecasted, so far as was then practicable, household suffrage as against household democracy; and at the same time sought to represent education and ensure variety. By his attendant scheme of redistribution, he tried to prevent the counties from being “swamped”