It is not within my province to track the maze of altercations which attended every step of a bill on which Disraeli, contrary to his wont, spoke more than three hundred times, or to raise the dust of controversy this year revived. But, were it so, I could prove how faithful Disraeli remained to the central ideas which had animated him from his youth. So far from having passed a “liberal” measure, he had passed under colossal difficulties, that for which he had long striven, and in a manner which remedied the defects of 1832 without endangering the repose of the State. Indeed, for the second time he actually re-created the Conservative party, and, to the surprise of some of his friends and all his enemies, discovered in the unknown region of the toilers, with whom he had ever sympathised, whom he had always trusted, but whom the Whigs had driven to revolt, and to whom the “cheapest market” Radicals perpetually begrudged protection, health, and alleviation--discovered, I say, in these elements--the pawns of ignoble partisanship--his truest props of order and of allegiance. The measure and the events of 1884 were to prove the rightness alike of his confidence and of his caution. The counties with a lowered franchise became a prey to agitators. The towns remained staunch and steadfast. And this, though in 1867 Mr. Bright had sneered at Disraeli for having “lugged” his “omnibus” of stupid squires up the hill of democracy. In his speech of 1859, Disraeli protested against any “predominance of household democracy.” He kept his word. Speaking at Edinburgh in the autumn of 1867, he remarked on this very topic-- “... It may be said you have established a democratic government in England, because you have established household suffrage, and you have gone much further than the measures which you previously opposed.... Now, I am not at all prepared to admit that household suffrage with the constitutional conditions upon which we have established it--namely, residence and rating--has established a democratic government. But it is unnecessary to enter into that consideration, because we have not established household suffrage in England. There are, I think I may say, probably four million houses in England. Under our ancient laws, and under the Act of Lord Grey, about one million of those householders possessed the franchise. Under the Act of 1867, something more than half a million will be added to that million. Well, then, I want to know if there are four million householders, and one and a half million in round numbers possess the suffrage, how can ‘household suffrage’ be said to be established in England?”