“It is supposed [said Mr. Disraeli] to be an act which can be performed with very great promptitude, and that it is a resource to which any Minister may recur with the utmost facility. That is a grave mistake. Dissolution of Parliament is a different instrument in different hands. It is an instrument of which a Minister who is in office, with his Government established, can avail himself with a facility which a Minister who is only going to accede to office is deprived of. There may be circumstances which may render it imperative on a Minister in office to advise the Sovereign to exercise the prerogative of dissolving Parliament; but he always has the opportunity of disposing of the public business before that dissolution takes place. The position of the Minister who is about to accede to office is very different. In the first place he has to form his Administration. This is a work of great time and of heavy responsibility. It is not confined merely to the construction of a Cabinet. Before a Ministry can be formed, whoever undertakes the task of its construction must see some fifty individuals whom he has to appoint to offices of trust and consideration. It is a duty which he can delegate to no one. He must see each of those individuals personally, and must communicate with them by himself. And this is a matter which--irrespective of the knowledge of human nature, which whoever undertakes to form a Cabinet ought to possess--requires time, and materially affects the business of the country. In the present case it would not have been possible to form a Government before Easter. Then the holidays would have intervened. After the holidays we might, by having recourse to measures of which I greatly disapprove--namely, provisional finance, the taking votes on credit and votes on account, and by accepting the estimates of my predecessors--have been able to dissolve Parliament in the early part of May. But when the month of May arrived, this question would have occurred: What are you going to dissolve Parliament about? There was no issue before the country. At least, it cannot be pretended for a moment that there was one of those issues before the country which would justify an extraordinary dissolution of Parliament--that is, some question upon which the country would passionately wish to decide. I ask the House to consider impartially what was the real condition of affairs. Her Majesty’s Ministers had resigned; the Queen had called upon a member of this House to form a Ministry in a house in which he had nearly ninety majority arrayed against him. Suppose it was in his opinion necessary to appeal to the country, by which the majority might be returned--probably of ninety--in his favour.