“I know well (added Mr. Disraeli), and those around me know well, what will occur when a Ministry takes office and attempts to carry on Government with a minority during the session, with a view of ultimately appealing to the people. A right hon. gentleman will come down here, he will arrange his thumb-screws and other instruments of torture, and we shall never ask for a vote without a lecture; we shall never perform the most ordinary routine office of Government without there being annexed to it some pedantic and ignominious condition. (No, no.) I wish to express nothing but what I know from painful personal experience. No observation of the kind I have encountered could divest me of the painful memory; I wish it could. I wish it was not my duty to take this view of the case. For a certain time we should enter into the paradise of abstract motions. One day hon. gentlemen cannot withstand the golden opportunity of asking the House to assert that the income-tax should no longer form one of the features of Ways and Means. Of course, a proposition of that kind would be scouted by the right hon. gentleman and all his colleagues; but they might dine out on that day, and the resolution might be carried, as resolutions of that kind have been. Perhaps another gentleman, distinguished for his knowledge of ‘men and things’ (Mr. Rylands), moves that the Diplomatic Service should be abolished. While hon. gentlemen opposite may laugh in their sleeves at the mover, they vote for the motion in order to put the Government into a minority. So it would go very hard with us if on some sultry afternoon some member should ‘rush in where angels fear to tread’ (Mr. Trevelyan) and successfully assimilate the borough and the county franchise. And so things would go on until the bitter end--until at last even the Appropriation Bill has passed, Parliament is dissolved, and we appeal to those millions who, perhaps, six months before might have looked upon us as the vindicators of their intolerable grievances, but who now receive us as a defeated, discredited, and a degraded Ministry, whose services can no longer be of value to the Crown or a credit to the nation.” Under these circumstances, with the concurrence of all his friends, he had represented to the Queen that it was not for the public interest that he should attempt to form a Government. FIRST LONDON HOSPITAL SUNDAY (1873). =Source.=--_The Times_, Monday, June 16, 1873.