Palmerston's discredit with his countrymen was of short duration, as was his exile from office; he was Premier again in the June of 1859, and was thenceforth "Prime Minister for life." His popularity, which had been for some time increasing, remained now quite unshaken until his death in 1865. Before Lord Derby's Government fell, however, a reform had been carried which could not but have been extremely grateful to Mr. Disraeli, then the Ministerial leader of the House of Commons. The last trace of the disabilities under which the Jews in England had laboured for many generations was now removed, and the Baron Lionel de Rothschild was able quietly to take his seat as one of the members for the City of London. The disabilities in question had never interfered with the ambition or the success of Mr. Disraeli, who at a very early age had become a member of the Christian Church. But his sympathies had never been alienated from the own people, with whom indeed he had always proudly identified himself by bold assertion of their manifold superiority. There are still, undoubtedly, persons in this country whose convictions lead them to think it anything but a wholesome change which has admitted among our legislators men, however able and worthy, who disclaim the name of _Christian_. But the change was brought about by the conviction, which has steadily deepened among us, that oppression of those of a different faith from our own, either by direct severities or by the withholding of civil rights, is a singularly poor weapon of conversion, and that the adversaries of Christianity are more likely to be conciliated by being dealt with in a Christlike spirit; further, that religious opinion may not be treated as a crime, without violation of God's justice. On the point as to the claim of _irreligious_ opinion to similar consideration, the national feeling cannot be called equally unanimous. In the case of the English Jews, it may be said that the tolerant and equal conduct adopted towards them has been well requited; the ancient people of God are not here, as in lands where they are trampled and trodden down, an offence and a trouble, the cause of repeated violent disturbance and the object of a frenzied hate, always deeply hurtful to those who entertain it.