It was no common energy and perseverance that Benjamin Disraeli needed to climb to fame as he did. It was a continuous struggle for him, from the time when, hooted by the Whig majority in Parliament, he retorted that the day would come when they would hear him, to the time when the great Conservative Party chose him as its leader and he was acclaimed by all his countrymen. Without inheriting a fortune in this country――where wealth and birth had always been, if not altogether indispensable, at least a most important qualification for admission to public life――he was yet able to overcome obstacles that were then deemed insurmountable and to attain by sheer force of his own unconquerable will to a position that powers unfathomable seemed joined to prevent him from gaining. By race a Jew, he was at bottom a clear-sighted sceptic. With remarkable foresight he had been able to weigh the advantage which, from the point of view of a Cabinet Minister, he could gain from the position offered him by the Conservative party. No one foresaw more clearly than he the future in store for it. As a Jew he also knew well that it was impossible to prevent the Liberal evolution from being slowly accomplished in England. Instead of declaring war upon Liberalism he compromised with it, and, by means of concessions cleverly granted at the right moment, he contrived to concede only a portion of what public opinion demanded. His tendencies, however, were democratic, and in an age in which greed for material advancement was levelling all things to the lowest plane, he was able to rescue England from a grovelling servility to blatant commercialism, uplift her soul and rouse her to a recognition of the fact that ephemeral interests are not everything to a great people. As Premier he showed Europe that “England was something more than a counting-house.” He obtained possession of the Suez Canal by the purchase of shares――a transaction in which he was assisted by the late Lord Rothschild (Appendix lviii). He placed the Imperial Crown of India on his Sovereign’s head. Without firing a shot, he took possession of Cyprus (Appendix lix), and caused the might of British arms to be felt in every continent.