Some of Lord Randolph’s maxims in Opposition are well known. He is often credited with, though he cannot rightly claim, the authorship of the phrase, ‘The duty of an Opposition is to oppose.’ Lord Salisbury condemned early in 1883 ‘the temptation, strong to many politicians, to attempt to gain the victory by bringing into the Lobby men whose principles were divergent, and whose combined forces therefore could not lead to any wholesome victory.’ ‘Excellent moralising,’ observed Lord Randolph, ‘very suitable to the digestions of country delegates, but one of those Puritanical theories which party leaders are prone to preach on a platform, which has never guided for any length of time the action of politicians in the House of Commons, and which, whenever apparently put into practice, invariably results in weak and inane proceedings. Discriminations between wholesome and unwholesome victories are idle and impracticable. Obtain the victory, know how to follow it up, and leave the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness to critics.’ His second maxim was as follows: ‘Take office only when it suits you, but put the Government in a minority whenever you decently can’; and his third, ‘Whenever by an unfortunate concurrence of circumstances an Opposition is compelled to support the Government, the support should be given with a kick and not with a caress and should be withdrawn on the first available moment.’ Lord Randolph always declared that in such things he was sustained by the example of Mr. Disraeli. In 1852 Mr. Disraeli put Lord John Russell in a minority by allying himself with Lord Palmerston. In 1857 he put Lord Palmerston in a minority by allying himself with Mr. Gladstone and the Radical party. In 1858 he put Lord Palmerston in a second minority by following the lead of Mr. Milner Gibson and the Radicals. In 1866 Mr. Disraeli, with the assistance of Lord Cranborne, placed Mr. Gladstone in a minority by allying himself with the Whigs. Again, in 1873 Mr. Disraeli placed Mr. Gladstone in a minority by making a temporary alliance with the Radicals and with the Irish. Fortified by these examples, the leader of Tory Democracy pursued his devious and unexpected course, to the bewilderment of his friends and the discomfiture of his foes.