One word upon your past. I have no doubt the great bulk of you are Liberals, but yet I shall be very glad if some of you are Conservatives. Are Conservatives seriously considering with the gravity which becomes the people of this country--the responsible people of this country--what course they shall take upon the coming occasion? Great things have been done in the last three days, and these things are not done in a corner. The intelligence, limited, but, I think, intelligible, has been flashed over sea and land, and has reached, long before I address you, the remotest corners of the earth. I can well conceive that it has been received in different countries with different feelings. I can believe that there are one or two Ministers of State in the world, and possibly even here and there a sovereign, who would have eaten this morning a heartier breakfast if the tidings conveyed by the telegraph had been reversed, and if the issue of the elections had been as triumphant for the existing Administration as it has been menacing, if not fatal, to their prospects. But this I know, among other places to which it has gone, it has passed to India--it has before this time reached the mind and the heart of many millions of your Indian fellow subjects--and I will venture to say that it has gladdened every heart among them. They have known this Government principally in connexion with the aggravation of their burdens and the limitation of their privileges. And, gentlemen, I will tell you more, that if there be in Europe any State or country which is crouching in fear at the feet of powerful neighbours with gigantic armaments, which loves, enjoys, and cherishes liberty, but which at the same time fears lest that inestimable jewel should be wrenched out of its hands by overweening force--if there be such a State, and there may be such a State in the East and in the West--then I will venture to say that in that State, from the highest to the lowest, from sovereign to subject, joy and satisfaction will have been diffused by the intelligence of these memorable days. BENJAMIN DISRAELI JULY 4, 1864 DENMARK AND GERMANY