What fitness, I should like to ask, has Lord Beaconsfield ever shown for appreciating the great events which, during his time, have gone forward in the world. During this generation, two stupendous rearrangements of States, completely recasting all the international relationships of Western Europe, have taken place--the unification of Italy and the transformation of Prussia into a German Empire. Political earthquakes like those do not come about all in a moment; these two were, in fact, long in preparation; there were throes, there were signs, there were symptoms. Some English statesmen--we could name several on the Liberal side--read the intimations rightly. But what subtle diplomatic sensitiveness did they challenge in Lord Beaconsfield--what preternaturally quick prognostications had he of the foreign marvels that were about to happen? Look first to the Prussian transformation. He severely blamed Chevalier Bunsen for indulging what he styled "the dreamy and dangerous nonsense called German nationality." Turn to Italy. Lord Beaconsfield characterized the earliest attempts of those patriots determined to win back national life or die as "mere brigandage." He spoke of the "phantom of a United Italy." All the world knows that so late even as the publication of his novel, "Lothair," he was under the impression that everything that had happened in the Italian peninsula and in Sicily was the work of a few secret societies, of whom Garibaldi was the figure-head. Take another example. He glossed over the former policy of the Austrian rulers towards Hungary, as innocent as the youngest baby in any cradle in any of our embassies, of discerning that in a few years it would be Hungary that would dominate the empire. In fact, Lord Beaconsfield has never shown the slightest true prevision of anything that was to happen abroad. But I must not be so unfair as to forget that Lord Beaconsfield took the side of the North in the American Civil War. Accidents will happen at times in the play of any kind of intellect; and this, at the very moment, had something of the appearance of being an abnormality of the Disraelian mind. When you look into the instance more closely, it proves not fully to contradict the other cases. Mr. Disraeli uttered a prophecy as to the future of America, and it was this: "It will be a mart of arms, a scene of diplomacies, of rival States, and probably of frequent wars." The result has vindicated his Lordship--nothing of the sort has happened.[1] Come, however, still nearer home. The French Commercial Treaty, which was the first practical attempt to bring the peoples on each side of the Channel into real intercourse, sure to make them permanent friends in the end, was urgently opposed by Lord Beaconsfield. It was towards him that Mr. Cobden had to turn at every stage of his nearly superhuman labours to see what was the next obstacle he would have to set himself to try and overcome.