When the harlequin's wand of Pitt converted Warren, the club waiter, into an earl, the Heralds' College traced his descent for him to the Norman Fitzwarren. Robert Burns was content to take his patent of nobility from a more immediate source. Disraeli doubtless had a right to use the bearings of the Laras if he cared about such things. But a Spanish pedigree at best was a shadowy sort of business, and one could rather wish that he had let it alone. CHAPTER XIII Fall of the Whigs in 1867--Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer--Reform Bill, why undertaken--Necessities real or fancied of a Party Leader--Alternatives--Split in the Cabinet--Disraeli carries his point--Niagara to be shot--Retirement of Lord Derby--Disraeli Prime Minister--Various judgments of his character--The House of Commons responsible for his elevation--Increasing popularity with all classes. [Sidenote: NEW REFORM BILL] Something else too as well as the Castilian pedigree Disraeli might have done better to leave to others. In 1865 he had uttered his memorable warning in the House of Commons against playing tricks with the Constitution. Other countries might emerge out of a revolution and 'begin again.' England could not begin again. Lord John Russell's Reform Bill was thrown out. The Whig Ministry fell in 1867, and Lord Derby came a third time to the helm with Disraeli for his Chancellor of the Exchequer. They at least, it might have been thought, would have let alone a subject on which the latter had pronounced so recently so emphatic an opinion. But they were still a Ministry on sufferance, and how to turn a minority into a majority was still an unsolved problem. The spectre of Reform was unexorcised. Both parties had evoked it at intervals, when they wished ultimately to pose before the world as the people's friends. Yet no experienced statesman, Whig or Tory, unless from unworthy jealousy, would have opened his lips to recommend a change from which he could not honestly expect improvement. Even the working classes themselves, who were to be admitted to the suffrage, were not actively demanding it. No good had come to them from the great Bill of 1832. 'I don't care who is in or who is out,' said a rough artisan to me. 'I could never see that any of them cared for us.' They had been told that they were living in a world where everyone was to look out for himself, that their interests would never be attended to till they had representatives who would force attention to them. But their general sense was that the ills which they complained of were out of reach of Parliament, and they were looking for a remedy in combination among themselves which would take the place of the old Guilds. The ancient organisation of labour had been destroyed in the name of Liberty. Their employers had piled up fortunes. They had been left 'free,' as it was called, with their families to multiply as they