The aristocracy had lost their power because their duties had been neglected. They might have wealth or they might have power; but not both together. It was not too late to reconsider the alternative. The Chartists, finding themselves scoffed out of the House of Commons, took to violence. There were riots in Birmingham, and a Chartist convention sat in London threatening revolution. Lord John Russell appealed for an increase of the police. Disraeli was one of a minority of five who dared to say that it was unnecessary, and that other measures ought to be tried. When the leaders were seized, he supported his friend, Tom Duncombe, in a protest against the harshness of their treatment. The Chancellor of the Exchequer rebuked him. Fox Maule, a junior member of the Government, charged him with being 'an advocate of riot and disorder.' In later times Disraeli never struck at small game. When he meant fight, he went for the leading stag of the herd. On this occasion he briefly touched his two slight antagonists. 'Under-Secretaries,' he said, 'were sometimes vulgar and ill-bred. From a Chancellor of the Exchequer to an Under-Secretary of State was a descent from the sublime to the ridiculous, though the sublime was on this occasion rather ridiculous, and the ridiculous rather trashy!' It is scarcely conceivable that if Disraeli was then aspiring to harness under Sir Robert, he would have committed himself with such reckless audacity; and his action was the more creditable to him as the profession which he had chosen brought him no emoluments. His financial embarrassments were thickening round him so seriously, that without office it might soon become impossible to continue his Parliamentary career. Like Bassanio, When he had lost one shaft, He shot his fellow of the self-same flight The self-same way with more advised watch To find the other forth, and by adventuring both He oft found both.