The House of Commons had much of the generous temper of an English public school. Boys like a little fellow who has the courage to stand up to a big one, and refuses to be bullied. The Whigs were amused at the mutiny of a Tory subordinate. The Tory rank-and-file had so often smarted under Peel's contempt that the blow told, and Disraeli had increased his consequence in the House by another step. Those who judge of motive by events, and assure themselves that when the actions of a man lead up to particular effects, those effects must have been contemplated by himself from the outset of his career, see indication in these speeches of a deliberate intention on Disraeli's part to supersede Sir Robert Peel in the leadership of the Conservative party. The vanity of such a purpose, had it been really entertained, would have been exceeded by the folly of his next movement. In the following year O'Connell's monster meetings had become a danger to the State. Peel had again to apply to the House of Commons, with a general sense on both sides that the authority of the Crown must be supported. Disraeli, almost alone among the English members, took the same daring attitude which he had assumed on the Chartist petition. Being in reality a stranger in the country of his adoption, he was able to regard the problems with which it was engaged in the light in which they appeared to other nations. The long mismanagement of Ireland, its chronic discontent and miserable state, were regarded everywhere as the blot upon the English escutcheon, and the cause of it was the mutual jealousy and suspicion of parties at Westminster. If a remedy was ever to be found, party ties must be thrown to the winds. What, he asked, did this eternal Irish question mean? One said it was a physical question, another a spiritual question. Now it was the absence of an aristocracy, then the absence of railroads. It was the Pope one day, potatoes the next. Let the House consider Ireland as they would any other country similarly situated, in their closets. They would see a teeming population denser to the square mile than that of China, created solely by agriculture, with none of those sources of wealth which are developed by civilisation, and sustained upon the lowest conceivable diet. That dense population in extreme distress inhabited an island where there was an Established Church which was not their Church, and a territorial aristocracy the richest of whom lived in distant capitals. They had a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and, in addition, the weakest executive in the world. That was the Irish question. Well, then, what would honourable gentlemen say if they were reading of a country in that position? They would say at once 'the remedy was revolution.' But Ireland could not have a revolution; and why? Because Ireland was connected with another and more powerful country. Then what was the consequence? The connection with England