In Mr. Gladstone's "great Edinburgh speech" of the autumn of 1893 the veteran Premier said that _Punch_, "whenever it can, manifests the Liberal sentiments by which it was governed from the first." And naturally, as a consistent Liberal supporter, it as consistently attacked the Tory party. Says Mr. Ruskin in one of his lectures on "The Art of England:" "You must be clear about _Punch's_ politics. He is a polite Whig, with a sentimental respect for the Crown, and a practical respect for property. He steadily flatters Lord Palmerston, from his heart adores Mr. Gladstone. Steadily, but not virulently, caricatures Mr. D'Israeli; violently and virulently castigates assault upon property in any kind, and holds up for the general idea of perfection, to be aimed at by all the children of heaven and earth, the British Hunting Squire, the British Colonel, and the British sailor." This persistent opposition to Disraeli throughout his whole career--an hostility more bitter than perhaps might have been expected from Ruskin's "polite Whig"--was esteemed at its full importance by the object of it, though it was accepted by him, as similar attacks are accepted by all great minds, in excellent part. Nevertheless, after only three or four years of attack, he made a determined though unsuccessful attempt to conciliate his pungent critic. Vizetelly, in his "Glances Back through Seventy Years," tells the story with all the interest belonging to a personal recollection. "In the summer of 1845," he says, "Mr. Disraeli took the chair at the annual dinner of the 'Printers' Pension Society,' when the stewards, of whom I was one, received him in the drawing-room of the 'Albion,' in Aldersgate Street. Immediately after his entrance he posted himself in a nonchalant fashion with his back to the mantelpiece, and his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, an attitude Thackeray was fond of assuming, and began to chat familiarly with those near him. In a minute or two he asked if Mr. Leech was present (Leech was one of the stewards), as if he would like to make his acquaintance. The famous _Punch_ caricaturist thereupon stepped forward, and was duly introduced. Disraeli showed himself particularly gracious, and warmly congratulated the artist, whose pencil had lately been employed in satirising him in a disparaging fashion, depicting him as a nice young man for a small party, _i.e._ the Young England party, as a Jew dealer in cast-off notions, and as a young Gulliver before the Brobdingnag Minister (Sir R. Peel). Disraeli tried his hardest to ingratiate himself with the distinguished caricaturist, but Leech, proof against the wiles of the charmer, rejoined some months afterwards with the famous cartoon wherein Disraeli, who had lately proclaimed that, although the cause was lost, there should be some retribution for those who betrayed it, figured as a spiteful ringletted viper, and Peel as a smiling unconcerned old file.