When Lord Derby came to power in 1866 he was reported to have said that it would be his mission “to stem the tide of democracy.” It has, therefore, been supposed that he was an irreconcilable opponent of Reform. As he passed an extremely democratic measure of Parliamentary Reform--thereby, to use his own phrase, “dishing the Whigs”--he has been accused of the grossest possible tergiversation. What, then, was the attitude of the Tories to Reform in 1866? The party, as a whole, was certainly hostile to it. To give votes to people who paid £6 a year for their houses meant, as Sir E. Bulwer Lytton declared, the enfranchisement of “poverty and passion.” No speeches stirred the hearts and sympathies of the Tory party throughout this country so strongly as those in which Mr. Lowe, and other Adullamites, heaped the coarsest abuse on the working-classes of England. In those days an English artisan was spoken of in Tory society with an antipathy stronger even than that with which the “mean whites” regarded the negroes in the Southern States. The leaders of the Tory party, however--Lord Derby, Lord Stanley, Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Henley--never shared these prejudices. But what would they do after being called to power by the declared enemies of Reform? The first public utterances of Ministers did not throw much light on their intentions. Mr. Disraeli told his constituents that when the Government attempted to deal with Reform they would not adopt any foreign pattern--either American or French--as a model for the Parliamentary institutions of the country. He protested that he could not discover whether the defeated Bill was based on the rights of man or the rights of numbers. He seemed to have some notion that “the estate of the Commons” should, like all other estates, have a fair share in the Government of the country. But his idea evidently was to enfranchise not masses but classes, and to give electoral power to the _élite_ of all the different “orders” of society. Sir Stafford Northcote was opposed to bringing in any new Reform Bill.[250] Lord Stanley said bluntly that he had objected to the defeated Bill, because it made the franchise lower than the House of Commons would endure; and as for Lord Derby, his opinion was very ambiguous. He had no objection to see the electorate largely increased. But his difficulty was, that the agitators who were alone earnest in demanding Reform would never be satisfied with any Bill which the great parties in the State could unite in accepting. It was quite clear that he intended to let the matter rest and ripen. Lord Derby and his colleagues, however, made a fatal mistake in imagining that they would be allowed to let the matter rest. He completely miscalculated the strength of the social and political forces which had been let loose by the death of Lord Palmerston. The nation was in a condition of suspense and excitement that recalled revolutionary memories of 1848, and the working-classes had been roused from their