his Canal shares among the Powers. It was possible that at any moment Germany or France might buy them up, and then impede the passage of English troops to India. Not a day was to be lost, and Mr. Disraeli, therefore, on his own responsibility, and without consulting his Cabinet, purchased the Shares. There was joy in the City over this operation. The bankruptcy of Turkey, declared at the end of October, had converted Turkish Bonds into waste paper, and it was some compensation to speculators that Mr. Disraeli’s purchase of the Canal Shares sent up the price of Egyptian Stock by leaps and bounds. Lord Hartington, it is true, in a speech at Sheffield (15th of December), querulously carped at the transaction. But as his contention was that England was in a better position to secure the neutrality of the Canal without than with a solid proprietary interest in it, nobody paid the least attention to his unpatriotic cavillings. They merely convinced the country that, despite Mr. Disraeli’s bungling Parliamentary leadership, his inaccuracy of statement, his loose hold of principle, and the administrative blunders of his subordinates, he was the only living statesman of first rank, in whose hands the higher interests of the Empire were safe. [Illustration: COUNT FERDINAND DE LESSEPS.] It was announced in March that the Prince of Wales was to visit India in November, with Sir Bartle Frere as his guide. In July it was decided that his tour should be a State Progress, the expenses of which should be paid for out of the revenues of England and India. The marine escort was to be provided by the Admiralty at a cost of £52,000; the Indian Treasury was to contribute £30,000; and when Mr. Disraeli asked the House of Commons for £52,000, Lord Hartington had no complaint to make except that he thought the vote ought to be larger. Messrs. Macdonald and Burt, when they objected that the working-classes would not approve of the grant, were literally “howled down” by the House. Yet all Mr. Burt said was that as he himself lived on a salary derived from his constituents, he could not decently vote away their money to pay the cost of what they believed was a tour of pleasure for a rich Prince. His argument was fair enough from his point of view. It was faulty because he failed to see that a vote for a State pageant which meant to individualise the Monarchy to the Indian mind, was not a grant to the Prince as a private individual. Mr. Bright’s support of the grant, which was voted, was useful to the Government. But as his argument was that the visit of the Prince might be serviceable in checking the harsh and cruel treatment to which the natives of India are subjected by their English rulers, it was condemned as unjust to the devoted servants of the Queen, who wear out their lives in honourable exile, maintaining peace in an Empire that, without them, would be converted into a pandemonium of slaughter.