the chapels of your creed; nor am I in possession of a princely revenue arising from a starving race of fanatical slaves. Nevertheless, I have a deep conviction that the hour is at hand when I shall be more successful, and take my place in that proud assembly of which Mr. O'Connell avows his wish to be no longer a member. I expect to be a representative of the people before the repeal of the Union. We shall meet at Philippi; and rest assured that, confident in a good cause, and in some energies which have been not altogether unimproved, I will seize the first opportunity of inflicting upon you a castigation which will make you at the same time remember and repent the insults that you have lavished upon

"BENJAMIN D'ISRAELI."

O'Connell and Mr. Disraeli did meet at Philippi. How Mr. Disraeli attempted to inflict the promised castigation on the Irish agitator, and what was the result, will soon be seen.

413

CHAPTER VI.

OTHER CONTROVERSIES.

THE world had not yet ceased to laugh at O'Connell's unsparing dissection of Lord Beaconsfield, when that gentleman once more claimed its attention.

More useful, after all, than any gift Nature can bestow upon a man, is the gift of unfailing self-conceit. The man so blessed comes, in his opinion, triumphantly out of every argument-is, in his own eyes, covered with glory, when, in the eyes of others, he is bespattered with shame; imagines himself grossly ill-treated, when, in the opinion of all others, he has received richlydeserved punishment.

An ordinary man would have felt the shame and failure which fell upon Lord Beaconsfield in 1835 so keenly, as to desire nothing better than obscurity for some time to come. But Lord Beaconsfield is not an ordinary man-Lord Beaconsfield possesses the gift of unfailing self-conceit.

It has been already seen that, at an early period in his career, he had, by some means or other, obtained the friendship of Lord Lyndhurst. Mr. Greville has,

it has also been seen, unkindly suggested that the intimacy was due to that feeling which is said to attract black sheep to black sheep. That early friendship of Lord Beaconsfield is certainly one of the most significant and most curious points in his career. How came it that this young man, the son of a Jewish litterateur, made himself the friend of a Lord Chancellor, a great political chief? How many problems of the like kind are we not called upon to solve every day of our lives? Why, of two men born in exactly the same rank of life, is the one admitted to good society, and the other excluded from it? Examine the two men, and you often find that the man of success is the meaner man of the two-gifted with less intelligence, poorer in heart, lower in ideal, less truthful in nature. Can it be, then, that social successes, that "big friends"-Lord Lyndhurst, for example, are obtained by mean and not by high qualities, by servility and "cheek," by an over-estimate of frivolous aims, and a careful suppression of truth as to one's real position, which amounts to a suggestio falsi?

One is often set a-thinking on such questions in studying the career of the man who is now called Earl of Beaconsfield.

"Vindication of the English Constitution, in a Letter to a Noble and Learned Lord, by Disraeli the Younger" -such is the title of the work with which Mr. Disraeli challenged public attention towards the end of 1835. · It is, indeed, a marvellous production, but its main · characteristics and its main principles are of a kind

with which the reader has already been made familiar. My quotations from this work shall, therefore, be few and brief; and the first shall be one, which has little to do with the subject of the letter, but is illustrative of the personal character of Lord Beaconsfield. In proving one of his philosophic propositions, he lugs in a story about a Pasha of Egypt, who took it into his head that representative institutions would be suitable to his kingdom.

"It so happened," writes the Vindicator of the Constitution, "that a young English gentleman, who was on his travels, was at this period resident in Cairo, and as he had more than once had the good fortune in an audience of engaging the attention of the pacha, by the readiness or patience of his replies, his Highness determined to do the young Englishman the honour of consulting him.”*

The pacha unfolds his plan, and here is how it is met. "The surprise of our countryman, when he received the communication of the pacha, was not unconsiderable; but he was one of those who had seen sufficient of the world never to be astonished; not altogether untinctured with political knowledge, and gifted with that philosophical exemption from prejudice, which is one of the most certain and most valuable results of extensive travel. Our countryman communicated to the Egyptian ruler with calmness and with precision the immediate difficulties that occurred to him, explained to the successor of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies that

* "Vindication," 102-3.

the political institutions of England had been the gradual growth of ages, and that there is no, political function which demands a finer discipline or a more regulated preparation, than the exercise of popular suffrage.'

"God is great!" said Mehemet Ali to the traveller ; "you are a wise man. Allah! Kerim, but you spit pearls"-and persists in his plan. †

Of course Lord Beaconsfield himself is the hero of this interesting little story. Even in a treatise on a philosophic subject, the restless and ever-present vanity of the man insists on his introducing his own personality with a flourish of trumpets characteristically loud and unblushing.

And now for some of the Vindicator's political views. One of the first and most startling is a denial that "the House of Commons is the House of the People, or that the members of the House of Commons are the Representatives of the People." +

What, then, the reader will naturally ask, is the House of Commons? "The Commons of England," answers Mr. Disraeli, "form an Estate, and the mem bers of the House of Commons represent that Estate." § And, again, we are told that that Estate "consists of a very limited section of our fellow-subjects, invested for the general advantage of the commonwealth, with certain high functions and noble privileges."||

This idea of the nation being divided into estates. is one for which Lord Beaconsfield has shown an abiding love. It is brought forward, not only in the "Vindication," but also in "Coningsby" and in "Sybil,"

Ibid. 103-4. † Ibid. 104-5. ‡ Ibid. 66. § Ibid. || Ibid. 66-7.