tion in which your Majesty might deign to place her. Might her husband then hope that your Majesty would be graciously pleased to create her Viscountess Beaconsfield, a town with which Mr. Disraeli has been long connected and which is the nearest town to his estate in Bucks which is not yet ennobled?

From Queen Victoria.

WINDSOR CASTLE, Nov. 24, 1868.- The Queen has received Mr. Disraeli's letter, and has much pleasure in complying with his request that she should confer a peerage on Mrs. Disraeli, as a mark of her sense of his services. The Queen thinks that Mr. Disraeli, with whom she will part with much regret, can render her most useful service even when not in office; and she would have been very sorry if he had insisted on retiring from public life.

The Queen can indeed truly sympathise with his devotion to Mrs. Disraeli, who in her turn is so deeply attached to him, and she hopes they may yet enjoy many years of happiness together.

The Queen will gladly confer the title of Viscountess Beaconsfield on Mrs. Disraeli.

The Queen cannot conclude without expressing her deep sense of Mr. Disraeli's great kindness and consideration towards her, not only in what concerned her personally, but in listening to her wishes which were however always prompted by the sole desire to promote the good of her country.

To Queen Victoria.

Nov. 25, 1868.— Mr. Disraeli at your Majesty's feet offers to your Majesty his deep gratitude for your Majesty's inestimable favor and for the terms so gracious and so graceful-in which your Majesty has deigned to speak of his efforts when working under a Sovereign whom it is really a delight to serve.

Though there was some ill-mannered comment in a portion of the Radical press, public opinion in general accepted Mrs. Disraeli's peerage as a graceful and appropriate recognition of her husband's eminence and her own devotion. Derby wrote: 'Pray let me be among the first to congratu late "Lady Beaconsfield" on her new honour. She will, I am sure, receive it as a graceful acknowledgment, on the part of the Crown, of your public services, unaccompanied

1868]

STANLEY AND THE DISRAELIS

101

by the drawback of removing you from the House in which (pace Sir R. Knightley) your presence is indispensable.' And Gladstone concluded a formal letter to Disraeli about the Speakership with a pleasant reference: 'I also beg of you to present my best compliments on her coming patent to (I suppose I must still say, and never can use the name for the last time without regret) Mrs. Disraeli.' By a happy thought, or a happy chance, the Secretary of State, who signed the warrant for the issue of the patent of the new peeress, was an old friend, Stanley.

To Lord Stanley.

10, DOWNING STREET, Nov. 27, '68.— She was very much pleased with your note; and still more, that you were destined to be the Secretary of State, who performed the function.

There seemed a dramatic unity and completeness in the incident; bringing her memory back to old days, wanderings over Buckinghamshire commons, when, instead of a great statesman, you were only a young Under-Secy.

CHAPTER III

RESERVE IN OPPOSITION

1868-1871

The concentration of the Liberal party, which had been a marked feature of the elections, was reflected in the composition of the new Government. Gladstone was able to combine in his Cabinet both Whigs and Radicals, Reformers and anti-Reformers, Clarendon and Goschen, Bright and Lowe. Clarendon went to the Foreign Office as of right; Lowe was very infelicitously placed at the Exchequer; Granville was of course restored to that leadership of the Lords which he had held with general acceptance under Palmerston. No sooner was the Ministry constituted than the Prime Minister set himself to work out in detail and reduce to legislative form his Irish Church policy; with such success that he was in a position to introduce his measure within a fortnight of the reassembling of Parliament in February.

Meanwhile Disraeli's attention, almost immediately after his retirement from office, was claimed by a family loss. His youngest brother James, whose health had been failing for some time, died very suddenly. He had been for ten years a Commissioner of Excise. Disraeli described him to Corry as a man of vigorous and original mind and great taste,' and mentioned that he had left a collection of French pictures of Louis Quinze period, and bricbracquerie, very remarkable; and of drawings by modern artists of the highest class.' Disraeli inherited a substantial sum, about £5,000, from his brother; but he did not enjoy the duties of executor.

1868-1869] DEATH OF JAMES DISRAELI

To Lord Beauchamp.

103

GROSVENOR GATE, Dec. 24, '68.-I was most distressed at missing to write to you by yesterday's post: but the death was so sudden, everything so unprepared, everybody away, I finding myself executor without having had the slightest hint of such an office devolving on me, and having to give orders about everything, and things which I least understand, and most dislike that I was really half distracted, and lost the post.

Amid sorrow, and such sorrow, one ought not to dwell upon personal disappointments, but it is a great one to Lady Beaconsfield and myself, not to pass our Xmas with friends we so dearly love, as Lady Beauchamp and her lord.

To Lord Stanley.

GROSVENOR GATE, Jan. 11, 1869.- Your letter was very welcome, and very interesting, as your letters generally are. Events affect the course of time so sensibly, that it came to me like a communication from some one I had known in another life, perhaps another planet. It seemed such long ages, since we used to see each other every day, and communicate almost every hour.

Here I have remained; and probably shall until the end of the month, when we shall re-enter life by going to Burghley. I have seen no one, and been nowhere, not even to a club; I have in fact realised perfect solitude: but I have found enough to do, and regular hours are the secret of health. . . .

The General Election of 1868 sent Disraeli back once more to that seat facing the box on the Speaker's left, in which he had already spent so much of his Parliamentary life. He had no doubt as to what must be the immediate course of the Opposition. Just before the session was resumed, he wrote to Stanley, declining an invitation to a public dinner in Lancashire, and giving as his reason, ‘I think on our part there should be, at the present, the utmost reserve and quietness.' Even when, in opposition to Palmerston, he commanded a formidable minority not much. short, in voting strength, of the forces of the Government, he often practised tactics of the kind. Now that he was facing a Minister who had behind him a large and enthusiastic majority such as Parliament had not seen since the

fall of Peel, reserve was all the more imperative. Kicking against the pricks was neither dignified nor useful. Plenty of rope, to vary the metaphor, was what a wise Opposition would extend to a Premier of boundless eagerness and activity.

Accordingly the resistance which Disraeli offered to Glad- stone's Irish Church Bill, though strenuous, was not prolonged. Nor was his speech on the second reading a very successful effort. Salisbury in retrospect described it as much below the orator's usual level; Hardy at the time characterised it as sparkling and brilliant, but far from earnest.' Perhaps the most interesting passage in it was one protesting against the confiscation by the State of corporate property, and especially of Church property, which was to a certain degree an intellectual tenure; in a greater degree a moral and spiritual tenure. It is the fluctuating patrimony of the great body of the people.' The constant sense of the anomalous position of the Irish Church rather paralysed Disraeli's efforts in its defence; and in this second. reading debate the Opposition speaker who roused the enthusiasm which can only be produced by conviction as well as eloquence was Gathorne Hardy.

But no conviction and no eloquence were of any avail against a majority returned by the newly created constituency to deal with this very question, and against a Minister who conceived himself to be entrusted with a mission to pacify Ireland. The second reading was carried by 118. Though Disraeli told Archbishop Tait that it was 'a mechanical majority,' which created no enthusiasm,' and gave the Archbishop the impression that he hoped to be able to set the Liberal party by the ears, he realised that it was impossible to resist the Bill with effect in the ComHe discouraged blind opposition to every clause in Committee, urged his followers to concentrate on a few vital amendments, and made no attempt at delay. The Bill, therefore, in spite of its complexity, passed easily through its various stages with the support of an undiminished ma

mons.