ing the offer that was so graciously made to me, did impress upon me that if I undertook the task I might count upon her most cordial support, and that if a dissolution could at all assist me I might depend upon the exercise of the Royal prerogative for that result. However, I was obliged to represent to Her Majesty, by means of the details which I have given you, though not perhaps, at so much technical length, that a dissolution of Parliament would not remove the obstacles to which I have referred. I ought not to pass unnoticed the observations with which the right honourable gentleman commenced his address. The right honourable gentleman has with candour and temper referred to the delay which elapsed between Thursday and Sunday in forming a cabinet, and I think the House will agree with me that he has acquitted me-at least I understood him to do so-of being the cause of that delay. The right honourable gentleman seems to have misapprehended the decision which on my part I thought was singularly precise and definite. The right honourable gentleman has referred to a controversy between us which has not appeared before the House on that conduct of the Opposition in the course which they took on the motion for the second reading of the University Bill. I have no wish to enter into any discussion on this subject. The right honourable gentleman will bear me out that in my letter to Her Majesty I at least did not shrink from arguing the question, and vindicating on constitutional grounds the course which we took. I refrain from further alluding to this subject, but I must say, in passing, I thought it was a most gracious condescension on the part of Her Majesty to deign to become the medium of communication, in order, to use Her Majesty's language, 'to prevent, if possible, misconceptions.' As to the charge against myself, that I did not take sufficient pains or exhaust the means of forming a cabinet on the occasion, and which appears to have been the cause of the hesitation in the right honourable gentleman's mind, I hope that, as the right honourable gentleman has read a passage on that head, I may also read a passage from my letter to Her Majesty on the subject. In it I say, 'The charge against the Leader of the Opposition personally, that by "his summary refusal" to undertake your Majesty's Government he was failing in his duty to your Majesty and the country, is founded altogether on a gratuitous assumption of Mr. Gladstone, which pervades his letter, that the means of Mr. Disraeli to carry on the Government were not exhausted. A brief statement of facts will at once dispose of this charge. Before Mr. Disraeli, with due deference, offered his decision to your Majesty, he had enjoyed the opportunity of consulting those gentlemen with whom he acts in public life, and they were unanimously of opinion that it would be prejudicial to the interests of the country for a Conservative Administration to attempt to conduct your Majesty's affairs in the present House of Commons. What other means were at Mr. Disraeli's disposal? Was he to open negotiations with a section of the late Ministry, and waste days in barren interviews, vain applications, and the device of impossible combinations? Was he to make overtures to the considerable section of the Liberal party who had voted against the Government-namely, the Irish Roman Catholic gentlemen? Surely Mr. Gladstone could not seriously contemplate this? Impressed, from experience obtained in the very instances to which Mr. Gladstone refers, of the detrimental influence upon Government of a crisis unnecessarily prolonged by hollow negotiations, Mr. Disraeli humbly conceived that he was taking a course at once advantageous to the public interests, and tending to spare your Majesty unnecessary anxiety by at once laying before your Majesty the real position of affairs.' I spoke particularly from the experience which I, then myself inexperienced in public affairs, obtained when acting with Lord Derby and witnessing the course he took with reference to the Government of 1852; and if it be, as I hold, one of the greatest disadvantages of these political crises that so much public time should be wasted, that Parliament should become. dislocated, that public business should be postponed or measures given up, and that the public mind should be disturbed, I consider I was doing my duty when I took every possible means to make the period during which the right honourable gentle man was absent from office as short as possible. While upon this subject, I beg to say that, although I did not presume to give any advice to Her Majesty as to whom she should send for, as this is a peculiar right of the Crown with which no one ought to interfere, yet in speaking of the difficulties of the position in which Her Majesty was placed, I did give my opinion that I thought the cause for the resignation of the right honourable gentleman and his colleagues was hardly adequate to the great event which had occurred. It appeared to me that, under the circumstances of the case, the right honourable gentleman was scarcely justified in the course he pursued, because we must remember that the unfortunate University Bill had been unpopular in this House from the beginning, and that a large section of the Liberal party opposed it on the same grounds on which it was opposed by honourable gentlemen on this side of the House-namely, that it sacrificed the educational interests of Ireland to the claims of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. When we took that line in debate it was with a complete anticipation that every gentleman connected with the Roman Catholic interest in Ireland would support Her Majesty's ministers. But I said it was possible that the right honourable gentleman, in consequence I will not say of a hasty, but, as I think, of an unfortunate expression he used a month ago when he introduced the Bill, might feel his honour concerned so far as to be obliged to resign office. As regards his honour a statesman cannot be too nice and scrupulous; but I thought the right honourable gentleman's honour was vindicated by the act of resignation, and that he might return to office without the slightest difficulty. I am quite aware that the counsel I humbly recommended to Her Majesty in these negotiations may have been disappointing to some of my supporters in this House, and to many of my supporters in the country; but I would fain believe that, when they have given a mature and an impartial consideration to all the circumstances, they will not visit my conduct with a verdict of unqualified condemnation. I believe that the Tory party at the present time occupies the most satisfactory position which it has held since the days of its I.e., that it was a cabinet question. greatest statesmen, Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville. It has divested itself of those excrescences which are not indigenous to its native growth, but which in a time of long prosperity were the consequence partly of negligence, and partly perhaps, in a certain degree, of ignorance of its traditions. We are now emerging from the fiscal period in which almost all the public men of this generation have been brought up. All the questions of Trade and Navigation, of the Incidence of Taxation and of Public Economy, are settled. But there are other questions not less important, and of deeper and higher reach and range, which must soon engage the attention of the country. The attributes of a Constitutional Monarchy,— whether the aristocratic principle should be recognised in our Constitution, and, if so, in what form ?-whether the Commons of England shall remain an estate of the realm, numerous but privileged and qualified, or whether they should degenerate into an indiscriminate multitude?-whether a National Church shall be maintained, and, if so, what shall be its rights and duties?-the functions of corporations, the sacredness of endowments, the tenure of landed property, the free disposal and even the existence of any kind of property-all those institutions and all those principles which have made this country free and famous, and conspicuous for its union of order with liberty, are now impugned, and in due time will become great and burning' questions. I think it is of the utmost importance that when that time-which may be nearer at hand than we imagine-arrives there shall be in this country a great constitutional party, distinguished for its intelligence as well as for its organisation, which shall be competent to lead the people and direct the public mind. And, Sir, when that time arrives, and when they enter upon a career which must be noble, and which I hope and believe will be triumphant, I think they may perhaps remember, and not perhaps with unkindness, that I at least prevented one obstacle from being placed in their way, when as the trustee of their honour and their interests I declined to form a weak and discredited Administration. PART V. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Between the years 1860 and 1864 Mr. Disraeli delivered several speeches on the Church of England of great interest and value, which were afterwards collected and republished under the title of Church and Queen.' I have here given the most interesting of them. THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE CHURCH ON ACT OF UNIFORMITY ON CHURCH POLICY. Nov. 14, 1861. Oct. 30, 1862. JUNE 9, 1863. Nov. 25, 1864. |