ge by
general results, and declared that the forty years of tory rule closing in
1830 left institutions weaker than it had found them, whereas the liberal
term of forty years left throne, laws, and institutions not weaker but
much stronger. The address was a fine bold composition, but perhaps it
would have been more effective with a public that was impatient and out of
humour, if it had been shorter.

(M154) The performance was styled by his rival "a prolix narrative," but
it is said that in spite of this Mr. Disraeli read it with much alarm. He
thought its freshness and boldness would revive Mr. Gladstone's authority,
and carry the elections. His own counter-manifesto was highly artificial.
He launched sarcasms about the Greenwich seat, about too much energy in
domestic legislation, and too little in foreign policy; about an act of
folly or of ignorance rarely equalled in dealing with the straits of
Malacca (though for that matter not one elector in a hundred thousand had
ever heard of this nefarious act). While absolving the prime minister
himself, "certainly at present," from hostility to our national
institutions and the integrity of the empire, he drew a picture of
unfortunate adherents--some assailed the monarchy, others impugned the
independence of the House of Lords, while others would relieve parliament
altogether from any share in the government of one portion of the United
Kingdom; others, again, urged Mr. Gladstone to pursue his peculiar policy
by disestablishing the anglican as he has despoiled the Irish church; even
trusted colleagues in his cabinet openly concurred with them in their
desire altogether to thrust religion from the place which it ought to
occupy in national education. What is remarkable in Disraeli's address is
that to the central proposal of his adversary he offered no objection. As
for remission of taxation, he said, that would be the course of any party
or any ministry. As for the promise of reduced local burdens and the
abolition of the income-tax, why, these "were measures which the
conservative party have always favoured and which the prime minister and
his friends have always opposed."

By critics of the peevish school who cry for better bread than can be made
of political wheat, Mr. Gladstone's proffer to do away with the income-tax
has been contumeliously treated as dangling a shameful bait. Such talk is
surely pharisaic stuff. As if in 1852 Disraeli in his own address had not
decl