at Mr. Disraeli discerned the first great opportunity
approaching, and he took the field. At Manchester (April 3) he drew the
famous picture of the government, one of the few classic pieces of the
oratory of the century:--

Extravagance is being substituted for energy by the government.
The unnatural stimulus is subsiding. Their paroxysms end in
prostration. Some take refuge in melancholy, and their eminent
chief alternates between a menace and a sigh. As I sit opposite
the treasury bench, the ministers remind me of one of those marine
landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You
behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers upon a
single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There
are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumblings
of the sea.

On midsummer day he essayed at the Crystal Palace a higher flight, and
first struck the imperialist note. He agreed that distant colonies could
only have their affairs administered by self-government. "Self-government,
when it was conceded, ought to have been conceded as part of a great
policy of imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accomplished by an
imperial tariff, by securities for the people of England, for the
enjoyment of the unappropriated lands which belonged to the sovereign as
their trustee, and by a military code which should have precisely defined
the means and the responsibilities by which the colonies should have been
defended, and by which, if necessary, this country should call for aid
from the colonies themselves. It ought further to have been accompanied by
the institution of some representative council in the metropolis which
would have brought the colonies into constant and continuous relations
with the home government." He confessed that he had himself at one time
been so far caught by the subtle views of the disintegrationists, that he
thought the tie was broken. Opinion in the country was at last rising
against disintegration. The people had decided that the empire should not
be destroyed. "In my judgment," he said, "no minister in this country will
do his duty who neglects any opportunity of reconstructing as much as
possible our colonial empire, and of responding to those distant
sympathies which may become the source of incalculable strength and
happiness to this land." Toryism now sought three great objects: "the
maintenance of our institu