rotectionist party, and prompting its leader,
Lord George Bentinck. In embracing free trade, Peel carried with him
his own personal friends and disciples, men like Gladstone, Sidney
Herbert, Lord Lincoln, Sir James Graham, Cardwell, and a good many
others, the intellectual _elite_ of the Tory party. The more numerous
section who clung to Protection had numbers, wealth, respectability,
cohesion, but brains and tongues were scarce. An adroit tactician and
incisive speaker was of priceless value to them. Such a man they found
in Disraeli, while he gained, sooner than he had expected, an
opportunity of playing a leading part in the eyes of Parliament and
the country. In the end of 1848, Lord George Bentinck, who, though a
man of natural force and capable of industry when he pleased, had been
to some extent Disraeli's mouthpiece, died, leaving his prompter
indisputably the keenest intellect in the Tory-Protectionist party. In
1850, Peel, who might possibly have in time brought the bulk of that
party back to its allegiance to him, was killed by a fall from his
horse. The Peelites drifted more and more towards Liberalism, so that
when Lord Derby, who, in 1851, had been commissioned as head of the
Tory party to form a ministry, invited them to join him, they refused
to do so, imagining him to be still in favour of the corn duties, and
resenting the behaviour of the Protectionist section to their own
master. Being thus unable to find one of them to lead his followers in
the House of Commons, Lord Derby turned in 1852 to Disraeli, giving
him, with the leadership, the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The appointment was thought a strange one, because Disraeli brought to
it absolutely no knowledge of finance and no official experience. He
had never been so much as an Under-Secretary. The Tories themselves
murmured that one whom they regarded as an adventurer should be raised
to so high a place. After a few months Lord Derby's ministry fell,
defeated on the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Budget, which had been
vehemently attacked by Mr. Gladstone. This was the beginning of that
protracted duel between him and Mr. Disraeli which lasted down till
the end of the latter's life.

For the following fourteen years Disraeli's occupation was that of a
leader of Opposition, varied by one brief interval of office in
1858-59. His party was in a permanent minority, so that nothing was
left for its chief but to fight with skill, courage, and