, and both parties acquiesced in his rule. But, on
his death, the scene changed. Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone brought
forward a Reform Bill strong enough to evoke the latent Conservative
feeling of a House of Commons which, though showing a nominally
Liberal majority, had been chosen under Palmerstonian auspices. The
defeat of the Bill, due to the defection of the more timorous Whigs,
was followed by the resignation of Lord Russell's Ministry. Lord Derby
and Mr. Disraeli came into power, and, next year, carried a Reform
Bill which, as it was finally shaped in its passage through the House,
really went further than Lord Russell's had done, enfranchising a much
larger number of the working classes in boroughs. To have carried this
Bill remains the greatest of Disraeli's triumphs. He had to push it
gently through a hostile House of Commons by wheedling a section of
the Liberal majority, against the appeals of their legitimate leader.
He had also to persuade his own followers to support a measure which
they had all their lives been condemning, and which was, or in their
view ought to have been, more dangerous to the Constitution than the
one which they and the recalcitrant Whigs had thrown out in the
preceding year. He had, as he happily and audaciously expressed it, to
educate his party into doing the very thing which they (though
certainly not he himself) had cordially and consistently denounced.

The process was scarcely complete when the retirement of Lord Derby,
whose health had given way, opened Disraeli's path to the post of
first Minister of the Crown. He dissolved Parliament, expecting to
receive a majority from the gratitude of the working class whom his
Act had admitted to the suffrage. To his own surprise, and to the
boundless disgust of the Tories, a Liberal House of Commons was again
returned, which drove him and his friends once more into the cold
shade of Opposition. He was now sixty-four years of age, had suffered
an unexpected and mortifying discomfiture, and had no longer the great
name of Lord Derby to cover him. Disaffected voices were again heard
among his own party, while the Liberals, reinstalled in power, were
led by the rival whose unequalled popularity in the country made him
for the time omnipotent. Still Mr. Disraeli was not disheartened. He
fought the battle of apparently hopeless resistance with his old tact,
wariness, and tenacity, losing no occasion for any criticism that
could damage the