ave declared war against Turkey"--the fact being that the societies
which in Russia were promoting the Servian war were public societies,
openly collecting subscriptions, while those secret "social
democratic" societies of which we have since heard so much were
strongly opposed to the interference of Russia, and those other secret
societies in the rest of Europe, wherein Poles and Italians have
played a leading part, were, if not hostile, at any rate quite
indifferent to the movement among the Eastern Christians.

Against these errors there must be set several cases in which he
showed profound discernment. In 1843 and 1844 he delivered, in debates
on the condition of Ireland, speeches which then constituted and long
remained the most penetrating and concise diagnosis of the troubles of
that country ever addressed to Parliament. Ireland has, he said, a
starving peasantry, an alien church, and an absentee aristocracy, and
he went on to add that the function of statesmanship was to cure by
peaceful and constitutional methods ills which in other countries had
usually induced, and been removed by, revolution. During the American
Civil War of 1861-65, Disraeli was the only leading statesman on his
own side of politics who did not embrace and applaud the cause of the
South. Whether this arose from a caution that would not commit itself
where it recognised ignorance, or from a perception of the superior
strength of the Northern States (a perception which whoever visits the
South even to-day is astonished that so few people in Europe should
have had), it is not easy to decide; but whatever the cause, the fact
is an evidence of his prudence or sagacity all the more weighty
because Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell, and Mr. Gladstone, as well as
Lord Derby and Sir Hugh Cairns, had each of them expressed more or
less sympathy with, or belief in, the success of the Southern cause.

The most striking instance, however, of Disraeli's insight was his
perception that an extension of the suffrage would not necessarily
injure, and might end by strengthening, the Tory party. The Act of
1867 was described at the time as "a leap in the dark." But
Disraeli's eyes had pierced the darkness. For half a century
politicians had assumed that the masses of the people were and would
remain under the Liberal banner. Even as late as 1872 it was thought
on Liberal platforms a good joke to say of some opinion that it might
do for Conservative working men, i