et. As a soldier, Wellington shone
without a rival, but as a statesman he was an obstinate reactionary.
Perhaps his solitary claim to political regard is that he, more than any
other man, wrung from the weak hands of George IV. a reluctant consent
to Catholic Emancipation--a concession which could no longer be refused
with safety, and one which had been delayed for the lifetime of a
generation through rigid adherence in high places to antiquated
prejudices and unreasoning alarm.

The strength of parties in the new Parliament proved to be nearly evenly
balanced. Indeed, the Liberals were only in a majority of sixteen, if
the small but compact phalanx of forty Peelites be left for the moment
out of the reckoning. The Conservatives had, in truth, gained ground in
the country through the reverses of one kind and another which had
overtaken their opponents. Lord Palmerston, always fond, to borrow his
own phrase, of striking from his own bat, declared in airy fashion that
Lord John had given him with dismissal independence, and, though Lord
Derby offered him a seat in his Cabinet, he was too shrewd and
far-seeing a statesman to accept it. The Liberal party was divided about
Lord Palmerston, and that fact led to vacillation at the polling booths.
Ardent Protestants were disappointed that the Durham Letter had been
followed by what they regarded as weak and insufficient legislative
action, whilst some of the phrases of that outspoken manifesto still
rankled in the minds of ardent High Churchmen. The old Conservative
party had been smashed by Peel's adoption of Free Trade, and the new
Conservative party which was struggling into existence still looked
askance at the pretensions of Mr. Disraeli, who, thanks to his own
ability and to the persistent advocacy of his claims in earlier years by
his now departed friend, Lord George Bentinck, was fairly seated in the
saddle, and inclined to use both whip and spurs.

[Sidenote: DISRAELI'S POSITION]

In the autobiography recently published of the late Sir William
Gregory[26] a vivid description will be found of the way in which the
aristocracy and the squires 'kicked at the supremacy of one whom they
looked at as a mountebank;' and on the same page will be found the
remarkable assertion that it was nothing but Mr. Disraeli's claim to
lead the Conservative party which prevented Mr. Gladstone from joining
it in 1852.[27] Disraeli's borrowed heroics in his pompous oration in
the House o