the Table of the House of Commons last Session has now more than
heart could wish; his eyes--speaking in an Oriental manner--stand
out with fatness, he speaketh loftily; and pride compasseth him
about as with a chain. It is all very well to say that the candle
of the wicked is put out in the long run; that they are as stubble
before the wind, and as chaff that the storm carries away. So we
were told in other times of tribulation. This was the sort of
consolation that used to be offered in the jaunty days of Lord
Palmerston. People used then to soothe the earnest Liberal by the
same kind of argument. 'Only wait,' it was said, 'until he has
retired, and all will be well with us.' But no sooner has the storm
carried away the wicked Whig chaff than the heavens are forthwith
darkened by new clouds of Tory chaff."

Lord Shaftesbury, as became his character, took a sterner view.
"Disraeli Prime Minister! He is a Hebrew; this is a good thing.
He is a man sprung from an inferior station; another good thing
in these days, as showing the liberality of our institutions. But
he is a leper, without principle, without feeling, without regard
to anything, human or Divine, beyond his own personal ambition."

The situation in which the new Prime Minister found himself was, from
the constitutional point of view, highly anomalous. The settlement
of the question of Reform, which he had effected in the previous
year, had healed the schism in the Liberal party, and the Liberals
could now defeat the Government whenever they chose to mass their
forces. Disraeli was officially the Leader of a House in which his
opponents had a large majority. In March, 1868, Gladstone began his
attack on the Irish Church, and pursued it with all his vigour, and
with the support of a united party. He moved a series of Resolutions