There was a slight stir of movement, and Sir John Russell was on his feet. He commended the Prime Minister’s speech and quietly backed it up with the authentic statement of Whig disasters. Some of the tenseness relaxed. There was polite applause when Sir John ended and a bit of parliamentary phrasing by the clerk. Men moved restlessly, wondering what to do next.
Then, like an actor carefully choosing his entrance Disraeli rose. Slowly his eyes swept the chamber. There was a sneering smile on his lips. It was as if he scorned their cowardly silence. Disraeli knew his time had come.
He stepped forth as defender of everything sacred! He talked of all the fine traditions of Great Britain. Englishmen, he said, must be protected without and within, from those who would undermine her power. The Prime Minister had given a “glorious example of egotistical rhetoric,” and his policy was a “gross betrayal of the principles which had put him in power and of the party which kept him there.”
The brilliance of his style held them spellbound. His defense of England thrilled them and his attack on Peel justified their selfishness. Disraeli took his seat to thunderous applause.
Douglass was shaking as though ill.
“What does it mean?” he asked, when they had got away.
“It means,” said Richard Cobden, grimly, “that we’ll have to fight every inch of the way all over again. We have won nothing. Except that now Disraeli will stop at nothing to ruin Peel.”
“But how can Disraeli oppose the cause of poor people? I thought he knew of oppression and suffering from his own experience.” Douglass’ distress was very real. John Bright tried to explain.
“Suffering and oppression often only embitter men, Frederick, embitter and harden them. They close in upon themselves. They are so determined to be safe that they are ruthless and cruel. Undoubtedly Disraeli has suffered, but he has suffered selfishly—he has refused to see the sufferings of other people. He will sacrifice anything for power.”
Frederick Douglass was learning what it takes to make men free. In the spring he went up into Wales. He traveled, as he said in a letter which was published in the Liberator, “from the Hill of Howth to the Giant’s Causeway, and from the Giant’s Causeway to Cape Clear.” On May 12 he made a speech at Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, which was published throughout England. William Gladstone addressed a note to him, inviting him to call.