[61] The motion was designed to throw the burden of taxation on land. Disraeli showed that land was no monopoly, while it remained a security for good government; and that the rental of property in Great Britain, if equally divided among its proprietors, would only amount to £170 as an average annual income per head.
[62] “... But thanks to parliamentary patriotism, the people of England were saved from Ship-money, which money the wealthy paid, and only got in its stead the customs and the excise, which the poor mainly supply....”—Sybil.
[63] “... Burke effected for the Whigs what Bolingbroke in a preceding age had done for the Tories: he restored the moral existence of the party. He taught them to recur to the ancient principles of their connection.... He raised the tone of their public discourse; he breathed a high spirit into their public acts....”—Ibid.
[64] “... In my time” (said Mr. Ormsby) “... a proper majority was a third of the House. That was Lord Liverpool’s majority. Lord Monmouth used to say that there were ten families in this country who, if they could only agree, could always share the government. Ah! those were the good old times!...”
[65] That this object was of direct design is proved by a correspondence of Cobden with Sir Robert Peel.
[66] In a speech of 1864, Disraeli said: “... For my own part, believing that parliamentary government is practically impossible without two organised parties, that without them it would be the most contemptible and corrupt system which could be devised, I always regret anything that may damage the just influence of either of the great parties in the State.”
[67] The great depression of 1847–51 was not wholly caused by the fiscal change. It was largely due to reaction after the railway mania, as Disraeli pointed out in a speech of 1879. It was followed by a rise in wages, due, not to Free Trade, but to the large imports of newly discovered gold; and by an increased purchasing power which was due to Peel’s large abatements of the tariff.
[68] It should be borne in mind that Disraeli sometimes employs the words “aristocracy” and “democracy” to mean the order of aristocrats and democrats, sometimes to mean the systems of exclusion and inclusion, sometimes to mean the government by the best and by the miscellaneous, and oftener as indicating elements in our Constitution.
[69] This phrase is American, and refers to the democrat extremists, conduct in Tammany Hall in 1834. The same year had seen the invention of the “self-lighting” cigar.
[70] At that time, under the full spell of the analogy which the age of Walpole presented, he believed that triennial parliaments and the ballot might redress the balance of constitutional power and foil the oligarchs who had baffled the people by espousing a popular cry. In 1852, however, he said, with regard to those proposals brought forward by Mr. Hume: “... He did not object to them, but he saw no necessity to adopt them. His objections to the latter were distinctly founded on the limits of the franchise which the settlement of 1832 had not sufficiently extended, but ... if they had universal suffrage they came to a new constitution—a constitution commonly called the ‘Sovereignty of the People,’ but that is not the Constitution of England; for, wisely modified as that monarchy may be, the Constitution of England is the sovereignty of Queen Victoria.”