[110] It will be noticed that Sir Robert goes beyond Disraeli’s ideas of direct kingship.
[111] In 1872, Disraeli said, after stating that Lord Derby’s successor was no enemy to Russian aggression, “... I speak of what I know, not of what I believe, but of what I have evidence in my possession to prove, that the Crimean War would never have happened if Lord Derby had remained in office....” Lord Derby’s error in resigning in 1853 he always deplored; just as he regretted equally his rash acceptance of office during the previous year, and his more fatal timidity in shrinking from assuming it in 1855.
[112] This passage was written before the events of 1903.
[113] This was realised some ten years later by the repeal of the Sugar Duties.
[114] The speech about Income Tax, which contains another masterly analysis of the displacement of labour. Previously, in 1845, he had said of Canada, “... I am not one of those who think that its inevitable lot is to become annexed to the United States. Canada has all the elements of a great and independent country, and is destined, I sometimes believe, to be the Russia of the New World.”
[115] “Ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀπολώλεκ’ ἀλλὰ καταπεφρόντικα.”
[116] It will be remembered that in Coningsby “Rigby’s” election speech called everything with which he disagreed “un-English.” Dickens’s satire of the misuse of “un-English” in the person of “Podsnap” may be compared.
[117] “Light and leading,” which Disraeli employed long before the famous letter to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, in a speech of 1858, comes of course from Burke. His theory of the House of Lords in 1861 as “an intermediate body” is derived from Bolingbroke and Burke. “Peace with honour” he employed in one of his Crimean speeches. Many of his phrases were derived from the works of his father.
[118] He had in an earlier speech considered this question with regard to Canada.
[119] This very phrase was repeated by Lord Beaconsfield in 1876.