[139] Eight years before, Disraeli had written in the trenchant slap-dash of his Runnymede Letters: “... Then, Ireland must be tranquillised. So I think. Feed the poor and hang the agitators. That will do it. But that’s not your way. It is the destruction of the English and Protestant interest that is the Whig specific for Irish tranquillity.”
[140] He was alluding to Lord Derby’s earlier efforts. And again, in another speech: “... The principles of our policy were, first, to create and not destroy; and, secondly, to acknowledge that you could not in any more effectual way strengthen the Protestant interest than by doing justice to the Roman Catholics.”
[141] He pointed out that England experienced both Norman and Dutch conquests; and that if Cromwell conquered Ireland, he conquered England too.
[142] “... Fenianism now is not rampant; we think we have gauged its lowest depths, and we are not afraid of it” (Speech, April 3, 1868). As regards coercion, he always maintained that proved sedition alone justified it.
[143] He wrote that the question of the Church in Ireland was one totally without the pale of modern politics. His programme also at the dissolution breathed not a word on the subject.
[144] Rogers is mentioned in the very young Disraeli’s Infernal Marriage—“The Pleasures of Oblivion. The poet, apparently, is fond of his subject.”
[145] He lost his life in restoring Ely Cathedral. He designed a portion of Belgrave Square. When Disraeli was at last returned to Parliament, he wrote to his sister, “So much for Uncle G. and his ‘maddest of mad acts.’”
[146] He mentions several less familiar among the ancients. For instance, John of Padua in Endymion.
[147] In a letter of the late ’forties to his sister, he says with surprise that Croker (who disclaimed having read it) should have greeted him with effusion. In the same correspondence he repeats a mot that the two most disgusting things in life—because you cannot deny them—are Warrender’s wealth, and Croker’s talents.
[148] When they met, Sir Walter treated him with cordiality; nevertheless, in one of his late letters he styles him “un vieux crapaud.”