England does not love coalitions.

In a speech on the Budget, Dec. 3, 1852, he declared that "coalitions, although successful, have always this: their triumph has been brief. This I know, that England does not love coalitions."

A gentleman of the press.

Disraeli defended, in the House of Commons, in 1853, the Emperor Napoleon, who was denounced for curtailing the freedom of the press; at the same time he denied that he should ever say or do any thing himself to depreciate the influence or diminish the power of Parliament or the press. "My greatest honor is to be a member of this House, in which all my thoughts and feelings are concentrated; and as for the press, I am myself a gentleman of the press, and have no other escutcheon."

"A tu quoque argument," he said in a speech on the Prosecution of the Crimean War, May 24, 1855, "should always be goodhumored, for it has nothing else to recommend it."

Addressing the House on Ways and Means, May 3, 1861, he spoke of a resolution having been carried by a very small majority: "as it is in its 'teens,' it can hardly be called a majority at all."

"The history of superannuation in this country," he declared, "is the history of spoliation. It is a very short history, for it may be condensed in one sentence: You promised a fund, and you exacted a tax" (Speech on the Civil Service Superannuation Bill, Feb. 15, 1856).

"Youth is, we all know, somewhat reckless in assertion; and when we are juvenile and curly, one takes a pride in sarcasm and invective" (On the amendments to the Address to the Queen, June 7, 1859).

A superior person.

In a speech on a vote of censure of the government, for its course towards Denmark, July 8, 1864, Disraeli characterized the member for Stroud, the Right Hon. Edward Horsman, as “the superior person of the House of Commons."

In a eulogy of Richard Cobden, April 3, 1865, he declared

that "there are some members of Parliament, who, though not present in the body, are still members of the House: independent of dissolution, of the caprice of constituencies, even of the course of time."

During the discussion in committee on the Reform Bill of 1867, Mr. Beresford Hope spoke of Disraeli as the "Asian Mystery." "The action of the former while speaking," says Jennings ("Anecdotal History of Parliament "), and, it may be added, his descent from the family of Hope of Amsterdam, gave point to Disraeli's sarcastic reply: "When he talks about an Asian mystery, I will tell him that there are Batavian graces in all he says, which I notice with satisfaction, and which charm me." He called Goldwin Smith "an itinerant spouter of stale sedition."

In a speech at the Mansion House, Nov. 9, 1878, he said, "The government of the world is carried on by sovereigns and statesmen, and not by anonymous paragraph-writers or the hairbrained chatter of irresponsible frivolity."

He said of Lord Salisbury, in 1874, "He is a great master of gibes, and pouts, and sneers."

Sanitas sanitatum.

In a speech at the meeting of an agricultural society at Aylesbury, in 1864, he quoted the observation of a very great scholar, that, in his opinion, the declaration of the wisest of mankind, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," was not a misprint, but a mistake of the copyist, and that he believed that the words were not Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas, but Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas. This caused a member of the Liberal party to characterize the views of the opposition as "a policy of sewage."

Posterity a pack-horse.

Replying to Lord Palmerston, in a debate on fortifications and works, June 3, 1862, he accused the noble lord of seeming to think that "posterity is a pack-horse, always ready to be loaded." This reminds one of Sir Boyle Roche's unanswerable question in the Irish Parliament, "Why should we legislate for posterity? What has posterity ever done for us?"

In reply to Sir Robert Peel, who appealed from the judgment of his critics to the verdict of posterity, Disraeli said, "Very few people reach posterity. Who among us may arrive at that destination, I presume not to vaticinate. Posterity is a most limited assembly. Those gentlemen who reach posterity are not much more numerous than the planets."

I am on the side of the angels.

At a meeting of the Oxford Diocesan Society in 1864, Mr. Disraeli gave his views upon the popular idea of Darwinism: "What is the question which is now placed before society, with the glib assurance which to me is most astounding? That question is this: Is man an ape, or an angel? I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence those new-fangled theories."

Party is organized opinion.

In a speech at Oxford, Nov. 25, 1864.

During a debate on the redistribution of seats, May 14, 1866, he declared, "Ignorance never settles a question."

He professed, in an address at an agricultural meeting at Salthill, Oct. 5, 1864, to have learned what he had often learned before, — “that you should never take any thing for granted."

"Nobody," he said, "ever acted on a testimonial who had not afterwards cause to regret it" (Speech on a proposed pension to Mr. Young, an Irish poet, March 22, 1867).

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

(Speech in the House of Commons on the assassination of President Lincoln, May, 1865.)

"Re-action," he said, "is the law of life; and it is the characteristic of the House of Commons" (On the address in reply to the Queen's Speech, Feb. 6, 1867). "Change," he remarked at a Conservative banquet at Edinburgh, Oct. 29, 1867, "change is inevitable in a progressive country. Change is constant."

I had to educate our party.

He spoke in the same address (at the banquet in Edinburgh) of reform, and particularly of the bill passed under his leadership during the administration of Lord Derby; and said of the interval between 1860 and the passage of the act, "I had to prepare the mind of the country, and to educate, - if it be not arrogant to use such a phrase, — to educate our party."

The Right Hon. Robert Lowe said, after the passage of the bill," We must now at least educate our masters." It was of this statesman (Lord Sherbrooke) that Disraeli declared, "What is more remarkable than his learning and his logic is that power of spontaneous aversion which particularly characterizes him.” At another time he called him "an inspired schoolboy."

The mountains of Rasselas.

In moving a vote of thanks in the House of Commons to Sir R. Napier's army after the Abyssinian campaign of 1868, he gave utterance to one of his most florid periods: "They brought the elephant of Asia to convey the artillery of Europe to dethrone one of the kings of Africa, and to hoist the standard of St. George upon the mountains of Rasselas.'

Apologies only account for what they do not alter.

Speech on the Order of Business, July 28, 1871.

He called the national debt "a mere flea-bite."

The Irish Church Bill was stigmatized by him in 1868, as 'legalized confiscation and consecrated sacrilege."

"Parliamentary speaking," he said, "like playing on the fiddle, requires practice." (Elections Bill, July 13, 1871.)

Of ritualism he once said, "What I do object to is the mass in masquerade."

A range of exhausted volcanoes.

In a speech to the Conservatives of Lancashire, at Manchester, April 3, 1872, Disraeli said, “As I sat opposite the Treasury Bench, the ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes - not a flame flickers

on a single pallid crest, but the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes, and, ever and anon, the dark rumbling of the sea." In the same speech he called "increased means and increased leisure the two civilizers of man."

Mr. Bright made a humorous allusion to the conservative ministry, in a speech on Reform, at Birmingham, in 1866. The government of Lord Derby in the House of Commons, sitting all in a row, reminds me very much of a number of amusing and ingenious gentlemen whom I dare say some of you have seen and listened to. I mean the Christy Minstrels."

Of ministers' speeches during the recess of 1872, Disraeli said, "Her Majesty's ministers may be said during the last six months to have lived in a blaze of apology;" and in a letter to Earl Grey de Wilton, Oct. 3, 1873, "For nearly five years the present ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property."

Burning questions.

An expression first used by Edward Miall, M.P., a late wellknown advocate of disestablishment, in a letter to some of his political friends. Disraeli appropriated it in a speech in the House of Commons, March, 1873, in which he said that the aristocratic principle, the constitution of the House of Commons, the position of the National Church, "would in due time become great and burning questions." The expression is, however, borrowed from the German. In the preface of Hagenbach's "Grundlinien der Liturgik und Homiletik," 1803, the author asks, "Who will burden himself with your liturgical parterre, when the burning questions (brennende Fragen) of the day invite to very different toils?"

Peace with honor.

On his return from the Berlin Congress, July 16, 1878, Lord Beaconsfield said, "Lord Salisbury and myself have brought you back peace-but a peace, I hope, with honor, which may satisfy our sovereign, and tend to the welfare of the country."

Lord John Russell spoke at Greenock, September, 1853, of the