He had been sitting, as his manner is, very quietly during the evening, never moving a muscle of his face, save when he smiled coldly once or twice at the sharp sallies of Whiteside, or spoke, as he did very rarely, to some member near him.  A stranger to his manner would have supposed him utterly indifferent to what was going on about him.  Yet it is probable that no member of the House was more thoroughly absorbed in the debate or watched its progress with deeper interest.  Excepting his political ambition, Mr. Disraeli is actuated by no stronger passion than hatred of Mr. Gladstone.  To have been a warm admirer and protege of Sir Robert Peel would have laid a sufficient foundation for intense personal dislike.  But Mr. Disraeli has other and greater grievances to complain of.  This is not the place to enter at large into the history of the political rivalry between these eminent men.  Enough to say, that in the spring of 1852 Mr. Disraeli realized the dream of his lifelong ambition by being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the Ministry of Lord Derby.  Late in the same year he brought forward his Budget, which he defended at great length and with all his ability.  This Budget, and the arguments by which it was supported, Mr. Gladstone—­who had already refused to take the place in the Derby Cabinet—­attacked in a speech of extraordinary power, demolishing one by one the positions of his opponent, rebuking with dignified severity the license of his language, and calling upon the House to condemn the man and his measures.  Such was the effect of this speech that the Government was defeated by a decided majority.  Thus dethroned, Mr. Disraeli had the additional mortification of seeing his victorious opponent seated in his vacant chair.  For, in the Ministry of Lord Aberdeen, which immediately succeeded, Mr. Gladstone accepted the appointment of Chancellor of the Exchequer.  The Budget brought forward by the new Minister took by surprise even those who had already formed the highest estimate of his capacity; and the speech in which he defended and enforced it received the approval of Lord John Russell, in the well-known and well-merited compliment, that “it contained the ablest expositions of the true principles of finance ever delivered by an English statesman.”  Since that memorable defeat, Disraeli has lost no opportunity of attacking the member for Oxford University.  To weaken his wonderful ascendency over the House has seemed to be the wish nearest his heart, and the signal failure which has thus far attended all his efforts only gives a keener edge to his sarcasm and increases the bitterness of his spirit.  That persistent and inflexible determination which, from a fashionable novelist, has raised him to the dignity of leader of the Conservative party in the House of Commons, that unsparing and cold-blooded malignity which poisoned the last days of Sir Robert Peel, and those powers of wit and ridicule which make him so formidable an adversary, have all been impressed into this service.