When, at the age of thirty-three.  Benjamin Disraeli entered the House of Commons, he was flushed with his first literary successes and inclined perhaps to take parliamentary popularity by storm.  It was the first year of Victoria’s reign (1837) and the fashions of the times allowed great latitude for the display of idiosyncracies in dress.  It seems that Disraeli pushed this advantage to the point of license.  We hear much of the amount of jewelry he wore and of the gaudiness of his waistcoats.  This may or may not have had a deciding influence in determining the character of his reception by the house, but at any rate it was a tempestuous one.  He was repeatedly interrupted, and when he attempted to proceed the uproar of cries and laughter finally overpowered him and he abandoned for the time being the attempt to speak—­not, however, until he had served on the house due notice of his great future, expressed in the memorable words—­thundered, we are told, at the top of his voice, and audible still in English history—­“You shall hear me!”

Not ten years later, the young man with the gaudy waistcoats had become the leading Conservative orator of the campaign against the Liberals on their Corn Law policy and so great was the impression produced by his speeches that in 1852, when the Derby ministry was formed, he was made Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The secret of his success is the thorough-going way in which he identified himself with the English aristocracy.  Where others had apologized for aristocracy as a method of government, he justified.  Instead of excusing and avoiding, he assumed that a government of privilege rather than that based on rights or the assumption of their existence is the best possible government, the only natural one, the only one capable of perpetuating itself without constant and violent changes.  Kept on the defensive by the forward movement of the people, as well as by the tendency towards Liberalism or Radicalism shown by the men of highest education among the aristocratic classes themselves, the English Conservatives were delighted to find a man of great ability and striking eloquence, who seemed to have a religious conviction that “Toryism” was the only means of saving society and ensuring progress.  It is characteristic of his mind and his methods, that he does not shrink from calling himself a Tory.  He is as proud of bearing that reproach as Camilla Desmoulins was of being called a Sansculotte.  When a man is thus “for thorough,” he becomes representative of all who have his aspirations or share his tendencies without his aggressiveness.  No doubt Disraeli’s speeches are the best embodiment of Tory principle, the most attractive presentation of aristocratic purposes in government made in the nineteenth century.  No member of the English peerage to the “manner born” has approached him in this respect.  It is not a question of whether others have equaled or exceeded him in ability or statesmanship.  On that point there may be room for difference of opinion, but to read any one of his great speeches is to see at once that he has the infinite advantage of the rest in being the strenuous and faith-inspired champion of aristocracy and government by privilege—­not the mere defender and apologist for it.