Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-10-31 00:00:00

him, but say noble friend has said, you :are his neigh-
bours, pm are.in immediate sontact with him, and you
have formed the ?same estimation of his public character
as those who admire him so much. I cairnot but feel.
deeply gratified that you should for one moment have
turned aside from the great object of this assembly to
bestow a compliment upon myself. I know that, when
the heart is full,-the simplest words are the best, .and in
return far the honour you have done me, _all that can
say is that I shall ever feel grateful for the kindness I
received st your lands.
The Ciiiraltaor proposed the health of the light
Hon. B. Disraeli. (Loud and continued cheering and
waving of handkerchiefs.) If Mr. Disraeli could
have sustained -the Administration by his eloquence
he would have done so. (Cheers.) He had held the
post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he (the .chair-
man) felt that there was something to be said in ,relation
to his occupation of that important office. At the present
time the country was called upon to pay an extra charge
upon its income, and blame was laid by some upon the
predecessors in office of the present Government. (Rear,
and laughter.) Butle (the chairman) maintained that
the conduct of Mr. Disraeli in office was both just and
judicious. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) The country was
just then rising out of the suffering of a great commer-
cial crisis, and if they had then had- an additional
income-tax laid upon them. it would have crushed them
down, and prevented them from bearing, as with recovered
strength and prosperity they now could do, the financial
burthens of the country. (Hear, hear.) He therefore
maintained that the late Chancellor of the lxehequer
had acted judicioaslya and, to confirm what he bad
said with regard to the eloquence of Mr. Disraeli, he
would call upon the right honourable gentleman him-
self to address the assembly.—The chairman concluded
by proposing the health of .Mr. Disraeli.
The toast was drank amid the 'most enthusiastic
demonstrations of applause.
~.
Mr. DISRAELI was received with loud cheers, which
were repeated again and again. When the applause had
subsided, he said—Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, your
illustrious guest to-day, and others of my colleagues,
who have preceded me, have touched upon the conduct
of their office, and have done so, I am sure, not only
with exceeding great interest to your minds, but with
great sympathy on your part. But I may be allowed to
remind you that it was my privilege to fill an office, the
possessor of which, upon all public occasions, has been
allowed to be silent, except upon one memorable day
of the year. (Laughter.) Therefore, I. am sure that
you will excuse me from vindicating the course which
I thought it my duty to recommend to Parlia-
ment, or attempting to foresee the course which
will be adopted by my successor. With
.refer-
ence to the remark of your chairman, that in
recommending the reduction of taxation, which was
adopted and sanctioned by Parliament, I recommended
a course which, had it not been an imperative duty for
us to adopt, a considerable increase in the armaments
of this country would still, notwithstanding that reduc-
tion, have left a large surplus in the Exchequer.
(Hear, hear.) Gentlemen, as you have had the kind-
ness, to-day, through your chairman, and through the
generous manner in which you have been pleased to re-
ceive the proposition of my health—as you have
been pleased to refer to my conduct in the House of
Commons, and to my attempts to conduct the affairs of
that assembly, perhaps you will joermit me to remind you
that it fell to my lot, which, I believe, has fallen to no other
man, to be suddenly and unexpectedly called to attempt to
conduct the affairs of that great assembly. I can assure
you, gentlemen, that no individual in this room could
have been more sensible than myself of my inefficieacy
for the discharge of such a duty. (Cries of " No, no.")
But I think there are emergencies when it is the duty
of every public man not to shrink from the exercise of
responsibility, and I undertook that office because I felt
that I should have the advantage of the constant counsel
and the admirable advice of your principal guest this
evening,—(hear, hear)—who in that House of Parlia-
ment had for a long period of years obtained a great, a
various, and a distinguished expeijence. (Cheers.)- It
was under these circumstances, and with this advan-
tage, that I undertook to attempt to cenduct the
affairs of the Conservative party in the House
of Commons, now ten years ago. Gentlemen, they
have been ten years of great -difficulty, and, permit
me to add, of great exertion. But, gentlemen, although
I know that, as far as I myself individually am concerned,
much may have been done which ought not to have
been done, and much may have been omitted which
ought to have been accomplished, I think that I may
be permitted to say this—that looking back over these ten
years, when I consider what was the position of the
Conservative party, as far as the House of Commons is con-
cerned, ten years ago, whether I look at its numbers, at its
intelligence, at its influencein the country, or at its power
in debate, or at its position at this moment, I may not
shrink from any comparison with what it was at that period,
and therefore I trust that, even under my humble gui-
dance, it has not suffered in public esteem—(" no," and
Cheer;)—or lost in public position. (Cheers.) I venture
to say that these have been ten years of great difficulty
and great exertion ; but I may be allowed to add that,
during that period, however various may have appeared
to you, and to the world, to have been the vicissitudes,
however capricious may have appeared to be the changes,
we ourselves have always had a main object in the
course which we have pursued, and in the purpose
which we have at length achieved. It has been our
wish to put an end to that which I may describe as the
monopoly of Liberalism--(loud cheers)—which, in our
opinion, has exercised a very pernicious influence upon the
course of public proceedings, and upon the character
of public men. (Hear, hear.) Now, for more than a
quarter of a century, by this theory of a monopoly of
Liberalism, one half the public men of England have
been held up as individuals who were incapable and
unqualified for attempting any measure which might
improve the institutions or the administration of the
country ; while, on the other hand, in order to sustain
this monopoly, men were perpetually pledging them-
selves to changes and alterations, injurious almost in
every case, in many utterly impracticable ; and who,
when they were in power, expended all their resources
in inventing evasions by which they might extricate
themselves from their previous pledges. (Loud cheers.).
Now, I believe, and I am sare that all my colleagues do,,
this state of affairs was the principal cause of that in-
sincerity in public life which has of late years been
so frequently attributed to the conduct of public men,
but which I believe is now completely terminated. I
believe that we have brought about a healthy state of
political parties. (Cheers.) Men will now be decided
upon by the policy which they recommend and the
measures which they bring forward, not by traditions
Which are generally false, not by promises which are
seldom fulfilled. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, I know that
we are told now that this monopoly of Liberalism is
extirpated, and that it is at length shown that no single
party isto have the peculiar privilege of governing by right
the country, and we are .told now that party is of no im-
portance, because there are no longer any public questions
to settle. (Laughter.) Gentlemen, he would, in my
opinion, be an arrogant, and not a very far-seeing states-
man, who, in dealing with the affairs of a great empire,
would presume to say that great questions would not
frequently occur. But let that pass. I maintain that it is
an error—a pernicious error—to associate the existence in
England of great parliamentary parties solely with the
existence of great political questions. (Hear.) Great
political questions should be rare, and will be rare, in com-
munities which enjoy'so salutary a political state as, on the
whole, England has so long enjoyed. The duties of an oppo-
sition, gentlemen, are not to be confined merely to
emergencies ' • there are duties which perpetually exist, and
which ought to be constantly fulfilled. There are duties
of vigilance and of criticism, and it is only upon great
emergencies that an opposition is called upon to propose
the initiative. (Cheers.) I therefore hold that our
duties as a great Conservative party, although there may
not at the moment be questions that concern the exist-
ence of the principal institutions of the state at stake,
are still duties which are urgent, which cannot be
neglected, which must be fulfilled, and it is a doctrine
which I trust will never be popular in this country, that
political party is a constitutional arrangement which
ought to be obsolete. (Hear, hear.) If parliamentary
government be, as I believe it is, as I cannot doubt you
and the great majority of Englishmen must believe it is, the
best guarantee for public liberty—(hear)—then, rely
upon it political party must be acknowledged as a salu-
tary influence in the state, because parliamentary
government is impossible, except on condition that
there should be political party. (Hear, hear.) What
is the House of Commons ? What is the House of
Lords ? What is the proudest Parliament in the
world, though its elements may be composed, in one