The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-30 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, OCT. 30, 1867.

Mr. DISRAELI has appeared on a new stage and
won fresh laurels for himself. Last night he was
entertained by the Conservatives of Scotland at the
Corn Exchange, Edinburgh, and we are happy to
say that the affair was a great success in every
sense of the word. The right hon. gentleman deli-
vered ono of those brilliant and comprehensive
speeches, which are far more effective than those
elaborate discourses on which some orators are wont
to rest their fame. Sir W. STIRLING MAXWELL
occupied the chair, and on proposing the toast
of the evening, he said that the last and
greatest of the services which Mr. DISRAELI had
rendered to the country was the passing of the
recent Reform Bill—a work the successful ac-
complishment of which was due to the energy,
patience, and genius of the right hon. gentleman
himself. The question of Reform was treated as a
joke, he sail, until the Conservatives took it up,
and certainly he had some excuse for saying so
after the events which have occurred of late years.
Mr. DISRAELI, who met with the most flattering
reception, commenced by declaring that there was
nothing more gratifying to a public man than
to meet thus with the expression of
sympathy from his fellow-countrymen. Suc h
a sentiment is enhanced when that ex -
pression comes from those with whom he is
not immediately connected by any local association;
and we have no doubt that the Chancellor of the
Exchequer seldom if ever experienced more gratifi-
cation during his arduous career than he did last
night, when, as he impressively said, he was cor-
dially greeted by so great an assemblage, and that,
too, " in the fair capital of a famous nation, united
to England, but on equal terms, and by whose
blended influence we have, since that union, con-
summated some of the greatest feats of British
valour, and achieved some of the most brilliant re-
sults of British genius." The speech of last night being
eminently a political one, Mr. DISRAELI was able
to give free scope to that inimitable power he pos-
sesses of turning the shafts his adversaries direct
upon him against themselves. Thus, he said, that
he was the more rejoiced to find that the Reform
Bill of Lord DERBY'S Government had met with
approval in the city of Edinburgh, because he
might have been deceived on that point by some
expressions which had reached him prior to his
visiting Scotland. A person of considerable position
had said that the measure just carried was not en-
titled to such distinction as that for which the
'Whig party had toiled, since Lord GREY had been
defeated by the machinations of Mr PITT. As the
right hon. gentleman truly said, this is important,
because it is, in another form, " a revival of the
old political dogma that, upon the most important
of political subjects—namely, the question how
power should be distributed in the State—one of
the great historical parties is to be forbidden from
ever touching it." This is indeed a most mistaken
and mischievous notion, and it is on this account
also that one may well be glad that Reform has
been settled by the Conservatives, because it
has been a comparative deathblow to the monopoly
for which the Liberals were struggling, and which
militated against the best and truest interests of the
country.

The Tory party can never find a better champion
than Mr. DISRAELI, for he is armed at all points,
and accordingly he showed how the country would
have been all the better if the ideas of Mr. Prrr had
been carried out. There was indeed no earthly
reason why the Tory party should have been pre-
vented from dealing with the question of reform
any more than any other question of interest and
importance that engaged the attention of the
community, but the notion has been so industri-
ously circulated that it is quite as well to show
its emptiness as Mr. DISRAELI did last night. Those
rho have watched events will have noticed how
tenaciously some persons cling to the Conservative
Government keeping this year to the propositions
which in IS3B they had broul:lit forward, but not
then approved of. Thus, as the Chancellor of the
Exchequer said last night—" The lodger franchise
was one ; it was treated, of course, with contempt;
but I understand now that it is the palladium
of our liberties." Another point worthy of notice
in the complicated history of Reform is this,
that many of those who were among its most vigo-
rous opponents at the time of the measure were
transformed by some process into its protectors
afterwards, and a stranger might well believe to
hoar them that the Government only took advan-
tage of their ideas when they introduced the bill,
and passed them all for their own. No wonder
Mr. DISRAELI'S satire is aroused a this, and he