The Earl of Beaconsfield

Carlyle, speaking to me many years ago of parliamentary government as he had observed the working of it in this country, said that under this system not the fittest men were chosen to administer our affairs, but the ‘unfittest.’ The subject of the present memoir was scornfully mentioned as an illustration; yet Carlyle seldom passed a sweeping censure upon any man without pausing to correct himself. ‘Well, well, poor fellow,’ he added, ‘I dare say if we knew all about him we should have to think differently.’ I do not know that he ever did try to think differently. His disposition to a milder judgment, if he entertained such a disposition, was scattered by the Reform Bill of 1867, which Carlyle regarded as the suicide of the English nation. In his ‘Shooting Niagara’ he recorded his own verdict on that measure and the author of it.