the English race, but of the English State all over the globe." The English people, it has been said, have conquered and peopled half a world in a fit of absence of mind; and it required a Jewish statesman and a Cambridge professor to point out to them that there was anything noticeable in the achievement. Disraeli had not perceived it in 1852. In that year he, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to Lord Malmesbury, as Foreign Secretary, "These wretched colonies will all be independent in a few years, and are a millstone round our necks." What a change between this remainder biscuit of an effete doctrine of the Manchester School, and the Imperial statesman of later years! When his life is written it will be interesting to see when and how he developed the Imperialism with which his name is now associated. His passing of the Bill in 1876 which made the Queen Empress of India has been already referred to. The Queen valued him as a statesman and as a friend more than any Prime Minister since the days of Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen. Whether he derived his Imperialism from her, or she hers from him, will not be known till the history of both lives can be fully revealed. She honored him with her regard and friendship, entirely abandoning the distrust and suspicion with which at the outset of his political career she had regarded him. In Hughenden Church she placed after his death a memorial tablet with the following inscription, written by herself:—
To the dear and honored memory of
Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield,
This memorial is placed by
His grateful and affectionate Sovereign and Friend,
Victoria, R. I.
"Kings love them that speak right."—Prov. xvi. 13.
She wrote at the time of Lord Beaconsfield's death to Dean Stanley:—
