MR. DISRAELI'S FIRST SPEECH. [To TILE EDIT011 OF TICS "
firscrAroe.."] SIR,—If your correspondent, "M. J. G.," in the Spectator of April 24th, had consulted authentic documents instead of trusting to his own imagination, he would 114-ve waved himself
from a great blunder. He assumes, without warrant, that Disraeli said, "When the Hurried Hudson rushed through the chambers of the Vatican, with the keys of Peter in one hand, and—." "M. J. G." then says the question is,—" What had Hudson in his other hand P" And he answers this question by urging that Disraeli meant to end the sentence with the words "and the King's letter in the other." Your correspondent is in error on both these points. If he will turn to "Hansard" (December 7th, 1837), he will find—" The noble lord might wave in one hand the keys of St. Peter, and in the other—." And in "Lord Beaconsfield's Corre- spondence with his Sister" (p. 79) he tells his sister that he had meant to say—" and in the other the Cap of Liberty." Mr. Froude, in his "Life of Lord Beaconsfield" (p. 71), explains this by saying, "He had to speak of the alliance between the Whigs and the Irish Catholics. With a flourish of rhetoric he described Melbourne as flourishing in one hand the keys of St. Peter, in the other, he was going to say, the Cap of Liberty,' but the close of the sentence was drowned in derisive shouts." That the Hurried Hudson should be made the hero of this tale seems very strange. In short, your correspondent has sent you a conjectural ending to a sentence which never had a beginning.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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