A hundred years ago
From the 'Spectator', 10 October 1868—Mr. Dis- raeli's "word of power" to the electors of Buckinghamshire came forth this day week . . . and very powerful it was—in a verbal point of view. . . . He takes credit, of course, for carrying in 1867 and 1868 a Parliamentary Reform "broad in its principles", but for his high principle in suc- cessfully resisting which,—or rather something much less broad,—he had taken credit in his address to the same electors in 1865. He insists justly on the admirable conduct of foreign affairs during his administration, and on the success both moral and physical of the Abyssinian campaign. He rather unhappily congratulates the country on the in- creased strength of the Navy,—the forty little wooden ships added to it by Sir John Pakington, on the completion of guns for our fortresses which have only been tested since the resignation of the Liberal Government, and on the conversion of the Enfield rifles, which would have been delayed for years but for the Prussian war. . . . Such is the substantive part of Mr. Disraeli's official manifesto, which is strictly antiquarian, not containing a single forecast of his future policy, either towards Ireland or any other part of the empire.
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