Mr. Disraeli made a speech at Buckingham on Tuesday, in
which he was very cautious, and did not show his hand in relation to policy at all, except,. perhaps, by intimating that the Nonconformists had nothing to hope in relation to the Education Act and the Twenty-fifth Clause from the Tories. "No compromise," he said, "can be effected. The only question before the country is whether national educa- tion shall be founded on the consecrated basis of religion, or whether it shall be entirely secular education. The 25th Clause is the symbol of the controversy, and you must be for or against it." He himself is, of course, for it,—and the Angela. For the rest, Mr. Disraeli's most important remark was that out of about thirty Prime Ministers since the accession of the House of Hanover, five had been supplied by Buckinghamshire, so that he had a kind of special claim on Buckinghamshire to send him back to the House of Commons, as of coarse it already has done, and will do once again in three weeks or so, as first Minister of the Crown. Mr. Disraeli's pose as the proud and happy statesman of a party which he had renovated, was extremely good.
