In the old wars there used to be a story
that one Englishman could beat three members of some other nation.
But I think if we want to maintain our power, we ought to make one
Englishman equal really in the business of life to three other men
that any other nation can furnish. I do not see otherwise how . . .
we can fulfil the great destiny that I believe awaits us, and the
great position we occupy."
He did more than any other Minister to raise the Crown to the position
it now occupies, and no monarch ever had a more devoted and faithful
servant. His high standard of morals and his force of character
especially appealed to the English people, and his loyalty to his
friends and colleagues remained unshaken throughout his whole life.
He impressed not only his own countrymen, but also foreigners, with
his splendid gifts of imagination and foresight.
Bismarck, the man of 'blood and iron,' who welded the disunited
states of Germany into a united and powerful empire, considered that
Queen Victoria was the greatest statesman in Europe, and of the great
Beaconsfield he said: "Disraeli _is_ England."
Disraeli was a master of wit and phrase, and many of his best sayings
and definitions have become proverbial, _e.g._ "the hansom, the
'gondola' of London," "our young Queen and our old institutions,"
"critics, men who have failed," "books, the curse of the human race."
[Illustration: Sir Robert Peel, Lord Melbourne, Benjamin Disraeli
Photo W.
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