PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
has treated the world, has been impossible for Lord Beaconsfield. In the phrase of the apostle he has "studied to be quiet and to do his own business."
Such a man needs no apologist. What is attempted in the following pages, is to trace the public career of the greatest statesman England has possessed since Mr. Pitt was carried to his grave. I have had access to no private or special information. Nothing appears here that may not be found in "Hansard," or in contemporary newspapers and memoirs. The so called "lives" and "biographies" of the noble Earl have been carefully eschewed. Most of them are grossly inaccurate and disfigured by a narrow-minded and bigoted party spirit, which makes the task of reading them anything but agreeable.
No living statesman has in fact suffered so much from misrepresentation, or has had attributed to him so frequently words which he never uttered, and sentiments which he never entertained; none has so much to gain by the promulgation of the exact truth. Even while these sheets are passing through the press I find one leading journal attributing to him the leadership of the opposition to the Bill for the removal of Jewish disabilities; and on the same day another newspaper, which would doubtless be very indignant if not also described as "leading," asserting that Lord John Russell and the Tory chief led their followers side by side in support of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. Wherever it has been possible, therefore, Lord Beaconsfield's own words have been used, and where his longer and more important speeches have been summarised, no pains have been spared to produce an accurate epitome, still in the speaker's own phraseology as far as possible. Over the period of his life which ended with the death of Lord George Bentinck, I have passed somewhat lightly. I have, however, endeavoured to show how Lord Beaconsfield thought on all principal topics, and how he acted upon all critical occasions; and to afford the necessary materials for forming an accurate judgment of his career. The earlier portion of his life is tolerably familiar, and Lord Beaconsfield has himself told the story of the great Free Trade struggle in a work so perfect in its way, that