The speech on the Budget was amusing chiefly for its
indi- cations of Mr. Disraeli's charming state of spirits. The depression under which he laboured during the first series of Reform messes has quite *Bed away, and the success of his great reply on Tuesday week has made him gracious, and disposed to be jocular. There was real hilarity in his reference to Mr. Gladstone's support of his own assault on "the excellent Sir Georce Lewis's" scheme- for a sinking fund at the end of the Crimean war, as "a rare but. gratifying incident," and in his noble Parliamentary paraphrase
of his reply to "the great by" (who was he, by the way?) who attacked him on the Buckinghamshire hustings by quoting. the National Debt as a reason for not vindicating the honour of England, that after all it was little more than "an incision of the most troublesome, but not the most unpopular, of insects." And when he concluded," I am not myself an alarmist in public affairs. I do not awake in the morning and believ„, the country is going, to be involved in a great European war Still it is impos-
sible to shut your eyes to what is passing around us. The state of Europe is remarkable,—it is at the present moment an armed
camp I certainly think that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer is called upon. to ga into the market to raise money, he will walk with a prouder mien, and experience greater facili- ties in raising money, if in the days of our prosperity we have made an honest attempt to reduce the amount of our Debt,"— the general cheering in the House, as indeed its whole manner throughout the latter part of his speech, showed that he had not miscalculated the effect of his conciliatory and magnanimous line of action in carrying out Mr. Gladstone's policy, and giving him all the credit of it.
