Excerpt from The Earl of Beaconsfield and the Conservative Reform Bill of 1867: A Lecture, Delivered at the Cambridge Reform Club, on Monday, November 13, 1876

Gentlemen, - Nothing is so politically instructive for Englishmen as the continuous study of the debates in Parliament which have led to the passing of great legislative measures. Nor is it easy to devise a fairer test wherewith to try the statesmanship of the responsible minister in charge of such a measure than the way in which he introduces it to Parliament, defends its essential principles on the second reading, and pilots it through the reefs and quicksands of the committee. A Reform Bill, touching as it does the very spring-head of political power, is necessarily one of the most momentous undertakings on which Parliament can embark, and is therefore certain, before it becomes law, to receive an amount of searching discussion proportionate to the vast interests which it involves. We may safely assume that the minister under whose auspices such a measure is carried will have a magnificent opportunity, and will receive a most urgent summons, to put forth the very highest powers of his statesmanship. Contemporaries and posterity are therefore abundantly justified in allowing the judgment they form of the political character of a minister who has passed through such an ordeal to be predominantly influenced by the manner in which he has stood the test. These remarks sufficiently indicate my object in bringing before your notice this evening the most important incidents which marked the debates on the Reform Bill of 1867, with special reference to the conduct of Mr. Disraeli. The members of the Cambridge Reform Club will hardly require of me any apology for asking their attention to a most important branch of the great subject which is embodied in the name of their club. Were they to do so, it would be natural to dwell on the facility with which facts too old for current periodical literature, and too young for systematic history, are forgotten, or on the fact that a generation of members of the club is growing up which knows the Reform Act of 1867 only by the vaguest hearsay. In either case - whether old memories are to be revived, or interest is to be for the first time aroused - my attempt will be sure of your indulgent attention.

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