IRON HORSE 99

tite capacity to make profits was the proper test of all economic
activity. It was an ancient national principle and a popular
prejudice that a man should receive a fair price for the product
of his labour, that he should be protected in his employment,
his enjoyment of home and his dignity as a man, however great
the potential profits others might make in depriving him of
these. In this Disraeli joined vital issue with the Free Traders.
For they were not concerned with the social consequences of the
system of trade they advocated, believing that those consequences,
through the unimpeded- operation of economic law, would
always look after themselves.

It was Disraeli's lot to see his counsel neglected and his country
adopt the policy he deplored. Until the Corn Laws were repealed
he was only a back-bencher. On the very day that the fatal
measure finally passed the Lords, he became a leader of the Tory
rump which Peel had betrayed. For twenty years, with two
short breaks, he remained in the political wilderness—the derided
mentor of "a fat cattle opposition" which had lost touch with
the spirit of the age. Like a wise man who realised the strength
of his countryman's infatuation, he accepted their decision and
warned his bucolic followers that they must allow a fair chance
to the experiment on which Parliament and the nation had
resolved. "You are in the position of a man who has made an
improvident marriage," he told them, "You have become united
to Free Trade, and nothing can divorce you except you can prove
the charmer to be false. Wait, then, till that period has arrived;
when you find that you have been betrayed, then will be the
time to seek a divorce from that pernicious union. You have
become united to the false Duessa, and you must take the con-
sequences; and the consequence, I venture to predict, will be
that the House of Commons, after a fair, full and ample trial
of this great measure, will be driven to repeal it from absolute
necessity, though at the termination of much national suffering;
but that that suffering will be compensated for by the bitterness
and the profundity of national penitence."1

That the question of Protection was not dead but merely
sleeping, was the recurring theme of Disraeli's argument.
"Protection to native industry is a fundamental principle," "It
may be vain now," he said in another speech, "in the midnight
of their intoxication, to tell them that there will be an awakening

ijfonyfenny & Suckle, /, 83$.