hem. Among other services he
dispelled many misrepresentations by obtaining an accurate return of
the numbers of owners of land in the United Kingdom, and of the
quantity of land which they owned.

With the single exception of Lord Shaftesbury, I believe no
conspicuous English public man devoted so much time and labour as Lord
Derby to the class of questions I have described. He brought to their
discussion an almost unrivalled fulness of knowledge. His purse was
liberally opened in such causes, and the speeches in which he examined
what Government can do and what it cannot do for the material
well-being of the poor, are in my judgment among the most valuable
contributions to political thought that have been furnished by any
English statesman during the present century.

The election of 1874, bringing the Conservative party again into
power, called him to other fields, and he became for the second time
Foreign Secretary under Disraeli, and was soon involved in that
Eastern Question which led to his severance from the Conservative
party. It would answer no good purpose in a short sketch like the
present to rake up the still smouldering ashes of that controversy.
The time will come when it will be reviewed in the calm light of
history, and with the assistance of materials that are not now before
the public. I shall here content myself with a mere sketch. In the
earlier stages of their foreign policy the Government appear to have
been perfectly agreed. Lord Derby fully concurred in the purchase of
the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal, which was one of the most
successful strokes of policy of the Government, though he defended it
on somewhat more prosaic grounds than some of its supporters, and was
careful to explain that it was essentially a measure of self-defence,
and not connected with any project for the dismemberment of Turkey or
the establishment of an English protectorate in Egypt. When the
insurrection broke out in 1875 in Herzegovina and Bosnia, neither Lord
Derby nor any of his colleagues believed it to be more than a mere
passing disturbance. But the feebleness manifested by the Turkish army
in suppressing the insurrection, and the partial bankruptcy of the
Government at Constantinople, contributed with many elements of race
and religious dissension, with foreign intrigue and local
misgovernment, to aggravate the sore, and the movement soon acquired
the dimensions of a great European danger. In sending an Eng