Note 284 — Chapter XIII · THE NEW ERA OF REFORM.

This was in his 1844 speech, when he advocated Home Rule for Ireland and the Disestablishment of “an absentee aristocracy and an alien church.” Mr. Disraeli had been taunted with this phrase early in the Session, during the first debate on the Irish Question. His reply was infinitely humorous and audacious. He said of the phrase, with an exquisite touch of mournful reminiscence, “it appeared to me at the time I made it that nobody listened to it. It seemed to me I was pouring water on sand—but it seems now that the water came from a golden goblet.”