DISRAELI AND AGRICULTURE. 75 



conclusions which you may call Dogmas and Formu- 

 laries and prescribe by Acts of Parliament ; but I am 

 persuaded that a system of national education which 

 repudiates the religious instincts of our nature will be 

 the greatest of failures, but more fatal to the State than 

 to the Church." How truly also he hit the right nail on 

 the head, when he said, in this Manchester speech of 

 h's, ".Gentlemen, political institutions are the embodied 

 experience of a race.'' 



Disraeli was always particularly anxious for the 

 welfare of the agricultural labourer, and I do not 

 forget how, in one of his speeches at the meeting of 

 the Bucks Agricultural Association, in speaking of the 

 sanitary condition and the better housing of the 

 labourers, he said, "In building cottages there aic 

 three absolutely necessary things to be provided — an 

 oven, a tank, and a porch." This is practical advice ; 

 and in his Manchester speech I find the following, 

 which perhaps may shock the sensitive nerves of many 

 of my agricultural friends. " And in the first place," he 

 said, " to prevent any misconception, I beg to express 

 my opinion that an agricultural labourer has as m.uch 

 right to combine for the bettering of his condition as a 

 manufacturing labourer or a worker in metals." Again, 

 he said, " Gentlemen, I should deeply regret to see the 

 tillage of this country reduced and a recurrence to 

 pasture take place. I should regret it principally on 

 account of the labourers themselves. Their new friends 

 call them * Hodge,' and describe them as a feeble bod}', 

 and stolid in mind. That is not my experience of them 

 — T believe them to be a stalwart race, sufficiently shrewd 



