248 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



it was not at the bank, but only in the problematical 

 value of mares and stallions. 



I have never yet come upon a scheme by which 

 accounts of a stud farm could be kept with any pretence 

 of certainty, for there is no sort of standard value by 

 which any of the animals can be assessed. What you 

 have given 1000 guineas for may depreciate to 50 guineas, 

 and a 5o-guinea purchase may become worth 5000 guineas. 

 These considerations are still more confusing if you enter 

 such animals in the books at cost price, for the animal 

 bought for 50 and worth 5000 guineas will have eaten 

 its head off in the first year and be counted as valueless. 



The above is a dry subject, and at the time I am dealing 

 with there were events in progress of absorbing interest. 

 The Russo-Turkish War had been concluded by the Treaty 

 of Berlin on i6th July 1878, and Lord Salisbury and 

 Disraeli had returned to England in a blaze of triumph. 

 In 1877 there had been the ever-to-be-remembered defence 

 of Plevna from July to November, and in the earlier half 

 of 1878 the Indian troops had been brought to Malta. 

 Disraeli then was at the zenith of his power, and it is sad 

 that his opportunity should have come so late in life, 

 for he it was who first raised the British Empire to con- 

 scious knowledge of its corporate existence, and in that 

 one brief motto of Imperium et Libertas he epitomised 

 the whole code under which the sisterhood of free nations 

 can co-operate for the good of all. 



I had never ceased to be mixed up with politics in so 

 far as they could be made to serve the cause of Tory 

 Democracy as so beautifully developed in Disraeli's 

 books, especially in Sybil, and I think Tory Democracy 

 has, from the first, meant " All for England all for the 

 British Empire." 



As to the Treaty of Berlin, Lord Salisbury, no doubt, 

 thought in later years that they had " backed the wrong 

 horse," in Turkey, but it was only after the real Turkey 

 had been bought and sold to the Germans, under the 

 sickening sham of developing Liberal ideas in a country 



