so in his case, when he had all to gain and nothing to lose. He was a "lucky man," but he made his own good luck. His name thus comes to be identifled with the most successful administrative speculations of modern times. Disraeli was the Minister who purchased the telegraph system of the United Kingdom and consolidated it with the Postoffice Department. This was a bold speculative operation, which the result fully justified; but it is of far more importance politically, as giving the Government, in certain contingencies, the control of all avenues of information, and preventing the

try, to realize in his own case the fickleness of the constituencies. The majority was overwhelmingly against him. He was beaten worse than Gladstone had been, and beaten by the indomitable will and splendid talents of that great English statesman. It was Mr. Gladstone single-handed, and not the Liberal party leaders, that turned the tide of popular opinion against the popular idol; and it was Mr. Gladstone, to Disraeli's great chagrin, and contrary to the wish of the Queen, who succeeded him. Thus the open political account was balanced between these two great but dissimilar men. In 1870, while out of office, Disraeli publish- | creation of a dangerous monopoly. Benjamin ed the politico-religious novel, Lothair. Eighty Disraeli was the great telegraph consolidator. thousand copies of this book were sold in Amer- Jay Gould simply works upon the lines laid ica. It served a threefold purpose. It revived down by the British Minister as a measure of his literary reputation, kept his name in a phe- public policy, and usurps a power which should nomenal way before the public, and furnished alone be exercised by responsible executive auhim with money, of which he then stood greatly thority. More audacious, and yet more specuin need. In 1876, as already stated, Benjamin lative, was the purchase by Disraeli, on behalf Disreali was created Earl of Beaconsfield. He of the British Government, of the Khedive's inwas then in the zenith of his power and fame, terest in the Suez Canal, calling for the payand no one could have anticipated his sudden ment of £4,000,000 sterling, or twenty million fall. But there were causes, unseen though dollars. There was no precedent for such an potent, at work which sufficiently account for act, no warrant or authority for pledging the it. The Tories had utterly neglected social credit of the State for such a purpose; yet Disquestions. They had allowed the Irish ques- raeli quietly arranged for payment through the tion to develop proportions menacing to the Rothschilds, and trusted to Parliament to apmonarchy, through the combined influence ofpropriate the money. This purchase was comfamine and rack-rents. They had done noth-pleted on the 25th of November, 1875, and ining to mitigate the agricultural depression in stead of impeachment, to which the Minister England and Scotland consequent upon a suc- was liable, he was lauded to the skies. It gave cession of bad crops and American compe- England control of the short route to India, tition. They had, on the contrary, kept the and made her mistress of the situation in the public mind occupied and the popular imagi- | East. Steadily Disraeli's sun kept rising in the nation dazzled by a succession of foreign sur- European firmament, and as steadily his amprises. But the time had now fully come when bition kept mounting. The climax was reached the country, wearied with a sensational foreign when Parliament was informed, upon its assempolicy, involving heavy expenditures and wars bling in 1876, that the title "Empress of India" without glory, insisted upon a return to sober had been added to the royal style of the Queen. domestic legislation, and, as a matter of course, This was the enunciation of "the imperial polDisraeli's power and popularity disappeared like icy," which has been fruitful of so much trouble a morning cloud in the fierce rays of the sun. already, and which will cause England infinitely more trouble in the hereafter. There are constitutional reasons for this, but they need not be discussed in this place. The Prince of Wales had been sent to India to impress upon the native princes and sovereigns the personality of that power which held them in its iron grip, but which had hitherto been a mere abstraction to them. They saw and did homage to their future Emperor, and thenceforward must associate the man with the sovereign authority. This was Disraeli's conception. It was natural to a man of his race, but it would not have occurred to a purely English statesman, whose constitutional instincts and training would have impelled him to avoid artifice in government.

The Earl of Beaconsfield, as has been already shown, was a great party leader-the greatest, perhaps, of any since Chatham's time. He understood Parliament; he understood the aristocracy; and he used this knowledge skillfully to his own personal advantage. He was also a great Minister. This character contemporary history concedes to him, and the judgment of posterity will justify it. But his methods were not English methods. His genius was purely Semitic, and herein lay the secret of his great success. He took risks which no other English constitutional Minister would ever think of taking, and fortune, which is so often propitious to the daring, was very kind to him. It was

Queen Victoria liked it exceedingly, and she reEng-warded her Minister with an earldom, and extended to him a measure of personal confidence greater than had ever before been enjoyed by any of her constitutional advisers.

It is not necessary to follow in detail the de

It was a mere trick, but it was a very successful one. It was not approved generally in land, because personal government is distasteful to Anglo-Saxon sentiment, while it is of the essence of Semitic thought, which is formulated in the ancient demand: "Give us a king to rule over us." As a step in the imperial pol-velopment of this imperial policy. In South icy, however, the visit of the Prince of Wales to India was a very important one. It was leading up straight to what was soon to follow-the proclamation of the Indian Empire.

Benjamin Disraeli, the political and literary waif, had done many surprising things. He had conferred titles and honors with a lavish hand; but what were these social distinctions compared with encircling the brow of his sovereign mistress with the diadem of empire? Peerages, ribbons, and stars sink into insignificance when compared with this august creation. To create a ducal title, which conferred limited social prestige, was a very little thing in comparison to charging the sovereign style of a constitutional kingdom with the addition of "Empress," which carried with it a precedence above kings and the idea of absolutism. This was his work. In the whirl of active life, its audacity and grandeur have been overlooked, but in time to come it will certainly be regarded as the greatest achievement of his life, and in many respects, also, of the century. The possibilities of what it involves were only slightly disclosed to Europe during the later phases of the Eastern question, when the Queen of England, as Empress of India, brought her Indian troops to the Mediterranean, outside the charter limits, without the consent of Parliament, and when it was argued by Lord Chancellor Cairns that as Queen, by virtue of her prerogative, she might quarter them in Scotland and Ireland, because they had independent legislatures when the Bill of Rights was enacted, and were not parties to it. In other words, that the following provision of the Bill of Rights-"that the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with the consent of Parliament, is against law"-applies only to the ancient realm. of England, and not to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, or to any colonial dependency thereof. It was made the subject of a very dignified protest by the Russian representatives at the Berlin Congress, and was bitterly resented by the Liberals in Parliament. But the presence of the Indian battalions at Malta, outside the charter limits of India, in a time of peace, and without the knowledge or consent of Parliament, proved that the title, "Empress of India," was not an empty one. The British people disliked the imperial style;

Africa it was enforced by the annexation of Basutoland and Transvaal, involving three costly, bloody, and humiliating wars-the Zulu war, in which the Prince Imperial was killed; the war in Basutoland, still in progress; and the Transvaal war. Previous to this, Abyssinia had been invaded and its ruler killed, at the cost of many millions of treasure; and the savage king of Ashantee was driven out of his capital by British bayonets. These wars were the outgrowth of the imperial idea, which had, through Disraeli, permeated the Tory ranks. British blood in purple streams enriched the soil of the Dark Continent in warfare which was destitute of all possibilities of honor, and which was unjust in the extreme. What matter? It was in pursuance of a policy which placed the imperial crown of India upon the brow of Queen Victoria. But imperialism was not safe in India without "a scientific frontier," and accordingly a quarrel was fixed upon the British pensioner, Sheer Ali, Ameer of Afghanistan, who was driven direct into Russia's arms. India invaded Afghanistan, and here, too, British blood was poured out like water in a doubtful, and as it proved, a losing and useless cause. A scientific frontier was fixed by the treaty of Gundamuk, but all that remains of it now is the memory of the Cabul massacre, the annihilation of General Burrows's command by Ayoob Khan, the brilliant achievements of General Roberts, and a dangerous state prisoner in the person of Yakoob Khan, the puppet sovereign set up by the Indian Government by direction of Disraeli.

The Eastern question was seized upon by Disraeli as an occasion for testing the imperial policy in European affairs. He boldly swung England into the front rank of European powers in opposition to Russia, which was pressing hard upon Turkey, and abandoned the policy of non-intervention, which had been accepted by several administrations as the wisest one for an insular power. That non-intervention had sometimes been carried to an extreme, to the prejudice of national honor, is undoubted; but Disraeli displayed a spirit of recklessness, on the other hand, which might have involved the country in great disasters. It was his imperialism, however, which was at the root of all. During that great controversy of the nations, whatever men may think of the wisdom of his

nation had almost gone frantic. It had got into one of its mad fighting moods, and would rather have had war than peace. When the annex-jority of one hundred and twenty. The Tories ation of Cyprus and the protectorate of Asia Minor were announced, there was a burst of exultation, and millions of money were ready at call to build "The Euphrates Valley Railroad." The Suez Canal might be blockaded by hostile flotillas. England wanted a land route to India, and—

WIRING A CONTINENT.

The establishment of telegraphic communi- | maintain telegraphic communication across the cation between the principal cities of California had the effect of making the people on the Pacific Coast realize more clearly their isolated position from the rest of the Union, and the question of an overland telegraph was at once agitated. The matter had already, in point of fact, been considered in Congress soon after the acquisition of this territory by the United States. The plan thought to be the most feasible, among the several suggested, was one by the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas. It was for the Government to establish stockades or military posts at distances thirty to fifty miles apart across the continent. It was thought that such a plan would have the double advantage of protecting the emigrants as well as opening up safe and reliable communication between the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts. A careful examination into the details of this scheme showed that it would prove too expensive, and nothing came of it.

It was not until 1860, when a bill was introduced by Senator Broderick, that the Senate should authorize the Postmaster General to enter into a contract with Henry O'Reilly, J. J. Speed, and T. P. Schaffner for the carrying of Goverment messages to and from the Pacific States. The contract was for ten years, and the consideration $70,000 a year, with a preemption of 320 acres of land every ten miles along the route. This bill was referred to the committee of which Dr. Gwin was a member, but, on account of incompatibility of temper between the two Senators, it never reached the House. The year previous, 1859, the State Legislature had passed an act granting $6,000 a year, for ten years, to the company that should put the first line through, and $4,000 a year to the one that would get the second line through. This encouragement gave fresh impetus to the enterprises already commencedone by the way of Placerville and Carson Valley, known as the Placerville and St. Joseph Telegraph Company, and another via Los Angeles, following the route of the Butterfield overland mail stages.

Early in the succeeding year, several other telegraph bills were introduced in the United States Senate. An examination of them in detail led to the conviction that no private company would be able to successfully build and

continent, the cost of maintenance after the construction of the line being too great. Goverment aid was consequently considered absolutely necessary if the enterprise were to be carried out. A bill finally passed Congress appropriating $40,000 a year, for ten years, toward the construction and maintenance of a line of telegraph between the Atlantic and Pacific States. Within the appointed time the Secretary of the Treasury advertised for proposals. The Grand Confederated North American Association held a convention at New York, and agreed, as the Western Union Company had more at stake than any other Eastern company, to refer the whole matter to it and to the Placerville and St. Joseph Company. The Western Union Company resolved to put in a bid at the maximum price fixed by Congress, the bid to go in Hiram Sibley's name, but if successful, all the California lines, so disposed, were to share in the benefits. Several other competing companies made bids, but as before the time came around for giving the necessary bonds they had all withdrawn, the contract was awarded to the Western Union Company.

The parties whom Mr. Sibley represented met at Rochester, New York, and agreed that if all the California lines would consolidate they should have construction of the line from Salt Lake to the Pacific connection, while the Western Union Company should build from Salt Lake to the eastern connection. It was also agreed that the California and General Government subsidies, together with the receipts, should be divided equitably between them. In the fall of the same year, 1860, J. H. Wade, the representative of the Western Union Company, came to California to complete arrangeinents for the commencement of the great work. He brought the matter before the several companies then in operation on the Pacific Coast, proposing to them a plan of consolidation of all their lines, which was immediately carried out. The different companies agreed to consolidate with the California State Telegraph Company, and to create a new company called the Overland Telegraph Company, with a capital stock of $1,250,000, to complete a line from San Francisco to Salt Lake. This company, on the completion of the line, was merged into the California State Telegraph