The Irish
orator, in a bitter rejoinder at Dublin, denounced Disraeli as a
Jewish traitor, "the heir at law of the blasphemous thief that
died upon the cross."
After many fruitless struggles the coveted seat was won, and in
1837 Benjamin Disraeli entered the House of Commons for
Maidstone, his colleague being Wyndham Lewis, the friend whose
good offices had gained him the nomination. Not long after the
death of Mr. Lewis, in 1838, Mr. Disraeli married his lively
widow, a woman to whose devotion not less than to her ample
fortune he owed a debt of gratitude which he never failed to
acknowledge.
Welcomed to the ranks of the Tory opposition by Sir Robert Peel,
the ambitious recruit plunged at once into oratory--only to have
his maiden effort drowned by the jeers of his hostile hearers,
led by O'Connell's "tail" of Irish members. They mocked at his
appeals for a hearing, and though the Tories cheered his pluck,
he could not make it go. "At last, losing his temper, which until
now he had preserved in a wonderful manner, he paused in the
midst of a sentence, and looking the Liberals indignantly in the
face, raised his hands and opening his mouth as widely as its
dimensions would admit, said, in a remarkably loud and almost
terrific tone, 'I have begun, several times, many things, and I
have often succeeded at last; aye, sir, and though I sit down
now, the time will come when you will hear me.
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