Much more satisfactory, as regarded our intercourse with the Oriental world, was the inauguration of the Overland Route to and from India, due to the enterprise of Lieutenant Waghorn, who, on the 31st of October, 1845, arrived in London with the Bombay Mail of the 1st of that month. His despatches had reached Suez on the 19th, and Alexandria on the 20th of October; and from the latter of those cities he proceeded by steamboat to the European continent, when, hurrying post through Austria, Baden, Bavaria, Prussia, and Belgium, he reached London at half-past four on the morning of October 31st. The speed of the Overland Route was afterwards increased; but it had the disadvantage of greater expense. The difference between the old and the new system consisted in the fact that by the former it was necessary to pursue the long sea-route by the Cape of Good Hope, and so round the western coasts of Africa and Europe; whereas, by Lieutenant Waghorn’s system, the passengers and luggage were carried by land across the Isthmus of Suez and transferred to another vessel on the northern shore. Hence the extensive operations of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, with which modern visitors to the East are so well acquainted.
While these important things were being done in distant parts of the world, the state of political affairs in England was becoming somewhat complicated. The popularity of Sir Robert Peel had, by 1845, greatly declined from the mark at which it stood in 1841. Thousands of persons complained of the Income Tax--of the unfairness of its incidence, the heaviness of its burden, and the inquisitorial character inseparable from its operation. The objectors did not sufficiently consider that the imposition of this tax had enabled the Premier to abolish many millions of duties upon articles of ordinary consumption. The boon was accepted with silent gratitude; but the price by which it had been purchased was assailed in terms of unmeasured vituperation. Such was the view taken by a large majority of the public, and at the same time Sir Robert Peel had to encounter the assaults of many prominent members of the party to which he himself belonged, whose animosity was excited by his manifest leaning towards a Free Trade policy, and by other tendencies which had far more of a Liberal than a Conservative character. It was now that Mr. Disraeli began to acquire that commanding force in Parliament which he never ceased to exercise until his death in 1881. The days had long gone by when he was unable to obtain a hearing in the House of Commons; when his voice was drowned by hoots, and his awkward flights of rhetoric were met with peals of laughter. He had developed a style of remarkable pungency and vigour; and perhaps no one in the Lower House, at that time, possessed so remarkable a power of launching those barbed arrows of sarcasm which never fail to strike, and which usually leave a scar behind.