The election of 1865 left the Conservative leaders in a condition of total depression. Once more the Conservative party was the minority party in the House of Commons. In Scotland there had been ‘utter rout’. Spofforth, the chief Conservative agent, could not ‘help expressing my regret that the result is so disastrous’. To Gathorne Hardy, shooting with Colonel Taylor, the chief whip, who found ‘the elections…unaccountable’, it seemed that they ‘have…I fear…almost demolished the party’. Disraeli, offering his own resignation but hinting at Derby's, reflected that ‘the leadership of hopeless opposition is a gloomy affair and there is little distinction when your course [the adjective was perhaps ambiguous] is not associated with the possibility of future power’. To Derby it seemed ‘at the age of sixty-six and after forty-four years of public life, a man may well be content, as I shall be, to take no greater share in public affairs than that which may attach to any personal influence which I may exercise’.As Derby and Disraeli looked out there was only a faint glimmer of hope. Palmerston was eighty:‘his bladder complaint, tho' in itself not fatal, deprives him of his usual exercise, and of sleep which was his forte and carried him through everything.’