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THE QUEEN'S PRIME MINISTERS,
A SERIES OF POLITICAL BIOGRAPHIES
EDITED BY
STUART J. REID,
AUTHOR OF 'THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SYDNEY SMITH.'
_The Volumes will contain Portraits, and will be published at periodical
intervals._
=THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD, K.G.= By J. A. FROUDE, D.C.L.
=VISCOUNT MELBOURNE.= By HENRY DUNCKLEY, LL.D. ('Verax.')
=SIR ROBERT PEEL.= By JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M.P.
=VISCOUNT PALMERSTON.= By the MARQUIS OF LORNE, K.T.
=EARL RUSSELL.= By STUART J. REID.
=THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.= By G. W. E. RUSSELL.
=THE EARL OF ABERDEEN.= By Sir ARTHUR GORDON, G.C.M.G. &c.
=THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY.= By H. D. TRAILL, D.C.L.
=THE EARL OF DERBY.= By GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, Limited,
St. Dunstan's House, FETTER LANE, FLEET STREET, E.C.
The Prime Ministers of
Queen Victoria
EDITED BY
STUART J. REID
_LORD BEACONSFIELD_
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
[Illustration]
LORD BEACONSFIELD
BY
J. A. FROUDE
_He was a man, take him for all in all,
We shall not look upon his like again_
Hamlet, Act I. Scene 2
SECOND EDITION
LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON
_LIMITED_
St. Dunstan's House
FETTER LANE, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1890
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Carlyle on Lord Beaconsfield--Judgment of the House of
Commons--Family history--The Jews in Spain--Migration to
Venice--Benjamin D'Israeli the elder--Boyhood of Isaac
Disraeli 1
CHAPTER II
Family of Isaac Disraeli--Life in London--Birth of his
children--Abandons Judaism and joins the Church of
England--Education of Benjamin Disraeli--School
days--Picture of them in 'Vivian Grey' and 'Contarini
Fleming'--Self-education at home--Early ambition 12
CHAPTER III
The Austen family--Choice of a
profession--Restlessness--Enters a solicitor's
office--'Vivian Grey'--Illness--Travels abroad--Migration of
the Disraelis to Bradenham--Literary
satires--'Popanilla'--Tours in the
East--Gibraltar--Cadiz--Seville--Mountain
adventures--Improved health--Malta--James
Clay--Greece--Yanina--Redshid
Pasha--Athens--Constantinople--Plains of Troy and
Revolutionary epic--Jaffa--Jerusalem--Egypt--Home
letters--Death of William Meredith--Return to England 20
CHAPTER IV
'Contarini Fleming'--The poetical life--Paternal advice--A
poet, or not a poet?--'Revolutionary Epic'--Disraeli submits
to an unfavourable verdict--Success of the novels--Disraeli
a new star--London society--Political ambition--Mrs. Wyndham
Lewis--Financial embarrassments--Portraits of Disraeli by N.
P. Willis--Lady Dufferin and others--Stands for High
Wycombe--Speech at the Red Lion--Tory Radicalism--Friendship
with Lord Lyndhurst--Self-confidence--Vindication of the
British Constitution--Conservative reaction--Taunton
election--Crosses swords with O'Connell--The Runnymede
Letters--Admitted into the Carlton Club--'Henrietta Temple'
and 'Venetia' 45
CHAPTER V
Returned to Parliament for Maidstone--Takes his place behind
Sir R. Peel--Maiden speech--Silenced by violence--Peel's
opinion of it--Advice of Shiel--Second speech on Copyright
completely successful--State of politics--England in a state
of change--Break-up of ancient institutions--Land and its
duties--Political economy and Free Trade--Struggle on the
Corn Laws 67
CHAPTER VI
Disraeli's beliefs, political and religious--Sympathy with the
people--Defends the Chartists--The people, the
middle-classes, and the aristocracy--Chartist Riots--Smart
passage at arms in the House of Commons--Marriage--Mrs.
Wyndham Lewis--Disraeli as a husband 83
CHAPTER VII
The enthusiasm of progress--Carlyle and Disraeli--Protection
and Free Trade--Sir Robert Peel the Protectionist
champion--High Church movement at Oxford--The Church as a
Conservative power--Effect of the Reform Bill--Disraeli's
personal views--Impossible to realise--Election of 1841--Sir
Robert Peel's Ministry--Drift towards Free Trade--Peel's
neglect of Disraeli--Tariff of 1842--Young England--Symptoms
of revolt--First skirmish with Peel--Remarkable speech on
Ireland 91
CHAPTER VIII
Young England and the Oxford Tractarians--Disraeli a Hebrew at
heart--'Coningsby'--Sidonia--'Sybil; or the Two
Nations'--The great towns under the new creed--Lords of the
soil, as they were and as they are--Disraeli an aristocratic
socialist--Practical working of Parliamentary
institutions--Special importance of 'Sybil' 107
CHAPTER IX
The New Gospel--Effect on English character--The Manchester
School--Tendencies of Sir Robert Peel--The Corn Laws--Peel
brought into office as a Protectionist--Disraeli and
Peel--Protracted duel--Effect of Disraeli's speeches--Final
declaration of Peel against the Corn Laws--Corn Laws
repealed--Lord George Bentinck--Irish Coercion Bill--The
Canning episode--Defeat and fall of Peel--Disraeli succeeds
to the Leadership of the Conservative Party 129
CHAPTER X
Disraeli as Leader of the Opposition--Effects of Free
Trade--Scientific discoveries--Steam--Railroads--Commercial
revolution--Unexampled prosperity--Twenty-five years of
Liberal government--Disraeli's opinions and general
attitude--Party government and the conditions of it--Power
of an Opposition Leader--Never abused by Disraeli for party
interests--Special instances--The _coup d'état_--The Crimean
War--The Indian Mutiny--The Civil War in America--Remarkable
warning against playing with the Constitution 149
CHAPTER XI
Literary work--'Tancred; or, the New Crusade'--Modern
philosophy--The 'Vestiges of the Natural History of
Creation'--'Life of Lord George Bentinck'--Disraeli's
religious views--Revelation as opposed to Science--Dislike
and dread of Rationalism--Religion and statesmanship--The
national creed the supplement of the national law--Speech in
the theatre at Oxford--Disraeli on the side of the angels 165
CHAPTER XII
Indifference to money--Death of Isaac Disraeli--Purchase of
Hughenden--Mrs. Brydges Willyams of Torquay--An assignation
with unexpected results--Intimate acquaintance with Mrs.
Willyams--Correspondence--Views on many subjects--The Crown
of Greece--Louis Napoleon--Spanish pedigree of Mrs. Willyams 178
CHAPTER XIII
Fall of the Whigs in 1867--Disraeli as Chancellor of the
Exchequer--Reform Bill, why undertaken--Necessities, real or
fancied, of a Party Leader--Alternatives--Split in the
Cabinet--Disraeli carries his point--Niagara to be
shot--Retirement of Lord Derby--Disraeli Prime
Minister--Various judgments of his character--The House of
Commons responsible for his elevation--Increasing popularity
with all classes 188
CHAPTER XIV
Reply of the Liberals to the Tory Reform Bill--State of
Ireland--The Protestant Establishment--Resolutions proposed
by Mr. Gladstone--Decay of Protestant feeling in
England--Protestant character of the Irish Church--The Upas
Tree--Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy--General effect on
Ireland of the Protestant Establishment--Voltaire's
opinion--Imperfect results--The character of the Protestant
gentry--Nature of the proposed change--Sprung on England as
a surprise--Mr. Gladstone's resolutions carried--Fall of
Disraeli's Government 199
CHAPTER XV
The calm of satisfied ambition--A new novel--'Lothair'--Survey
of English society--The modern aristocracy--Forces working
on the surface and below it--Worship of rank--Cardinal
Grandison--Revolutionary Socialism--Romeward drift of the
higher classes--'Lothair' by far the most remarkable of all
Disraeli's writings 215
CHAPTER XVI
The exhausted volcanoes--Mr. Gladstone's failure and
unpopularity--Ireland worse than before--Loss of influence
in Europe--The Election of 1874--Great Conservative
majority--Disraeli again Prime Minister with real power--His
general position as a politician--Problems waiting to be
dealt with--The relations between the Colonies and the
Empire--The restoration of the authority of the law in
Ireland--Disraeli's strength and Disraeli's
weakness--Prefers an ambitious foreign policy--Russia and
Turkey--The Eastern Question--Two possible policies and the
effects of each--Disraeli's choice--Threatened war with
Russia--The Berlin Conference--Peace with honour--Jingoism
and fall of the Conservative party--Other features of his
administration--Goes to the House of Lords as Earl of
Beaconsfield and receives the Garter--Public Worship
Act--Admirable distribution of patronage--Disraeli and
Carlyle--Judgment of a conductor of an omnibus 232
CHAPTER XVII
Retirement from office--Dignity in retreat--Hughenden--Lord
Beaconsfield as a landlord--Fondness for country
life--'Endymion'--Illness and death--Attempted estimate of
Lord Beaconsfield--A great man? or not a great man?--Those
only great who can forget themselves--Never completely an
Englishman--Relatively great, not absolutely--Gulliver among
Lilliputians--Signs in 'Sybil' of a higher purpose, but a
purpose incapable of realisation--Simplicity and
blamelessness in private life--Indifference to
fortune--Integrity as a statesman and administrator 254
INDEX 263
LORD BEACONSFIELD
CHAPTER I
Carlyle on Lord Beaconsfield--Judgment of the House of Commons--Family
History--The Jews in Spain--Migration to Venice--Benjamin D'Israeli
the Elder--Boyhood of Isaac Disraeli.
[Sidenote: CARLYLE'S OPINION OF HIM]
Carlyle, speaking to me many years ago of parliamentary government as he
had observed the working of it in this country, said that under this
system not the fittest men were chosen to administer our affairs, but
the 'unfittest.' The subject of the present memoir was scornfully
mentioned as an illustration; yet Carlyle seldom passed a sweeping
censure upon any man without pausing to correct himself. 'Well, well,
poor fellow,' he added, 'I dare say if we knew all about him we should
have to think differently.' I do not know that he ever did try to think
differently. His disposition to a milder judgment, if he entertained
such a disposition, was scattered by the Reform Bill of 1867, which
Carlyle regarded as the suicide of the English nation. In his 'Shooting
Niagara' he recorded his own verdict on that measure and the author of
it.
'For a generation past it has been growing more and more evident that
there was only this issue; but now the issue itself has become
imminent, the distance of it to be guessed by years. Traitorous
politicians grasping at votes, even votes from the rabble, have brought
it on. One cannot but consider them traitorous; and for one's own poor
share would rather have been shot than have been concerned in it. And
yet, after all my silent indignation and disgust, I cannot pretend to be
clearly sorry that such a consummation is expedited. I say to myself,
Well, perhaps the sooner such a mass of hypocrisies, universal
mismanagements, and brutal platitudes and infidelities ends, if not in
some improvement then in death and _finis_, may it not be the better?
The sum of our sins increasing steadily day by day will at least
be less the sooner the settlement is. Nay, have I not a kind of
secret satisfaction of the malicious or even of the judiciary kind
(_Schadenfreude_, "mischief joy," the Germans call it, but really it is
"justice joy" withal) that he they call Dizzy is to do it; that other
jugglers of an unconscious and deeper type, having sold their poor
mother's body for a mess of official pottage, this clever, conscious
juggler steps in? "Soft, you, my honourable friends: _I_ will weigh out
the corpse of your mother--mother of mine she never was, but only
step-mother and milch cow--and you shan't have the pottage--not yours
you observe, but mine." This really is a pleasing trait of its sort;
other traits there are abundantly ludicrous, but they are too lugubrious
even to be momentarily pleasant. A superlative Hebrew conjuror
spell-binding all the great lords, great parties, great interests of
England to his hand in this manner, and leading them by the nose like
helpless mesmerised somnambulist cattle to such issue! Did the world
ever see a _flebile ludibrium_ of such magnitude before? Lath-sword and
scissors of Destiny, Pickle-herring and the three Parcæ alike busy in
it. This too I suppose we had deserved; the end of our poor old England
(such an England as we had at last made of it) to be not a fearful
tragedy, but an ignominious farce as well.'
The consequences of the precipitation over the cataract not being
immediate, and Government still continuing, over which a juggler of some
kind must necessarily preside, Carlyle, though hope had forsaken him,
retained his preference for the conscious over the unconscious. He had a
faint pleasure in Disraeli's accession to power in 1874. He was even
anxious that I should myself accept a proposal of a seat in Parliament
which had been made to me, as a _quasi_ follower of Disraeli--not that
he trusted him any better, but he thought him preferable to a worse
alternative. He was touched with some compunction for what he had
written when Disraeli acknowledged Carlyle's supremacy as a man of
letters--offered him rank and honours and money, and offered them in
terms as flattering as his own proudest estimate of himself could have
dictated. Accept such offers Carlyle could not; but he was affected by
the recognition that of all English ministers the Hebrew conjuror should
have been the only one who had acknowledged his services to his country,
and although he disapproved and denounced Disraeli's policy in the East
he did perceive that there might be qualities in the man to which he had
not done perfect justice.
However that may be, Disraeli was a child of Parliament. It was
Parliament and the confidence of Parliament which gave him his place in
the State. For forty years he was in the front of all the battles which
were fought in the House of Commons, in opposition or in office, in
adversity or in success, in conflict and competition with the most
famous debaters of the age. In the teeth of prejudice, without support
save in his own force of character, without the advantage of being the
representative of any popular cause which appealed to the imagination,
he fought his way till the consent of Parliament and country raised him
to the Premiership.
Extraordinary qualities of some kind he must have possessed. No horse
could win in such a race who had not blood and bone and sinew. Whether
he was fit or unfit to govern England, the House of Commons chose him as
their best; and if he was the charlatan which in some quarters he is
supposed to have been, the Parliament which in so many years failed to
detect his unworthiness is itself unfit to be trusted with the nation's
welfare. He was not borne into power on the tide of any outside
movement. He was not the advocate of any favourite measure with which
his name was identified. He rose by his personal qualifications alone,
and in studying what those qualifications were we are studying the
character of Parliament itself.
[Sidenote: THE JEWS IN SPAIN]
The prophets who spoke of the dispersion of the Jews as a penalty for
their sins described a phenomenon which probably preceded the Captivity.
Through Tyre the Hebrew race had a road open through which they could
spread along the shores of the Mediterranean. There was a colony of them
in Rome in the time of Cicero. In Carthage they were among a people who
spoke their own language. It is likely that they accompanied the
Carthaginians in their conquests and commercial enterprises, and were
thus introduced into Spain, where a Jewish community undoubtedly existed
in St. Paul's time, and where it survived through all changes in the
fortunes of the Peninsula. Under the Arabs the Jews of Spain preserved
undisturbed their peculiar characteristics. As the crescent waned before
the cross they intermarried with Christian families, and conformed
outwardly with the established faith while they retained in secret their
own ceremonies.
The Jewish people, says Isaac Disraeli in his 'Genius of Judaism,' are
not a nation, for they consist of many nations. They are Spanish or
Portuguese, German or Polish, and, like the chameleon, they reflect the
colours of the spot they rest on. The people of Israel are like water
running through vast countries, tinged in their course with all
varieties of the soil where they deposit themselves. Every native Jew as
a political being becomes distinct from other Jews. The Hebrew adopts
the hostilities and the alliances of the land where he was born. He
calls himself by the name of his country. Under all these political
varieties the Jew of the Middle Ages endeavoured to preserve his inward
peculiarities. In England, in France, in Germany, in Italy, he enjoyed
for the sake of his wealth a fitful toleration, with intervals of
furious persecution. From England he was expelled at the beginning of
the fourteenth century, and his property was confiscated to the State.
In crusading Spain he had not ventured to practise his creed in the open
day, and thus escaped more easily. He was unmolested as long as he
professed a nominal Christianity. He was wealthy, he was ingenious, he
was enterprising. In his half-transparent disguise he intermarried with
the proudest Castilian breeds. He took service under the State, and rose
to the highest positions, even in the Church itself. A Jew who had not
ceased to be a Jew in secret became Primate of Spain, and when the
crowns of Castile and Aragon became united it was reckoned that there
was scarcely a noble family in the two realms pure from intermixture of
Jewish blood. His prosperity was the cause of his ruin. The kingdom of
Granada fell at last before Ferdinand and Isabella, and the Church of
Spain addressed itself, in gratitude to Providence, to the purifying of
the Peninsula from the unholy presence of the wealthy unbeliever.
The Jews who were willing to break completely with their religious
associations remained undisturbed. The Inquisition undertook the
clearance of the rest, and set to work with characteristic vigour. Rank
was no protection. The highest nobles were among the first who were
called for examination before Torquemada's tribunal. Tens of thousands
of the 'new Christians' who were convicted of having practised the rites
of their own religion after outward conformity with Christianity, were
burnt at the stake as 'relapsed.' Those who could escape fled to other
countries where a less violent bigotry would allow them a home. Venice
was the least intolerant. Venice lived upon its commerce, and the Jews
there, as always, were the shrewdest traders in the world. The Venetian
aristocrats might treat them as social pariahs, rate them on the Rialto,
and spit upon their gabardines, but they had ducats, and their ducats
secured them the protection of the law.
[Sidenote: THE DISRAELI FAMILY]
Among those who thus sought and found the hospitality of the Adriatic
republic at the end of the fifteenth century was a family allied with
the house of Lara, and perhaps entitled to bear its name. They
preferred, however, to break entirely their connection with the country
which had cast them off. They called themselves simply D'Israeli, or
Sons of Israel, a name, says Lord Beaconsfield, never borne before or
since by any other family, in order that their race might be for ever
recognised. At Venice they lived and throve, and made money for two
hundred years. Towards the middle of the last century, when Venice was
losing her commercial pre-eminence, they began to turn their eyes
elsewhere. Very many of their countrymen were already doing well in
Holland. England was again open to them. Jews were still under some
disabilities there, but they were in no danger of being torn by horses
in the streets under charge of eating children at their Passover. They
could follow their business and enjoy the fruits of it; and the head of
the Venetian house decided that his second son, Benjamin, 'the child of
his right hand,' should try his fortune in London. The Disraelis
retained something of their Spanish pride, and did not like to be
confounded with the lower grades of Hebrews whom they found already
established there. The young Benjamin was but eighteen when he came
over; he took root and prospered, but he followed a line of his own and
never cordially or intimately mixed with the Jewish community, and the
tendency to alienation was increased by his marriage.
[Sidenote: ISAAC DISRAELI]
'My grandfather,' wrote Lord Beaconsfield, 'was a man of ardent
character, sanguine, courageous, speculative, and fortunate; with a
temper which no disappointment could disturb and a brain full of
resources.' He made a fortune, he married a beautiful woman of the same
religion as his own and whose family had suffered equally from
persecution. The lady was ambitious of social distinction, and she
resented upon her unfortunate race the slights and disappointments to
which it exposed her. Her husband took it more easily. He was rich. He
had a country house at Enfield, where he entertained his friends, played
whist, and enjoyed himself, 'notwithstanding a wife who never pardoned
him his name.' So successful he had been that he saw his way to
founding a house which might have been a power in Europe. But the more
splendid his position the more bitter would have been his wife's
feelings. He retired therefore early from the field, contented with the
wealth which he had acquired. Perhaps his resolution was precipitated by
the character of the son who was the only issue of his marriage. Isaac
Disraeli was intended for the heir of business, and Isaac showed from
the first a determined disinclination for business of any sort or kind.
'Nature had disqualified the child from his cradle for the busy pursuits
of men.' 'He grew up beneath a roof of worldly energy and enjoyment,
indicating that he was of a different order from those with whom he
lived.' Neither his father nor his mother understood him. To one he was
'an enigma,' to the other 'a provocation.' His dreamy, wandering eyes
were hopelessly unpractical. His mother was irritated because she could
not rouse him into energy. He grew on 'to the mournful period of
boyhood, when eccentricities excite attention and command no sympathy.'
Mrs. Disraeli was exasperated when she ought to have been gentle. Her
Isaac was the last drop in her cup of bitterness, and 'only served to
swell the aggregate of many humiliating particulars.' She grew so
embittered over her grievances that Lord Beaconsfield says 'she lived
till eighty without indulging a tender expression;' and must have been
an unpleasant figure in her grandson's childish recollections. The
father did his best to keep the peace, but had nothing to offer but
good-natured commonplaces. Isaac at last ran away from home, and was
brought back after being found lying on a tombstone in Hackney
Churchyard. His father 'embraced him, gave him a pony,' and sent him to
a day school, where he had temporary peace. But the reproaches and
upbraidings recommenced when he returned in the evenings. To crown all,
Isaac was delivered of a poem, and for the first time the head of the
family was seriously alarmed. Hitherto he had supposed that boys would
be boys, and their follies ought not to be too seriously noticed; but a
poem was a more dangerous symptom; 'the loss of his argosies could not
have filled him with a more blank dismay.'
The too imaginative youth was despatched to a counting-house in
Holland. His father went occasionally to see him, but left him for
several years to drudge over ledgers without once coming home, in the
hope that in this way, if in no other, the evil spirit might be
exorcised. Had it been necessary for Isaac Disraeli to earn his own
bread the experiment might have succeeded. His nature was gentle and
amiable, and though he could not be driven he might have been led. But
he knew that he was the only child of a wealthy parent. Why should he do
violence to his disposition and make himself unnecessarily miserable?
Instead of book-keeping he read Bayle and Voltaire. He was swept into
Rousseauism and imagined himself another Emile. When recalled home at
last the boy had become a young man. He had pictured to himself a
passionate scene in which he was to fly into his mother's arms, and
their hearts were to rush together in tears of a recovered affection.
'When he entered, his strange appearance, his gaunt figure, his excited
manner, his long hair, and his unfashionable costume only filled her
with a sentiment of tender aversion. She broke into derisive laughter,
and noticing his intolerable garments reluctantly lent him her cheek.'
The result, of course, was a renewal of household misery. His father
assured him that his parents desired only to make him happy, and
proposed to establish him in business at Bordeaux. He replied that he
had written another poem against commerce, 'which was the corruption of
man,' and that he meant to publish it. What was to be done with
such a lad? 'With a home that ought to have been happy,' says Lord
Beaconsfield, 'surrounded with more than comfort, with the most
good-natured father in the world and an agreeable man, and with a mother
whose strong intellect under ordinary circumstances might have been of
great importance to him, my father, though himself of a very sweet
disposition, was most unhappy.' To keep him at home was worse than
useless. He was sent abroad again, but on his own terms. He went to
Paris, made literary acquaintance, studied in libraries, and remained
till the eve of the Revolution amidst the intellectual and social
excitement which preceded the general convulsion. But his better sense
rebelled against the Rousseau enthusiasm. Paris ceasing to be a safe
residence, he came home once more, recovered from the dangerous form of
his disorder, 'with some knowledge of the world and much of books.'
His aversion to the counting-house was, however, as pronounced as ever.
Benjamin Disraeli resigned himself to the inevitable--wound up his
affairs and retired, as has been said, upon the fortune which he had
realised. Isaac, assured of independence, if not of great wealth, went
his own way; published a satire, which the old man overlived without a
catastrophe, and entered the literary world of London. Before he was
thirty he brought out his 'Curiosities of Literature,' which stepped at
once into popularity and gave him a name. He wrote verses which were
pretty and graceful, verses which were read and remembered by Sir
Walter Scott, and were at least better than his son's. But he was too
modest to overrate their value. He knew that poetry, unless it be the
best of its kind, is better unproduced, and withdrew within the limits
where he was conscious that he could excel. 'The poetical temperament
was not thrown away upon him. Because he was a poet he was a popular
writer, and made _belles-lettres_ charming to the multitude.... His
destiny was to give his country a series of works illustrative of its
literary and political history, full of new information and new views
which time has ratified as just.'