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.
The acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham Lewis had grown into a close
friendship. Mr. Lewis, as has been said, was member for Maidstone, and
had large local influence in the borough. The death of William IV., in
the summer of 1837, dissolved Parliament; and Disraeli, being adopted by
Mr. Lewis as his colleague, was returned by an easy majority. The
election again gave the Whigs a majority, but not a large one. The tide
was fast ebbing, and the time was near when the Conservatives, as the
Tories now called themselves, were to see the balance turn in their
favour. Lord Melbourne meanwhile remained Minister, but a Minister who
desired to be able to do nothing. Ministers with a powerful party behind
them are driven occasionally into measures which they would have
preferred to avoid. The electors who have given them power require them
to use it. Whigs and Tories alike know that their time will be short
unless by some sensational policy they can gratify public expectation.
Nothing was expected of Lord Melbourne, and persons who dreaded change
of any kind, from whichever side it might come, were satisfied that it
should be so. I remember Bishop Philpotts rubbing his hands over the
situation, and saying that he hoped never more to see a strong
Government.
It was a time of 'slack water;' nevertheless Disraeli was supremely
happy. He had now a career open before him, and a career in which he was
certain that he could distinguish himself. His delight was boyish. He
said, 'It makes a difference in public opinion of me.' The election was
in July, and Parliament met in November. He took his seat on the second
bench behind Peel, a place which he intended, if possible, to secure for
himself. Peel's character had rallied the Conservative party, and to
Peel personally they looked for guidance. Yarde Buller being asked his
opinion on some question, replied that Peel had not made up his mind;
Old Toryism was gone with Lord Eldon; the Reform Bill, once passed, was
to be the law of the land. Disraeli had no personal interest in any of
the great questions which divided English opinion. He owned no land; he
was unconnected with trade; he had none of the hereditary prepossessions
of a native Englishman. He was merely a volunteer on the side with
which, as a man of intellect, he had most natural sympathy. He took a
brief from the Conservatives, without remuneration in money, but
trusting to win fame, if not fortune, in an occupation for which he knew
that he was qualified. He began in the ranks, and Peel was his leader;
and his leader, till he had made a place for himself, he loyally
prepared to serve.
'Peel welcomed me very warmly,' he reported to Bradenham, 'and all
noticed his cordial demeanour. He looks very well, and asked me to join
a swell dinner at the Carlton on Thursday--a House of Commons dinner
purely,' he said. 'By that time we shall know something of the temper of
the House.' A fortnight later he mentioned, with evident pride, that he
had met Peel again, and Peel took wine with him.
[Sidenote: FINANCIAL EMBARRASSMENTS]
[Sidenote: MAIDEN SPEECH IN HOUSE OF COMMONS]
Success to Disraeli in the House of Commons was the alternative of a
financial catastrophe. His debts were large; money had been necessary to
him for the position to which he aspired. He had no securities to offer,
and never entangled friends in his pecuniary dealings. He had gone
frankly to the professional money-lenders, who had made advances to him
in a speculation upon his success. There was no deception on either
side--Disraeli was running his talents against the chance of failure. If
he succeeded the loans would be paid. If he did not succeed, the usurers
had played for a high stake and had lost it, that was all. At worst he
was but following the example of Burke and the younger Pitt. As his
bills fell due, they had been renewed at 8 and 10 per cent. and even
more, and when he commenced his political life would have been
formidable to anyone but himself. They were all eventually paid, and he
was never charged, even in thought, with having abused afterwards the
opportunities of power to relieve himself. But it was with this weight
upon his back that he began his Parliamentary career. He had started on
his own merits, for he had nothing else to recommend him, and he had
challenged fate by the pretensions which he had put forward for himself.
His birth was a reproach to be got over. He had no great constituency at
his back, no popular cause to represent. He was without the academic
reputation which so often smooths the entrance to public life, and the
Tory gentlemen, among whom he had taken his place, looked upon him with
dubious eyes. 'Had I been a political adventurer,' he said at Wycombe,
'I had nothing to do but join the Whigs.' The Radicals would have
welcomed him into their ranks; but the Radicals looked on him as an
apostate, as a mischievous insect to be crushed on the first
opportunity. The 'Globe' had assailed him brutally, and he had replied
in kind. 'The Whig Samson should never silence him with the jaw of an
ass. He would show the world what a miserable poltroon, what a craven
dullard, what a literary scarecrow, what a mere thing stuffed with straw
and rubbish was the _soi-disant_ director of public opinion and official
organ of Whig politics.' A first speech in the House of Commons is
usually treated with indulgence. The notoriety which Disraeli had
brought on himself by these encounters was to make him a solitary
exception. He had told O'Connell that they would meet at Philippi. Three
weeks after Disraeli had taken his seat there was a debate upon some
election manœuvres in Ireland. Hard blows had been exchanged. Sir F.
Burdett had called O'Connell a paid patriot. O'Connell had replied that
he had sacrificed a splendid professional income to defend his country's
rights. 'Was he for this to be vilified and traduced by an old
renegade?' Immediately after O'Connell Disraeli rose. His appearance was
theatrical, as usual. He was dressed in a bottle-green frock coat, with
a white waistcoat, collarless, and with needless display of gold chain.
His face was lividly pale, his voice and manner peculiar. He began
naturally and sensibly, keeping to the point of the debate. He was
cheered by his own side, and might have got through tolerably enough;
but the gentlemen below the gangway had determined that his Philippi
should not end with a victory. Of course he did not yet know the House
of Commons. Affected expressions, which would have been welcomed at
Wycombe or Taunton, were received with scornful laughter. He bore it
for a time good-humouredly, and begged them to hear him out. He was
answered with fresh peals of mockery. He had to speak of the alliance
between the Whigs and the Irish Catholics. With a flourish of rhetoric
he described Melbourne as flourishing in one hand the keys of St. Peter,
in the other, he was going to say, 'the cap of Liberty,' but the close
of the sentence was drowned in derisive shouts. The word had gone out
that he was to be put down. Each time that he tried to proceed the
storm burst out, and the Speaker could not silence it. Peel cheered
him repeatedly. The Tory party cheered, but to no purpose. At last,
finding it useless to persist, he said he was not surprised at the
reception which he had experienced. He had begun several times many
things and had succeeded at last. Then pausing and looking indignantly
across the House, he exclaimed in a loud and remarkable tone, which
startled even the noisy hounds who were barking loudest, 'I will sit
down now, but the time will come when you will hear me.'
No one suffers long through injustice. His ill-wishers had tried to
embarrass him and make him break down. They had not succeeded, and
probably even O'Connell himself felt that he had been unfairly dealt
with. People watched him curiously the rest of the evening to see how he
bore his treatment. He was said to have sat with his arms folded,
looking gloomily on the floor. His own account shows that he was not
depressed at all, and that indeed the experience was not entirely new.
[Sidenote: CRITICAL OPINIONS]
'I made my maiden speech last night,' he tells his sister, 'rising very
late after O'Connell, but at the request of my party and with the full
sanction of Sir Robert Peel. I state at once that my _début_ was a
failure--not by my breaking down or incompetency on my part, but from
the physical power of my adversaries. It was like my first _début_ at
Aylesbury, and perhaps in that sense may be auspicious of ultimate
triumph in the same scene. I fought through all with undaunted pluck and
unruffled temper, made occasionally good isolated hits when there was
silence, and finished with spirit when I found a formal display was
ineffectual. My party backed me well, and no one with more zeal and
kindness than Peel, cheering me repeatedly, which is not his custom. The
uproar was all organised by the Rads and the Repealers. In the lobby, at
the division, Chandos, who was not near me in speaking, came up and
congratulated me. I replied I thought there was no cause for
congratulation, and muttered "Failure." "No such thing," said Chandos;
"you are quite wrong. I have just seen Peel, and I said to him, 'Now
tell me exactly what you think of Disraeli.' Peel replied, 'Some of my
party were disappointed and talk of failure; I say just the reverse. He
did all that he could under the circumstances; I say anything but
failure: he must make his way.'" The Attorney-General (Campbell), to
whom I never spoke in my life, came up to me in the lobby and spoke to
me with great cordiality. He said, "Now, Mr. Disraeli, could you just
tell me how you finished one sentence in your speech? We are anxious to
know. 'In one hand the keys of St. Peter and in the other ----'" "In the
other the cap of Liberty, Sir John." He smiled and said, "A good
picture." I replied, "But your friends would not allow me to finish my
picture." "I assure you," he said, "there was the liveliest desire to
hear you from us. It was a party at the bar, over whom we have no
control; but you have nothing to be afraid of." Now I have told you
all.--Yours, D., in very good spirits.'
Disraeli's collapse was the next day's delight at the clubs. Shiel,
though an Irish leader, declined to join in it. 'I have heard what you
say,' he answered to the wits who appealed to him, 'and what is more, I
heard this same speech of Mr. Disraeli; and I tell you this: If ever the
spirit of oratory was in a man it is that man. Nothing can prevent him
from being one of the first speakers of the House of Commons.'
The speech, however, might have been a failure, Shiel admitted, if
Disraeli had been allowed to go on. The manner was unusual; the House of
Commons had not grown accustomed to it. 'Get rid of your genius for a
session,' he said to Disraeli himself. 'Speak often, for you must not
show yourself cowed, but speak shortly. Be very quiet; try to be dull;
only argue and reason imperfectly. Astonish them by speaking on subjects
of detail; quote figures, dates, and calculations. In a short time the
House will sigh for the wit and eloquence they know are in you. They
will encourage you to pour them forth, and thus you will have the ear of
the House and be a favourite.'
Disraeli's sense was stronger than his vanity. His whole fate was at
stake, and he knew it. He took Shiel's advice. A week after he had been
howled down he spoke again on the Copyright Bill, a subject which he
perfectly understood. Again when he rose he was observed with
curious attention. It was thought that he would allude to his first
misadventure; he made not the least reference to it. His voice,
naturally impressive, was in good condition. What he said was exactly to
the purpose. His conclusion, if simple, was excellent.
'I am glad to hear from her Majesty's Government that the interests of
literature have at length engaged their attention. It has been the boast
of the Whig party, and a boast not without foundation, that in many
brilliant periods of our literary annals they have been the patrons of
letters. As for myself, I trust that the age of literary patronage has
passed; and it will be honourable to the present Government if under its
auspices it is succeeded by that of literary protection.'
The House was willing to be pleased. Lord John Russell cheered the
allusion to his Liberal predecessors. The Radicals approved of the
independence which he claimed for the future of his own profession. Peel
loudly applauded, and never after had Disraeli to complain that he was
not listened to with respect. The cabal which would have silenced him
had, in fact, made his reputation. His colleague and his Maidstone
constituents were delighted. In the remainder of the session he was
frequently on his feet, but only to say a few sensible sentences and
never putting himself forward on great occasions.
Notwithstanding all that has been said and continues to be said about
the outset of his Parliamentary career, he had made solid progress in
the estimation of the House and, far more to the purpose, his quick
apprehension had learnt the temper and disposition of the House itself.
[Sidenote: ENGLAND, PAST AND PRESENT]
Before proceeding further a brief sketch must be given of the state of
public affairs when Disraeli's political life commenced. The British
Islands were covered with the shells of institutions which no longer
answered the purpose for which they were intended. The privileges
remained. The duties attaching to them were either unperformed or, from
change of circumstances, incapable of performance. Down to the
Reformation of the sixteenth century the beliefs and habits of the
English nation were formed by the Catholic Church. Men and women of all
ranks were brought up on the hypothesis that their business in this
world was not to grow rich, but to do their duties in the state of life
to which they had been called. Their time on earth was short. In the
eternity which lay beyond their condition would wholly depend on the way
in which it had been spent. On this principle society was constructed,
and the conduct, public and private, of the great body of the people was
governed by the supposition that the principle was literally true.
History takes note of the exception of the foolish or tyrannical king,
the oppressive baron, the profligate Churchman, the occasional
expressions of popular discontent. Irregularities in human life are like
the river cataracts and waterfalls which attract the landscape painter.
The historian dwells upon them because they are dramatically
interesting, but the broad features of those ages must be looked for in
the commonplace character of everyday existence, which attracts little
notice and can be traced only in the effects which it has produced. It
was thus that the soil of this island was cleared and fenced and divided
into fields as by a pencil. It was then that in every parish there arose
a church, on which piety lavished every ornament which skill could
command, and then and thus was formed the English nation, which was to
exercise so vast an influence on the fortunes of mankind. They were
proud of their liberty. A race never lived more sternly resolute to keep
the soil of their sea-girt island untrodden by the foot of the invader.
Liberty in the modern sense, liberty where the rights of man take the
place of the duties of a man--such a liberty they neither sought nor
desired. As in an army, each man had had his own position under a
graduated scale of authority, and the work was hardest where the rank
was highest. The baron was maintained in his castle on the produce of
the estate. But the baron had the hardest knocks in the field of battle.
In dangerous times he was happy if he escaped the scaffold. He
maintained his state in the outward splendour which belonged to his
station, but in private he lived as frugally as his tenants, sleeping on
a hard bed, eating hard, plain food, with luxury unheard of and undreamt
of. The rule was loyalty--loyalty of the lord to the king, loyalty of
lord to peasant and of peasant to lord. So deeply rooted was the mutual
feeling that for long generations after the relation had lost its
meaning, and one of the parties had forgotten that it ever had a
meaning, reverence and respect to the owner of the land lingered on and
is hardly extinct to-day.
In the towns the trades were organised under the guilds. The price of
food, the rate of wages from household servant to field labourer and
artisan, were ordered by statute on principles of equity. For each trade
there was a council, and false measure and bad quality of goods were
sharply looked to. The miller could not adulterate his flour. The price
of wheat varied with the harvest, but the speculator who bought up grain
to sell again at famine price found himself in the hands of the
constable. For the children of the poor there was an education under the
apprentice system, to which the most finished school-board training was
as copper to gold. Boys and girls alike were all taught some useful
occupation by which they could afterwards honestly maintain themselves.
If there were hardships they were not confined to a single class, but
were borne equally by the great and the humble. A nation in a healthy
state is an organism like the human body. If the finger says to the
hand, 'I have no need of thee; I will go my way, touch what pleases me,
and let alone what I do not care to meddle with,' the owner of the hand
will be in a bad way. A commonwealth, or common weal, demands that each
kind shall do the work which belongs to him or her. When he or she, when
individuals generally begin to think and act for themselves, to seek
their rights and their enjoyments, and forget their duties, the work of
dissolution has already set in.
[Sidenote: PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE]
The fear of God made England, and no great nation was ever made by any
other fear. When the Catholic Church broke down it survived under
Protestant forms, till Protestantism too dwindled into opinion and
ceased to be a rule of life. We still read our Bibles and went to
church; we were zealous for the purity of our faith, and established our
societies to propagate it; but the faith itself became consistent with
the active sense that pleasure was pleasant and wealth was power, and
while our faith would make things right in the next world we might
ourselves make something out of the present. From the Restoration
downwards the owners of land began to surround themselves with luxuries,
and the employers of labour to buy it at the cheapest rate. Selfishness
became first a practice and then developed boldly into a theory. Life
was a race in which the strongest had a right to win. Every man was to
be set free and do the best which he could for himself. The Institutions
remained. Dukes and earls and minor dignitaries still wore their
coronets and owned the soil. Bishops were the spiritual lords of their
dioceses, and the rector represented the Church in his parish. The
commercial companies survived in outward magnificence. But in aiming at
wealth they all alike forfeited their power. Competition became the sole
rule of trade; a new philosophy was invented to gild the change;
artisans and labourers were taught to believe that they would gain as
largely as the capitalists. They had been bondsmen; they were now free,
and all would benefit alike. Yet somehow _all_ did not benefit alike.
The houses of the upper classes grew into palaces, and the owners of
them lived apart as a separate caste; but the village labourer did not
find his lot more easy because he belonged to nobody. As population
increased his wages sank to the lowest point at which he could keep his
family alive. The 'hands' in the towns fared no better. If wages rose
the cost of living rose along with them. The compulsory apprentice
system was dropped, and the children were dragged up in squalor upon the
streets. Discontent broke out in ugly forms: ricks were burnt in the
country, and in the northern cities there was riot and disorder. They
were told that they must keep the peace and help themselves. Their
labour was an article which they had to sell, and the value of it was
fixed by the relations between supply and demand. Man could not alter
the laws of nature, which political economy had finally discovered.
Political economy has since been banished to the exterior planets; but
fifty years ago to doubt was heresy, to deny was a crime to be censured
in all the newspapers. Carlyle might talk scornfully of the 'Disraeli
science.' Disraeli might heap ridicule on Mr. Flummery Flum. But Mr.
Flummery Flum was a prophet in his day and led the believers into
strange places. The race for wealth went on at railroad speed. Vast
fortunes were accumulated as the world's markets opened wider. The
working classes ought to have shared the profits, and they were
diligently instructed that they had gained as much as their employers.
But their practical condition remained unaltered, and they looked with
strange eyes upon the progress in which, for one cause or another, they
did not find that they participated. The remedy of the economists was to
heat the furnace still hotter, to abolish every lingering remnant of
restraint, and stifle complaint by admitting the working men to
political power. The enlightened among the rich were not afraid, for
they were entrenched, as they believed, behind their law of nature. In
its contracts with labour capital must always have the advantage; for
capital could wait and hungry stomachs could not wait. In the meantime
let the Corn Laws go. Let all taxes on articles of consumption go. Trade
would then expand indefinitely, and all would be well. 'The wealth of
the nation,' the Free-Traders of Manchester said, depends on its
commerce. The commerce of England is shackled by a network of duties.
The consumer pays dear for the necessaries of life, which he might buy
cheap but for artificial interference. The raw materials of our industry
are burdened with restrictions. But for these we might multiply our
mills, expand our connections, provide work and food for the millions
who are now hungry. With your Corn Laws you are starving multitudes to
maintain the rents of a few thousand Elysians, who neither toil nor
spin, who might be blotted off the surface of the soil to-morrow and
none would miss them; who consume the labours of the poor on a splendour
of living unheard of since the Roman Empire, and extort the means of
this extravagance by an arbitrary law. You say you must have a revenue
to maintain your fleets and armies, and that it cannot be raised except
by customs duties. Your fleets and armies are not needed. Take away your
commercial fetters, allow the nations of the earth a free exchange of
commodities with us, and you need not fear that they will quarrel with
us: wars will be heard of no more, and the complaints of the poor that
they are famished to supply the luxuries of the rich will no longer cry
to Heaven.
The Free-Traders might have been over-sanguine, but on the Corn Laws it
was hard to answer them. The duties attaching to the ownership of land
had fallen to shadows. The defence of the country had passed to the
army. Internal peace was maintained by the police. Unless they
volunteered to serve as magistrates the landlords had but to receive
their rents and do as they pleased with their own. An aristocracy whose
achievements, as recorded in newspapers, were the slaughter of unheard
of multitudes of pheasants, an aristocracy to one of whose distinguished
members a granite column was recently erected on a spot where he had
slain fifty brace of grouse in half an hour, were scarcely in a position
to demand that the poor man's loaf should be reduced in size, for fear
their incomes should suffer diminution. Carlyle said that he had never
heard an argument for the Corn Laws which might not make angels weep. If
the fear of suffering in their pockets had been the only motive which
influenced the landed interest in its opposition to free trade, there
would have been nothing to be said for it; but if that had been all,
Corn Laws in such a country as England could never have existed at all.
Protection for native industry had been established for centuries. It
had prevailed and still prevails in spite of the arguments of
free-traders all the world over, and under all forms of government. The
principle of it has been and is that no country is in a sound or safe
condition which cannot feed its own population independent of the
foreigner. Peace could not be counted on with an empire so extended as
ours. Occasions of quarrel might arise which no prudence could avert.
The world had seen many a commercial commonwealth rise to temporary
splendour, but all had gone the same road, and a country which depended
on its imports for daily bread would be living at the mercy of its
rivals. Christianity had failed to extinguish war. It was not likely
that commerce would succeed better, and the accidents of a single
campaign, the successful blockade of our ports even for a month or a
fortnight, might degrade us into a shameful submission. British
agriculture was the creation of protection. Under the duties which kept
out foreign corn waste lands had been reclaimed, capital had been
invested in the soil, and with such success and energy that double the
wheat was raised per acre in England as was produced in any country in
the world. The farmer prospered, the labourer at least existed, and the
country population was maintained. Take protection away and wheat would
cease to be grown. The plough would rust in the shed; the peasantry of
the villages would dwindle away. They would drift into the towns in
festering masses, living precariously from day to day, ever pressing on
the means of employment with decaying physique and growing discontent.
Cobden said the cost of carriage would partially protect the farmer. His
own industry must do the rest. The ocean steamers have made short work
of the cost of carriage; the soil could yield no more than it was
bearing already. Cobden's more daring followers said that if the country
districts returned to waste and forest the nation itself would be no
poorer. In the defence of protection and in the denunciation of it there
was alike a base element. The landlords were alarmed for their private
interests. The manufacturer did expect that if the loaf was cheaper
labour would be cheaper, for by orthodox doctrine labour adjusted itself
to the cost of living. But to statesmen, whose business it was to look
beyond the day that was passing over them, there was reason to pause
before rushing into a course from which there could be no return, and
which in another century might prove to have been a wild experiment. The
price of food might be gradually reduced without immediate revolution,
and the opportunity might be used to attach the colonies more closely to
the mother country. The colonies and India, with the encouragement of an
advantage in the home market, could supply corn without limit, and their
connection with us would be cemented by interest; while if they were
placed on the same level as foreigners they would perhaps take us at our
word and become foreigners. The traders insisted that if we opened our
ports all the world would follow our example. But prophecies did not
always prove correct, and, if the world did not follow our example, to
fight prohibitive duties with free imports might prove a losing
bargain.