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--Drifts towards
Free Trade--Peel's neglect of Disraeli--Tariff of 1842--Young
England--Symptoms of revolts--First skirmish with Peel--Remarkable
speech on Ireland.
[Sidenote: ENGLISH PROGRESS]
The discovery of the steam engine had revolutionised the relations of
mankind, and during the decline of the Melbourne Ministry was
revolutionising the imagination of the English nation. The railroads
were annihilating distances between town and town. Roads were opening
across the ocean, bringing the remotest sea-coasts in the world within
sure and easy reach. Possibilities of an expansion of commerce
practically boundless inflated hopes and stimulated energies. In past
generations England had colonised half the new world; she had become
sovereign of the sea; she had preserved the liberties of Europe, and had
made her name feared and honoured in every part of the globe; but this
was nothing compared to the prospect, which was now unfolding itself, of
becoming the world's great workshop. She had invented steam; she had
coal and iron in a combination and quantity which no other nation could
rival; she had a population ingenious and vigorous, and capable, if
employment could be found for them, of indefinite multiplication. The
enthusiasm of progress seized the popular imagination. No word was
tolerated which implied a doubt, and the prophets of evil, like Carlyle,
were listened to with pity and amusement. The stars in their courses
were fighting for the Free Traders. The gold-discoveries stimulated the
circulation in the national veins, and prosperity advanced with leaps
and bounds.
The tide has slackened now; other nations have rejected our example,
have nursed their own industries, and supply their own wants. The volume
of English trade continues to roll on, but the profits diminish. The
crowds who throng our towns refuse to submit to a lowering of wages, and
perplex economists and politicians with uneasy visions: we are thus
better able to consider with fairness the objections of a few far-seeing
statesmen forty and fifty years ago.
[Sidenote: THE CORN LAWS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY]
As far as the thoughts of an ambitious youth who had taken Pistol's 'The
world's mine oyster' as the motto of his first book, and perhaps as the
rule of his life--of a gaudy coxcomb who astonished drawing-rooms with
his satin waistcoats, and was the chosen friend of Count D'Orsay--as far
as the thoughts of such a person as this could have any affinity with
those of the stern ascetic who, in the midst of accumulating splendour,
was denouncing woe and desolation, so far, at the outset of his
Parliamentary life, the opinions of Benjamin Disraeli, if we take
'Sybil' for their exponent, were the opinions of the author of 'Past and
Present.' Carlyle thought of him as a fantastic ape. The interval
between them was so vast that the comparison provokes a smile. Disraeli
was to fight against the Repeal of the Corn Laws: Carlyle said that of
all strange demands, the strangest was that the trade of owning land
should be asking for higher wages; and yet the Hebrew conjuror, though
at a humble distance, and not without an eye open to his own
advancement, was nearer to him all along than Carlyle imagined. Disraeli
did not believe any more than he that the greatness of a nation depended
on the abundance of its possessions. He did not believe in a progress
which meant the abolition of the traditionary habits of the people, the
destruction of village industries, and the accumulation of the
population into enormous cities, where their character and their
physical qualities would be changed and would probably degenerate. The
only progress which he could acknowledge was moral progress, and he
considered that all legislation which proposed any other object to
itself would produce, in the end, the effects which the prophets of his
own race had uniformly and truly foretold.
Under the old organisation of England, the different orders of men were
bound together under reciprocal obligations of duty. The economists and
their political followers held that duty had nothing to do with it.
Food, wages, and all else had their market value, which could be
interfered with only to the general injury. The employer was to hire his
labourers or his hands at the lowest rate at which they could be induced
to work. If he ceased to need them, or if they would not work on terms
which would remunerate him, he was at liberty to turn them off. The
labourers, in return, might make the best of their own opportunity, and
sell their services to the best advantage which competition allowed. The
capitalists found the arrangement satisfactory to them. The people found
it less satisfactory, and they replied by Chartism and rick-burnings.
The economists said that the causes of discontent were the Corn Laws and
the other taxes on food. Farmers and landowners exclaimed that if the
Corn Laws were repealed, the land must go out of cultivation. The
Chartists were not satisfied with the remedy, because they believed
that, with cheap food, wages would fall, and they would be no better off
than they were. It was then slack water in the political tides. Public
feeling was at a stand, uncertain which way to turn. The Reform Bill of
1832 had left to property the preponderance of political power, and
everyone who had anything to lose began to be alarmed for himself. The
Conservative reaction became more and more evident. The faith of the
country was in Sir Robert Peel. He had been opposed to the Reform Bill,
but when it was passed he had accepted it as the law of the land, and
had reconstituted his party out of the confidence of the new
constituencies. He had been a declared Protectionist. He had defended
the Corn Laws, and had spoken and voted for them. He had resisted the
proposal by the Whigs of a fixed eight-shilling duty, and had accepted
and gloried in the position of being the leader of the gentlemen of
England. But he had refused to initiate any policy of his own. He was
known to be cautious, prudent, and a master of finance. He was no
believer in novel theories or enthusiastic visions, but he had shown by
his conduct on the Catholic question that he could consider and allow
for the practical necessities of things. He was, however, above all
things an avowed Conservative, and as a Conservative the country looked
to him to steer the ship through the cataracts.
[Sidenote: CHURCH REVIVAL]
Another phenomenon had started up carrying a Conservative colour.
Puseyism had appeared at Oxford, and was rapidly spreading. The Church
of England, long paralysed by Erastianism and worldliness, was awaking
out of its sleep, and claiming to speak again as the Divinely-appointed
ruler of English souls. Political economy had undertaken to manage
things on the hypothesis that men had no souls, or that their souls, if
they possessed such entities, had nothing to do with their commercial
relations to one another. The Church of England, as long as it remained
silent or sleeping, had seemed to acquiesce in the new revelation, but
it was beginning to claim a voice again in the practical affairs of the
world, and the response, loud and strong, indicated that there still
remained among us a power of latent conviction which might revive the
force of noble and disinterested motive. A Church of England renovated
and alive again might, some thought, become an influence of incalculable
consequence. Carlyle's keen, clear eyes refused to be deceived.
'Galvanic Puseyism,' he called it, and 'dancings of the sheeted dead.' A
politician like Disraeli looking out into the phenomena in which he was
to play his part, and thinking more of what was going on among the
people than of the immediate condition of Parliamentary parties,
conceived that he saw in the new movement, not only an effort of
Conservative energy, but an indication of a genuine recoil from moral
and spiritual anarchy towards the Hebrew principle in which he really
believed. Two forces he saw still surviving in England which had been
overlooked, or supposed to be dead--respect for the Church, and the
voluntary loyalty (which, though waning, might equally be recovered) of
the people towards the aristocracy. Perhaps he overrated both because he
had been himself born and bred outside their influence, and thus looked
at them without the insight which he gained afterwards on more intimate
acquaintance. To some extent, however, they were realities, and were
legitimate subjects of calculation. Extracts from his writings will show
how his mind was working. He had been studying the action of the Reform
Bill of 1832. No one pretended, he said, that it had improved the
character of Parliament itself.
'But had it exercised a beneficial influence in the country? Had it
elevated the tone of the public mind? Had it cultivated the popular
sensibilities to noble and ennobling ends? Had it proposed to the people
of England a higher test of national respect and confidence?... If a
spirit of rapacious covetousness, desecrating all the humanities of
life, has been the besetting sin of England for the last century and a
half, since the passing of the Reform Act the altar of Mammon has blazed
with a triple worship. To acquire, to accumulate, to plunder each other
by virtue of philosophic phrases--to propose a Utopia to consist only of
Wealth and Toil--this has been the business of enfranchised England for
the last twelve years, until we are startled from our voracious strife
by the wail of intolerable serfage.'[6]
[Sidenote: EFFECTS OF THE REFORM BILL]
Again: 'Born in a library, and trained from early childhood by learned
men who did not share the passions and the prejudices of our political
and social life, I had imbibed on some subjects conclusions different
from those which generally prevail, and especially with reference to the
history of our own country. How an oligarchy had been substituted for a
kingdom, and a narrow-minded and bigoted fanaticism flourished in the
name of religious liberty, were problems long to me insoluble, but which
early interested me. But what most attracted my musing, even as a
boy, were the elements of our political parties, and the strange
mystification by which that which was national in our Constitution had
become odious, and that which was exclusive was presented as popular.
'What has mainly led to this confusion is our carelessness in not
distinguishing between the excellence of a principle and its injurious
or obsolete application. The feudal system may have worn out; but its
main principle--that the tenure of property should be the fulfilment of
duty--is the essence of good government. The divine right of kings may
have been a plea for feeble tyrants; but the divine right of government
is the key of human progress, and without it governments sink into a
police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.... National institutions
were the ramparts of a multitude against large estates, exercising
political power, derived from a limited class. The Church was in theory,
and once it had been in practice, the spiritual and intellectual trainer
of the people. The privileges of the multitude and the prerogative of
the sovereign had grown up together, and together they had waned. Under
the plea of Liberalism, all the institutions which were the bulwark of
the multitude had been sapped and weakened, and nothing had been
substituted for them. The people were without education, and relatively
to the advance of science and the comfort of the superior classes, their
condition had deteriorated and their physical quality as a race was
threatened.
'To change back the oligarchy into a generous aristocracy round a real
throne; to infuse life and vigour into the Church as the trainer of the
nation by the revival of Convocation, then dumb, on a wise basis; to
establish a commercial code on the principles successfully negotiated by
Lord Bolingbroke at Utrecht, and which, though baffled at the time by a
Whig Parliament, were subsequently and triumphantly vindicated by his
pupil and political heir, Mr. Pitt; to govern Ireland according to the
policy of Charles I., and not of Oliver Cromwell; to emancipate the
political constituency of 1832 from its sectarian bondage and contracted
sympathies; to elevate the physical as well as the moral condition of
the people by establishing that labour required regulation as much as
property--and all this rather by the use of ancient forms and the
restoration of the past, than by political revolutions founded on
abstract ideas--appeared to be the course which the circumstances of the
country required, and which, practically speaking, could only, with all
their faults and backslidings, be undertaken and accomplished by a
reconstructed Tory party.
'When I attempted to enter public life, I expressed these views, long
meditated, to my countrymen.... I incurred the accustomed penalty of
being looked on as a visionary.... Ten years afterwards, affairs had
changed. I had been some time in Parliament, and had friends who had
entered public life with myself, who listened always with interest, and
sometimes with sympathy.... The writer, and those who acted with him,
looked then upon the Anglican Church as a main machinery by which these
results might be realised. There were few great things left in England,
and the Church was one. Nor do I doubt that if a quarter of a century
ago there had arisen a Churchman equal to the occasion, the position of
ecclesiastical affairs in this country would have been very different
from that which they now occupy. But these great matters fell into the
hands of monks and schoolmen. The secession of Dr. Newman dealt a blow
to the Church under which it still reels. That extraordinary event has
been "apologised" for, but it has never been explained. The tradition of
the Anglican Church was powerful. Resting on the Church of Jerusalem
modified by the Divine school of Galilee, it would have found that rock
of truth which Providence, by the instrumentality of the Semitic race,
had promised to St. Peter. Instead of that, the seceders sought refuge
in mediæval superstitions; which are generally only the embodiments of
Pagan ceremonies and creeds.'[7]
[Sidenote: DISAPPOINTED HOPES]
Writing after the experience of thirty years of Parliamentary life,
Disraeli thus described the impressions and the hopes with which he
commenced his public career. He was disappointed by causes which he
partly indicates, and by the nature of things which he then imperfectly
realised. But, carefully considered, they explain the whole of his
action down to the time when he found his expectation incapable of
realisation. His Church views were somewhat hazy, though he was right
enough about the Pagan ceremonies.
After their marriage, the Disraelis spent two months on the Continent.
They went to Baden, Munich, Frankfort, Ratisbon, Nuremburg, seeing
galleries and other curiosities. In November they returned to England,
to the house in Grosvenor Gate which was thenceforward their London
home, and Disraeli took his place on an equal footing as an established
member of the great world. He was introduced to the Duke of Wellington,
who had hitherto known him only by reputation. He received Peel's
congratulations on his marriage with admitted pride and pleasure, and
began to give dinners on his own account to leading members of his
party. The impecunious adventurer had acquired the social standing
without which the most brilliant gifts are regarded with a certain
suspicion.
[Sidenote: POWERS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS]
At the general election in 1841, Sir Robert Peel was borne into power,
with a majority returned on Protectionist principles, larger than the
most sanguine enthusiast had dared to hope for, Disraeli himself being
returned for Shrewsbury--his connection with Maidstone having been
probably broken by his late colleague's death. When the new Parliament
settled to work, Peel took the reins, and settled the finances by an
income-tax--then called a temporary expedient, but in fact a necessary
condition of the policy which at once he proceeded to follow. Duties
were reduced in all directions, but there was no word of commercial
treaties. Free Trade principles were visibly to be adopted, so far as
the state of parties would allow, and the indications grew daily
stronger that no such policy as Disraeli desired had come near the
Premier's mind. The middle classes had confidence in Peel. It seemed
that Peel had confidence in them, and Disraeli had none at all. Still,
Peel was his political chief, and Disraeli continued to serve him, and
to serve effectively and zealously. More and more he displayed his
peculiar powers. When he chose he was the hardest hitter in the House of
Commons; and as he never struck in malice, and selected always an
antlered stag for an adversary, the House was amused at his audacity.
Palmerston on some occasion regretted that the honourable member had
been made an exception to the rule that political adherents ought to be
rewarded by appointments. He trusted that before the end of the Session
the Government would overlook the slight want of industry for the sake
of the talent. Disraeli 'thanked the noble viscount for his courteous
aspirations for his political promotion. The noble viscount was a
master of the subject. If the noble viscount would only impart to him
the secret by which he had himself contrived to retain office during so
many successive administrations, the present debate would not be without
a result.' Such a passage at arms may have been the more entertaining
because Disraeli was supposed to have resented the neglect of his claims
when Peel was forming his Administration. It is probable that Peel had
studied the superficial aspects of his character, had underrated his
ability, had discerned that he might not be sufficiently docile, or had
suspected and resented his advocacy of the Chartists. Disraeli may have
thought that the offer ought to have been made to him, but it is evident
that on other grounds the differences between them would tend to widen.
The Tariff of 1842 was the first note of alarm to the Conservative
party--Disraeli defended it, but not with an entire heart. 'Peel,' he
said in a letter to his sister,[8] 'seems to have pleased no party, but
I suppose the necessity of things will force his measure through:
affairs may yet simmer up into foam and bubble, and there may be a row.'
The Conservatives had been trusted by the country with an opportunity of
trying their principles which, if allowed to pass, might never be
renewed. Their leader was not yet openly betraying them, but everyone
but himself began to perceive that the Conservatism of the Government
was only to be Liberalism in disguise.
Disraeli individually had the satisfaction of feeling that he was
becoming a person of consequence. He ran across to Paris, and dined
privately with Louis Philippe. In London he was presented to the King of
Hanover, 'the second king who has shaken hands with me in six months.'
Public affairs he found 'uncertain and unsatisfactory,' Peel 'frigid and
feeble,' and 'general grumbling.' He continued to speak, and speak often
and successfully; but the mutual distrust between him and his chief was
growing.
Peel among his magnificent qualities had not the art of conciliating the
rank-and-file of his supporters. He regarded them too much as his own
creatures, entitled to no consideration. Disraeli, taking the whole
field of politics for his province, met with rebuke after rebuke. He had
seen by this time that for his own theories there was no hope of
countenance from the present chief. He had formed a small party among
the younger Tory members--men of rank and talent, with a high-bred
enthusiasm which had been kindled by the Church revival. A party
including Lord John Manners, George Smyth, Henry Hope, and Baillie
Cochrane was not to be despised; and thus reinforced and encouraged, he
ventured to take a line of his own.
Among the articles of faith was the belief that Ireland ought to be
treated on the principles of Charles I., and not on the principles of
Cromwell. O'Connell in 1843 was setting Ireland in a flame again, and
Peel, better acquainted with Ireland than Disraeli, and hopeless of
other remedy, had introduced one of the periodic Coercion Bills. The
Young Englanders, as he and his friends were now called, had Catholic
sympathies, and they imagined that religion was at the bottom of these
perpetual disturbances. Coercion answered only for the moment. A more
conciliatory attitude towards the ancient creed might touch the secret
of the disease. Disraeli perhaps wished to show that he bore no malice
against O'Connell or against his tail. He thought that he could persuade
the Irish that they had more to hope for from Cavalier Tories than from
Roundhead Whigs. Of Irish history he knew as little as the rest of the
House of Commons. He had heard, perhaps, of the Glamorgan Articles and
Charles I.'s negotiations with the Kilkenny Parliament. Peel, when in
opposition, had talked about conciliation. In office he had nothing to
propose but force. Disraeli, when the Bill came before the House, gave
the first sign of revolt; he said that it was one of those measures
which to introduce was degrading, and to oppose disgraceful. He would
neither vote for it nor against it; but as Peel had departed from the
policy which he had led his party to hope that he meant to pursue before
he came into power, he (Disraeli), speaking for himself and his friends,
declared that they were now free from the bonds of party on this subject
of Ireland, for the right hon. gentleman himself had broken them. They
had now a right to fall back on their own opinions.
[Sidenote: PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE]
Something still more significant was to follow. A few days later (August
1843) the Eastern question came up. Disraeli, whose friendship for the
Turks was of old standing, asked a question relating to Russian
interference in Servia. Peel gave an abrupt answer to end the matter.
Palmerston, however, taking it up, Disraeli had a further opportunity of
speaking. He complained that Turkey had been stabbed in the back by the
diplomacy of Europe; that the integrity and independence of the Turkish
dominions were of vital consequence, &c. But the point of his speech was
in the sting with which it concluded. Winding up in the slow, deliberate
manner which he made afterwards so peculiarly effective, he reminded the
House of his own previous question, couched, he believed, in
Parliamentary language, and made with all that respect which he felt for
the right hon. gentleman. 'To this inquiry,' he said, 'the right hon.
gentleman replied with all that explicitness of which he was a master,
and all that courtesy which he reserved only for his supporters.'
[Sidenote: THE IRISH QUESTION]
The House of Commons had much of the generous temper of an English
public school. Boys like a little fellow who has the courage to stand up
to a big one, and refuses to be bullied. The Whigs were amused at the
mutiny of a Tory subordinate. The Tory rank-and-file had so often
smarted under Peel's contempt that the blow told, and Disraeli had
increased his consequence in the House by another step. Those who judge
of motive by events, and assure themselves that when the actions of a
man lead up to particular effects, those effects must have been
contemplated by himself from the outset of his career, see indication in
these speeches of a deliberate intention on Disraeli's part to supersede
Sir Robert Peel in the leadership of the Conservative party. The vanity
of such a purpose, had it been really entertained, would have been
exceeded by the folly of his next movement. In the following year
O'Connell's monster meetings had become a danger to the State. Peel had
again to apply to the House of Commons, with a general sense on both
sides that the authority of the Crown must be supported. Disraeli,
almost alone among the English members, took the same daring attitude
which he had assumed on the Chartist petition. Being in reality a
stranger in the country of his adoption, he was able to regard the
problems with which it was engaged in the light in which they appeared
to other nations. The long mismanagement of Ireland, its chronic
discontent and miserable state, were regarded everywhere as the blot
upon the English escutcheon, and the cause of it was the mutual jealousy
and suspicion of parties at Westminster. If a remedy was ever to be
found, party ties must be thrown to the winds. What, he asked, did this
eternal Irish question mean? One said it was a physical question,
another a spiritual question. Now it was the absence of an aristocracy,
then the absence of railroads. It was the Pope one day, potatoes the
next. Let the House consider Ireland as they would any other country
similarly situated, in their closets. They would see a teeming
population denser to the square mile than that of China, created solely
by agriculture, with none of those sources of wealth which are developed
by civilisation, and sustained upon the lowest conceivable diet. That
dense population in extreme distress inhabited an island where there was
an Established Church which was not their Church, and a territorial
aristocracy the richest of whom lived in distant capitals. They had a
starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and,
in addition, the weakest executive in the world. That was the Irish
question. Well, then, what would honourable gentlemen say if they were
reading of a country in that position? They would say at once 'the
remedy was revolution.' But Ireland could not have a revolution; and
why? Because Ireland was connected with another and more powerful
country. Then what was the consequence? The connection with England
became the cause of the present state of Ireland. If the connection with
England prevented a revolution, and a revolution was the only remedy,
England logically was in the odious position of being the cause of all
the misery in Ireland. What, then, was the duty of an English Minister?
To effect by his policy all those changes which a revolution would do by
force. That was the Irish question in its integrity.... If the noble
lord (Lord John Russell) or any other honourable member came forward
with a comprehensive plan, which would certainly settle the question of
Ireland, no matter what the sacrifice might be, he would support it,
though he might afterwards feel it necessary to retire from Parliament
or to place his seat at the disposal of his constituency ('Life of Lord
Beaconsfield,' T. P. O'Connor, 6th edition p. 255, &c.).
Truer words had not been spoken in Parliament on the subject of Ireland
for half a century, nor words more fatal to the immediate ambition of
the speaker, if ambition he then entertained beyond a patriotic one; and
many a session, and many a century perhaps, would have to pass before a
party could be formed in England strong enough to carry on the
government on unadulterated principles of patriotism.