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against the Corn Laws--Corn Laws repealed--Lord George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.
[Sidenote: THE NEW CREED]
With the light which is thrown by 'Sybil' on the workings of Disraeli's
mind, it is easy to understand the feelings with which he regarded the
words and actions of Sir Robert Peel. He had seen, or supposed himself
to have seen, a poisonous fungus eating into the heart of English life.
In town and country, among the factory operatives, and on the estates of
the rich and the noble, there was one rapid process of degeneracy. The
peasantry were serfs, without the redeeming features of serfdom; the
town artisans were becoming little better than brutes. In the cities,
family and the softer influences of home were ceasing to exist. Children
were being dragged up in misery or were left to die, and life was turned
into a flaring workshop in which the higher purposes of humanity were
obliterated or forgotten. The cause was everywhere the same. The gospel
of political economy had been substituted for the gospel of Christ. The
new law was to make money; the new aim of all classes, high and low
alike, was to better their condition, as it was called, and make the
most of their opportunities. Each must look out for himself: one man was
not another's keeper; labour was an article of trade, which the employer
was to buy as cheap as he could get it, and the workman was to sell for
the most that he could get. There their duties to each other ended, and
the results were the scenes which he had witnessed in Marley and
Mowbray. The further trade was extended under the uncontrolled
conditions demanded by the 'Manchester school,' the more these scenes
would multiply.
[Sidenote: SIR ROBERT PEEL]
With the powerful Protectionist majority returned by the elections of
1841, Peel, in Disraeli's opinion, had an opportunity of bringing these
demoralising tendencies under the authority of reason and conscience.
The Corn Laws were but one feature of the problem. The real question was
whether England was to remain as she had been, the nursing mother of a
noble breed of men, or whether the physical and moral qualities of a
magnificent race were to be sacrificed to a rage for vulgar wealth.
Disraeli had not flattered his party. In Trafford and in the elder
Millbank, he had drawn manufacturers who were splendidly alive to their
duties. The ennobled landowners he had left to be represented by such
men as Lord Marley. He was a Radical of the Radicals, a Radical who went
to the root of the mischief. Like Carlyle, he was telling his country
that unless they brought authority to deal with it, the England which we
were so proud of would speedily forfeit her place among the nations of
the world. It is likely enough that Peel would have failed if he had
tried. His own followers were thinking more of their rents than of the
moral condition of the people. But at any rate he was not trying, and
evidently had no thought of trying. He took the course which promised
most immediate success. To restore authority required an aristocracy who
could be trusted to use it, and there was none such ready to hand. Wages
must be left to the market where he found them. All that he could do to
help the people was to cheapen the food which was bought with them, to
lay taxation on the shoulders best able to bear it, and by education and
such other means as he could provide to enable the industrious and the
thoughtful to raise themselves, since neither legislation nor
administration could raise them. Cheap food and popular education was
his highest ideal. Peel could see what was immediately before him
clearer than any man. His practical sagacity forbade him to look farther
or deeper.
But the difficulty of his position lay in his having been brought into
power as a Protectionist. The constituencies had given him his majority
in reply to his own Protectionist declarations. If Free Trade was to be
made the law of the land was Peel to repeat the part which he had played
in Catholic emancipation? All reasonable Conservatives knew that the
corn laws must be modified; but the change, if inevitable, need not be
precipitate. Peel's great defect, Disraeli said in his 'Life of Lord
George Bentinck,' was that he wanted imagination, and in wanting that he
wanted prescience. No one was more sagacious when dealing with the
circumstances before him. His judgment was faultless, provided that he
had not to deal with the future. But insight into consequences is the
test of a true statesman, and because Peel had it not Catholic
emancipation, Parliamentary Reform, and the abrogation of the commercial
system were carried in haste or in passion, and without conditions or
mitigatory arrangements. On Canning's death the Tories might have had
the game in their hands. A moderate reconstruction of the House of
Commons, the transfer of the franchises of a few corrupt boroughs to the
great manufacturing towns, would have satisfied the country. Peel let
the moment pass, and the Birmingham Union and the Manchester Economic
School naturally followed. His policy was to resist till resistance was
ineffectual, and then to grant wholesale concessions as a premium to
political agitation. The same scene was being enacted over again. Sir
Robert had rejected Lord John Russell's eight-shilling duty. It appeared
now, from the course in which he was drifting, that the duty would be
swept away altogether.
In whatever way Peel had acted it is not likely that the state of
England at present would have differed materially from what it is. The
forces which were producing either the decay or the renovation of the
Constitution, whichever it proves to be, were too powerful for the
wisest statesman either to arrest or materially direct. Plato thought
that had he been born a generation sooner he might have saved Greece.
The Olympian gods themselves could not have saved Greece. But when
untoward events arrive they are always visited on the immediate actors
in them, and Disraeli visited on Peel the ruin of his own party and the
disappointment of his own hopes. Perhaps, as he was but half an
Englishman, his personal interest in the question at issue was not
extreme. It is possible that he had resented Peel's neglect of him. At
any rate he saw his opportunity and used it to make his name famous.
Hitherto he had been known in the House of Commons as a brilliant
and amusing speaker, but of such independent ways that even the
Conservatives gave him but a limited confidence. So little had he
spared his own friends in vote, speech, or writing that he may be
acquitted of having dreamt of becoming their immediate leader. But Peel
had laid himself open. The Premier's policy, supported as it was by his
political pupils and the Liberal Opposition, Disraeli knew to be
practically irresistible. He was therefore spared the necessity of
moderating his own language. At least he could avenge his party and
punish what he could not prevent. It was his pride when he made an
attack to single out the most dangerous antagonist. Sir Robert Peel was
the most commanding member of the House of Commons, and the most
powerful oratorical athlete.
[Sidenote: PEEL AND DISRAELI]
Disraeli's speeches during Peel's Ministry and the effects which they
produced can be touched but superficially in a narrative so brief as
this, but they formed the turning-point of his public life. His assaults
when he began were treated with petulant contempt, but his fierce
counter-hits soon roused attention to them. The Liberals were
entertained to see the Conservative chief dared and smitten by one of
his own followers. The country members felt an indignant satisfaction at
the deserved chastisement of their betrayer. The cheers in Parliament
were echoed outside the walls and rang to the farthest corner of the
Continent. With malicious skill Disraeli touched one after the other the
weak points of a character essentially great but superficially
vulnerable. Like Laertes he anointed his point, but the venom lay in the
truth of what he said, and the suffering which he inflicted was the more
poignant because administered by a hand which Peel had unfortunately
despised. Disraeli was displaying for the first time the peculiar
epigrammatic keenness which afterwards so much distinguished him, and
the skill with which he could drive his arrows through the joints in
the harness. Any subject gave him an opening. Peel supposed that he had
rebuked and silenced him by quoting in a dignified tone Canning's lines
upon 'A Candid Friend.' The allusion was dangerous, for Peel's conduct
to Canning had not been above reproach. Disraeli took an occasion when
the general policy of the Ministry was under discussion to deliver
himself in his clear, cold, impassive manner of a few sentences which
hit exactly the temper of the House. Peel was generally accused of
having stolen the Liberal policy. The right honourable gentleman, he
said, had caught the Whigs bathing and had walked away with their
clothes. He had tamed the shrew of Liberalism by her own tactics. He was
the 'political Petruchio who had outbid them all.' Then came the sting.
Peel had a full memory, and was rather proud of the readiness with which
he could introduce quotations. Disraeli first touched his vanity by
complimenting him on the success with which he used such weapons,
'partly because he seldom quoted a passage which had not previously
received the meed of Parliamentary approbation, partly because his
quotations were so happy.... We all admire Canning,' he said; 'we all,
or at least most of us, deplore his untimely end. We sympathised with
him in his fierce struggle with supreme prejudice and sublime
mediocrity, with inveterate foes and with candid friends. Mr. Canning!
and quoted by the right honourable gentleman. The theme, the poet, the
speaker!--what a felicitous combination!'
The shaft which Peel had lightly launched was returned into his own
breast and quivered there. The House of Commons, bored with dulness,
delights in an unusual stroke of artistic skill. The sarcasm was
received with cheers the worse to bear because while the Radicals
laughed loud Peel's own side did not repress an approving murmur. He
was like the bull in the Spanish arena when the _chulos_ plant their
darts upon his shoulders. 'He hoped,' he said, 'that the honourable
member, having discharged the accumulated virus of the last week, now
felt more at his ease;' but the barb had gone to the quick, and Peel,
however proudly he controlled himself, was the most sensitive of men.
The tormentor left him no rest. A few days later came Mr. Miles's motion
for the application of surplus revenue to the relief of agriculture.
Peel, when in opposition, had argued for the justice of this proposal.
In office he found objections to it; and Disraeli told his friends that
they must not be impatient with Sir Robert Peel. 'There is no doubt,' he
said, 'a difference in the right honourable gentleman's demeanour as
leader of the Opposition and as Minister of the Crown. But that is the
old story. You must not contrast too strongly the hours of courtship
with the years of possession. I remember the right honourable
gentleman's Protection speeches. They were the best speeches I ever
heard. But we know in all these cases when the beloved object has ceased
to charm it is vain to appeal to the feelings.'
Sidney Herbert had spoken of the agricultural members as whining to
Parliament at every recurrence of temporary distress. Disraeli again
struck at Peel, dealing Sidney Herbert an insolent cut by the way.
'The right honourable gentleman,' he continued, 'being compelled to
interfere, sends down his valet, who says in the genteelest manner, "We
can have no whining here." But, sir, that is exactly the case of the
great agricultural interest, that beauty which everyone wooed and one
deluded. Protection appears to me to be in the same condition that
Protestantism was in 1828. For my part, if we are to have Free Trade,
I, who honour genius, prefer that such measures should be proposed by
the honourable member for Stockport [Mr. Cobden] than by one who, though
skilful in Parliamentary manœuvres, has tampered with the generous
confidence of a great people and a great party. For myself, I care not
what may be the result. Dissolve, if you please, the Parliament, whom
you have betrayed, and appeal to the people, who I believe mistrust you.
For me there remains this at least, the opportunity for expressing thus
publicly my belief that a Conservative Government is an organised
hypocrisy.'
This speech became famous. O'Connell, who, like Disraeli himself, bore
no malice, when asked his opinion of it said it was all excellent except
the peroration, and that was matchless. Disraeli, who had calmly watched
the effect of his assaults, told his sister that 'Peel was stunned and
stupefied, lost his head, and vacillating between silence and spleen,
spoke much and weakly, assuring me that I had not hurt his feelings,
that he would never reciprocate personalities, having no venom, &c. &c.'
A wasp which you cannot kill buzzing round your face and stinging when
it has a chance will try the patience of the wisest. The Maynooth grant
might have been a safe subject, for no one had advocated justice to
Ireland more strongly than Disraeli; but he chose to treat it as a bid
for the Irish vote. He called Peel 'a great Parliamentary middleman,'
swindling both the parties that he professed to serve, and with deadly
ingenuity he advised the Roman Catholic members to distrust a man 'whose
bleak shade had fallen on the sunshine of their hopes for a quarter of a
century.'
Driven beside himself at last, either on this or on some similar
occasion, I have been assured that Peel forgot his dignity and asked a
distinguished friend to carry a challenge from him to his reviler. The
friend, unwilling to give Disraeli such a triumph and more careful of
Peel's reputation than Peel himself, did not merely refuse, but
threatened, if the matter was pursued farther, to inform the police.[9]
Disraeli asked Lord John Russell if he was not weary of being dragged at
the triumphal car of a conqueror who had not conquered him in fair
fight. 'Habitual perfidy,' he said, 'was not high policy of state.' He
invited the Whig leader to assist him 'in dethroning the dynasty of
deception and putting an end to the intolerable yoke of official
despotism and Parliamentary imposture.'
[Sidenote: THE CORN LAWS]
Though the Free-Traders were revolutionising the tariff old-fashioned
statesmen on both sides still hesitated at the entire abolition of the
Corn Laws. It had been long assumed that without some protection the
soil of England must fall out of cultivation. The Corn Law Leaguers were
prepared even for that consummation, although they denied the
probability of it. Disraeli, laying aside his personalities, showed in a
noble passage that when he chose he could rise to the level of a great
subject. He said--
'The leading spirits on the benches I see before me have openly declared
their opinion that if there were not an acre of land cultivated in
England it would not be the worse for this country. You have all of you
in open chorus announced your object to be the monopoly of the commerce
of the universe, to make this country the workshop of the world. Your
system and ours are exactly contrary. We invite union; we believe that
national prosperity can only be produced by the prosperity of all
classes. You prefer to remain in isolated splendour and solitary
magnificence. But, believe me, I speak not as your enemy when I say it
will be an exception to the principles which seem hitherto to have ruled
society if you can maintain the success at which you aim without the
possession of that permanence and stability which the territorial
principle alone can afford. Although you may for a moment flourish after
their destruction, although your ports may be filled with shipping, your
factories smoke on every plain, and your forges flame in every city, I
see no reason why you should form an exception to that which the page of
history has mournfully recorded, that you should not fade like Tyrian
dye and moulder like the Venetian palaces.'
The great Whig peers, who were the largest of the territorial magnates,
were not yet prepared to cut their own throats. Lord John was still for
his eight-shilling duty. Peel was for a sliding scale which would lower
the duty without extinguishing it. But, as Disraeli observed, 'there is
nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident than in
politics. They baffle the forethought of statesmen and control even the
apparently inflexible laws of national development and decay.' In the
midst of the debate on the customs duties came the Irish famine, and the
Corn Laws in any shape were doomed. Protection might have been continued
in a moderate form if this catastrophe had not occurred, provided the
lords of the soil could have reverted to the practice of their
forefathers and looked on their rents as the revenue of their estates,
to be expended on the welfare of their dependents. But it was not in
them and could not come out of them. On the top of distress in England
followed the destruction of the sole means of support which the
recklessness of the Irish proprietors had left to five millions of
peasants. Sir Robert Peel informed his Cabinet that the duties on grain
must be suspended by order of Council, and that if once removed they
could never be reimposed. The Cabinet split; Lord Stanley left him. He
felt himself that if the Corn Laws were to be repealed he was not the
statesman who ought to do it. He resigned, but he could not escape his
fate. Lord John Russell could not form a Ministry and 'handed the
poisoned chalice back to Peel,' who was forced to return and fulfil his
ungracious office. He announced at the opening of the session of 1846
that the debates had convinced him not only of the impolicy but of the
injustice of the Corn Laws, and he warned his followers that if they
defeated him on a question of their personal interests 'an ancient
monarchy and a proud aristocracy might not be found compatible with a
reformed House of Commons.' The intimation and the threat were received
with silent dismay. Disraeli alone was able to give voice to their
indignation, and in the style of which he had made himself such a master
he said that he at least was not one of the converts; he had been sent
to the House to advocate protection, and to protection he adhered. In
bitter and memorable words he compared Peel to the Turkish admiral who
had been sent out to fight Mehemet Ali, and had carried his fleet into
the harbour at Alexandria, alleging as his excuse that he had himself an
objection to war, that the struggle was useless, and that he had
accepted the command only to betray his master. Up to this time the Tory
party had but half liked Disraeli. Many of his utterances in the House
and out of it had a communistic taint upon them. Now, forlorn and
desperate, a helpless flock deserted by the guardian whom they trusted,
they cheered him with an enthusiasm which is only given to an accepted
chief. 'So keen was the feeling and so spurring the point of honour that
a flock deserted by their shepherds should not be led, as was intended,
to the slaughter-house without a struggle, that a stimulus to exertion
was given which had been rarely equalled in the House of Commons.'
Lord George Bentinck sold his racehorses and converted himself into a
politician with a vigour of which no one had suspected him of being the
possessor. Bentinck in youth had been Canning's secretary. He was then a
moderate Whig, but had deserted politics for the turf. He was roused out
of his amusements by the menaced overthrow of the principles in which he
had been bred. His sense of honour was outraged by this second instance
of what he regarded as Peel's double-dealing, and the Tories, whose
pride would have been wounded by submitting avowedly to be led by an
adventurer, were reconciled to Disraeli as second in command while they
had Bentinck for his coadjutor and nominal chief. After the Peelites had
separated from them they were still a powerful minority. If parties
could but be forced back into their natural positions 'they could still
exercise the legitimate influence of an Opposition in criticising
details and insisting on modifications.' Free trade 'could be better
contended against when openly and completely avowed than when brought
forward by one who had obtained power by professing his hostility to
it.' They were betrayed and they had a right to be angry; for Peel only,
as parties stood, could carry repeal complete, and it was they who had
given Peel his power.
Complaint, resistance were equally vain. The Bill for the repeal of the
Corn Laws went through its various stages. On the third reading on May
15, when the battle was practically over, Disraeli again delivered a
speech in which, dispensing with his epigrams and sarcasms, he displayed
the qualities of a great and far-seeing statesman.
'I know,' he said, 'that there are many who believe that the time has
gone by when one can appeal to those high and honest impulses that were
once the mainstay and the main element of the English character. I know,
sir, that we appeal to a people debauched by public gambling, stimulated
and encouraged by an inefficient and shortsighted Minister. I know that
the public mind is polluted by economic fancies, a depraved desire that
the rich may become richer without the interference of industry and
toil. I know that all confidence in public men is lost. But, sir, I have
faith in the primitive and enduring elements of the English character.
It may be vain now in the midnight of their intoxication to tell them
that there will be an awakening of bitterness. It may be idle now in the
springtide of their economic frenzy to warn them that there may be an
ebb of trouble. But the dark and inevitable hour will arrive. Then when
their spirit is softened by misfortune they will recur to those
principles which made England great, and which, in our belief, alone can
keep England great. Then too, perhaps, they may remember, not with
unkindness, those who, betrayed and deserted, were neither ashamed nor
afraid to struggle for the good old cause, the cause with which are
associated principles the most popular, sentiments the most entirely
national, the cause of labour, the cause of the people, the cause of
England.'
[Sidenote: PEEL AND CANNING]
The Bill passed both Houses, the noble Lords preferring their coronets
to their convictions. The Conservative defeat was complete and
irreparable. 'Vengeance, therefore, had succeeded in most breasts to
more sanguine sentiments; the field was lost, but at any rate there was
retribution for those who betrayed it.' The desire of vengeance was
human. Perhaps there was a feeling, more respectable, that if Peel was
allowed to triumph some other institution might be attacked on similar
lines; but it cannot be said that the occasion which the Conservatives
used to punish him was particularly creditable to them. Ireland was
starving, and Ireland was mutinous. Ordinary law proving, as usual,
unequal to the demand upon it, Peel was obliged to bring in one of the
too familiar Coercion Bills. Both parties when in office are driven to
this expedient. The Liberals when in opposition generally denounce it.
The Conservatives, as believing in order and authority, are in the habit
of supporting the Administration, even if it be the Administration of
their rivals. However discontented Peel might know his followers to be,
he had no reason to expect that they would desert him on such a ground
as this. His Coercion Bill passed the Lords without difficulty. It was
read a first time in the House of Commons in an interval in the Corn
Laws debate. A Conservative Opposition at such a crisis was at least
factious, for there was danger of actual rebellion in Ireland. It was
factious and it was not easy to organise. The opportunity was not a good
one, but if it was allowed to escape a second was not likely to offer.
Disraeli was a free-lance, and had opposed Coercion before. Lord George
had committed himself by his vote on the first reading. But he had a
private grudge of his own against Peel. They resolved to try what could
be done, and called a meeting of the Conservative party. They found
their friends cold. 'There is no saying how our men will go,' Lord
George said to Disraeli. 'It may be perilous, but if we lose this
chance the traitor will escape. I will make the plunge.' Lord George's
avowed ground was that he could no longer trust Peel and 'must therefore
refuse to give him unconstitutional powers.' On the merits he would
probably have been defeated; but the main point was lost sight of in the
personal quarrel to which the debate gave rise. Peel's conduct on the
Corn Laws had revived the recollection of his treatment of Catholic
Emancipation. When Canning, in 1827, was proposing to deal with it Peel
had refused to join his Ministry on this avowed ground, and Canning's
death was popularly connected with his supposed mortification at his
failure on that occasion. Disraeli, as we have seen, had given Peel one
sharp wound by referring to this episode in his career. Lord George
dealt him another and a worse. The object was to prove that Peel's
treachery was an old habit with him. He insisted that while he had
refused to support Emancipation if introduced by Canning in 1827 he had
himself changed his opinion about it two years before, and that he had
himself heard him avow the alteration of his sentiments.
'We are told now,' Lord George said, speaking on the Coercion Bill--'we
hear it from the Minister himself--that he thinks there is nothing
humiliating in the course which he has pursued, that it would have been
base and dishonest in him, and inconsistent with his duty to his
Sovereign, if he had concealed his opinions after he had changed them;
but I have lived long enough, I am sorry to say, to remember the time
when the right honourable Baronet chased and hunted an illustrious
relative of mine to death, and when he stated that he could not support
his Ministry because, as leading member of it, he was likely to forward
the question of Catholic Emancipation. That was the conduct of the
right honourable Baronet in 1827, but in 1829 he told the House he had
changed his opinion on that subject in 1825 and had communicated that
change of opinion to the Earl of Liverpool.' 'Peel,' he said, 'stood
convicted by his own words of base and dishonest conduct, conduct
inconsistent with the duty of a Minister to his Sovereign.' 'He' (Lord
George) 'was satisfied that the country would not forgive twice the same
crime in the same man. A second time had the right honourable Baronet
insulted the honour of Parliament and of the country, and it was now
time that atonement should be made to the betrayed constituencies of the
Empire.'
[Sidenote: FALL OF PEEL]
This had nothing to do with the Coercion Bill, and the motive of a
charge so vindictive could only have been to irritate passions which did
not need any further stimulus. The manners of Parliament are not
supposed to have improved in recent periods, but the worst scenes in our
own day are tame reproductions of the violence of forty years ago. The
House of Commons was then the real voice of the country, and the anger
of the Conservatives was the anger of half a nation. Lord George's
charge was based on a speech alleged to have been made in the House
itself. It was therefore absurd to accuse Peel of secret treachery. Any
treachery which there might have been was open and avowed. But did Peel
ever make such a speech? He rose as if stunned by the noise, and said
peremptorily that the accusation was destitute of foundation. 'It was as
foul a calumny as a vindictive spirit ever directed against a public
man.' The House adjourned in perplexity and astonishment. Lord George
was positive; he had been himself present, he said, when the words were
spoken. The question became more perplexed on reference to the reports
in the newspapers. The incriminated passage was not in the report in
'Hansard,' which had been revised by Sir Robert; but it was found in the
'Mirror of Parliament,' and also in the 'Times.' It was discovered also
that Sir Edward Knatchbull had drawn attention to Peel's words at the
time, and had enquired why he had not supported Canning if, as he
alleged, he had changed his mind as early as 1825. This seemed decisive.
Lord George could not speak again by the rules of the House, and handed
his authorities to Disraeli to use for him when the debate was renewed.
Disraeli was not likely to fail with such materials, and delivered an
invective to which the fiercest of his previous onslaughts was like the
cooing of a dove. He was speaking as an advocate. It does not follow
that he believed all he said, but the object was to make Peel suffer,
and in this he undoubtedly succeeded. Peel made a lame defence, and the
matter was never completely cleared up. Sir Edward Knatchbull's speech
could not be explained away. The House, however, was willing to be
satisfied. Lord John Russell, winding up the discussion and speaking for
the Opposition, accepted Peel's denial, declaring that both on Catholic
Emancipation and on the Corn Laws he had done good service to his
country, but agreed that on both occasions he had turned round upon his
pledges and ought not to be surprised if his friends were angry with
him. Disraeli, in telling the story afterwards in his Life of Lord
George, said that the truth was probably this: 'that Peel's change on
the Emancipation question had not been a sudden resolve--that he had
probably weighed the arguments for and against for a considerable time,
and that having to make a complicated and embarrassing statement when
he announced that he had gone round, and to refer by dates to several
periods as to his contingent conduct, had conveyed a meaning to the
House different from what he had intended.' Thus looked at his conduct
might be explained to his entire vindication. Disraeli, however, still
insisted that both Bentinck and himself had been also right in bringing
the charge. The point before the House was Peel's general conduct. He
had twice betrayed the party who had trusted his promises. Lord George
said that to denounce men who had broken their pledges was a public
duty. 'If the country could not place faith in the pledges of their
representatives the authority of the House of Commons would fall.'
However that might be the storm decided the wavering minds of the Tory
army, and with it the fate of Sir Robert Peel. In voting against the
Coercion Bill they would be voting against their own principles, and the
utmost efforts were made to retain them in their allegiance. Persuasion
and menace were alike unavailing. 'The gentlemen of England,' of whom it
had once been Sir Robert's proudest boast to be the leader, declared
against him. He was beaten by an overpowering majority, and his career
as an English Minister was closed.
Disraeli's had been the hand which dethroned him, and to Disraeli
himself, after three years of anarchy and uncertainty, descended the
task of again building together the shattered ruins of the Conservative
party. Very unwillingly they submitted to the unwelcome necessity.
Canning and the elder Pitt had both been called adventurers, but they
had birth and connection, and they were at least Englishmen. Disraeli
had risen out of a despised race; he had never sued for their favours;
he had voted and spoken as he pleased, whether they liked it or not. He
had advocated in spite of them the admission of the Jews to Parliament,
and many of them might think that in his novels he had held the Peerage
up to hatred. He was without Court favour, and had hardly a powerful
friend except Lord Lyndhurst. He had never been tried on the lower steps
of the official ladder. He was young too--only forty-two--after all the
stir that he had made. There was no example of a rise so sudden under
such conditions. But the Tory party had accepted and cheered his
services, and he stood out alone among them as a debater of superior
power. Their own trained men had all deserted them. Lord George remained
for a year or two as nominal chief: but Lord George died; the
Conservatives could only consolidate themselves under a real leader, and
Disraeli was the single person that they had who was equal to the
situation. Not a man on either side in the House was more than his match
in single combat. He had overthrown Peel and succeeded to Peel's
honours.
His situation was now changed. So far he had remained the Tory Radical
which he had first professed himself. He had his own views, and he had
freely enunciated them, whether they were practical or only theoretic.
No doubt he had thought that use might have been made of the reaction of
1841 to show the working men of England that the Tories were their real
friends. He knew that the gulf which was dividing the rich from the poor
was a danger to the Constitution. But, instead of far-reaching social
legislation, Parliament had decided for the immediate relief of cheap
bread. The country was committed to _laissez-faire_ and liberty, and no
reversion to earlier principles was now possible until _laissez-faire_
had been tried out and the consequences of it tasted and digested. As an
outsider he would have been still free to express his own opinions; as
the leader of a party he had now to consider the disposition of his
followers and the practical exigencies of the situation. All that was
for the present possible was to moderate the pace of what was called
Progress, keep the break upon the wheels, and prevent an overturn in the
descent of the incline. In the life of nations the periods of change are
brief; the normal condition of things is permanence and stability. The
bottom would be reached at last, and the appetite for innovation would
be satiated.