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.
[Sidenote: DISRAELI THE CONSERVATIVE LEADER]
Mr. Disraeli's career has been traced in detail from his birth to the
point which he had now reached. Henceforward it is neither necessary nor
possible to follow his actions with the same minuteness. The outer side
of them is within the memory of most of us. The inner side can only be
known when his private papers are given to the world. For twenty-five
years he led the Conservative Opposition in the House of Commons, varied
with brief intervals of power. He was three times Chancellor of the
Exchequer under Lord Derby--in 1852, in 1858-9, and again in 1867--but
he was in office owing rather to Liberal dissensions than to recovered
strength on his own side. Being in a minority he was unable to initiate
any definite policy; nor if the opportunity had been offered him would
he have attempted to reverse the commercial policy of Peel. The country
had decided for Free Trade, and a long Trade Wind of commercial
prosperity seemed to indicate that the Manchester school had been right
after all. On this question the verdict had gone against him, and the
opinion of the constituencies remained against him. More than all, what
Cobden had prophesied came to pass. Science and skill came to the
support of enterprise. Railroads cheapened transport and annihilated
distance. The ocean lost its terrors and became an easy and secure
highway, and England, with her boundless resources, became more than
ever the ocean's lord. Exports and imports grew with fabulous rapidity,
and the prosperity which Disraeli had not denied might be the immediate
effect exceeded the wildest hopes of the Corn Law League. Duty after
duty was abandoned, and still the revenue increased. The people
multiplied like bees, and yet wages rose. New towns sprang out of the
soil like mushrooms, and the happy owners of it found their incomes
doubled without effort of their own. Even the farmers prospered, for
time was necessary, before America, and Russia, and India could pull
down the market price of corn. Meat rose, farm produce of all kinds
rose, and rent rose along with it, and the price of land. The farm
labourer had his advance of a weekly shilling or two, and the
agricultural interest, which had been threatened with ruin, throve as it
had never thriven before. Althea's horn was flowing over with an
exuberance of plenty, and all classes adopted more expensive habits,
believing that the supply was now inexhaustible. The lords of the land
themselves shook off their panic, and were heard to say that 'Free Trade
was no such a bad thing after all.'
[Sidenote: FREE TRADE AND PROGRESS]
When things are going well with Englishmen they never look beyond the
moment.
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
We see the lords of human kind go by.
Our countrymen of the last generation had confidence in themselves. They
were advancing by leaps and bounds, and the advance was to continue for
ever. Carlyle told them that their 'unexampled prosperity' was in itself
no such beautiful thing, and was perhaps due to special circumstances
which would not continue. Carlyle was laughed at as a pessimist. Yet as
time goes on a suspicion does begin to be felt that both he and Disraeli
were not as wrong as was supposed. The anticipated fall in wheat, though
long delayed, has come at last; at last the land is falling out of
cultivation, and the rents go back once more, and the labourers have
lost their extra shillings. The English farmer is swamped at last under
the competition of the outer world, and the peasantry, who were the
manhood of the country, are shrinking in numbers. The other nations, who
were to have opened their ports after our example, have preferred to
keep them closed to protect their own manufactures and supply their own
necessities.
Chimneys still smoke and engines clank, and the volume of our foreign
trade does not diminish, but if the volume is maintained the profits
fall, and our articles must be produced cheaper and ever cheaper if we
are to hold our ground. As employment fails in the country districts the
people stream into the towns. This great London of ours annually
stretches its borders. Five millions of men and women, more than the
population of all England at the time of the Commonwealth, are now
collected within the limits of the Bills of Mortality. Once our English
artisans were famous throughout Europe. They were spread among the
country villages. Each workman was complete of his kind, in his way an
artist; his work was an education to him as a man. Now he is absorbed in
the centres of industry and is part of a machine. In the division of
labour a human being spends his life in making pins' heads or legs of
chairs, or single watch wheels, or feeding engines which work instead of
him. Such activities do not feed his mind or raise his character, and
such mind as he has left he feeds at the beer shop and music hall. Nay,
in the rage for cheapness his work demoralises him. He is taught to
scamp his labour and pass off bad materials for good. The carpenter, the
baker, the smith, the mason learns so to do his work that it may appear
what it professes to be, while the appearance is delusive. In the shop
and manufactory he finds adulteration regarded as a legitimate form of
competition. The various occupations of the people have become a
discipline of dishonesty, and the demand for cheapness is corroding the
national character.
Disraeli as a cool looker-on foresaw how it would be, but it was his
fate to steer the vessel in the stream when it was running with the
impetuosity of self-confidence. He could not stem a torrent, and all
that he could do was to moderate the extent of its action. Only he
refused to call the tendency of things Progress. 'Progress whence and
progress whither?' he would ask. The only human progress worth calling
by the name is progress in virtue, justice, courage, uprightness, love
of country beyond love of ourselves. True, as everyone was saying, it
was impossible to go back; but why? To go back is easy if we have missed
our way on the road upwards. It is impossible only when the road is
downhill.
[Sidenote: PARTY GOVERNMENT]
His function was to wait till the fruit had ripened which was to follow
on such brilliant blossom, and to learn what the event would teach him;
to save what he could of the old institutions, to avoid unnecessary
interference, and forward any useful measures of detail for which
opportunity might offer: meantime to watch his opponents and take fair
advantage of their mistakes provided he did not injure by embarrassing
them the real interests of the country. Party government in England is
the least promising in theory of all methods yet adopted for a
reasonable management of human affairs. In form it is a disguised civil
war, and a civil war which can never end, because the strength of the
antagonists is periodically recruited at the enchanted fountain of a
general election. Each section in the State affects to regard its rivals
as public enemies, while it admits that their existence is essential to
the Constitution; it misrepresents their actions, thwarts their
proposals even if it may know them to be good, and by all means, fair or
foul, endeavours to supplant them in the favour of the people. No nation
could endure such a system if it was uncontrolled by modifying
influences. The rule till lately has been to suspend the antagonism in
matters of Imperial moment, and to abstain from factious resistance when
resistance cannot be effectual in the transaction of ordinary business.
But within these limits and independent of particular measures each
party proceeds on the principle that the tenure of office by its
opponents is an evil in itself, and that no legitimate opportunity of
displacing them ought to be neglected. That both sides shall take their
turn at the helm is essential if the system is to continue. If they are
to share the powers of the State they must share its patronage, to draw
talent into their ranks. The art of administration can be learnt only by
practice; young Tories as well as young Whigs must have their chance of
acquiring their lessons. No party can hold together unless encouraged by
occasional victory. Thus the functions of an Opposition chief are at
once delicate and difficult. He must be careful _ne quid detrimenti
capiat Respublica_ through hasty action of his own. He must consider, on
the other hand, the legitimate interests of his friends. As a member of
a short-lived administration once bluntly expressed to me, 'you must
blood the noses of your hounds,' but you must not for a party advantage
embarrass a Government to the general injury of the Empire.
Under such circumstances the details of past Parliamentary sessions are
for the most part wearisome and unreal. The opposing squadrons are
arranged as if for battle, exhorted night after night in eloquence so
vivid that the nation's salvation might seem at stake. The leaders cross
swords. The newspapers spread the blaze through town and country, and
all on subjects of such trifling moment that they are forgotten when an
engagement is over, the result of which is known and perhaps determined
beforehand. When the division is taken, the rival champions consume
their cigars together in the smoking-room and discuss the next Derby or
the latest scandal. Questions are raised which wise men on both sides
would willingly let alone, because neither party can allow its opponents
an opportunity of gaining popular favour. The arguments are insincere.
The adulterations of trade pass into Parliament and become adulterations
of human speech. It is a price which we pay for political freedom, and a
price which tends annually to rise. Thus it is rightly felt to be unfair
to remember too closely the words or sentiments let fall in past
debates. The modern politician has often to oppose what in his heart he
believes to be useful, and defend what he does not wholly approve. He
has to affect to be in desperate earnest when he is talking of things
which are not worth a second's serious thought. Everyone knows this and
everyone allows for it. The gravest statesman of the century could be
proved as uncertain as a weathercock, lightly to be moved as
thistle-down, if every word which he utters in Parliament or on platform
is recorded against him as seriously meant.
[Sidenote: DISRAELI AS OPPOSITION LEADER]
The greater part of our Parliamentary history during the twenty-five
years of Disraeli's leadership of the Tory Opposition in the House
of Commons is of this character. The nation was going its own
way--multiplying its numbers, piling up its ingots, adding to its
scientific knowledge, and spreading its commerce over the globe.
Parliament was talking, since talk was its business, about subjects the
very names of which are dead echoes of vanished unrealities. It may be
claimed for Disraeli that he discharged his sad duties during all this
time with as little insincerity as the circumstances allowed, that he
was never wilfully obstructive, and that while he was dexterous as a
party chief he conducted himself always with dignity and fairness. It
cost him less than it would have cost most men, because being not deeply
concerned he could judge the situation with coolness and impartiality.
He knew that it was not the interest of the Conservative party to
struggle prematurely for office, and he had a genuine and loyal
concern for the honour and greatness of the country. Any proposals
which he considered good he helped forward with earnestness and
ability--proposals for shortening the hours of labour, for the
protection of children in the factories, for the improvement of the
dwelling-houses of the poor. He may be said to have brought the Jews
into Parliament a quarter of a century before they would otherwise have
been admitted there, for the Conservatives left to themselves would
probably have opposed their admission to the end. He could accomplish
little, but he prevented harm. The interesting intervals of the long
dreary time were when the monotony was broken in upon by incidents from
without--Continental revolutions, Crimean campaigns, Indian mutinies,
civil wars in America, and such like, when false steps might have swept
this country into the whirlpools, and there was need for care and
foresight. On all or most of these occasions he signalised himself not
only by refraining from taking advantage of them to embarrass the
Government, but by a loftiness of thought and language unfortunately not
too common in the House of Commons.
The _coup d'état_ of Louis Napoleon did not deserve to be favourably
received in England. The restoration of a military Government in France
alarmed half of us by a fear of the revival of the Napoleonic
traditions. The overthrow of a Constitution exasperated the believers in
liberty. All alike were justly shocked by the treachery and violence
with which the Man of December had made his way to the throne. The
newspapers and popular orators, accustomed to canvass and criticise the
actions of statesmen at home, forgot that prudence suggested reticence
about the affairs of others with whom we had no right to interfere. The
army was master of France, and to speak of its chief in such terms as
those in which historians describe a Sylla or a Marius was not the way
to maintain peaceful relations with dangerous neighbours. Neither the
writers nor the speakers wished for war with France. They wished only
for popularity as the friends of justice and humanity; but war might
easily have been the consequence unless pen and tongue could be taught
caution. Disraeli applied the bit in a powerful speech in the House. He
had been acquainted with Louis Napoleon in the old days at Lady
Blessington's. He had no liking for him and no belief in him; but he
reminded the House and he reminded the nation that it was not for us to
dictate how France was to be governed, and that the language, so freely
used might provoke a formidable and even just resentment.
[Sidenote: THE CRIMEAN WAR]
The Crimean war he was unable to prevent, but as good a judge as Cobden
believed that if Disraeli and Lord Derby had not been turned out of
office in 1852 they would have prevented it, and a million lives and a
hundred millions of English money, which that business cost, need not
have been sacrificed over a struggle which events proved to be useless.
Much was to be said for a policy which would have frankly met and
accepted the Emperor Nicholas's overtures to Sir Hamilton Seymour. If a
joint pressure of all the European Powers had been brought to bear on
Turkey, internal reforms could have been forced upon her, and
preparation could have been made peacefully for the disappearance,
ultimately inevitable, of the Turks out of Europe. If the state of
public opinion forbade this (and Disraeli himself would certainly never
have adopted such a course) something was to be said also for adhering
firmly from the first to the traditionary dogmas on the maintenance of
the integrity of the Turkish Empire, and this the Conservatives were
prepared to do. Nothing at all was to be said for hesitation and waiting
upon events. The Tzar was deceived into supposing that while we talked
we meant nothing, and we drifted into a war of which the only direct
result was a waste of money which, if wisely used, might have drained
the Bog of Allen, turned the marshes of the Shannon into pasture ground,
and have left in Ireland some traces of English rule to which we could
look with satisfaction.
The indirect consequences of fatuities are sometimes worse than their
immediate effects. It was known over the world that England, France,
Turkey, and Italy had combined to endeavour to crush Russia, and had
succeeded only in capturing half of a single Russian city. The sepoy
army heard of our failures, and the centenary of the battle of Plassy
was signalised by the Great Mutiny. The rebellion was splendidly met. It
was practically confined to the army itself, and over the largest part
of the peninsula the general population remained loyal; but the murder
of the officers, the cruelties to the women and children, and the
detailed barbarities which were paraded in the newspapers, drove the
English people into fury. Carried away by generous but unwise emotion,
they clamoured for retaliatory severities, which, if inflicted, would
have been fatal to our reputation and eventually perhaps to the Indian
Empire. Disraeli's passionless nature was moved to a warmth which was
rare with him. Such feelings, he said, were no less than 'heinous.' We
boasted that we ruled India in the interests of humanity; were we to
stain our name by copying the ferocities of our revolted subjects?
[Sidenote: CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA]
His influence was no less fortunately exerted at the more dangerous
crisis of the American civil war. On all occasions English instinct
inclines to take the weaker side, but for many reasons there was in
England a particular and wide-spread inclination for the South. There
was a general feeling that the American colonies had revolted against
ourselves; if they quarrelled, and a minority of them desired
independence, the minority had as good a right to shake off the North as
the thirteen original States to shake off the mother country. The North
in trying to coerce the South was contradicting its own principle.
Professional politicians even among the Liberals were of opinion that
the transatlantic republic was dangerously strong, that it was
disturbing the balance of power, and that a division or dissolution of
it would be of general advantage. Those among us who disliked republican
institutions, and did not wish them to succeed, rejoiced at their
apparent failure, and would willingly have lent their help to make it
complete.
The Northern Americans were distasteful to the English aristocracy. The
Southern planters were supposed to be gentlemen with whom they had more
natural affinity. The war was condemned by three-quarters of the London
and provincial press, and when the Emperor Napoleon invited us to join
with him in recognising the South and breaking the blockade it perhaps
rested with Disraeli to determine how these overtures should be
received. Lord Palmerston was notoriously willing. Of the Tory party the
greater part would, if left to themselves, have acquiesced with
enthusiasm. With a word of encouragement from their leader a great
majority in Parliament would have given Palmerston a support which would
have allowed him to disregard the objections of some of his colleagues.
But that word was not spoken. Disraeli was as mistaken as most of us on
the probable results of the conflict. He supposed, as the world
generally supposed, that it must leave North America divided, like
Europe, into two or more independent States; but he advised and he
insisted that the Americans must be left to shape their fortunes in
their own way. England had no right to interfere.
Events move fast. Mankind make light of perils escaped, and the
questions which distracted the world a quarter of a century ago are
buried under the anxieties and passions of later problems. Hereafter,
when the changes and chances of the present reign are impartially
reviewed, Disraeli will be held to have served his country well by his
conduct at this critical contingency.
In domestic politics he was a partisan chief. His speeches in Parliament
and out of it were dictated by the exigencies of the passing moment. We
do not look for the real opinions of a leading counsel in his forensic
orations. We need not expect to find Disraeli's personal convictions in
what he occasionally found it necessary to say.
There did, however, break from him remarkable utterances on special
occasions which deserve and will receive remembrance. Two extracts only
can be introduced here, one on the state of the nation in 1849, when he
spoke for the first time as the acknowledged Conservative leader, the
other on Parliamentary Reform in 1865, the subject on which his own
action two years later called out Carlyle's scornful comment. The first
referred to the changed condition of things brought about by the
adoption of Free Trade.
[Sidenote: EFFECTS OF FREE TRADE]
'In past times,' he said, 'every Englishman was taught to believe that
he occupied a position better than the analogous position of individuals
of his order in any other country in the world. The British merchant was
looked on as the most creditable, the wealthiest, the most trustworthy
merchant in the world. The English farmer ranked as the most skilful
agriculturist.... The English manufacturer was acknowledged as the most
skilful and successful, without a rival in ingenuity and enterprise. So
with the British sailor; the name was a proverb. And chivalry was
confessed to have found a last resort in the breast of a British
officer. It was the same in the learned professions. Our physicians and
lawyers held higher positions than those of any other countries.... In
this manner English society was based upon the aristocratic principle
in its complete and most magnificent development.
'You set to work to change the basis on which this society was
established. You disdain to attempt the accomplishment of the _best_,
and what you want to achieve is the _cheapest_. The infallible
consequence is to cause the impoverishment and embarrassment of the
people. But impoverishment is not the only ill consequence which the new
system may produce. The wealth of England is not merely material wealth.
It does not merely consist in the number of acres we have tilled and
cultivated, nor in our havens filled with shipping, nor in our
unrivalled factories, nor in the intrepid industry of our miners. Not
these merely form the principal wealth of our country; we have a more
precious treasure, and that is _the character of the people_. This is
what you have injured. In destroying what you call class legislation you
have destroyed the noble and indefatigable ambition which has been the
source of all our greatness, of all our prosperity, of all our powers.'
The noble ambition of which Disraeli was speaking was the ambition of
men to do their work better and more honestly than others, and the rage
for cheapness has indeed destroyed this, and destroyed with it English
integrity. We are impatiently told that the schools will set it right
again. Character, unfortunately, is not to be formed by passing
standards, second or first. It is the most difficult of all attainments.
It is, or ought to be, the single aim of every government deserving the
name, and there is a curious remark of Aristotle that while aristocratic
governments recognised the obligation and acted upon it, democracies
invariably forget that such an obligation exists. They assume that
character will grow of itself. Of character ὁπόσον οὖν, ever so little
would suffice, and so the old republics went to ruin, as they deserved
to go. No subject deserves more anxious reflection. Yet Disraeli is the
only modern English statesman who has given it a passing thought.
The second passage referred to the playing with the Constitution which
had been going on ever since 1832. Lord Grey had dispossessed the gentry
and given the power to the middle classes. The operatives, the numerical
majority, were left unrepresented. Neither party wished to enfranchise
them, for fear they might be tempted to inroads upon property. Each was
afraid to confess the truth, and thus year after year the extension of
the suffrage was proposed dishonestly and dropped with satisfaction.
Lord John Russell made his last experiment in 1865, and Disraeli gave
the House a remarkable warning, which, if he afterwards neglected it
himself, the statesmen who are now with light hearts proposing to break
the Constitution to pieces may reflect upon with advantage.
[Sidenote: A WARNING]
'There is no country at the present moment that exists under the same
circumstances and under the same conditions as the people of this realm.
You have an ancient, powerful, and richly endowed Church, and perfect
religious liberty. You have unbroken order and complete freedom. You
have landed estates as large as the Romans, combined with a commercial
enterprise such as Carthage and Venice united never equalled. And you
must remember that this peculiar country, with these strong contrasts,
is not governed by force. It is governed by a most singular series of
traditionary influences, which generation after generation cherishes and
preserves because it knows that they embalm custom and represent law.
And with this you have created the greatest empire of modern times. You
have amassed a capital of fabulous amount. You have devised and
sustained a system of credit still more marvellous, and you have
established a scheme so vast and complicated of labour and industry that
the history of the world affords no parallel to it. And these mighty
creations are out of all proportion to the essential and indigenous
elements and resources of the country. If you destroy that state of
society remember this: _England cannot begin again_. There are countries
which have gone through great suffering. You have had in the United
States of America a protracted and fratricidal civil war, which has
lasted for four years; but if it lasted for four years more, vast as
would be the disaster and desolation, when ended, the United States
might begin again, because the United States would then only be in the
same condition that England was in at the end of the wars of the Roses,
when probably she had not three millions of population, with vast tracts
of virgin soil and mineral treasures not only undeveloped but undreamt
of. Then you have France. France had a real revolution in this century,
a real revolution, not merely a political but a social revolution. The
institutions of the country were uprooted, the order of society
abolished, even the landmarks and local names removed and erased. But
France could begin again. France had the greatest spread of the most
exuberant soil in Europe, and a climate not less genial. She had, and
always had, comparatively a limited population, living in a most simple
manner. France, therefore, could begin again. But England, the England
we know, the England we live in, the England of which we are proud,
could not begin again. I do not mean to say that after great trouble
England would become a howling wilderness, or doubt that the good sense
of the people would to some degree prevail, and some fragments of the
national character survive; but it would not be the old England, the
England of power and tradition and capital, that now exists. It is not
in the nature of things. And, sir, under these circumstances I hope the
House, when the question is one impeaching the character of our
Constitution, will hesitate; that it will sanction no step that has a
tendency to democracy, but that it will maintain the ordered state of
free England in which we live.'