fallen? The cure which seemed natural to Mr. Disraeli was to revert to
the principles of our history. Practically, the first thing to be done
was to break up the political monopoly of the Whigs, and it was
this very task that he set himself to do. I have already extracted a
passage denouncing that party in the first election address he issued.
But here, too, he had no new course to strike out. He affirmed that
both Lord Shelburne and Mr. Pitt had attempted the same work long
before. Shelburne, he said, saw in the growing middle-class a bulwark
for the throne against the Revolution families; and Pitt, still
more determined to curb the power of the patrician party, created a
plebeian aristocracy, when they baffled his first endeavours, blending
it with the old oligarchy. It has not unlikely begun to dawn upon the
reader that Mr. Disraeli, holding these views, was himself a Reformer,
of a much more comprehensive kind even than the Radicals. True, Reform
as it actually had come about in 1832, most craftily manipulated as
it then was by the Whigs to their own advantage, skilfully snatching
profit out of what ought to have been a danger to them, was not his
notion. For part of what happened then he, indeed, with his usual
courage, blamed the Duke of Wellington and his colleagues. His own
party have had from no quarter criticism so severe as that he has
given them. If Lord Beaconsfield is in favour of an aristocracy, it
is because he is for making it actually "lead." He affirms that the
Tories, by their conduct in office, precipitated a revolution which
might have been delayed for half a century, and which need never have
occurred at all in so aggravated a form. All that he could do, all
that he has ever claimed to do, by his own partial Reform measure, was
to do away with part of the ill effects of that partisan move of the
other side, and to prevent fresh ill ones from being worked in just
the same way. But there ought to be given a still broader statement
of Lord Beaconsfield's political and social doctrines, and, perhaps, I
cannot do better than make with that view the following quotation from
the preface to "Lothair." He there explains that his general aims were
these:--
"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 wide basis, and not, as has since been done,
in the shape of a priestly faction; 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 political pupil and heir, Mr. Pitt; to
govern Ireland according to the policy of Charles I., and not
of Oliver Cromwell; to emancipate the political constituencies
of 1832 from sectarian bondage and contracted sympathies; to
elevate the physical as well 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 revolution
founded on abstract ideas."
This, he goes on to say, appeared to him at the beginning of his
career to be the course which the country required, and, he adds, that
it was one "which, practically speaking, could only with all
their faults and backslidings be undertaken and accomplished by a
reconstructed Tory party."
If I were able to find room for bringing together from Lord
Beaconsfield's books and speeches detailed passages to illustrate this
summary, it would be seen what a coherent social scheme he has always
had present to his mind. The above hints, however, must serve. Any
one who, after reading them, thinks that there is any ground for the
electioneering cry the Liberals are trying to raise, that this is a
Minister who has no domestic policy, will show more stolidity than we
hope the bulk of the electors possess. Further on I will return for a
moment to this point.
Let me go at once to the fourth topic I have allotted to myself--Lord
Beaconsfield's foreign policy. This policy, I need not say, is that,
of the Cabinet as well, but I am not in this paper writing of the
other members of the Government. It is not my purpose to trace the
history of the Eastern Question, that of the Afghan War, and the Zulu
embroglio. But there is one general aspect of these matters as to
which I must offer two or three comments in addition to what has been
before said about "Imperialism." A set attempt has been made, and is
pretty certain to go on being made all the time between now and the
elections--whether they come earlier or later--and to be then finally
repeated on the hustings, to give to Lord Beaconsfield the air of a
most belligerent, not to say a bloodthirsty, Minister, who, the moment
he got into office, began to peep about the world to see where he
could pick a quarrel, and who has especially acted defiantly towards
Russia. By way of preliminary, I may ask whether his past antecedents
show him to be a statesman of this hobgoblin type? Lord Palmerston
found no more unyielding opponent of his turbulent foreign policy than
Mr. Disraeli, who always contended that the effect of it was to draw
the national attention away from home reforms. When the question of
coast fortifications was before Parliament, Mr. Disraeli was among
the first to protest against panic; he it was who spoke of "bloated
armaments;" and on countless occasions he has raised his voice for
peace and retrenchment. In 1865 he publicly declared that since he
had had to do with politics he had known only one war which was
justifiable--that waged in the Crimea. But it may be said that it is
a common artifice for men in Opposition to preach peace. Let us, then,
turn specially to the Eastern Question, and see what grounds there are
for insinuating that Lord Beaconsfield has in that case concocted a
war policy for the purpose of exciting and dazzling the country, and
keeping himself in power. In 1843--which is now some time ago--in a
debate as to the production of papers on Servia, in which Sir Robert
Peel and Lord Palmerston were the chief orators, he made a speech
which contained this passage:--"What, then, ought to be the
Ministerial policy? To maintain Turkey by diplomatic action in such a
state that she might be able to hold independently the Dardanelles."
Why, this is the literal description of what he has done now. And we
have already seen that in 1865, twenty-two years after, the one only
war he approved was that which had been fought against Russia for this
very purpose. In the early stage of the negotiations which led to that
war, his complaint was that the Government was not vigorous enough
in defending Turkey. But, in 1857, there arose another occasion for
testing whether Mr. Disraeli's feelings naturally were for peace
or war. He opposed the war with China, and in the Persian affair he
denounced the Russophobia of Lord Palmerston--the very complaint from
which, we infer, the Liberals wish him to be understood to be himself
suffering now. Or take India as a test. According to the Duke of
Argyll and others, Lord Beaconsfield has an insatiable thirst for more
territory in that part of the world. Very strangely, it was he who
most condemned the annexation of Oude, going so far as to make a
motion for a Royal Commission to be sent out to India to inquire into
the condition of the people. When the contest between the Northern and
Southern States of America broke out, no public man regretted it more
than he did, and he was unfalteringly on the side of the North.
In fact, only in one single case has Lord Beaconsfield ever shown the
slightest disposition for sacrificing peace, if need be--namely, for
the checking of Russia's portentous advance; and this has necessarily
implied the maintenance of Turkey in some degree of power. Twice in
his lifetime has the need arisen, and he has acted the second time
in just the same way that he did the first, the only difference
being that he happens now, fortunately, to be in office instead of in
Opposition.
In his first speech in the Upper House, Lord Beaconsfield said--"The
Eastern Question involves some of the elements of the distribution of
power in the world, and involves the existence of empires. I plead
for a calm statesmanlike consideration of the question." In his second
great speech in that House, he made this remark,--"The independence
and integrity of Turkey is the traditional policy not only of England
but of Europe." This is the absolute truth. It is not he who has
invented any brand-new tactics in this matter; he has simply
stood upon the old paths, and carried on the settled habits of our
statesmanship. The innovators are Mr. Gladstone and the self-styled
humanitarians, who were for substituting hysterics for national
diplomacy, and thought to solve the Eastern Question by presenting the
Turk with a carpet-bag and begging him to retire with it into Asia.
But it is stated that Lord Beaconsfield has defied Russia. Well, turn
to the famous Guildhall speech, which is the great article in the
indictment. It suits his critics to pick words out of it to please
them; but it also contains sentences like the following, which they
somehow overlook,--"We have nothing to gain by war. We are essentially
a non-aggressive Power." In that same speech, too, he alluded to the
Emperor of Russia's "lofty character," addressing to him words of the
highest compliment. If he added a solemn warning to that monarch as to
the extent of England's resources if she was forced into war for
the cause of public right, he still was speaking in the interests of
peace, not war. It was his bounden duty to prevent the present Czar
from falling into the mistake his father was so fatally guided into by
the Manchester school--that of thinking England would in no case draw
the sword. Construe his words how you will, they amount to no more
than this. Mr. Gladstone and his friends, by their factitious public
demonstrations, partly did away with the natural effects of that grave
intimation, and made it necessary for the Government to prove its
seriousness by bringing troops from India, and actually risking the
very war which Lord Beaconsfield had wished to avoid. But the Premier
had the courage not only of his opinions but of a true policy, and he
has had his reward. He successfully checked the sinister progress of
Russia, restored the reign of public law in Europe, and while exalting
the renown of his own country, he has pointed another empire--that
of Austria--to a new career which will benefit the world as well as
strengthen and ennoble herself. After the alliance between Germany
and Austria-Hungary was proclaimed, only one thing was left for his
Lordship's opponents to go on repeating,--namely, that he had, in
upholding Turkey, spared no thought or feeling to the victims of her
rule. In the very face of this there was the fact that he had made
England the formal protector of the inhabitants of Asia Minor, and had
demanded Cyprus as a nearer point of observation of the Turk; but
the plain obvious meaning of those arrangements has been tried to be
muddled away by misrepresenting the protectorate of Asia Minor as a
new insult to Russia. These brave humanitarians got sorely entangled
in their logic on all sides. They pleaded in one breath that England
had rashly undertaken too much responsibility for these oppressed
peoples, and in the next breath said that nothing would ever come of
it. Lord Beaconsfield has made it all clear, and in the simplest way.
It is not fully explained at the moment of our writing what is the
actual extent of the pressure put upon the Porte, nor what precise
orders were sent to our admiral, but when the recent news was first
published here the opponents of the Ministry must have felt that Lord
Beaconsfield had ordered the British Fleet to sail against them when
they heard it was instructed to steam back for the Turkish waters.
Kindly meant as it might be for those in Asia Minor, it was a very
cruel step on the part of Lord Beaconsfield towards some of his
own countrymen, for it will necessitate the altering of a good many
already prepared electioneering speeches. In the end, as we venture to
predict, it will be seen that his Lordship and his colleagues are the
true humanitarians.
But let me not lose sight of the fact that this, though a very real
plea on the part of the Government, is not the one on which they
mainly rely. They have never pretended to be knights-errant for the
righting of wrongs throughout the world. What contents them is the
humbler _rôle_ of old-fashioned English statesmanship, which seeks
first to make sure of the safety of our own empire and the promotion
of our proper interests, doing what further good it can to other
peoples incidentally in discharging the fair reasonable obligations
which may in that way arise, nor disdaining any glory that so falls
to it. But an enormous obligation of this sort was already on our
shoulders--the preservation of India. We have a strict duty to two
hundred millions of human beings in the East, and Lord Beaconsfield
and his colleagues, who appeared to be the only public men in England
who remembered this, were determined to discharge it. Anything and
everything in their policy which may at first sight seem risky
or belligerent is explained fully to every one who will keep that
pressing need before his mind. It was this which made them purchase
the Suez Canal shares, and strengthen their interference in Egypt;
it was this that made them wish for a clearer understanding with the
Ameer of Afghanistan. But so little did they go about matters with a
high hand, that they most carefully humoured France with respect to
Egypt, and at the very earliest moment that they could, they made a
treaty with a new Afghan ruler. To try to make them appear responsible
for what afterwards occurred at Cabul is the most shameless abuse of
license on the part of an Opposition which parliamentary records can
show. A Russian embassy had been installed in Cabul with no other
guarantee for its safety than the word of a friendly Ameer, and our
Envoy and his suite were sent thither under the very same guarantee.
If we were not to be most dangerously overshadowed by the Russian
example, an English embassy had to show its face in Cabul; and to say
that our rulers either in Calcutta or in London should have foreseen
the pusillanimous break-down of the Ameer and the consequent massacre
of our brave countrymen is--well, it may be better not further to try
to say what it is.
Our own interests, I repeat, were jeopardized in every quarter where
the present Government has stirred hand or foot. That is its broad
justification. But I must certainly go a step farther than this. The
present Ministry assuredly would not be satisfied with an acquittal on
the Liberal arraignment; nor is that the verdict which the public has
given. The British people find this Government guilty of having won
for it and for themselves much honour. When Lord Beaconsfield saw that
in any event he was committed to a contest with Russia for the defence
of English interests, he had the courage and the wit to determine that
the issue of it should be the better for the world. It is for this
noble superfluity of skilful statesmanship, this Imperial scope given
to England's ruling, that Europe has thanked him, and the bulk of this
nation applauded him. By-and-by, he will reap still further credit,
for besides checking Russia he will eventually coerce the Turk. That
further obligation naturally arose out of the course he took, and he
added it to his proper task of safeguarding our own interests, just
as impartially as he did the other aim of arresting the Muscovite.
I shall not push this reasoning further: it seems to me sufficiently
triumphant as it stands. If Lord Beaconsfield has upheld the Turk, it
was because it was necessary, not because he admired him. But there
is another remark, coming much nearer home, that I wish to make before
concluding this section.
The foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield has brought to him and to his
party much renown; but it has brought them nothing else. That
there has been the need for it is for the Conservatives a positive
misfortune. It has nearly entirely put aside the domestic legislation
on which they reckoned for at once redressing some grievances of their
own, and for satisfying the town populations who their true friends
were. Let it not be forgotten that it was on this very claim of having
a domestic policy that the Conservatives appealed to the people at the
last election. Their opponents, who now make a pretence of measures of
this kind being lacking, then denounced it loudly enough as a "policy
of sewage." But Lord Beaconsfield's rivals have tried hard to make
it seem that he sought out, or even invented, these hazardous events
abroad which put aside his home policy. The very attempt impugns the
common sense of the general public. A sort of pretext might have been
found for insinuating such a notion if Lord Beaconsfield had been
nearing the end of expending his Parliamentary majority by carrying
party measures. But to suppose that a Minister attaining power in
the triumphant way he did would wish to be plunged straightway into
foreign entanglements, is to imagine him stricken with idiocy.
Lord Beaconsfield had had far too much experience to make such a
preposterous mistake. He knew at the beginning, as he knows now, that
neither Minister nor party has much to gain in any way of permanent
power or confirmed home advantage from foreign policies, however
successful they may turn out to be. Foreign dangers are half-forgotten
as soon as they are past. Directly, these occurrences abroad will be
but memories; splendid ones they must ever remain: but they will have
against them, in the eyes of the unthinking, the drawback of
having necessarily, to some extent, disordered the finances. Lord
Beaconsfield's rivals are sure to make the most of that fact on the
hustings, as he well knew beforehand they would do; and, to balance
its effect, he will have nothing on which to rely but the patriotic
recollection of his country. Should everything go for the best, no
_prestige_ which these foreign successes can give him and his party
will place him more solidly in power than he found himself at the
beginning of this Parliament; yet it will only be at the opening of
the next that he will be able to push forward the home policy intended
for the present Parliament. Apart from a heightening of fortunate
reputation, won through much risk, his own party will scarcely have
gained a shred of fair legislative or administrative advantage from
six years' splendid possession of overwhelming power.
It does not seem needful to waste space in speaking of the Zulu war.
Even the Liberals are beginning to be silent on the subject. The
affair was forced upon the Government, not sought for by them, and it
has ended successfully.
If I now ask what have been the causes of Lord Beaconsfield's
unexampled individual success, the remarks must at first seem to
narrow to mere personal ones. There has, in truth, been more than one
reason for the present Premier's triumphs. First of all, I might
state the matter so generally as to say that for half a century he has
managed to keep himself the most thoroughly interesting personage
in England. Neither Mr. Disraeli nor Lord Beaconsfield has ever been
dull, which is the one only sufficient explanation of failure
wherever it happens. But such a statement of the matter as this is too
comprehensive and wants particularizing. I may add, then, that no one
has shown so much pluck as he has, and that is a quality which in the
end tells with the British public beyond all others. For one starting
with his disadvantage of race to dream in those days of a political
career was most courageous, but so soon as it began to be seen that he
would triumph over all obstacles, his very difficulties turned to his
advantage. He soon commanded everybody's sympathies except those
of injured partisans on the other side. Not that it was sympathy he
begged for; it was admiration he extorted. Especially has he by means
of his writings had the generous feeling of youth in his favour,
generation after generation. They can never remain untouched by
the spectacle of a successful fight against circumstances. But Lord
Beaconsfield has not owed all to dash and daring. His industry has
been equal to his pluck. If he had only been a politician that would
have had to be said; and so it again would if he had only been known
as the writer of his works. Put both the careers together and nobody
else has shown such fertility of brain. His marvellous intellect has
never tired. The versatility, too, has been marvellous: a novelist and
a diplomatist, a poet and a Chancellor of the Exchequer, a satirist
and a successful leader of Opposition. For fifty years, in one or
other of these characters, and often in several of them at once, his
wit has never ceased blazing, save when he himself, the only one who
ever tired of its play--except, indeed, those hit by it--has chosen
to smother it in silence; but it was always ready to flash forth upon
occasion, and is as bright to-day as ever.
But, to come yet closer to the heart of the secret of Lord
Beaconsfield's success, his faithful devotion to the great historic
party he allied himself with has been equal to his courage, to his
industry, and to his abilities. No politician can make an individual
career; he has to find his success in the prosperity of his followers.
The loyalty which Lord Beaconsfield has shown to his party and the
ungrudging recognition they have paid to him has half-redeemed the
hardness of our coarse partisan politics. Some Liberals have had the
want of wit, without our going so far as to say the lack of capability
of feeling, to express surprise at the faithful respect shown to Lord
Beaconsfield by his present colleagues. That Lord Beaconsfield has a
personal charm must be admitted, for he has turned every one who was
ever brought into any degree of nearness with him into a friend, as
well as a colleague. Those who like may believe that he has done it
by the use of magic philtres; less credulous people will, perhaps,
content themselves with thinking that his spell has been simply that
of strength of character, superior experience, and a non-despotic
manner. One thing is very patent. This chief of a Cabinet who is said
to have imprinted everywhere his own individuality on the Ministerial
policy, has never practised the slightest interference with his
subordinates. It is not he who has been charged with an uncontrollable
wish to be the representative of all the Ministry in his own person.
Just as he could show patience when a leader of Opposition, he has
been able to be silent when a Minister. However, it has been rather
insinuated that he became preternaturally active in the Cabinet
Councils--there standing forth a wizard, and cast all his colleagues
into a clairvoyant slumber. Strange to say, they remained in the same
comatose condition afterwards in both Houses, never waking up though
speaking and passing measures. Two members of his Government, however,
have broken away--Lords Derby and Carnarvon have escaped from the
magician's cell; but they have divulged nothing as to any necromantic
violence worked on them. No, Lord Beaconsfield's fair and reasonable
ascendency has been more honestly won. But his marvellous friendships
have not been the only softening touches in his career. All England
felt a strange thrilling about the heart on the morning when it
heard that Mr. Disraeli's wife was henceforth to be the Viscountess
Beaconsfield. It was a domestic idyll suddenly disclosed in the centre
of British politics. A man who can make his own hearth the scene of
romance, convert all who know him well into true friends, and win
all the young people of a nation, must be something more than a
self-seeker.
Still, though these things might explain Lord Beaconsfield being so
interesting, something else has yet to be added to account for the
overwhelming importance which he has attained in the last period of
his career. Not even the success of his party could have given him
that unless the policy which secured this prosperity had obtained,
also, the exalting of the nation.
It is this which is his final boast; he has uplifted higher the fame
of England, and by doing that has made his own renown the greater.
Once more, it was achieved in the simplest way. He invented nothing,
strained at nothing, but only boldly carried on the traditionary
English policy, at a moment when his opponents were willing to forget
it; and in merely proving equal to the opportunity, and daring to make
Britain act worthily of her history, he has changed by her means the
destiny of the Western World. Not only his own countrymen, but Europe
and nations more distant still, to-day hail him as the greatest of
modern English statesmen. That is a title and dignity somewhat higher
than an Earldom, and it is under that larger style that those who
wish to do Lord Beaconsfield full honour will have to allude to him
hereafter in the national annals.
These are some of the reasons why we honour and follow him.
A TORY.
II.--WHY WE DISBELIEVE IN HIM.