back, to write his impressions of Mr. Disraeli, he would have set
about it in a strikingly different spirit from that which the task
awakens now. Lord Beaconsfield has recently become much too serious
a joke in the national history, but for a very long time the jocosity
was light enough. In the eyes of all Liberals who had not fully
acquired the gravity of their own fundamental principles, there was,
down to a very late period, always something diverting about Mr.
Disraeli. He might and did vex them, but shortly they were again
smiling at him. The explanation was this, that for a long time his
presence in Parliament hardly at all hindered the progress of Liberal
measures. Whenever a legislative reform was proposed, he invariably
spoke against it, and at some stage afterwards the Conservatives
voted in a body the same way. From the voting being subsequent to
the speaking, there was an illusive appearance of Mr. Disraeli's
speechifying being the cause of the Tory division list. But, in
reality, there was no such connection, and the Liberals were aware
of it. They all knew that the Conservatives would have voted just
the same without a word being spoken. If, during all the years Lord
Palmerston was in power, almost the whole of Lord Russell's
earlier and later official terms, and down to nearly the end of Mr.
Gladstone's Ministry, Mr. Disraeli, instead of making speeches, had
amused his audience by pirouetting on one leg night after night, the
practical result would have been exactly the same. It could not have
been so entertaining to the Liberals, because, looking at some members
of the Conservative party, it would have exceeded the bounds of
belief to suppose that Mr. Disraeli was really twirling for the whole,
whereas it did somehow come to be accepted that he was speaking for
all of them. The unlooked-for thoughts he pretended to put into their
minds, and the preposterous words he did put upon their lips, kept
all Englishmen who were not Conservatives shaking their sides with
laughter. It was as if a foreign Will-o'-the-Wisp had strayed into the
British Parliament, always, however, keeping himself and his antics on
the Conservative side, as being, we suppose, the worst-drained part of
the House, where the morasses lay. Even when, to the amazement of
the country generally, Mr. Disraeli found his way into office, the
merriment did not stop. Nobody who has reached mature years can forget
what an astounding drollery it was thought to be when Mr. Disraeli was
made Chancellor of the Exchequer by Lord Derby. For the time it seemed
to convert English politics into pantomime. Will-o'-the-Wisp had been
asked by the country party to undertake the post of chief financier.
Everybody on the other side was prepared beforehand to laugh at his
Budgets; and, when they were propounded, the Liberals did laugh a
little more even than they had expected to do. When he brought in
his India Bill, the merriment grew perfectly uproarious,--Manchester,
Liverpool, Glasgow, Belfast, and the other large commercial towns
exploding one after the other. It was the same when he proposed to
give sixteen millions for Irish railways; it was the same with the
first sketches of his Reform Bill. Surely nobody can have forgotten
the "fancy franchises?" In a word, every domestic measure that
Mr. Disraeli ever proposed was, in the first shape in which it was
presented, received with mirth from nearly every quarter excepting
his immediate rear. There sat his supporters, usually in those years
wearing rather long faces during the earlier period of the statements,
and apparently wondering if their ears could possibly be telling them
rightly.
But all this, as there is not a single Liberal in the country but will
admit, is a good deal altered. Lord Beaconsfield has recently signed
foreign treaties on England's behalf, insisting most successfully, he
tells us, on what kind of treaties they should be; he has undoubtedly
put our armies and fleets into motion; and, while risking war in
Europe, has actually waged it in Asia and Africa. The bustle of these
events, and a certain dazzle and glitter attending them, cause people
in general, at this moment, to forget all that prior long period of
non-success on his part in everything else but making successive
steps of personal advancement. What has happened lately in Lord
Beaconsfield's career has certainly worn a look of importance, and
it has undoubtedly embodied political power. If, as the Liberals will
have it, he is still really Will-o'-the-Wisp as much as ever, he has
managed to get hold of the sword of England, and has for some time
been playing with it to the great wonder of foreign nations. But how
has this change in his position been worked? This is the question I
want now to consider.
A Hebrew by descent, a Christian by profession, and in politics a
Tory--such is Lord Beaconsfield. This description, on the very face
of it, is a rather mixed one, and implies a singular career. It
is, however, the last item which specially fixes my attention. Mr.
Disraeli, sparse though the instances are, was not the first of his
race who changed his faith. Also, there have been, and indeed still
are, other Hebrews who have entered public life in England, and
attained conspicuousness in it. But those, while remaining nearly
invariably Jews in religion, became Liberals in politics. In fact,
Lord Beaconsfield is the only Hebrew of importance known who turned
Tory. It was--and at first sight it gives a highly religious air to
the Conservative party--indispensable to his doing this that he should
first be a Christian. Not being that he would indeed have had to
wait till the Liberals carried their Bill for the Removal of Jewish
Disabilities before he could have joined the Conservatives inside
Parliament. That circumstance, again, seems to give to his career a
curious aspect. In fact, the reflection is forced upon one so early as
this,--what an utter failure Mr. Disraeli must have been if he had
not so amazingly succeeded! To be a Hebrew-Tory left just two issues,
either to become the leader of the party or the very humblest member
of it. All the circumstances would seem to point to the latter
alternative as being the natural one, but it is the other which
has somehow come about. Mr. Disraeli has flowered into the Earl of
Beaconsfield, and has now twice been, and will remain for a little
time longer, the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Mr. Disraeli did not wait for his celebrity until he entered the House
of Commons; he gathered the renown of authorship, and I might add,
remembering the number of constituencies he tried before he was
elected, the notoriety of out-door political life, before he plucked
the fame of statesmanship. At the early age of twenty-two he was a
literary lion in London society; his only claim to this premature
publicity, though it was held to be quite sufficient, being that he
was the writer of "Vivian Grey." It is quite impossible to begin to
speak of Lord Beaconsfield in any other way than in connection with
"Vivian Grey," although he is understood not altogether to approve of
one's doing so.
All the world knows, or is supposed to know, this work. Mr. Disraeli's
own description of its object was that it was meant to paint the
career of a youth of talent in modern society, ambitious of political
celebrity. Nearly everybody has persisted in regarding it as a kind
of prospective autobiography, which the writer has ever since been
occupied in realizing. Certainly Mr. Disraeli was at that time a
youth, and a youth of talent; he must have been in society or he could
not have known a great many people who are sketched in the pages; and
it is impossible for him to deny that he was ambitious of political
celebrity. The means Vivian Grey adopted for attaining that aim
were, also, wonderfully like some of those which Mr. Disraeli himself
afterwards, by some mistake, appeared to use. On the title-page of the
book was the well-known quotation from "Ancient Pistol," to whom, in
the eyes of some people, Lord Beaconsfield at certain moments of his
career has ever had an indistinct resemblance. "The world is mine
oyster," the motto stated, either on behalf of the writer or the hero;
going on to add the rest, to the effect that either the one or the
other meant to open it. Lord Beaconsfield has assuredly done so. The
profound reflection which prompts the youthful hero of the book to his
course of action was this:--"How many a powerful noble wants only wit
to be a Minister; and what wants Vivian Grey to attain the same end?
That noble's influence." Not many years after this Mr. Disraeli was
seen in public very close to Lord Chandos. But it was not that Lord
but Lord Carabas that Vivian Grey chose for his patron, which is, no
doubt, a difference. The story most frankly relates how Vivian wins
the marquis by teaching him how to make tomahawk punch, how he wins
the marchioness by complimenting her poodle, and how during the task
he consoles himself by such thoughts as this:--"Oh, politics, thou
splendid juggle!" His settled purpose he thus sums up: "Mankind, then,
is my great game." He expressly states that he is to win this game
by the use of his "tongue," on which he states he is "able to perform
right skilfully;" but it will, he recognises, be requisite "to mix
with the herd" and to "humour their weaknesses." The chief guiding
rule which he lays down for himself in the midst of it all is, "that
he must be reckless of all consequences save his own prosperity."
There are people who still believe that in all this they see sketched
the very determinations, maxims, and rules which are to be found
deliberately carried out in Mr. Disraeli's actual career. It
is perplexing. The parallel, they assert, runs into the closest
correspondence of detail. Vivian Grey's model author is Bolingbroke;
and everybody knows that he, also, was Mr. Disraeli's. The young
man in the book shows his reverential admiration for Bolingbroke by
inventing a few passages and putting them into that personage's mouth
for the better bamboozling of Lord Carabas; and it is known that Mr.
Disraeli, at different periods of his life, has taken passages from
other people and put them into his own mouth. But I cannot pursue this
comparison or contrast, or whatever it is, farther: it will be better
seen as I go on, what grounds people have had for beholding Mr.
Disraeli in Vivian Grey. For the present it is enough to say, that it
was Mr. Disraeli, and not Vivian Grey, who wrote this book. So much as
that is quite certain. A fiction of the kind above briefly hinted at
was the first fruit of Mr. Disraeli's intellect; it was in penning
those pages of caricature of everybody who was notable in London
society that he expended the first fresh enthusiasm of his mind, and
displayed the earlier untainted innocence of his disposition. Lord
Beaconsfield has spoken of it as a book written by a boy. It was that
which made it so marvellous. This boy began with satire, and it
might have been predicted that the juvenile would develop into an
exceptional man.
It was not until 1837, when Mr. Disraeli was about thirty-three years
old, that he entered Parliament. Maidstone had the honour of finding
him his first seat, though he had been willing to represent three
other boroughs previously, if there had not been reluctance on the
part of the constituencies. High Wycombe saw his earliest appearance
on the hustings, and, indeed, it beheld him as a candidate more than
once, but never as a member. He also offered himself to Marylebone. By
some mistake it was supposed that in these instances he came forward
as a Radical. Certainly his addresses spoke of short Parliaments, the
ballot, and other measures commonly held to be Liberal. Mr. Joseph
Hume, Mr. O'Connell, and Sir F. Burdett fell under the delusion, and
wrote letters recommending him, though they afterwards withdrew them.
But when, a little later, Mr. Disraeli contested Taunton as a Tory he
explained it all. It seems that it arose out of a mystification.
From the first he really stood as an "Anti-Whig," which the Liberals
thought meant a Radical; and Mr. Disraeli, not wishing unnecessarily
to disturb their minds, had let them go on thinking so. However, there
was no doubt whatever as to his politics long before he was finally
successful at Maidstone. He had become intimate with Lord Chandos,
and had had his name toasted at banquets by the Aylesbury farmers as
a friend of the agricultural interest. The whole question is one
scarcely worth debating. I myself believe that the proper description
of Mr. Disraeli at this time was not strictly either that of Radical
or Tory; his accurate designation would have run,--"An intending
politician determined somehow to get into Parliament, and looking
eagerly for the first opening." Let me also add that, from a review
of all his tastes, I further believe that he would have preferred the
opening to offer on the Tory side, if only it had come soon enough.
The early part of Lord Beaconsfield's Parliamentary life will have
to be compressed into a very brief space. Where would be the good of
re-opening in any detail the closed story of those stale politics,
all as dead as Queen Anne herself; or where the use of treating Mr.
Disraeli's doings as very seriously forming part of those politics?
He simply availed himself of his opportunities. For all practical
purposes I might nearly skip--strange as that at first sight seems--to
his second term of office in the post of Premier. It is only during a
comparatively very few of these later years that Lord Beaconsfield has
been of real importance in our politics. Of course, he had always
much significance for his party, but it is of the nation I am speaking
here. These individual tactics have only any general interest now
through their making him successively Conservative leader, Chancellor
of the Exchequer, and Prime Minister. Nothing in this world, I should
say, would be more tedious than tracing, for example, how Mr. Disraeli
trimmed and tacked between Protection, Reciprocity, Revision of
Taxation in the interests of the farmers, and a recognition of Free
Trade. It all resulted in nothing; at least, the one single result
it has brought forth has been--Lord Beaconsfield. But if a detailed
retrospect of his lordship's earlier career would now have this dreary
aspect, it was at the time lively enough, from moment to moment, not
only on account of his debating smartness, but owing to a certain
drollery which it for a long time wore.
A Minister, plainly, must get both his glory and his power from either
domestic measures or from foreign policy. Very curiously, considering
all the facts of Lord Beaconsfield's history down to the beginning of
this last term of office, it was only to home matters that he should
have looked for any distinction. An impression seems oddly to have
popularized itself that he has a special genius for foreign affairs,
and an enormous acquaintance with diplomacy. I can only say, that five
years ago nobody knew it. The real truth is, that he had never any
opportunities before of meddling with events abroad, and that we have
been represented in these recent foreign complications by a Minister
who, to that very moment, had had less to do with diplomacy than any
English Premier for fully three-quarters of a century.
Lord Beaconsfield's mind has always been occupied with home affairs,
and his characteristic views on these come from the quarter whence it
is supposed all truth has been derived--the East. He somehow picked
them up during two years of travel in those parts, from 1829 to 1831.
About the former date, Mr. Disraeli's first brilliant but very brief
literary success was over. He had published a second part of "Vivian
Grey," which the public somehow was too busy to read; and had issued
a further work of satire, "Popanilla," which it also neglected to
buy. Mr. Disraeli immediately vanished into the Orient. When, after
visiting Jerusalem, and lingering, as he tells us, on the plains of
Troy, he returned to these shores, he brought back with him the Asian
Mystery and a whole apparatus of political and social principles. He
had also some manuscripts, which did not turn out to be of so much
importance--"Contarini Fleming" and "The Young Duke." It was the most
surprisingly fruitful voyage of discovery that any traveller ever
made. Years elapsed before all the principles were given to the world,
but Mr. Disraeli had them by him. Some of them are, indeed, hinted
at as early as 1835, when he issued his "Vindication of the English
Constitution," before he was in Parliament. Still, the system was not
divulged in its entirety until he was in the House, and had founded
what became known as the "Young England School." It is to the series
of political novels which he then wrote that we must turn for the
complete exposition of his fundamental ideas. Somehow, it has always
seemed to everybody the most natural and fitting thing in the world
that Mr. Disraeli should have corrected the inaccuracies of our
national history, and shown our social fallacies, by writing works of
fiction. The instruction with which he began the new training of the
public was this--that our history is, in all the latter part of it,
entirely wrong. In "Sybil," he thus gives his general opinion of the
way in which it has been written:--"All the great events have been
distorted, most of the important causes concealed, some of the
principal characters never appear, and all who figure are so
misunderstood and misrepresented that the result is a complete
mystification."
Assuredly if this, or anything like it, was the state of things, Mr.
Disraeli had not discovered it one moment too soon, and he was more
than justified in making it known. On all the points named in the
above summary he supplies most important rectifications. It seems that
the people of this country, in so far, that is, as they were not the
merest tools of their rulers, were under an entire mistake as to Rome
wanting any domination in England in Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth's
time; and that, strange to say, they also again fell into exactly
the same delusion at the expulsion of James I. Mr. Disraeli puts the
people who lived at those times right on these matters. But it was
a section of nobles who at the latter juncture were to blame; those,
namely, who had been enriched by the spoliation of the Church.
Mr. Disraeli, indeed, gives the very simplest explanation of the
Revolution of 1688. He states that the great Whig families were afraid
that King James meant to reapply the Church lands to the education
of the people and the support of the poor, and, in their alarm, they
brought over Prince William, who gladly came, since it was only in
England that he could reckon on being able to borrow money enough
to carry on his failing war against France. In and from that hour
happened the catastrophe which overwhelmed the English people--the
Crown became enslaved by a Whig oligarchy. What Mr. Disraeli styles
Venetian politics rushed in upon us, and these, by the aid of what
he further calls Dutch finance--that is, the incurring of a National
Debt--made foreign commerce necessary, and increased the obligation of
home industry; nearly, as might be expected, ruining everything.
All the more modern period of our history had been, he in the most
wonderful way explains, a fight to the death between these fearful
Whig nobles on the one hand, and, on the other, a struggling heroic
Crown and some enlightened patriotic Tory peers. The true incidents of
this dark and stupendous conflict had never been clearly observed
by the people in general at the time, nor had the real events been
recorded in any of the common chronicles. But, as any one will be
ready to allow, Mr. Disraeli could not be blamed for this. What was
especially to his credit was that he had himself found out that the
real ruler of England, in the era immediately preceding his own, was a
certain Major Wildman, whom nobody before Mr. Disraeli had ever in the
least suspected of wielding supreme power. I cannot stay to give the
details of this portentous disclosure, but anybody may find them
in Lord Beaconsfield's surprising pages. But in spite of superhuman
exertions in the cause of the people by Lord Shelburne, and after
him Mr. Pitt, the wicked Whigs always triumphed; the crowning act of
duplicity on their part being, in fact, the passing of the Reform Bill
of 1832.
The above is a highly condensed, but strictly accurate summary of
Lord Beaconsfield's version of our national history. Any reader by
the slightest rummaging in his own mind will know how far his own
impressions agree with it. But this is only his Lordship's instruction
of us as to facts: I must proceed to state the principles of action he
founds upon them. Here, however, I find myself brought up a little.
If the whole truth is to be spoken, this further task is more easily
announced than performed. Mr. Disraeli, in those early days, assuredly
made a great appearance of stating his political opinions; but it
almost seems as if a novel, after all, is not the best means of
expounding political doctrine. The more you attempt to lay hold of
these principles the more they somehow show a lack of exactness. But
let me try.