very different matter from knowing the House of Commons. Indeed, the
two kinds of knowledge are in a measure incompatible. Men who enter
Parliament soon begin to forget that it is not, in the last resort,
Parliament that governs, but the people. Absorbed in the daily
contests of their Chamber, they over-estimate the importance of those
contests. They come to think that Parliament is in fact what it is in
theory, a microcosm of the nation, and that opinion inside is sure to
reflect the opinion outside. When they are in a minority they are
depressed; when they are in a majority they fancy that all is well,
forgetting their masters out-of-doors. This tendency is aggravated by
the fact that the English Parliament meets in the capital, where the
rich and luxurious congregate and give their tone to society. The
House of Commons, though many of its members belong to the middle
class by origin, belongs practically to the upper class by sympathy,
and is prone to believe that what it hears every evening at dinners or
receptions is what the country is thinking. A member of the House of
Commons is, therefore, ill-placed for feeling the pulse of the nation,
and in order to do so must know what is being said over the country,
and must frequently visit or communicate with his constituents. If
this difficulty is experienced by an ordinary private member, it is
greater for a minister whose time is filled by official duties, or for
a leader of Opposition, who has to be constantly thinking of his
tactics in the House. In Disraeli's case there was a keenness of
observation and discernment far beyond the common. But he was under
the disadvantages of not being really an Englishman, and of having
never lived among the people.[10] The detachment I have already
referred to tended to weaken his power of judging popular sentiment,
and appraising at their true value the various tendencies that sway
and divide a nation so complex as the English. Early in life he had
formed theories about the relations of the different classes of
English society--nobility, gentry, capitalists, workmen, peasantry,
and the middle classes--theories which were far from containing the
whole truth; and he adhered to them even when the changes of half a
century had made them less true. He had a great aversion, not to say
contempt, for Puritanism, and for the Dissenters among whom it chiefly
holds its ground, and pleased himself with the notion that the
extension of the suffrage which he carried in 1867 had destroyed their
political power. The Conservative victory at the election of 1874
confirmed him in this belief, and made him also think that the working
classes were ready to follow the lead of the rich. He perceived that
the Liberal ministry of 1868-74 had offended certain influential
sections by appearing too demiss or too unenterprising in foreign
affairs, and fancied that the bulk of the nation would be dazzled by a
warlike mien, and an active, even aggressive, foreign policy. Such a
policy was congenial to his own ideas, and to the society that
surrounded him. It was applauded by some largely circulated newspapers
which had previously been unfriendly to the Tory party. Thus he was
more surprised than any other man of similar experience to find the
nation sending up a larger majority against him in 1880 than it had
sent up for him in 1874. This was the most striking instance of his
miscalculation. But he had all through his career an imperfect
comprehension of the English people. Individuals, or even an assembly,
may be understood by dint of close and long-continued observation; but
to understand a whole nation, one must also have sympathy, and this
his circumstances, not less than his character, had denied him.
It was partly the same defect that prevented him from mastering the
general politics of Europe. There is a sense in which no single man
can pretend to understand Europe. Bismarck himself did not. The
problem is too vast, the facts to be known too numerous, the
undercurrents too varying. One can speak only of more or less. If
Europe had been in his time what it was a century before, Disraeli
would have had a far better chance of being fit to become what it was
probably his dearest wish to become--its guide and arbiter. He would
have taken the measure of the princes and ministers with whom he had
to deal, would have seen and adroitly played on their weaknesses. His
novels show how often he had revolved diplomatic situations in his
mind, and reflected on the way of handling them. Foreign diplomatists
are agreed that at the Congress of Berlin he played his part to
admiration, spoke seldom, but spoke always to the point and with
dignity, had a perfect conception of what he meant to secure, and of
the means he must employ to secure it, never haggled over details or
betrayed any eagerness to win support, never wavered in his demands,
even when they seemed to lead straight to war. Dealing with
individuals, who represented material forces which he had gauged, he
was perfectly at home, and deserved the praise he obtained from
Bismarck, who, comparing him with other eminent figures at the
Congress, is reported to have said, bluntly but heartily, "Der alte
Jude, das ist der Mann."[11] But to know what the condition of
South-Eastern Europe really was, and understand how best to settle its
troubles, was a far more difficult task, and Disraeli possessed
neither the knowledge nor the insight required. In the Europe of
to-day, peoples count for more than the wills of individual rulers:
one must comprehend the passions and sympathies of peoples if one is
to forecast the future. This he seldom cared to do. He did not realise
the part and the power of moral forces. Down to the outbreak of the
American Civil War he maintained that the question between the North
and the South was mainly a fiscal question between the Protectionist
interests of the one and the Free Trade interests of the other. He
always treated with contempt the national movement in Italy. He made
no secret in the days before 1859 of his good-will to Austria and of
his liking for Louis Napoleon--a man inferior to him in ability and in
courage, but to whose character his own had some affinities. In that
elaborate study of Sir Robert Peel's character,[12] which is one of
Disraeli's best literary performances, he observes that Peel "was
destitute of imagination, and wanting imagination he wanted
prescience." True it is that imagination is necessary for prescience,
but imagination is not enough to give prescience. It may even be a
snare.
Disraeli's imagination, his fondness for theories, and disposition
rather to cling to them than to study and interpret facts, made him
the victim of his own preconceived ideas, as his indolence deterred
him from following the march of change and noting how different things
were in the 'seventies from what they had been in the 'thirties. Mr.
Gladstone said to me in 1876, "Disraeli's two leading ideas in foreign
policy have always been the maintenance of the temporal power of the
Pope, and the maintenance of the power of the Sultan." Unable to save
the one, he clung to the hope of saving the other. He was possessed by
the notion, seductive to a dreamy mind, that all the disturbances of
Europe arose from the action of secret societies; and when the Eastern
Question was in 1875 re-opened by the insurrection in Herzegovina,
followed by the war of Servia against the Turks, he explained the
event in a famous speech by saying, "The secret societies of Europe
have declared war against Turkey"--the fact being that the societies
which in Russia were promoting the Servian war were public societies,
openly collecting subscriptions, while those secret "social
democratic" societies of which we have since heard so much were
strongly opposed to the interference of Russia, and those other secret
societies in the rest of Europe, wherein Poles and Italians have
played a leading part, were, if not hostile, at any rate quite
indifferent to the movement among the Eastern Christians.
Against these errors there must be set several cases in which he
showed profound discernment. In 1843 and 1844 he delivered, in debates
on the condition of Ireland, speeches which then constituted and long
remained the most penetrating and concise diagnosis of the troubles of
that country ever addressed to Parliament. Ireland has, he said, a
starving peasantry, an alien church, and an absentee aristocracy, and
he went on to add that the function of statesmanship was to cure by
peaceful and constitutional methods ills which in other countries had
usually induced, and been removed by, revolution. During the American
Civil War of 1861-65, Disraeli was the only leading statesman on his
own side of politics who did not embrace and applaud the cause of the
South. Whether this arose from a caution that would not commit itself
where it recognised ignorance, or from a perception of the superior
strength of the Northern States (a perception which whoever visits the
South even to-day is astonished that so few people in Europe should
have had), it is not easy to decide; but whatever the cause, the fact
is an evidence of his prudence or sagacity all the more weighty
because Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell, and Mr. Gladstone, as well as
Lord Derby and Sir Hugh Cairns, had each of them expressed more or
less sympathy with, or belief in, the success of the Southern cause.
The most striking instance, however, of Disraeli's insight was his
perception that an extension of the suffrage would not necessarily
injure, and might end by strengthening, the Tory party. The Act of
1867 was described at the time as "a leap in the dark." But
Disraeli's eyes had pierced the darkness. For half a century
politicians had assumed that the masses of the people were and would
remain under the Liberal banner. Even as late as 1872 it was thought
on Liberal platforms a good joke to say of some opinion that it might
do for Conservative working men, if there were any. Disraeli had, long
before 1867, seen deeper, and though his youthful fancies that the
monarchy might be revived as an effective force, and that "the
peasantry" would follow with mediaeval reverence the lead of the landed
gentry, proved illusory, he was right in discerning that wealth and
social influence would in parliamentary elections count for more among
the masses than the traditions of constitutional Whiggism or the
dogmas of abstract Radicalism.
In estimating his statesmanship as a whole, one must give due weight
to the fact that it impressed many publicists abroad. No English
minister had for a long time past so fascinated observers in Germany
and Austria. Supposing that under the long reign of Liberalism
Englishmen had ceased to care for foreign politics, they looked on him
as the man who had given back to Britain her old European position,
and attributed to him a breadth of design, a grasp and a foresight
such as men had revered in Lord Chatham, greatest in the short list of
ministers who have raised the fame of England abroad. I remember
seeing in a Conservative club, about 1880, a large photograph of Lord
Beaconsfield, wearing the well-known look of mysterious fixity, under
which is inscribed the line of Homer: "He alone is wise: the rest are
fleeting shadows."[13] It was a happy idea to go for a motto to the
favourite poet of his rival, as it was an unhappy chance to associate
the wisdom ascribed to Disraeli with his policy in the Turkish East
and in Afghanistan, a policy now universally admitted to have been
unwise and unfortunate.[14] But whatever may be thought of the
appropriateness of the motto, the fact remains that this was the
belief he succeeded in inspiring. He did it by virtue of those very
gifts which sometimes brought him into trouble--his taste for large
and imposing theories, his power of clothing them in vague and solemn
language, his persistent faith in them. He came, by long posing, to
impose upon himself and to believe in his own profundity. Few people
could judge whether his ideas of imperial policy were sound and
feasible; but every one saw that he had theories, and many fell under
the spell which a grandiose imagination can exercise. It is chiefly
this gift, coupled with his indomitable tenacity, which lifts him out
of the line of mere party leaders. If he failed to see how much the
English are sometimes moved by compassion, he did see that it may be
worth while to play to their imagination.
We may now ask again the question asked at first: How did a man,
whatever his natural gifts, who was weighted in his course by such
disadvantages as Disraeli's, by his Jewish origin, by the escapades of
his early career, by the want of confidence which his habitual
cynicism inspired, by the visionary nature of so many of his
views,--how did he, in a conservative and aristocratic country like
England, triumph over so many prejudices and enmities, and raise
himself to be the head of the Conservative and aristocratic party, the
trusted counsellor of the Crown, the ruler, almost the dictator, of a
free people?
However high be the estimate formed of Disraeli's gifts, secondary
causes must have been at work to enable him to overcome the obstacles
that blocked his path. The ancients were not wrong in ascribing to
Fortune a great share in human affairs. Now, among the secondary
causes of success, that "general minister and leader set over worldly
splendours," as Dante calls her,[15] played no insignificant part. One
of these causes lay in the nature of the party to which he belonged.
The Tory party of the years between 1848 and 1865 contained a
comparatively small number of able men. When J. S. Mill once called it
the stupid party, it did not repudiate the name, but pointed to its
cohesion and its resolution as showing how many things besides mere
talent go to make political greatness. A man of shining gifts had
within its ranks few competitors; and this was signally the case
immediately after Peel's defection. That statesman had carried off
with him the intellectual flower of the Conservatives. Those who were
left behind to form the Protectionist Opposition in the House of
Commons were broad-acred squires, of solid character but slender
capacity. Through this heavy atmosphere Mr. Disraeli rose like a
balloon. Being practically the only member of his party in the Commons
with either strategical or debating power, he became indispensable,
and soon established a supremacy which years of patient labour might
not have given him in a rivalry with the distinguished band who
surrounded Peel. During the twenty years that followed the great Tory
schism of 1846 no man arose in the Tory ranks capable of disputing his
throne. The conspiracies hatched against him might well have prospered
could a candidate for the leadership have been found capable of
crossing swords with the chieftain in possession. Fortune, true to her
nursling, suffered none such to appear.
Another favouring influence not understood outside England was to be
found in the character of the party he led. In his day the Tories,
being the party of the property-holders, and having not to advance but
to stand still, not to propose changes but to resist them, having
bonds of interest as well as of sentiment to draw them close together,
possessed a cohesion, a loyalty to their chiefs, a tenacious corporate
spirit, far exceeding what was to be found among their adversaries,
who were usually divided into a moderate or Whig and an advanced or
Radical section. He who established himself as the Tory leader was
presently followed by the rank and file with a devotion, an
unquestioning submission and confidence, which placed his character
and doctrines under the aegis of the party, and enforced loyalty upon
parliamentary malcontents. This corporate spirit was of infinite value
to Disraeli. The historical past of the great Tory party, its
associations, the social consideration which it enjoys, all went to
ennoble his position and efface the remembrance of the less creditable
parts of his career. And in the later days of his reign, when no one
disputed his supremacy, every Tory was, as a matter of course, his
advocate and admirer, and resented assaults on him as insults to the
party. When a man excites hatred by his words or deeds, attacks on his
character are an inevitable relief to overcharged feelings.
Technically regarded, they are not good politics. Misrepresentation
sometimes succeeds; vituperation seldom. Let a man be personally
untrustworthy or dangerous, still, it is only his own words that
damage him, at least in England and America. Even his own words,
however discrediting, even his acts, however culpable, may, if they
belong to a past unfamiliar to the voter of to-day, tell little,
perhaps too little, on the voter's mind when they are brought up
against him. The average citizen has a short memory, and thinks that
the dead may be allowed to bury their dead.
Let it be further noted that Disraeli's career coincided with a
significant change in English politics, a change partly in the temper
of the nation, partly in the balance of voting power. For thirty years
after the Reform Act of 1832, not only had the middle classes
constituted the majority of the electors, but the social influence of
the great Whig families and the intellectual influence of the economic
school of Cobden had been potent factors. These forces were, in the
later part of Disraeli's life, tending to decline. The working-class
vote was vastly increased in 1867. The old Whig light gradually paled,
and many of the Whig magnates, obeying class sympathies rather than
party traditions, drifted slowly into Toryism. A generation arose
which had not seen the Free Trade struggle, or had forgotten the Free
Trade arguments, and which was attracted by ideals other than those
which Cobden had preached. The grievances which had made men
reformers had been largely removed. The battle of liberty and
nationality in Continental Europe had been in the main won, and
Englishmen had lost the enthusiasm for freedom which had fired them in
the days when the memory of their own struggle against the Crown and
the oligarchy was still fresh. With none of these changes had
Disraeli's personal action much to do, but they all enured to the
benefit of his party, they all swelled the tide which bore him into
office in 1874.
Finally, he had the great advantage of living long. Many a statesman
has died at fifty, and passed from the world's memory, who might have
become a figure in history with twenty years more of life. Had
Disraeli's career closed in 1854, he would have been remembered as a
parliamentary gladiator, who had produced a few incisive speeches, a
crude Budget, and some brilliant social and political sketches. The
stronger parts of his character might have remained unknown. True it
is that a man must have greatness in order to stand the test of long
life. Some are found out, like Louis Napoleon. Some lose their balance
and therewith their influence, like Lord Brougham. Some cease to grow
or learn, and if a statesman is not better at sixty than he was at
thirty, he is worse. Some jog heavily on, like Metternich, or stiffen
into arbitrary doctrinaires, like Guizot. Disraeli did not merely
stand the test, he gained immensely by it. He gained by rising into a
position where his strength could show itself. He gained also by so
impressing his individuality upon people as to make them accept it as
an ultimate fact, till at length they came, not so much to blame him
for what he did in accord with his established reputation, as rather
to relish and enter into the humour of his character. As they
unconsciously took to judging him by a standard different from that
which they applied to ordinary Englishmen, they hardly complained of
deflections from veracity which would have seemed grave in other
persons. He had given notice that he was not like other men, that his
words must not be taken in their natural sense, that he was to be
regarded as the skilful player of a great game, the consummate actor
in a great part. And, once more, he gained by the many years during
which he had opportunities of displaying his fortitude, patience,
constancy under defeat, unwavering self-confidence--gifts rarer than
mere intellectual power, gifts that deserve the influence they bestow.
Nothing so fascinates mankind as to see a man equal to every fortune,
unshaken by reverses, indifferent to personal abuse, maintaining a
long combat against apparently hopeless odds with the sharpest weapons
and a smiling face. His followers fancy he must have hidden resources
of wisdom as well as of courage. When some of his predictions come
true, and the turning tide of popular feeling begins to bear them
toward power, they believe that he has been all along right and the
rest of the world wrong. When victory at last settles on his crest,
even his enemies can hardly help applauding a reward which seems so
amply earned. It was by this quality, more perhaps than by anything
else, by this serene surface with fathomless depths below, that he
laid his spell upon the imagination of observers in Continental
Europe, and received at his death a sort of canonisation from a large
section of the English people.
What will posterity think of him, and by what will he be remembered?
The glamour has already passed away, and to few of those who on the
19th of April deck his statue with flowers is he more than a name.
Parliamentary fame is fleeting: the memory of parliamentary conflicts
soon grows dim and dull. Posterity fixes a man's place in history by
asking not how many tongues buzzed about him in his lifetime, but how
great a factor he was in the changes of the world, that is, how far
different things would have been twenty or fifty years after his death
if he had never lived. Tried by this standard, the results upon the
course of events of Disraeli's personal action are not numerous,
though some of them may be deemed momentous. He was an adroit
parliamentary tactician who held his followers together through a
difficult time. By helping to keep the Peelites from rejoining their
old party, he gave that party a colour different from the sober hues
which it had worn during the leadership of Peel. He became the founder
of what has in later days been called Tory democracy, winning over a
large section of the humbler classes to the banner under which the
majority of the wealthy and the holders of vested interests already
stood arrayed. He saved for the Turkish Empire a part of its
territories, yet in doing so merely prolonged for a little the death
agony of Turkish power. Though it cannot be said that he conferred any
benefit on India or the Colonies, he certainly stimulated the imperial
instincts of Englishmen. He had occasional flashes of insight, as when
in 1843 he perceived exactly what Ireland needed, and at least one
brilliant flash of foresight when he predicted that a wide extension
of the suffrage would bring no evil to the Tory party. Yet in the case
of Ireland he did nothing, when the chance came to him, to give effect
to the judgment which he had formed, while in the case of the suffrage
he did but follow up and carry into effect an impulse given by others.
The Franchise Act of 1867 is perhaps the only part of his policy which
has, by hastening a change that induced other changes, permanently
affected the course of events; and it remains the chief monument of
his parliamentary skill. There was nothing in his career to set the
example of a lofty soul or a noble purpose. He did not raise, he may
even have lowered, the tone of English public life.