Several years ago, at the moment when Mr Chamberlain, having abandoned
the Liberal Party, was adored by the party which calls itself
Conservative, I looked at him one evening after a dinner in a well-known
house in Belgrave Square. He was standing, surrounded by the loveliest
and most fashionable women of society, who were offering him a homage
which must have been delightful to him. It was an interesting, if rather
comical, spectacle, and I imagine that Chamberlain, though he gave no
sign of doing so, enjoyed it extremely, and laughed at it in his sleeve.
His physiognomy indicates his character; it has no distinction, but it
is full of energy, intelligence, and resolution; it is the physiognomy
of a tradesman, not of a statesman, of a person extremely keen and
acute, obstinate and cruel, but not by any means intellectual. The
eternal eyeglass serves to hide such expression as his features might
have, and the nose, short and _retrousse_, makes plebeian lineaments
which might without this defect be sufficiently regular. In these later
times he has aged more than his years perhaps justify, and it is said
that he suffers from neuralgia and gout. He is always well dressed; 'too
well' an ex-Viceroy murmured to me that evening; and he is never seen,
as everyone knows, without an orchid in his button-hole; a flower always
culled in one of those famous orchid-houses at Highbury, which, before
his conversion, the Tory ladies longed so passionately to burn down, in
days when he was considered odious, accursed, almost an
Antichrist!--days not so very distant as the life of a nation counts.
It was always said, at the time of his apostasy, that he left the
Radicals out of jealousy of Gladstone's greater powers, and of the
magnetism which Gladstone exercised over all his colleagues; and also
because amongst the Liberals there was Lord Rosebery, then in the
fulness of promise; there was Vernon Harcourt, then extremely eloquent
and much followed; and there was also in the Home Rule Party that great
genius, known amongst men as Charles Stewart Parnell, in whom
Chamberlain felt an irresistible superiority. If this were the reason,
he must now be content, since in his present party he has no rival in
the Cabinet, no one ventures to contradict him, and he is _de facto_,
though not yet _de jure_, the head of the present Government. There have
been many men of distinction before him in the somewhat subordinate post
of Secretary of the Colonies, notably the late Lord Carnarvon, and the
first Lord Lytton; but no one has ever made of this Department the
throne of the Suprema Lex as Mr Chamberlain has contrived to do. The
fault of whom, or the fault of what, lies at the root of this
successful usurpation? Let us endeavour to discover, for the problem is
interesting; and one of its most strange phenomena is to see Robert
Cecil, Marquis of Salisbury, fallen under the dominion of the Birmingham
screw-maker.
In the whole of the Tory Party, Chamberlain has no one who opposes him,
no one who approaches him for strength of character and for acuteness of
perception, one may also add for unscrupulousness in principle and in
action. The sole person of the party who could have imposed authority
upon him by superiority of intellect would have been Lord Salisbury; but
either through force of energy on his own part, or by lack of energy on
his chief's, he has been able completely to rule and influence the
master of Hatfield, as he has succeeded in ruling and influencing all
others who sit round the ministerial table in Downing Street. A friend
of mine speaking once to me of Lord Salisbury, whom he knew intimately,
said, 'He is a fine big cannon, but he won't go off; I doubt if he will
ever go off.' It is probable that Chamberlain had the same opinion, and
therefore resolved himself to manoeuvre and fire the cannon. Anyhow,
he has acted well for himself in leaving the Radicals to ally himself
with their adversaries. If posterity blame him, and call him a turncoat,
I imagine that he is a man to whom the verdict of posterity is
absolutely indifferent. He is as 'hard as nails,' to use an appropriate
if common phrase; he is cynical and selfish; and to a politician of this
stamp, reputation in history is a matter of extreme indifference; fame
must seem to him only a carnival-masquer, noisily blowing a tin
trumpet.
Napoleon, after the campaign of Egypt, said once, 'If I die to-morrow I
shall only have half a page in a universal dictionary.' To Chamberlain,
I believe, it would be wholly indifferent to have the half page, or even
a whole page. What suffices to him is to dominate and lead other men
while he lives. He is called inordinately ambitious, but his ambition is
essentially practical, not ideal. He wishes for the loaves and fishes; a
laurel crown would be to him a useless thing, unless it represented to
him solid lucre. Would he have succeeded if he had been born half a
century earlier? I doubt it. In the first half of the past century, men
admired in the ministers who ruled them very different qualities to
those which he possesses. On the other hand, his qualities are precisely
those which beget and command fortune in the actual moment; and by this
I intend no compliment either to him or to his times.
In an epoch more courageous, more honest, more well-bred than the
present, a great Party calling itself Conservative would have repulsed
with contempt any renegade Radical, however disguised in the domino of a
Unionist. Instead, this Party has received him with open arms, nay, with
prostrate self-effacement, and worshipped him with enthusiasm; indeed,
the victory of the so-called Tories at the urns in 1895 would not have
been possible if Chamberlain had not permitted it; which he would not
have done unless he had been assured that he would enter and dominate
the Salisbury Cabinet. He has been equally happy in the occasions which
have presented themselves to him, and in his own capability in using
them; in the mediocrity of the men who combine with him, and of the men
who oppose him; in his infinite ability in influencing the first, and in
intimidating the last; he has been fortunate also in the fact that the
English people are less bigoted in religion than of old; for in an
earlier time they would have seen with horror a Unitarian entering the
Government. But his greatest good fortune of all was in the rise of the
Home Rule question at the very moment when he conceived the project of
going over to the Tory camp, which, without such an opportune reason to
give for it, would have appeared mere unworthy treachery. Without the
platform of Home Rule from which to make his _saut perilleux_, the leap
would have probably broken his neck; at any rate he could not have made
it with the certainty of being welcomed and rewarded by his new allies,
and of occupying amongst them a position far more conspicuous than he
ever occupied with the Radicals.
His favouring star has also given him the marvellous good luck that in
the past year the death of Lord Salisbury's consort has so depressed and
preoccupied the Premier that the latter has almost entirely ceased to
occupy himself with the cares of office, and the Colonial Secretary has
been given more and more completely, with every month, a free hand.
To me it has always seemed, during these later months of 1899, and
since, that the Sovereign should have bidden Lord Salisbury either
dismiss Chamberlain from office, or surrender office himself; for since
Chamberlain was allowed virtually to hold the helm of the State, he
should have been forced to accept the responsibility of the State's
navigation.
Chamberlain has frequently declared that he has not changed in anything;
that he has not been an opportunist; that the Tory Party has come to
him, and has granted all his desires, accepted all his policy; and in
this statement of his there is some truth, if not an entire truth. As
two negatives make an affirmative, perhaps two desertions make a
fidelity! It is certain that the Tory Party has forsaken its old paths
quite as much as Chamberlain has his, indeed probably far more, for
there is no conservatism whatsoever in the acts of the so-called
Conservative Cabinets, and in his there is a great deal of radicalism
still, even of socialism, though this is oddly united to a hybrid and
artificial toryism.
An eminent Conservative, a member of the Upper House, assured me the
other day that he honestly believed that Chamberlain had never done
anything which would prevent him at any time from being able,
honourably, to become the leader of the Radical Party. If this be
admitted, what are we to think of the Tory Party which can find no other
guide and saviour than this consistent Radical? Either the consistent
Radical, or the inconsistent Conservative Party, has 'ratted' in the
most barefaced manner. One or the other has been false to primal faith;
and there is only a very small band of independent thinkers who venture
to declare this. For Chamberlain has had the supreme cleverness to get
himself taken by the public as a patriot, and to oppose him, therefore,
lays open his opponent to a charge of want of patriotism. This is
extremely absurd; but it is to him enormously useful; and he knows that
the nation which he 'personally conducts' is not logical or critical. He
has taken its measure very accurately.
The new hysterical creed of 'Imperialism' doubtless gained an impetus,
Home Rule equally certainly lost, by the change of front of 'Birmingham
Joe.' But the aristocratic party was harnessed like a cab-horse to the
triumphal car of the New Unionist, and has ever since then remained thus
harnessed. In the history of English politics these passages will
contribute a chapter which will not edify the readers of the next
generation; especially if its climax be, as it will be almost certainly,
the apotheosis of Chamberlain after a campaign of aggression and
conquest conceived and carried out by him and the Yellow Press which he
inspires. It is he who is responsible for the financiers' war in South
Africa; he might call it proudly, '_my war_,' as the Empress Eugenie
called the war with Germany, '_ma guerre a moi_.' If he had never been
anything higher than Mayor of Birmingham the farmers of the Transvaal
would still be ploughing their lands in peace.
The war was desired, conceived, and imposed on his colleagues by the
Minister of the Colonies, without any appeal to or sanction of
Parliament. He denies this, but it is clearly proved by his famous
speech at Highbury and by the text of his irritating and provocative
despatches; and it was only when that war was begun, beyond all
possibility of alteration, that the Prime Minister, after long silence,
accepted the responsibility of it in his speech at the Guildhall. Lord
Salisbury, in that Mansion House speech, of course, denied the
allegation then made by the President of the French Chamber of Commerce
as to the motives and causes of the war; but no one who has attentively
followed the actions and expressions of Chamberlain before and after the
Jameson Raid, and his conduct at the enquiry held upon the conduct
therein of Cecil Rhodes, can for a moment doubt the intimate relations
which united the Colonial Secretary and the founder of Rhodesia and the
Chartered.
Chamberlain, who, at the close of the Committee of Enquiry of 1897, had,
in common with other signatories, signed a statement that Rhodes was
culpable, declared a few days later in the House of Commons that Rhodes
was a man whose honour was untarnished! This, more than any other fact,
shows to what depths it is now possible to descend in English politics.
Certainly, in the time of Peel or of the earlier Governments of
Gladstone, a Minister capable of such conduct would have lost alike
office and seat in Parliament. Chamberlain, living in times of more
elastic morality, did not lose even a single follower.
'Joseph Chamberlain has brought into English politics the habits and
criterions of a commercial traveller,' an eminent Englishman wrote to me
the other day. 'And of a commercial traveller not burdened by scruples.'
Now, the man of trade may have considerable qualities, great
intelligence, and great enterprise, but his mind and his acts are those
of a tradesman, not those of a gentleman, or of a statesman. Chamberlain
boasted in public one day that he belonged to the Party of Gentlemen;
now no gentleman would ever have so expressed himself.
The tradesman inevitably brings into public life the traditions of his
counting-house; those traditions are to try, invariably, _de rouler les
autres_. Now public life should be something more than, and very
different to, the pursuit of speculation; and its aims should be higher
than the mere desire to trick a rival and send shares up or down. True,
statecraft in our day is chiefly 'land-grabbing' and an effort to bridle
democracy by taxation. Still it is a different art to the art of the
merchant's or manufacturer's office. When Chamberlain endeavours to be
diplomatic he becomes inane: a person (who must have been very _naif_)
wrote to him the other day to ask if it were true that it had always
been his wish and intention to make war on the Boers, he replied to this
simpleton of a correspondent, 'I fear there will always be those who
will attribute to me the worst motives. Tennyson has said that every man
attributes to another the motives which would actuate himself'--and that
was all! I imagine he thought this reply very ingenious and tactful.
He is no doubt adroit and ingenious in his management of men; but his
cunning does not wear the smiling and elegant mask which a politician's
should do. He does not possess the talent most necessary of all to a
politician, of taking refuge in exquisitely-turned phrases which seem to
reveal everything and reveal nothing. His voice is flexible and fine,
his deliverance imposes, but his statements are frequently impudently
cynical, and it is easy to discern that he holds men very cheap, and in
no way hesitates to use, to abuse, and to deceive them. He is never
really frank in his replies, though he affects candour; he often
approaches brutality; he loses his temper easily; and the spectator sees
by the nerves of his face and the movements of his limbs that he has not
the self-control and _sang-froid_, which are natural gifts of the man of
race and breeding. But despite these defects and these offences he has
conquered both society and his colleagues, and one sees scholarly and
refined men like Mr Arthur Balfour hopelessly and helplessly hypnotised
by him. He has taken with him into Downing Street the manners and the
methods with which he governed the town councillors of Birmingham; and
these succeed equally well in his altered atmosphere. 'We are all
horribly afraid of him,' one of his colleagues said the other day to a
friend of mine; probably because he is the only man amongst them
ill-bred and ill-tempered enough to be disagreeable and dangerous. In
earlier days, in those of Derby, of Palmerston, of Melbourne,
Westminster would not have tolerated him for a single session; in times
when orators quoting Greek or Latin verse were sure to be understood by
either House, when classical allusions were caught flying, when accuracy
and consistency were esteemed necessary in debate, the speeches of the
present Colonial Secretary would not have been thought tolerable.
But the Great Britain of Lord Grey, of Canning, of Sydney Herbert, of
the Rupert of Debate, of the first half of Gladstone's political life is
dead and gone; and Disraeli has passed over its grave, of which he was
the digger. Disraeli and his influence have dominated and penetrated
English political and social atmospheres, in their highest strata, as a
contagious fever enters and reigns in a district. It was a strange
phenomenon, the Venetian Jew leading by the leash the entire English
aristocracies. To trace the manifold reasons which enabled a man so
alien and antipathetic to the British nation in blood, in manner, in
appearance, in opinions, to dominate that nation so completely would
require many folio volumes; for there has never been anything more
singular, or more due to innumerable causes, all converging to one end.
No spectacle is more extraordinary than the power which Disraeli
acquired after being laughed down by everyone; acquired, and wields
still, so many years after his death. I think that his most potent
philtre lay in his flattery. He flattered his Sovereign, his party, and
the nation itself, with all the florid eloquence and subtle suggestion
of which he was so admirable a master. His famous 'Peace with Honour'
was an exact sample of his style; the peace was brittle and the honour
was dubious, but his manner of presenting them was so magnificent that
they were received as though they were gifts from heaven. An able writer
has said that the English are deficient in the power of observation, and
I believe it is true. They do not examine critically before committing
themselves to embrace a cause or an idea; they can easily be led into
any extravagance which humours their national humour. Disraeli played on
this weakness. He had himself a passion for advertisement, for varnish
and gilding, and florid decoration; all his speeches and all his
romances are spoilt by these; and he succeeded in inoculating with this
taste the English character to which it was naturally alien.
The first sign of the nation having been so inoculated was given when it
allowed Disraeli to call the Queen of England the Empress of India, and
change an ancient monarchy into a _parvenu_ empire. The first step
taken, the rest followed; the mania of what is considered aggrandisement
has acquired possession of the national life, and has made of a nation,
naturally noble and great, a swollen boaster, bawling of its millions,
its might, and its superiority, although surely vanity is no more
admirable in a country than in an individual? This alteration in the
British temper, which was primarily the work of Disraeli and of the new
nobility (chiefly commercial and largely Jewish), which was called into
being, prepared the ground for Chamberlain's Imperialism, a much coarser
and greedier thing, without any of the veil of ideality which Disraeli
lent to his creeds. In the time of Disraeli, the temper of England was
still largely coloured by an old aristocracy, retaining, with the
prejudices, the principles of gentlemen; now, the financiers and the
speculators make the old aristocracy dance to whatever music they
choose, and riches are the sole thing sought.
Every Ministry in England, on going out of office, leaves its contingent
of ennobled tradesmen, raised to the peerage solely for their money, and
for the way in which they have spent their money for the Party. In this
way the so-called Conservative leaders possess a solid phalanx of
supporters whose wealth makes them irresistible in the country, and who
practically send up to Westminster any men they choose. These great
_richards_ find Joseph Chamberlain more to their taste than Lord
Salisbury, who is too scholarly, too satirical, and too great a
gentleman for them; his health is failing, he speaks rarely, there is a
cynical contempt in his occasional speeches which cuts the _novi
homines_ like a whip. It is impossible that a man of Lord Salisbury's
pride of character and acuteness of intellect should much longer consent
to be the mere echo of his Colonial Secretary. There is every sign that
his retirement will be followed by the accession to the premiership of
Chamberlain. For months past the Imperialist Press, and notably that
journal which is the property of the Chancellor of the Primrose League,
has been insinuating that no one except Chamberlain is capable of rising
to the height required by advanced Imperialism: and what this journal
says is certain to be echoed by that party, which, with an audacity
almost sublime, still calls itself Conservative.
Chamberlain has continued the work of Disraeli, but he has done so by
vulgarising and brutalising it. The best qualities of the English
character are, under his influence, lost in a blatant self-admiration.
Its sense of morality is blunted; its leaders accept any denial or
excuse of the Minister of the Colonies, and he is applauded when, as an
independent Member said a few weeks since in the House of Commons, he
should be called to the bar of the House. Parliament, and the nation
after it, accept the suppression of despatches and telegrams, the use
and abuse of censorship, the denial and interruption of free speech, the
closure of debate at the moment when its continuance would be
inconvenient to ministers: all things previously intolerable to the
English people. Chamberlain has educated them into the abandonment of
all their ancient virtues. If, as he is almost certain to do if he live,
he become before long the Premier of England, he will do immeasurable
harm both to Great Britain and the world.
The reign of Queen Victoria has been a long succession of wars; few, if
any, were either necessary or inevitable. But not one of these has been
a war of defence at home; the English citizen and peasant know nothing
in their own land of the horrors of war; they have never seen its
desolation and its horrors; they have never seen their little children
crushed under the hoofs and wheels of a battery, their homes set on fire
by a shell, their sons starving, their fields devastated, their towns
beleaguered. They have never seen a battle, a siege, a trench full of
dead; therefore they do not know the hideous suffering which they
inflict when they let loose, in pride of spirit and lightness of heart
and triumphant vanity, the fiends of war upon a distant people and a
far-off land. This is the excuse of a large portion of the nation for
the present war; but it is at the same time the strongest condemnation
of those who preach war to it as a divine creed, and appeal to its most
brutal instincts, and abuse its ignorance to lead it into crime. The
victories now gained will be dearly bought, for they, and the national
madness they produce, will certainly set Joseph Chamberlain in the seat
of supreme power, and no one will have the courage to restrain his hand.
Bellona has served him so well now, she will be his chosen handmaid in
the future.[9]
[Footnote 9: It is possible, though little to be hoped, that the
complications in China (which any far-sighted statesman would have
foreseen and provided for) may open the eyes of the British people to
the terribly heavy bill which they will pay, eventually, for the luxury
of the Chamberlain Cabinet.]