Chapter VI (5)

I will not dwell upon that question. The gentleman who is principally concerned in it is at this moment, as you know, stricken down with affliction, and I am unwilling to enter here into any considerable discussion of the case which he is urging upon the public; but I say that we have territory enough in India; and if we have not troubles enough there, if we have not difficulties enough in China, if we have not taxation enough, by all means gratify your wishes for more; but I hope that whatever may be the shortcomings of the government with regard to any other questions in which we are all interested—and may they be few!—they will shut their eyes, they will turn their backs obstinately from adding in this mode, or in any mode, to the English possessions in the East. I suppose that if any ingenious person were to prepare a large map of the world, as far as it is known, and were to mark upon it, in any color that he liked, the spots where Englishmen have fought and English blood has been poured forth, and the treasures of English industry squandered, scarcely a country, scarcely a province of the vast expanse of the habitable globe, would be thus undistinguished.

Perhaps there are in this room, I am sure there are in the country, many persons who hold a superstitious traditionary belief that, somehow or other, our vast trade is to be attributed to what we have done in this way, that it is thus we have opened markets and advanced commerce, that English greatness depends upon the extent of English conquests and English military renown. But I am inclined to think that, with the exception of Australia, there is not a single dependency of the crown which, if we come to reckon what it has cost in war and protection, would not be found to be a positive loss to the people of this country. Take the United States, with which we have such an enormous and constantly increasing trade. The wise statesmen of the last generation, men whom your school histories tell you were statesmen, serving under a monarch who they tell you was a patriotic monarch, spent 130,000,000_l._ of the fruits of the industry of the people in a vain—happily a vain—endeavor to retain the colonies of the United States in subjection to the monarchy of England.

Add up the interest of that 130,000,000_l._ for all this time, and how long do you think it will be before there will be a profit on the trade with the United States which will repay the enormous sum we invested in a war to retain those States as colonies of this empire? It never will be paid off. Wherever you turn, you will find that the opening of markets, developing of new countries, introducing cotton cloth with cannon balls, are vain, foolish, and wretched excuses for wars, and ought not to be listened to for a moment by any man who understands the multiplication table, or who can do the simplest sum in arithmetic.

Since the “Glorious Revolution,” since the enthronization of the great Norman territorial families, they have spent in wars, and we have worked for, about 2,000,000,000_l._ The interest on that is 100,000,000_l._ per annum, which alone, to say nothing of the principal sum, is three or four times as much as the whole amount of your annual export trade from that time to this.[37]

Therefore, if war has provided you with a trade, it has been at an enormous cost; but I think it is by no means doubtful that your trade would have been no less in amount and no less profitable, had peace and justice been inscribed on your flag instead of conquest and the love of military renown. But even in this year, 1858—we have got a long way into the century,—we find that within the last seven years our public debt has greatly increased. Whatever be the increase of our population, of our machinery, of our industry, of our wealth, still our national debt goes on increasing.[38] Although we have not a foot more territory to conserve, or an enemy in the world who dreams of attacking us, we find that our annual military expenses during the last twenty years have risen from 12,000,000_l._ to 22,000,000_l._

Some people believe that it is a good thing to pay a great revenue to the state. Even so eminent a man as Lord John Russell is not without a delusion of this sort. Lord John Russell, as you have heard, while speaking of me in flattering and friendly terms, says he is unfortunately obliged to differ from me frequently; therefore, I suppose there is no particular harm in my saying that I am sometimes obliged to differ from him. Some time ago he was a great star in the northern hemisphere, shining, not with unaccustomed, but with his usual brilliancy at Liverpool. He made a speech, in which there was a great deal to be admired, to a meeting composed, it was said, to a great extent of working men; and in it he stimulated them to a feeling of pride in the greatness of their country, and in being citizens of a state which enjoyed a revenue of 100,000,000_l._ a year, which included the revenues of the United Kingdom and of British India. But I think it would have been far more to the purpose if he could have congratulated the working men of Liverpool on this vast empire being conducted in an orderly manner, on its laws being well administered and well obeyed, its shores sufficiently defended, its people prosperous and happy, on a revenue of 20,000,000_l._ The state indeed, of which Lord John Russell is a part, may enjoy a revenue of 100,000,000_l._, but I am afraid the working men can only be said to enjoy it in the sense in which men not very choice in their expressions say that for a long time they have enjoyed very bad health.

I am prepared to admit that it is a subject of congratulation that there is a people so great, so free, and so industrious that it can produce a sufficient income out of which 100,000,000_l._ a year, if need absolutely were, could be spared for some great and noble object; but it is not a thing to be proud of that our government should require us to pay that enormous sum for the simple purposes of government and defence.

Nothing can by any possibility tend more to the corruption of a government than enormous revenues. We have heard lately of instances of certain joint-stock institutions with very great capital collapsing suddenly, bringing disgrace upon their managers and ruin upon hundreds of families. A great deal of that has arisen, not so much from intentional fraud as from the fact that weak and incapable men have found themselves tumbling about in an ocean of bank-notes and gold, and they appear to have lost all sight of where it came from, to whom it belonged, and whether it was possible by any maladministration ever to come to an end of it. That is absolutely what is done by governments. You have read in the papers lately some accounts of the proceedings before a commission appointed to inquire into alleged maladministration with reference to the supply of clothing to the army, but if anybody had said any thing in the time of the late government about any such maladministration, there is not one of those great statesmen, of whom we are told we ought always to speak with so much reverence, who would not have got up and declared that nothing could be more admirable than the system of book-keeping at Weedon, nothing more economical than the manner in which the War Department spent the money provided by public taxation. But we know that it is not so. I have heard a gentleman—one who is as competent as any man in England to give an opinion about it—a man of business, and not surpassed by any one as a man of business, declare, after a long examination of the details of the question, that he would undertake to do everything that is done not only for the defence of the country, but for many other things which are done by your navy, and which are not necessary for that purpose, for half the annual cost that is voted in the estimates.

I think the expenditure of these vast sums, and especially of those which we spend for military purposes, leads us to adopt a defiant and insolent tone towards foreign countries. We have the freest press in Europe, and the freest platform in Europe, but every man who writes an article in a newspaper, and every man who stands on a platform, ought to do it under a solemn sense of responsibility. Every word he writes, every word I utter, passes with a rapidity of which our forefathers were utterly ignorant, to the very ends of the earth; the words become things and acts, and they produce on the minds of other nations effects which a man may never have intended. Take a recent case; take the case of France. I am not expected to defend, and I shall certainly not attack, the present government of France.

The instant that it appeared in its present shape the minister of England conducting your foreign affairs, speaking ostensibly for the cabinet, for his sovereign, and for the English nation, offered his congratulations, and the support of England was at once accorded to the re-created French empire.[39] Soon after this an intimate alliance was entered into between the Queen of England, through her Ministers, and the Emperor of the French.

I am not about to defend the policy which flowed from that alliance, nor shall I take up your time by making any attack upon it. An alliance was entered into and a war was entered into. English and French soldiers fought on the same field, and they suffered, I fear, from the same neglect. They now lie buried on the bleak heights of the Crimea, and except by their mothers, who do not soon forget their children, I suppose they are mostly forgotten. I have never heard it suggested that the French Government did not behave with the most perfect honor to this government and to this country all through these grave transactions; but I have heard it stated by those who most know, that nothing could be more honorable, nothing more just, than the conduct of the French Emperor to this government throughout the whole of that struggle. More recently, when the war in China was begun by a government which I have condemned and denounced in the House of Commons, the Emperor of the French sent his ships and troops to co-operate with us, but I never heard that any thing was done there to create a suspicion of a feeling of hostility on his part toward us. The Emperor of the French came to London, and some of those powerful organs of the press that have since taken the line of which I am complaining, did all but invite the people of London to prostrate themselves under the wheels of the chariot which conveyed along our streets the revived monarchy of France. The Queen of England went to Paris, and was she not received there with as much affection and as much respect as her high position and her honorable character entitled her to?

What has occurred since? If there was a momentary unpleasantness, I am quite sure every impartial man will agree that, under the peculiarly irritating circumstances of the time there was at least as much forbearance shown on one side of the Channel as on the other. Then we have had much said lately about a naval fortification recently completed in France, which has been more than one hundred years in progress, and which was not devised by the present Emperor of the French.

For one hundred years great sums had been spent on it, and at last, like every other great work, it was brought to an end. The English Queen and others were invited over, and many went who were not invited. And yet in all this we are told that there is something to create extreme alarm and suspicion; we, who never fortified any places; we, who have not a greater than Sebastopol at Gibraltar; we who have not an impregnable fortress at Malta, who have not spent the fortune of a nation almost in the Ionian Islands, and who are doing nothing at Alderney; we are to take offence at the fortifications of Cherbourg! There are few persons who at some time or other have not been brought into contact with a poor unhappy fellow-creature who has some peculiar delusion or suspicion pressing on his mind. I recollect a friend of mine going down from Derby to Leeds in the train with a very quiet and respectable looking gentleman sitting opposite to him. They had both been staying at the Midland Hotel, and they began talking about it. All at once the gentleman said: “Did you notice any thing particular about the bread at breakfast?” “No,” said my friend, “I did not.” “Oh! but I did,” said the poor gentleman, “and I am convinced there was an attempt made to poison me, and it is a very curious thing that I never go to an hotel without I discover some attempt to do me mischief.” The unfortunate man was laboring under one of the greatest calamities which can befall a human creature. But what are we to say of a nation which lives under a perpetual delusion that it is about to be attacked—a nation which is the most combined on the face of the earth, with little less than 30,000,000 of people all united under a government which, though we intend to reform we do not the less respect, and which has mechanical power and wealth to which no other country offers any parallel? There is no causeway to Britain; the free waves of the sea flow day and night forever round her shores, and yet there are people going about with whom this hallucination is so strong that they do not merely discover it quietly to their friends, but they write it down in double-leaded columns, in leading articles,—nay, some of them actually get up on platforms and proclaim it to hundreds and thousands of their fellow-countrymen. I should like to ask you whether these delusions are to last forever, whether this policy is to be the perpetual policy of England, whether these results are to go on gathering and gathering until there come, as come there must inevitably, some dreadful catastrophe on our country.

I should like to-night, if I could, to inaugurate one of the best and holiest revolutions that ever took place in this country. We have had a dozen revolutions since some of us were children. We have had one revolution in which you had a great share—a great revolution of opinion on the question of the suffrage. Does it not read like madness that men, thirty years ago, were frantic at the idea of the people of Birmingham having a 10_l._ franchise? Does it not seem something like idiocy to be told that a banker in Leeds, when it was proposed to transfer the seats of one rotten borough to the town of Leeds, should say (and it was repeated in the House of Commons on his authority) that if the people of Leeds had the franchise conferred upon them it would not be possible to keep the bank doors open with safety, and that he should remove his business to some quiet place, out of danger from the savage race that peopled that town? But now all confess that the people are perfectly competent to have votes, and nobody dreams of arguing that the privilege will make them less orderly.

Take the question of colonial government. Twenty years ago the government of our colonies was a huge job. A small family party in each, in connection with the Colonial Office, ruled our colonies. We had then discontent, and now and then a little wholesome insurrection, especially in Canada. The result was that we have given up the colonial policy which had hitherto been held sacred, and since that time not only have our colonies greatly advanced in wealth and material resources, but no parts of the empire are more tranquil and loyal.[40]

Take also the question of protection. Not thirty years ago, but twelve years ago, there was a great party in Parliament, led by a Duke in one House, and by a son and brother of a duke in the other, which declared that utter ruin must come, not only on the agricultural interest, but upon the manufactures and commerce of England, if we departed from our old theories upon this subject of protection. They told us that the laborer—the unhappy laborer—of whom it may be said in this country:

“Here landless laborers hopeless toil and strive,
But taste no portion of the sweets they hive,”

that the laborer was to be ruined; that is, that the paupers were to be pauperized. These gentlemen were overthrown. The plain, honest, common-sense of the country swept away their cob-web theories, and they are gone. What is the result? From 1846 to 1857 we have received into this country of grain of all kinds, including flour, maize, or India corn—all objects heretofore not of absolute prohibition, but which were intended to be prohibited until it was not safe for people to be starved any more,—not less than an amount equal in value to 224,000,000_l._ That is equal to 18,700,000_l._ per annum on the average of twelve years. During that period, too, your home growth has been stimulated to an enormous extent. You have imported annually 200,000 tons of guano, and the result has been a proportionate increase in the productions of the soil, for 200,000 tons of guano will grow an equal weight and value of wheat. With all this, agriculture was never more prosperous, while manufactures were never, at the same time, more extensively exported; and with all this, the laborers, for whom the tears of the Protectionist were shed, have, according to the admission of the most violent of the class, never been in a better state since the beginning of the great French war.

One other revolution of opinion has been in regard to our criminal law. I have lately been reading a book which I would advise every man to read—the “Life of Sir Samuel Romilly.” He tells us in simple language of the almost insuperable difficulties he had to contend with to persuade the legislature of this country to abolish the punishment of death for stealing from a dwelling-house to the value of 5_s._, an offence which now is punished by a few weeks’ imprisonment. Lords, bishops, and statesmen opposed these efforts year after year, and there have been some thousands of persons put to death publicly for offences which are not now punishable with death. Now every man and woman in the kingdom would feel a thrill of horror if told that a fellow-creature was to be put to death for such a cause.

These are revolutions in opinion, and let me tell you that when you accomplish a revolution in opinion upon a great question, when you alter it from bad to good, it is not like charitably giving a beggar 6_d._ and seeing him no more, but it is a great beneficent act, which affects not merely the rich and the powerful, but penetrates every lane, every cottage in the land, and wherever it goes brings blessings and happiness. It is not from statesmen that these things come. It is not from them that have proceeded these great revolutions of opinion on the questions of reform, protection, colonial government, and criminal law—it was from public meetings such as this, from the intelligence and conscience of the great body of the people who have no interest in wrong, and who never go from the right but by temporary error and under momentary passion.

It is for you to decide whether our greatness shall be only temporary, or whether is shall be enduring. When I am told that the greatness of our country is shown by the 100,000,000_l._ of revenue produced, may I not also ask how it is that we have 1,100,000 paupers in this kingdom, and why it is that 7,000,000_l._ should be taken from the industry chiefly of the laboring classes to support a small nation, as it were, of paupers? Since your legislation upon the Corn Laws, you have not only had nearly 20,000,000_l._ of food brought into the country annually, but such an extraordinary increase of trade that your exports are about doubled, and yet I understand that in the year 1856, for I have no later return, there were no less than 1,100,000 paupers in the United Kingdom, and the sum raised in poor-rates was not less than 7,200,000_l._[41] And that cost of pauperism is not the full amount, for there is a vast amount of temporary, casual, and vagrant pauperism that does not come in to swell that sum.

Then do not you well know—I know it, because I live among the population of Lancashire, and I doubt not the same may be said of the population of this city and county—that just above the level of the 1,100,000 there is at least an equal number who are ever oscillating between independence and pauperism, who, with a heroism which is not the less heroic because it is secret and unrecorded, are doing their very utmost to maintain an honorable and independent position before their fellow-men?

While Irish labor, notwithstanding the improvement which has taken place in Ireland, is only paid at the rate of about one shilling a day; while in the straths and glens of Scotland there are hundreds of shepherd families whose whole food almost consists of oatmeal porridge from day to day, and from week to week; while these things continue, I say that we have no reason to be self-satisfied and contented with our position; but that we who are in Parliament and are more directly responsible for affairs, and you who are also responsible though in a lesser degree, are bound by the sacred duty which we owe our country to examine why it is that with all this trade, all this industry, and all this personal freedom, there is still so much that is unsound at the base of our social fabric?

Let me direct your attention now to another point which I never think of without feelings that words would altogether fail to express. You hear constantly that woman, the helpmate of man, who adorns, dignifies, and blesses our lives, that woman in this country is cheap; that vast numbers whose names ought to be synonyms for purity and virtue, are plunged into profligacy and infamy. But do you not know that you sent 40,000 men to perish on the bleak heights of the Crimea, and that the revolt in India, caused, in part at least, by the grievous iniquity of the seizure of Oude, may tax your country to the extent of 100,000 lives before it is extinguished; and do you not know that for the 140,000 men thus drafted off and consigned to premature graves, nature provided in your country 140,000 women? If you have taken the men who should have been the husbands of these women, and if you have sacrificed 100,000,000_l._, which as capital reserved in the country would have been an ample fund for their employment and for the sustentation of their families, are you not guilty of a great sin in involving yourselves in such a loss of life and of money in war, except on grounds and under circumstances which, according to the opinions of every man in the country, should leave no kind of option whatever for your choice?

I know perfectly well the kind of observations which a certain class of critics will make upon this speech.

I have been already told by a very eminent newspaper publisher in Calcutta, who, commenting on a speech I made at the close of the session with regard to the condition of India, and our future policy in that country, said, that the policy I recommended was intended to strike at the root of the advancement of the British empire, and that its advancement did not necessarily involve the calamities which I pointed out as likely to occur.

My Calcutta critic assured me that Rome pursued a similar policy for a period of eight centuries, and that for those eight centuries she remained great. Now, I do not think that examples taken from pagan, sanguinary Rome, are proper models for the imitation of a Christian country, nor would I limit my hopes of the greatness of England even to the long duration of 800 years.

But what is Rome now? The great city is dead. A poet has described her as “the lone mother of dead empires.” Her language even is dead. Her very tombs are empty; the ashes of her most illustrious citizens are dispersed.

“The Scipios’ tomb contains no ashes now.” Yet I am asked, I, who am one of the legislators of a Christian country, to measure my policy by the policy of ancient and pagan Rome!

I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live. There is no man in England who is less likely to speak irreverently of the crown and monarchy of England than I am; but crowns, coronets, mitres, military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge empire are, in my view, all trifles, light as air, and not worth considering, unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment, and happiness among the great body of the people. Palaces, baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make a nation. The nation in every country dwells in the cottage; and unless the light of your constitution can shine there, unless the beauty of your legislation and the excellence of your statesmanship are impressed there on the feelings and condition of the people, rely upon it you have yet to learn the duties of government.

I have not, as you have observed, pleaded that this country should remain without adequate and scientific means of defence. I acknowledge it to be the duty of your statesmen, acting upon the known opinions and principles of ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in the country, at all times, with all possible moderation, but with all possible efficiency, to take steps which shall preserve order within and on the confines of your kingdom. But I shall repudiate and denounce the expenditure of every shilling, the engagement of every man, the employment of every ship, which has no object but intermeddling in the affairs of other countries, and endeavoring to extend the boundaries of an empire which is already large enough to satisfy the greatest ambition, and I fear is much too large for the highest statesmanship to which any man has yet attained.

The most ancient of profane historians has told us that the Scythians of his time were a very warlike people, and that they elevated an old cimeter upon a platform as a symbol of Mars, for to Mars alone, I believe, they built altars and offered sacrifices. To this cimeter they offered sacrifices of horses and cattle, the main wealth of the country, and more costly sacrifices than to all the rest of their gods. I often ask myself whether we are at all advanced in one respect beyond those Scythians. What are our contributions to charity, to education, to morality, to religion, to justice, and to civil government, when compared with the wealth we expend in sacrifices to the old cimeter? Two nights ago I addressed in this hall a vast assembly composed to a great extent of your countrymen who have no political power, who are at work from the dawn of the day to the evening, and who have therefore limited means of informing themselves on these great subjects. Now I am privileged to speak to a somewhat different audience. You represent those of your great community who have a more complete education, who have on some points greater intelligence, and in whose hands reside the power and influence of the district. I am speaking, too, within the hearing of those whose gentle nature, whose finer instincts, whose purer minds, have not suffered as some of us have suffered in the turmoil and strife of life. You can mould opinion, you can create political power;—you cannot think a good thought on this subject and communicate it to your neighbors,—you cannot make these points topics of discussion in your social circles and more general meetings, without affecting sensibly and speedily the course which the government of your country will pursue.

May I ask you, then, to believe, as I do most devoutly believe, that the moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but that it was written as well for nations, and for nations great as this of which we are citizens. If nations reject and deride that moral law, there is a penalty which will inevitably follow. It may not come at once, it may not come in our lifetime; but rely upon it, the great Italian is not a poet only, but a prophet, when he says:

“The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite,
Nor yet doth linger.”

We have experience, we have beacons, we have landmarks enough. We know what the past has cost us, we know how much and how far we have wandered, but we are not left without a guide. It is true we have not, as an ancient people had, Urim and Thummim—those oraculous gems on Aaron’s breast,—from which to take counsel, but we have the unchangeable and eternal principles of the moral law to guide us, and only so far as we walk by that guidance can we be permanently a great nation, or our people a happy people.

LORD BEACONSFIELD.

In 1825 the novel-reading public of England was thrown into not a little excitement by the appearance of a curious but brilliant work of imagination entitled “Vivian Grey.” This piece of literary pyrotechny was rapidly followed by “The Young Duke,” “Henrietta Temple,” “Contarini Fleming,” “Alroy,” and other curious compounds of fiction and politics. The name of the author did not at first appear; but it soon came to be known that the series was the product of a student of law, not yet twenty-five years of age, and the son of Isaac Disraeli, the author of the “Curiosities of Literature.” This young novelist was described by the society journals of the day as a man who frequented Gore House, and not only poured out upon society there torrents of remarkable talk on literary and political affairs, but made himself amusingly conspicuous by his decorations of gaudy waistcoats and gold chains. It came soon to be universally known in London society that this eccentric genius, though educated in private under his father’s care, had been a great reader of literature and history, and had come to have very definite notions in regard to almost every question under the sun.

Flushed with the success of his literary experiences, young Disraeli travelled extensively in Europe and the East, and then returned in 1831, resolved to secure a seat in Parliament. In his first efforts he was not successful; but in 1837, the year of Queen Victoria’s accession, the electors of Maidstone gave him a seat, and accordingly he entered the House of Commons in the thirty-third year of his age.

His first speech was generally regarded as a singular, even a ridiculous, failure. Those who depend for their impression on its words as they appear in Hansard or in Lord Beaconsfield’s selected speeches, will hardly perceive in its fanciful flights the reasons for the outbursts of laughter and jeers with which it was greeted and finally brought to an end. It must have been the gaudiness of the speaker’s dress, and the violent and theatrical manner of his speech, quite as much as the irrelevancy of what he said, that threw the House into roars of laughter, and led them to suppress the speaker altogether. He did not, however, take his seat without thundering out the prophecy—which appeared at the time quite as much like a threat—that the time would come when they would hear him. It was long before he secured the ear of the House. Between 1840 and 1845 he was largely occupied with literary works, and during that period he published “Coningsby,” “Sybil,” and “Tancred,” a trio of really remarkable political novels, designed to present a picture of the forces at work in the nation and of the way in which they should be dealt with by Parliament. The conversations of Sidonia in “Coningsby” give a clear and probably correct notion of Disraeli’s political opinions. He advanced with great emphasis the doctrine that the Tory party was the party of the people, and that the welfare of the lower classes was only to be secured by the prevalence of Tory principles. Holding these views he attached himself firmly to the party led by Sir Robert Peel; and it was not until 1846, when the leader announced his determination to bring in a bill for the modification of the Corn Laws, that Disraeli deserted him. The eccentric young member was an ardent Protectionist. In the course of the ten years that had elapsed since his first sad experience he had become a master of argumentative fence, and in the years that followed he developed such extraordinary abilities in his assaults upon the government that he was universally recognized as a consummate master of parliamentary invective and the most powerful orator of the Opposition. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was followed by a succession of poor harvests and by great suffering. In a series of speeches extending over the years from 1846 to 1852, Disraeli, with a skill and an eloquence that raised him to the front rank of British orators, attributed this suffering to the financial and economic policy of the government. These repeated and well-directed blows finally broke the power of the ministry, and when, in 1852, the Liberals went out of office, the Tories came in with Lord Derby as Prime-Minister and Mr. Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

This position was held by Disraeli through each of Derby’s three administrations; and on the resignation of that nobleman in February of 1868 the Chancellor of the Exchequer was raised to the post of Prime-Minister. This, however, he was obliged to resign before the end of the year; but in 1873, when Mr. Gladstone’s Government was defeated on the Irish Education Bill, the position was again tendered him. The circumstances of the situation, however, did not encourage him to accept. The Liberal ministry had been defeated not by the Conservatives alone, but by a combination with the Home Rulers, a group of some sixty Irish members who were likely to vote with the Liberals on all other questions. The offer, therefore, was declined; but when in the following year Mr. Gladstone decided to test the relative strength of the parties by a dissolution and an appeal to the country, the Conservatives were returned in triumphant majority, and Mr. Disraeli, in February, 1874, was called a second time to the head of the government. This position he continued to hold till the election of 1880, when, under the rigorous assaults of Gladstone and his followers, the Conservative policy was rejected by the country. Meanwhile, in August of 1876, Disraeli had been raised to the peerage with the title of Earl of Beaconsfield, and in July of 1878 had been invested with the Order of the Garter. With the downfall of his ministry in 1880, Lord Beaconsfield’s political career came to an end, though he continued to inspire the Opposition to the policy of his opponents till the time of his death in 1881.

Throughout Disraeli’s political career, or at least ever after the very first years of it, he was a staunch advocate of the old Tory principles advocated by Lord Bolingbroke and Lord Shelburne. In “Coningsby” and cropping out here and there in his speeches we find constant evidences of his belief that the welfare of the common people depends upon the union of the upper and the lower classes under the guidance of the Conservative party. He held that the triumph of the Whigs was the triumph of the middle class in opposition to the interests of the lower, and that the inevitable results of a triumph of Whig principles must be the creation of irreconcilable differences between classes that ought to be cordially united. These views were elaborated in his “Life of Lord George Bentinck,” in his “Defence of the English Constitution,” and to some extent in his speeches on the Reform Bill of 1867.

Two portions of Lord Beaconsfield’s career were very violently criticised. The first was his course in regard to the reform of 1867. Immediately after Lord Palmerston’s death in 1865, and the accession of Earl Russell’s ministry, it became evident that the popular demand could only be satisfied with a reform of the franchise. A bill was accordingly introduced with the design of further extending the right of suffrage in the manner of the great measure of 1832. The bill was powerfully advocated by Mr. Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House, and was opposed with equal vigor by Mr. Disraeli. On a motion to amend, the government was defeated, and Russell and Gladstone going out of power, Derby and Disraeli came in. As to what would be done, the public were not long left in doubt. On the 18th of March, 1867. Mr. Disraeli came forward with a measure of reform far more sweeping in its nature than that which he had in the previous administration so vigorously and successfully opposed. The extension of suffrage was to be made on a new principle, or at least a principle which appeared to be new, though in fact it had been advocated in Disraeli’s early writings. In his speech introducing the measure he called attention to the fact that no less than five times since 1832 attempts had been made to place the right of suffrage on a firm basis, but that all of these had failed. He declared that they had failed because they were mere expedients, whereas the question could only be settled by the adoption of a clearly defined principle. Hitherto the right to vote had depended upon income; it ought to depend, he declared, upon permanency of interest. He therefore proposed the substitution of the principle of household suffrage in the place of suffrage founded upon the payment of a fixed rate. The measure was looked upon with consternation by the Liberals, and was most strenuously opposed by Gladstone and his followers; but it was advocated in a succession of speeches of so much power and skill by Disraeli that no opposition could prevent its final passage. But the author of the measure, always more or less distrusted, was henceforth regarded as a political adventurer who had stolen into the camp of his enemy and run off with the spoils.

The foreign policy of Disraeli was equally obnoxious to his opponents. In one respect he was the lineal successor of Pitt, Canning, and Palmerston. Though he differed with many of the views held by those great foreign ministers, and did not shrink from criticising them with great severity, he was always in favor of a vigorous assertion of the rights and interests of Great Britain. This, in the opinion of his opponents, descended into a meddlesome interference with the affairs of other nations. In Afghanistan, in Abyssinia, in South Africa, and especially in the Eastern Mediterranean, his policy was thought to be aggressive, and provoked the most violent opposition of the Liberal party. By the treaty of San Stefano, concluded in 1878 between Russia and Turkey at the close of the war between these powers, Turkey was reduced almost to a cipher in the hands of Russia. In the opinion of Lord Beaconsfield this solution imperilled the interests of Great Britain in the Mediterranean. Russia was accordingly required by the English Government to submit the treaty to a congress of European powers. This at first Russia refused to do, whereupon the Prime-Minister moved an address to the Queen asking her to call out the Reserves. This was done, and was immediately followed by the still more vigorous step of bringing up to Malta a division of the Indian army. Russia at once began to lower her pretensions, and finally agreed that the treaty should be submitted to a European Congress. In June of 1878 Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury went as English Plenipotentiaries to the Congress at Berlin called to consider the whole question. The result was an important modification of the Treaty of San Stefano and a practical restoration of the independence of the Turkish empire. On the return of the Ambassadors, bringing back, as Beaconsfield said, “peace with honor,” they were received with an ovation which has not often had a parallel in English history. Three years later, Mr. Gladstone, in paying a tribute to his deceased rival, singled out his reception in the House of Lords as the culminating point of his greatness in the eyes of all those who regarded his policy with admiration; and applied to the Berlin triumph the well-known words of Virgil:

Aspice et insignis spoliis Marcellus opimis
Ingreditur, victorque viros supereminet omnes.

LORD BEACONSFIELD.

ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY; DELIVERED AT MANCHESTER, APRIL 3, 1872.

[In November of 1871, Sir Charles Dilke delivered an address at
Newcastle, in which he denounced the cost of royalty. The popular
agitation that followed throughout the country was very considerable;
and, as Mr. Gladstone was then Prime-Minister, there were not a
few that supposed this attack upon the support of the crown to be
a premonition of a policy to be adopted by the government. The
position of Dilke met with no popular encouragement, but it gave an
opportunity to the Opposition which they were by no means reluctant
to avail themselves of. The agitation that followed had not a little
influence in bringing on the downfall of Gladstone’s ministry in
1874. Lord Beaconsfield was at the head of the Opposition, and the
following speech was at once the most effective assault made upon
the policy of Gladstone, and the most comprehensive statement of the
principles advocated by the Conservative party.]

GENTLEMEN:

The Chairman has correctly reminded you that this is not the first time that my voice has been heard in this hall. But that was an occasion very different from that which now assembles us together—was nearly thirty years ago, when I endeavored to support and stimulate the flagging energies of an institution in which I thought there were the germs of future refinement and intellectual advantage to the rising generation of Manchester, and since I have been here on this occasion I have learned with much gratification that it is now counted among your most flourishing institutions. There was also another and more recent occasion when the gracious office fell to me to distribute among the members of the Mechanics’ Institution those prizes which they had gained through their study in letters and in science. Gentlemen, these were pleasing offices, and if life consisted only of such offices you would not have to complain of it. But life has its masculine duties, and we are assembled here to fulfil some of the most important of these, when, as citizens of a free country, we are assembled together to declare our determination to maintain, to uphold the constitution to which we are debtors, in our opinion, for our freedom and our welfare.

Gentlemen, there seems at first something incongruous that one should be addressing the population of so influential and intelligent a county as Lancashire who is not locally connected with them, and, gentlemen, I will frankly admit that this circumstance did for a long time make me hesitate in accepting your cordial and generous invitation. But, gentlemen, after what occurred yesterday, after receiving more than two hundred addresses from every part of this great county, after the welcome which then greeted me, I feel that I should not be doing justice to your feelings, I should not do my duty to myself, if I any longer considered my presence here to-night to be an act of presumption. Gentlemen, though it may not be an act of presumption, it still is, I am told, an act of great difficulty. Our opponents assure us that the Conservative party has no political programme; and, therefore, they must look with much satisfaction to one whom you honor to-night by considering him the leader and representative of your opinions when he comes forward, at your invitation, to express to you what that programme is. The Conservative party are accused of having no programme of policy. If by a programme is meant a plan to despoil churches and plunder landlords, I admit we have no programme. If by a programme is meant a policy which assails or menaces every institution and every interest, every class and every calling in the country, I admit we have no programme. But if to have a policy with distinct ends, and these such as most deeply interest the great body of the nation, be a becoming programme for a political party, then I contend we have an adequate programme, and one which, here or elsewhere, I shall always be prepared to assert and to vindicate.

Gentlemen, the programme of the Conservative party is to maintain the constitution of the country. I have not come down to Manchester to deliver an essay on the English constitution; but when the banner of Republicanism is unfurled—when the fundamental principles of our institutions are controverted—I think, perhaps, it may not be inconvenient that I should make some few practical remarks upon the character of our constitution—upon that monarchy limited by the co-ordinate authority of the estates of the realm, which, under the title of Queen, Lords, and Commons, has contributed so greatly to the prosperity of this country, and with the maintenance of which I believe that prosperity is bound up.

Gentlemen, since the settlement of that constitution, now nearly two centuries ago, England has never experienced a revolution, though there is no country in which there has been so continuous and such considerable change. How is this? Because the wisdom of your forefathers placed the prize of supreme power without the sphere of human passions. Whatever the struggle of parties, whatever the strife of factions, whatever the excitement and exaltation of the public mind, there has always been something in this country round which all classes and parties could rally, representing the majesty of the law, the administration of justice, and involving, at the same time, the security for every man’s rights and the fountain of honor. Now, gentlemen, it is well clearly to comprehend what is meant by a country not having a revolution for two centuries. It means, for that space, the unbroken exercise and enjoyment of the ingenuity of man. It means for that space the continuous application of the discoveries of science to his comfort and convenience. It means the accumulation of capital, the elevation of labor, the establishment of those admirable factories which cover your district; the unwearied improvement of the cultivation of the land, which has extracted from a somewhat churlish soil harvests more exuberant than those furnished by lands nearer to the sun. It means the continuous order which is the only parent of personal liberty and political right. And you owe all these, gentlemen, to the Throne.

There is another powerful and most beneficial influence which is also exercised by the crown. Gentlemen, I am a party man. I believe that, without party, parliamentary government is impossible. I look upon parliamentary government as the noblest government in the world, and certainly the one most suited to England. But without the discipline of political connection, animated by the principle of private honor, I feel certain that a popular assembly would sink before the power or the corruption of a minister. Yet, gentlemen, I am not blind to the faults of party government. It has one great defect. Party has a tendency to warp the intelligence, and there is no minister, however resolved he may be in treating a great public question, who does not find some difficulty in emancipating himself from the traditionary prejudice on which he has long acted. It is, therefore, a great merit in our constitution, that before a minister introduces a measure to Parliament, he must submit it to an intelligence superior to all party, and entirely free from influences of that character.

I know it will be said, gentlemen, that, however beautiful in theory, the personal influence of the sovereign is now absorbed in the responsibility of the minister. Gentlemen, I think you will find there is great fallacy in this view. The principles of the English constitution do not contemplate the absence of personal influence on the part of the sovereign; and if they did, the principles of human nature would prevent the fulfilment of such a theory. Gentlemen, I need not tell you that I am now making on this subject abstract observations of general application to our institutions and our history. But take the case of a sovereign of England who accedes to his throne at the earliest age the law permits and who enjoys a long reign,—take an instance like that of George III. From the earliest moment of his accession that sovereign is placed in constant communication with the most able statesmen of the period, and of all parties. Even with average ability it is impossible not to perceive that such a sovereign must soon attain a great mass of political information and political experience. Information and experience, gentlemen, whether they are possessed by a sovereign or by the humblest of his subjects, are irresistible in life. No man with the vast responsibility that devolves upon an English minister can afford to treat with indifference a suggestion that has not occurred to him, or information with which he had not been previously supplied. But, gentlemen, pursue this view of the subject. The longer the reign, the influence of that sovereign must proportionately increase. All the illustrious statesmen who served his youth disappear. A new generation of public servants rises up, there is a critical conjuncture in affairs—a moment of perplexity and peril. Then it is that the sovereign can appeal to a similar state of affairs that occurred perhaps thirty years before. When all are in doubt among his servants, he can quote the advice that was given by the illustrious men of his early years, and though he may maintain himself within the strictest limits of the constitution, who can suppose when such information and such suggestions are made by the most exalted person in the country that they can be without effect? No, gentlemen; a minister who could venture to treat such influence with indifference would not be a constitutional minister, but an arrogant idiot.[42]