Chapter VIII: Autumn Of 1871. Decline Of Popularity. (1871-1872)

For the present at least the reformation will operate against the
reformers. Nothing is more common than for men to wish, and call
loudly too, for a reformation, who when it arrives do by no means
like the severity of its aspect. Reformation is one of those
pieces which must be put at some distance in order to please. Its
greatest favourers love it better in the abstract than in the
substance.

—BURKE.

I

In July, 1871, Mr. Gladstone paid a Sunday visit to Tennyson among the Surrey hills. They had two interesting days, “with talk ranging everywhere.” The poet read the _Holy Grail_, which Mr. Gladstone admired. They discussed the Goschen parish council plan, and other social reforms; Lacordaire and liberal collectivism; politics and the stormy times ahead. Mr. Gladstone assured them that he was a conservative, and feared extreme measures from the opposition. “A very noble fellow,” Tennyson called him, “and perfectly unaffected.”(249) Mr. Gladstone, for his part, records in his diary that he found “a characteristic and delightful abode. In Tennyson are singularly united true greatness, genuine simplicity, and some eccentricity. But the latter is from habit and circumstance, the former is his nature. His wife is excellent, and in her adaptation to him wonderful. His son Hallam is most attractive.”

After a laborious and irksome session, “in which, we have sat, I believe, 150 hours after midnight,” the House rose (Aug. 21). Mr. Gladstone spent some time at Whitby with his family, and made a speech to his eldest son’s constituents (Sept. 2) on the ballot, and protesting against the spirit of “alarmism.” Towards the end of the month he went on to Balmoral. On September 26 he was presented with the freedom of Aberdeen, and made a speech on Irish home rule, of which, as we shall see, he heard a great deal fifteen years later:—

_To Mrs. Gladstone._

_Balmoral, Sept. 28._—The time is rolling on easily at this
_quiet_ place.... We breakfast six or eight. The Prince and
Princess Louis of Hesse dine most days. To-day I walked with her
and her party. She is quick, kind, and well informed. I got her
to-day on the subject of the religious movement in the Roman
catholic church in Germany. She is imbued with her father’s ideas,
and, I think, goes beyond them. She quoted Strauss to me, as
giving his opinion that the movement would come to nothing. She
said the infallibility was the legitimate development of the Roman
system. I replied that the Roman system had grown up by a
multitude of scarcely perceptible degrees out of the earliest form
of Christianity, and if we adopted this notion of legitimate
development, we ran a risk of making Saint Paul responsible for
the Vatican council. She talked much about the hospitals, in which
she worked so hard while nursing her baby, a very fine one, whom
she introduced to me, with two flourishing elder children. She
hates war; and is not easy as to the future.

_Sept. 29._—I have had a twelve-mile stretch to-day, almost all on
wild ground, and so solitary! not a living creature except three
brace of grouse all the way. I am glad to report that I came in
very fresh. ... What a mess the Bishop of Winchester has made of
this Glengarry kirk business.

_Sept. 30._—Last night we dined ten at Abergeldie. The Prince of
Wales had his usual pleasant manners. He is far lighter in hand
than the Duke of Edinburgh. After dinner he invited me to play
whist. I said, “For love, sir?” He said, “Well, shillings and
half-a-crown on the rubber,” to which I submitted. Ponsonby and I
against the Prince and Brasseur, a charming old Frenchman, his
tutor in the language. The Prince has apparently an _immense_
whist memory, and plays well accordingly. To-day the Queen was to
have seen me at six, but sent to postpone it till to-morrow on
account of expecting the Princess of Wales, who was to come over
and pay her a visit from Abergeldie. I think she is nervous, and
shrinks from talk; but I do not mean to say a word that would give
her trouble, as there would be no good in it at this moment.

_Oct. 3._—I have seen the Queen again this morning. She conversed
longer, near an hour, and was visibly better and stronger, and in
good spirits. She told me much about her illness. ... She wished
me a pleasant journey.

_Ballater, Oct. 4._—Here am I ensconced in the station-master’s
box at Ballater, after a 15 or 16 mile walk round through the
hills, the regular train being postponed for an hour or more to
let the couple from Mar Lodge go off special. They had two
carriages laden with luggage, besides their own carriage! I hope
to be at Colwyn soon after six. These solitary walks among the
hills, I think, refresh and invigorate me more than anything else.
To-day the early part of the day was glorious, and the wind most
bracing as it came over the mass of mountains. I bade farewell
reluctantly to Balmoral, for it is as homelike as any place away
from home can be, and wonderfully safe from invasions. I had all
the grand mountains in view at once, with their snow caps; the
lowest, about the same as Snowdon. I came by the falls of the
Muich, which, after the rain, were very fine. I had an interesting
conversation with Princess Louise about the Queen this morning.

_Oct. 4._—Nothing sets me up in mind and body like a mountain
solitude, not even, perhaps, the sea. Walked from Balmoral to
Ballater, 15 miles, in 4 hrs. 5 m. 6.—Walked 20 miles in 5 hrs.
and 45 minutes. 7.—Walked 15 miles.—(_Diary._)

_To Mrs. Gladstone._

_Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, Oct. 8, 1871._—I got here last night
before seven, and had the most affectionate welcome from the dean
that you can conceive; a dinner-party followed, and now I have for
the _first time_ since the government was formed had a holiday of
two whole days. Last night the lord advocate tried to talk to me
about the Scotch endowed schools and I refused to have anything to
say to him. I have no time to write about my walk, beyond this,
that it was quite successful. The dean [Ramsay] preached at St.
John’s this morning about Ruth. The sermon was beautiful, and the
voice and manner with his venerable age made it very striking. He
put an astonishing energy into it, and his clear melodious tones
rang through and through as they did when I first heard him 43½
years ago. It was altogether most touching, and he told me
afterwards that he had wished to preach to me once more before he
died. But I rejoice to say his life seems a very good one. I would
not have missed the occasion for much.

_London, Oct. 27._—Went to Sir R. Murchison’s funeral, the last of
those who had known me or of me from infancy. And so a step
towards the end is made visible. It was a great funeral. 28.—My
expedition to Greenwich, or rather, Blackheath. I spoke 1 h. 50
m.; too long, yet really not long enough for a full development of
my points. Physically rather an excess of effort. All went well,
thank God!—(_Diary._)

(M124) This speech at Blackheath was a fine illustration both of Mr. Gladstone’s extraordinary power, and of the sure respect of a British audience for manful handling and firm dealing in a minister, if only the appeal be high enough. It was one of the marked scenes of his life. In the cold mist of the October afternoon he stood bareheaded, pale, resolute, before a surging audience of many thousands, few of them enthusiastically his friends, a considerable mass of them dockyard workmen, furious at discharge or neglect by an economising government. He was received with loud and angry murmurs ominous of storm, but curiosity, interest, and a sense that even a prime minister should have fair play prevailed. His rich tones and clear articulation—and Mr. Gladstone had studied all the arts for husbanding vocal resources—carried his words beyond the five or six thousand persons that are commonly understood to be the limit of possible hearers in the open air. After half an hour of struggle he conquered a hold upon them that became more intense as he went on—touching topic after topic, defending all that had been done for the reform and efficiency of the army, denouncing extreme opinions on the Education Act, vindicating the ballot bill, laughing at various prescriptions of social quackery—until at the close of a speech nearly two hours long, he retired amid sustained hurricanes of earnest applause. Well might he speak of rather an excess of physical effort, to say nothing of effort of mind.

On his return to Hawarden he had a visit from Mr. Bright, whom he earnestly hoped to bring back into the cabinet.(250)

_Nov. 13._—Hawarden. Two long conversations with Mr. Bright, who
arrived at one. 14.—Some five hours in conversation with Mr.
Bright; also I opened my proposal to him, which he took kindly
though cautiously. My conversation with him yesterday evening kept
me awake till four. A most rare event; but my brain assumes in the
evening a feminine susceptibility, and resents any unusual strain,
though, strange to say, it will stand a debate in the H. of C.
15.—Forenoon with Bright, who departed, having charmed everybody
by his gentleness. Began the cutting of a large beech. #/

_To Lord Granville._

_Nov. 15, 1871._—Bright has been here for forty-eight hours, of
which we passed I think more than a fourth in conversation on
public affairs. Everything in and everything out of the cabinet I
told him as far as my memory would serve, and I think we pretty
well boxed the political compass. On the whole I remained
convinced of two things: first, that his heart is still altogether
with us; secondly, that his health, though requiring great care,
is really equal to the moderate demands we should make upon him.
The truth is I was quite as much knocked up with our conversation
as he was, but then I had the more active share. In the whole
range of subjects that we travelled over, we came to no point of
sharp difference, and I feel confident that he could work with the
cabinet as harmoniously and effectually as before. In saying this
I should add that I told him, with respect to economy, that I
thought we should now set our faces in that direction. I told him
that we should not expect of him ordinary night attendance in the
House of Commons, and that his attendance in the cabinet was the
main object of our desire. He was pleased and touched with our
desire, and he has not rejected the proposal. He has intimated
doubts and apprehensions, but he reserves it for consideration,
and seemed decidedly pleased to learn that the question _might_ be
held open until the meeting of parliament in case of need.... I
did not think it fair to put to him the request by which I
endeavoured to hold him in December 1868, viz.: that he would not
determine in the matter without seeing me again; but I begged and
pressed that he should in no case refuse without taking the
opinion of a first-rate London physician, as these are the people
whose wide experience best enables them to judge in such cases.
Altogether my experience of him was extremely pleasant, and he was
popular beyond measure in the house, where the guests were one or
two ladies and four gentlemen, Sir G. Prevost, a high church (but
most excellent) archdeacon, John Murray, the tory publisher, and
Hayward—whom to describe it needs not. One and all were charmed
with Bright. In his character the mellowing process has continued
to advance, and whatever he may have been thirty years ago, he is
now a gentle and tender being. Yesterday he had five hours of
conversation with me and much with others, also an hour and a half
walk in the rain, which seemed to do him no harm whatever. I will
add but one word. He was deeply impressed with the royalty
question.... Details I will report to the cabinet.

Mr. Bright did not yet feel able to return, and an important year, the third of the administration, drew to its close.

II

Two stubborn and noisy scuffles arose in the autumn of 1871, in consequence of a couple of appointments to which Mr. Gladstone as prime minister was a party. One was judicial, the other was ecclesiastical.

(M125) Parliament, authorising the appointment of four paid members of the judicial committee of the privy council, had restricted the post to persons who held at the date of their appointment, or had previously held, judicial office in this country or in India.(251) Difficulty arose in finding a fourth member of the new court from the English bench. The appointment being a new one, fell to the prime minister, but he was naturally guided by the chancellor. The office was first offered by Mr. Gladstone to Lord Penzance, who declined to move. Application was then made to Willes and to Bramwell. They also declined, on the ground that no provision was made for their clerks. Willes could not abandon one who had been “his officer, he might say friend, for thirty years.” Bramwell spoke of the pecuniary sacrifice that the post would involve, “for I cannot let my clerks, who between them have been with me near half a century, suffer by the change.” The chancellor mentioned to Mr. Gladstone a rumour that there was ’an actual strike among the judges’ in the matter. Nobody who knew Bramwell would impute unreasonable or low-minded motives to him, and from their own point of view the judges had a sort of case. It was ascertained by the chancellor that Blackburn and Martin had said expressly that they should decline. Mr. Gladstone felt, as he told Lord Hatherley, that “it was not right to hawk the appointment about,” and he offered it to Sir Robert Collier, then attorney-general. Collier’s claim to the bench, and even to the headship of a court, was undisputed; his judicial capacity was never at any time impugned; he acquired no additional emolument. In accepting Mr. Gladstone’s offer (Oct. 1871) he reminded him: “You are aware that in order to qualify me it will be necessary first to make me a common law judge.” Three days later, the chancellor told Mr. Gladstone, “It would hardly do to place the attorney-general on the common law bench and then promote him.” Still under the circumstances he thought it would be best to follow the offer up, and Collier was accordingly made a judge in the common pleas, sat for a few days, and then went on to the judicial committee. The proceeding was not taken without cabinet authority, for Lord Granville writes to Mr. Gladstone: “Nov. 12, ’71: The cabinet completely assented to the arrangement. Sufficient attention was perhaps not given to the technical point. For technical it only is.... I think you said at the cabinet that Collier wished to have three months’ tenure of the judgeship, and that we agreed with you that this would have been only a sham.”

Cockburn, the chief justice of the Queen’s bench, opened fire on Mr. Gladstone (Nov. 10) in a long letter of rather over-heroic eloquence, protesting that a colourable appointment to a judgeship for the purpose of getting round the law seriously compromised the dignity of the judicial office, and denouncing the grievous impropriety of the proceeding as a mere subterfuge and evasion of the statute. Mr. Gladstone could be extremely summary when he chose, and he replied in three or four lines, informing the chief justice that as the transaction was a joint one, and as “the completed part of it to which you have taken objection, was the official act of the lord chancellor,” he had transmitted the letter for his consideration. That was all he said. The chancellor for his part contented himself with half a dozen sentences, that his appointment of Collier to the puisne judgeship had been made with a full knowledge of Mr. Gladstone’s intention to recommend him for the judicial committee; that he thus “acted advisedly and with the conviction that the arrangement was justified as regards both its fitness and its legality”; and that he took upon himself the responsibility of thus concurring with Mr. Gladstone, and was prepared to vindicate the course pursued. This curt treatment of his Junius-like composition mortified Cockburn’s literary vanity, and no vanity is so easily stung as that of the amateur.

(M126) Collier, when the storm was brewing, at once wrote to Mr. Gladstone (Nov. 13) proposing to retain his judgeship to the end of the term, then to resign it, and act gratuitously in the privy council. He begged that it might not be supposed he offered to do this merely as matter of form. “Though I consider the objection to my appointment wholly baseless, still it is not pleasant to me to hold a salaried office, my right to which is questioned.” “I have received your letter,” Mr. Gladstone replied (Nov.. 14), “which contains the offer that would only be made by a high-spirited man, impatient of suspicion or reproval, and determined to place himself beyond it.... I have not a grain of inclination to recede from the course marked out, and if you had proposed to abandon the appointment, I should have remonstrated.”

What Mr. Gladstone called “a parliamentary peppering” followed in due course. It was contended that the statute in spirit as in letter exacted judicial experience, and that formal passing through a court was a breach of faith with parliament. As usual, lawyers of equal eminence were found to contend with equal confidence that a fraud had been put upon the law, and that no fraud had been put upon it; that the law required judicial status not experience, and on the other hand that what it required was experience not status. Lord Hatherley and Roundell Palmer were all the virtues, whether public or private, personified; they were at the top of the legal ladder; and they agreed in Palmer’s deliberate judgment that—after other judges with special fitness had declined the terms offered by parliament—in nominating the best man at the bar who was willing to take a vacant puisne judgeship upon the understanding that he should be at once transferred to the judicial committee, the government were innocent of any offence against either the spirit or substance of the law.(252)

Yet the escape was narrow. The government only missed censure in the Lords by a majority of one. In the Commons the evening was anxious. “You will see,” says Mr. Bruce (Feb. 20, 1872), “that we got but a small majority last night. The fact is that our victory in the Lords made men slack about coming to town, and Glyn got very nervous in the course of the evening. However, Palmer’s and Gladstone’s speeches, both of which were excellent, improved the feeling, and many who had announced their intention to go away without voting, remained to support us.” At one moment it even looked as if the Speaker might have to give a casting vote, and he had framed it on these lines: “I have concluded that the House while it looks upon the course taken by government as impolitic and injudicious, is not prepared at the present juncture to visit their conduct with direct parliamentary censure.”(253) In the end, ministers had a majority of twenty-seven, and reached their homes at three in the morning with reasonably light hearts.

III

(M127) The ecclesiastical case of complaint against Mr. Gladstone was of a similar sort. By an act of parliament passed in 1871 the Queen was entitled to present to the rectory of Ewelme, but only a person who was a member of convocation of the university of Oxford. This limitation was inserted by way of compensation to the university for the severance of the advowson of the rectory from a certain chair of divinity. The living fell vacant, and the prime minister offered it (June 15) to Jelf of Christ Church, a tory and an evangelical. By Jelf it was declined. Among other names on the list for preferment was that of Mr. Harvey, a learned man who had published an edition of Irenæus, a work on the history and theology of the three creeds, articles on judaism, jansenism, and jesuitism, and other productions of merit. As might perhaps have been surmised from the nature of his favourite pursuits, he was not a liberal in politics, and he had what was for the purposes of this preferment the further misfortune of being a Cambridge man. To him Mr. Gladstone now offered Ewelme, having been advised that by the process of formal incorporation in the Oxford convocation the requirement of the statute would be satisfied. Mr. Harvey accepted. He was told that it was necessary that he should become a member of convocation before he could be appointed. A little later (Aug. 1) he confessed to the prime minister his misgivings lest he should be considered as an “interloper in succeeding to the piece of preferment that parliament had appropriated to bona-fide members of the university of Oxford.” These scruples were set aside, he was incorporated as a member of Oriel in due form, and after forty-two days of residence was admitted to membership of convocation, but whether to such plenary membership as the Ewelme statute was taken to require, became matter of dispute. All went forward, and the excellent man was presented and instituted to his rectory in regular course. There was no secret about operations at Oxford; the Oriel men were aware of his motive in seeking incorporation, and the vice-chancellor and everybody else concerned knew all about it. Mr. Gladstone, when squalls began to blow, wrote to Mr. Harvey (Feb. 26, ’72) that he was advised that the presentation was perfectly valid.

The attack in parliament was, as such attacks almost always are, much overdone. Mr. Gladstone, it appeared, was far worse than Oliver Cromwell and the parliament of the great rebellion; for though those bad men forced three professors upon Oxford between 1648 and 1660, still they took care that the intruders should all be men trained at Oxford and graduates of Oxford. Who could be sure that the prime minister would not next appoint an ultramontane divine from Bologna, or a Greek from Corfu? Such extravagances did as little harm as the false stories about Mr. Harvey being jobbed into the living because he had been at Eton with Mr. Gladstone and was his political supporter. As it happened he was a conservative, and Mr. Gladstone knew nothing of him except that a number of most competent persons had praised his learning. In spite of all this, however, and of the technical validity of the appointment, we may wish that the rector’s doubts had not been overruled. A worthy member regaled the House by a story of a gentleman staying in the mansion of a friend; one morning he heard great noise and confusion in the yard; looking out he saw a kitchen-maid being put on a horse, and so carried round and round the yard. When he went downstairs he asked what was the matter, and the groom said, “Oh, sir, ’tis only that we’re going to take the animal to the fair to sell, and we want to say he has carried a lady.” The apologue was not delicate, but it conveyed a common impression. “Gladstone spoke,” says Mr. Bruce (March 9, 1872), “with great vigour and eloquence on the Ewelme case; but I think that, with the best possible intentions, he had placed himself in a wrong position.”

IV

In 1872 the wide popularity of the government underwent a marked decline. The award at Geneva caused lively irritation. The most active nonconformists were in active revolt. The Licensing bills infuriated the most powerful of all trade interests. The Collier case and the Ewelme case seemed superfluous and provoking blunders. A strong military section thirsted for revenge on the royal warrant. Mr. Goschen’s threatened bill on local rating spread vague terrors. Individual ministers began to excite particular odium.

As time went on, the essentially composite character of a majority that was only held together by Mr. Gladstone’s personality, his authority in the House, and his enormous strength outside, revealed itself in awkward fissures. The majority was described by good critics of the time, as made up of three sections, almost well defined enough to deserve the name of three separate parties. First were the whigs, who never forgot that the prime minister had been for half his life a tory; who always suspected him, and felt no personal attachment to him, though they valued his respect for property and tradition, and knew in any case that he was the only possible man. Then came the middle-class liberals, who had held predominance since 1832, who were captivated by Mr. Gladstone’s genius for finance and business, and who revered his high moral ideals. Third, there was the left wing, not strong in parliament but with a certain backing among the workmen, who thought their leader too fond of the church, too deferential to the aristocracy, and not plain enough and thorough enough for a reforming age. The murmurs and suspicions of these hard and logical utilitarians of the left galled Mr. Gladstone as ungrateful. Phillimore records of him at this moment:—

_Feb. 21, 1872._—Gladstone in high spirits and in rather a
conservative mood. 29.—Gladstone sees that the time is fast coming
when he must sever himself from his extreme supporters. He means
to take the opportunity of retiring on the fair plea that he does
not like to oppose those who have shown such great confidence in
him, or to join their and his opponents. The plea seems good for
retirement, but not for refraining in his individual capacity from
supporting a government which is liberal and conservative.

Here is a sketch from the Aberdare papers of the temper and proceedings of the session:—

_April 19._—We have had a disastrous week—three defeats, of which
much the least damaging was that on local taxation, where we
defended the public purse against a dangerous raid. There is no
immediate danger to be apprehended from them. But these defeats
lower prestige, encourage the discontented and envious, and
animate the opposition. I think that Gladstone, who behaved
yesterday with consummate judgment and temper, is personally very
indifferent at the result. He is vexed at the ingratitude of men
for whom he has done such great things which would have been
simply impossible without him, and would not be unwilling to leave
them for a while to their own guidance, and his feeling is shared
by many of the ministry. Our measures must for the most part be
taken up by our successors, and we should of course be too happy
to help them. But I don’t see the end near, although, of course,
everybody is speculating.

Yet business was done. Progress of a certain kind was made in the thorny field of the better regulation of public houses, but Mr. Gladstone seems never to have spoken upon it in parliament. The subject was in the hands of Mr. Bruce, the home secretary, an accomplished and amiable man of the purest public spirit, and he passed his bill; but nothing did more to bring himself and his colleagues into stern disfavour among the especially pagan strata of the population. An entry or two from Mr. Bruce’s papers will suffice to show Mr. Gladstone’s attitude:—

_Home Office, Dec. 9, 1869._—I am just returned from the cabinet,
where my Licensing bill went through with flying colours. I was
questioned a great deal as to details, but was ready, and I think
that Gladstone was very well pleased.

_Jan. 16, 1871._—I called upon Gladstone yesterday evening. He was
in high spirits and full of kindness. He said that he had told
Cardwell that I must be at the bottom of the abuse the press was
pouring upon him, as I had contrived to relieve myself of it.
“Some one minister,” he added, “is sure to be assailed. You caught
it in the autumn, and now poor Cardwell is having a hard time of
it.” I went with him afterwards to the Chapel Royal, which he
never fails to attend.

_Dec. 14._—We have a cabinet to-day, when I hope to have my
Licensing bill in its main principles definitely settled.
Unfortunately Gladstone cares for nothing but “free trade” [in the
sale of liquor], which the House won’t have, and I cannot get him
really to interest himself in the subject.

This is Speaker Brand’s account of the general position:—

Throughout the session the opposition, ably led by Disraeli, were
in an attitude of watchfulness. He kept his eye on the proceedings
of the government day by day on the Alabama treaty. Had that
treaty failed, no doubt Disraeli would have taken the sense of the
House on the conduct of the government. For the larger part of the
session the Alabama question hung like a cloud over the
proceedings, but as soon as that was settled, the sky cleared. It
has been a good working session.... Of the two leading men,
Gladstone and Disraeli, neither has a strong hold on his
followers. The radicals below the right gangway are turbulent and
disaffected, and the same may be said of the independent
obstruction below the left gangway.... B., E., H., L. avowedly
obstruct all legislation, and thus bring the House into discredit.

(M128) It was now that Mr. Disraeli discerned the first great opportunity approaching, and he took the field. At Manchester (April 3) he drew the famous picture of the government, one of the few classic pieces of the oratory of the century:—

Extravagance is being substituted for energy by the government.
The unnatural stimulus is subsiding. Their paroxysms end in
prostration. Some take refuge in melancholy, and their eminent
chief alternates between a menace and a sigh. As I sit opposite
the treasury bench, the ministers remind me of one of those marine
landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You
behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers upon a
single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There
are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumblings
of the sea.

On midsummer day he essayed at the Crystal Palace a higher flight, and first struck the imperialist note. He agreed that distant colonies could only have their affairs administered by self-government. “Self-government, when it was conceded, ought to have been conceded as part of a great policy of imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accomplished by an imperial tariff, by securities for the people of England, for the enjoyment of the unappropriated lands which belonged to the sovereign as their trustee, and by a military code which should have precisely defined the means and the responsibilities by which the colonies should have been defended, and by which, if necessary, this country should call for aid from the colonies themselves. It ought further to have been accompanied by the institution of some representative council in the metropolis which would have brought the colonies into constant and continuous relations with the home government.” He confessed that he had himself at one time been so far caught by the subtle views of the disintegrationists, that he thought the tie was broken. Opinion in the country was at last rising against disintegration. The people had decided that the empire should not be destroyed. “In my judgment,” he said, “no minister in this country will do his duty who neglects any opportunity of reconstructing as much as possible our colonial empire, and of responding to those distant sympathies which may become the source of incalculable strength and happiness to this land.” Toryism now sought three great objects: “the maintenance of our institutions, the preservation of our empire, and the improvement of the condition of the people.” The time was at hand when England would have to decide between national and cosmopolitan principles, and the issue was no mean one. “You must remember,” he concluded, “that in fighting against liberalism or the continental system, you are fighting against those who have the advantage of power—against those who have been high in place for nearly half a century. You have nothing to trust to but your own energy and the sublime instinct of an ancient people.”

Disraeli’s genius, at once brooding over conceptions and penetrating in discernment of fact, had shown him the vast tory reserves that his household suffrage of 1867 would rally to his flag. The same genius again scanning the skies read aright the signs and characteristics of the time. Nobody would seriously have counselled intervention in arms between France and Germany, yet many felt a vague humiliation at a resettlement of Europe without England. Nobody seriously objected to the opening of the Black Sea, yet many were affected by a restive consciousness of diplomatic defeat. Everybody was glad that—as I am about to describe in the following chapter—we had settled the outstanding quarrel with America, yet most people were sore at the audacity of the indirect claims, followed by the award of swingeing damages. National pride in short was silently but deeply stirred; the steady splendour of the economic era for a season paled in uncalculating minds. This coming mood the tory leader, with his rare faculty of wide and sweeping forecast, confidently divined, and he found for it the oracle of a party cry in phrases about Empire and Social Reform. When power fell into his hands, he made no single move of solid effect for either social reform or imperial unity. When Mr. Gladstone committed himself to a policy, he brought in bills to carry it out. Forecast without a bill is interesting, but not to be trusted.