Part 11

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.