Part 21

What fitness, I should like to ask, has Lord Beaconsfield ever shown for appreciating the great events which, during his time, have gone forward in the world. During this generation, two stupendous rearrangements of States, completely recasting all the international relationships of Western Europe, have taken place--the unification of Italy and the transformation of Prussia into a German Empire. Political earthquakes like those do not come about all in a moment; these two were, in fact, long in preparation; there were throes, there were signs, there were symptoms. Some English statesmen--we could name several on the Liberal side--read the intimations rightly. But what subtle diplomatic sensitiveness did they challenge in Lord Beaconsfield--what preternaturally quick prognostications had he of the foreign marvels that were about to happen? Look first to the Prussian transformation. He severely blamed Chevalier Bunsen for indulging what he styled "the dreamy and dangerous nonsense called German nationality." Turn to Italy. Lord Beaconsfield characterized the earliest attempts of those patriots determined to win back national life or die as "mere brigandage." He spoke of the "phantom of a United Italy." All the world knows that so late even as the publication of his novel, "Lothair," he was under the impression that everything that had happened in the Italian peninsula and in Sicily was the work of a few secret societies, of whom Garibaldi was the figure-head. Take another example. He glossed over the former policy of the Austrian rulers towards Hungary, as innocent as the youngest baby in any cradle in any of our embassies, of discerning that in a few years it would be Hungary that would dominate the empire. In fact, Lord Beaconsfield has never shown the slightest true prevision of anything that was to happen abroad. But I must not be so unfair as to forget that Lord Beaconsfield took the side of the North in the American Civil War. Accidents will happen at times in the play of any kind of intellect; and this, at the very moment, had something of the appearance of being an abnormality of the Disraelian mind. When you look into the instance more closely, it proves not fully to contradict the other cases. Mr. Disraeli uttered a prophecy as to the future of America, and it was this: "It will be a mart of arms, a scene of diplomacies, of rival States, and probably of frequent wars." The result has vindicated his Lordship--nothing of the sort has happened.[1] Come, however, still nearer home. The French Commercial Treaty, which was the first practical attempt to bring the peoples on each side of the Channel into real intercourse, sure to make them permanent friends in the end, was urgently opposed by Lord Beaconsfield. It was towards him that Mr. Cobden had to turn at every stage of his nearly superhuman labours to see what was the next obstacle he would have to set himself to try and overcome.

I venture to say that the foreign policy of such a Minister is certain to end in being one of isolation. Jack-o'-Lantern is always so busy in converting all he does into some private business of his own, that, by-and-by, he is sure to be alone in the transaction. Let us test the diplomatic situation as it now stands, by this rule, and, if it turns out that the English diplomacy has really established concert on our part with anybody, it will have of necessity to be admitted by me that I have been quite wrong in all that is said above. The position I take up is that a Will-o'-the-Wisp could not in his movements bring himself to coincide long enough with anybody else's activity to give any such result.

France is nearer to us than any other Continental Power, not only geographically but politically. How has the recent foreign policy turned out with respect to her? Our very first diplomatic move, that of hastily snatching at the Suez Canal shares, risked our understanding with France entirely. We do not hear much about Egypt now from the supporters of the Government. There are good reasons for it. Nothing could possibly have resulted worse than everything we did in that quarter. France did not allow a march to be stolen upon her; and the next moment we had Italy on our hands as well as France. But come to the Berlin Conference. France there, in pursuance of a traditional policy, backed up Greece. Lord Beaconsfield stood quite aloof from France. Come down to the very latest moment. The alliance between Germany and Austria is the one recent occurrence which is of all others most distasteful to Frenchmen, and Lord Salisbury, on behalf of his chief, not merely goes into slightly profane raptures over it, but works hard to create the impression that they two, indirectly though not directly, brought it about. This is how matters have been made to stand between us and France. With respect to Germany and Austria-Hungary, our Government is, of course, not within their arrangements, but, practically there seems to be an outside relation implied. Those two Powers are understood to reckon upon England as in some way restraining France if Russia made any move. At any rate, if France joined Russia, it is whispered, we should have to do something which would somehow aid Austria and Germany. Why, Chancellor Bismarck's chuckling at this position of things can distinctly be heard all the way from Varzin. Prince Gortschakoff is by no means the one at whom he is laughing hardest. Nothing need be said, I suppose, as to our relations with Russia: it is the special boast of our Government that in the case of the greatest Asiatic Power next to ourselves they have prevented any understanding at all. Just so, too, we have alienated Greece and the newly-formed Principalities. But there is Turkey. All that we have done has told in her favour,--surely we are at one with her? Lord Beaconsfield has just countermanded the orders to our fleet to get up steam and direct the muzzles of its guns towards Turkey. But a wonderful success, we are told, has already resulted from this. What does the recent flourish of telegrams really amount to? That the Porte has added one more sheet to the plentiful waste-paper heap of its proclamations. What our people were known to desire was a change of Minister: and Turkey, in place of that, offers to name Baker Pasha to look after the moral and social improvement of Asia Minor. The test of whether it is Will-o'-the-Wisp, or an ordinary statesman, who is at the head of our affairs gives the result I anticipated. England stands absolutely alone, and the last touch of preposterousness is added to the situation by the statement that it was at the advice of Russia that the Porte pretended to yield to our demands, and that though the Northern Powers are getting into motion again for some ends of their own, they do not in the least intend to meddle with us in Asia Minor. Indeed, I should think not. A splendid morass lies in that part of the world, with Turkey on one side and Russia on the other, and Jack-o'-Lantern has led us right into the middle of it. That is the present issue of the Beaconsfield foreign policy which was to have produced European concert,--we have Asia Minor on our hands, solitarily; and are going to set about immediately reforming it, before the next elections, against the willingness of Turkey, but with the sanction of Russia, and by the means of Baker Pasha. In the meantime, or at any time, Russia may use the situation against us just as best suits her.

I think it will now be admitted that Lord Beaconsfield's foreign policy is every whit as wonderful as the measures of home politics he ought to be urging, if he was only at liberty for that; and further, that they both bespeak exactly the same order of mind.

* * * * *

I must now try to bring together the personal impressions his Lordship makes on the mind of a Liberal. The noble Earl is very brilliant. That, of course, is accepted on all sides: there never was a member of the Wisp family who was not. Not to be brilliant would be against their nature; in fact, shine is their peculiarity. Moreover, standing now behind the event, we seem to see Lord Beaconsfield in Mr. Disraeli from the very beginning. Those who had the privilege of beholding him on his very first appearances in London high society, in, say, the Countess of Blessington's _salon_, where he would be grouped with Count D'Orsay, Prince Napoleon, and Count Morny, give a gorgeous description of him. It seems that he did not depend for celebrity solely upon his witticisms, either printed or spoken, but relied, also, in some measure, on the splendour of his walking canes. The jewels on his hands are said to have rivalled, and at times excelled, the pearls upon his lips; the display in both respects bearing witness that his native tastes were Oriental. His ringlets, in particular, are said to have been the admiration, if not the envy, of the ladies. It seemed almost necessary to give up a line or two to these personal particulars, for the younger people of this generation never saw Mr. Disraeli in his full splendour. As he developed his later powers, he moderated his earlier waistcoats. But he never was an ordinary commoner; he always moved in our public life like a superior being in disguise. He was with us but not of us. Since he is an Earl, the impression he makes has become more natural. The promotion to our peerage gives to some personages an artificial aspect; in Mr. Disraeli's case, the effect was simplifying; and though, after all, it is not quite gorgeous enough, it is befitting. There is a little something not quite in the English style,--a slight foreign incongruity; still, that was always there, and it is, in fact, less noticeable now under the coronet and beneath the ermine.

But--and this is the point sought to be brought out in the above remarks--it was evident from the earliest moment that this splendid person meant to achieve social success. And he has certainly done it. There would be injustice in pretending that he has not had other motives; but celebrity was his leading passion. He has himself made a frank confession on this point. In the days when it was not yet certain that there was a political career before him, the likelihood rather being that he might have wholly to depend upon literature as his means of distinction, he rushed into poetry, having just failed in prose. But he warned the public in the preface of his "Revolutionary Epick," that if they did not purchase and admire it, he had done with song. "I am not," so ran the naïvely self-disclosing sentence, "one of those who find consolation for the neglect of my contemporaries in the imaginary plaudits of posterity." No, nothing in this world, we are quite certain, would ever have consoled Mr. Disraeli for the neglect of his contemporaries. But he took sure measures not to undergo it. He positively raged to get into Parliament; trying one constituency after another, and only succeeding with the fourth. To judge from the fierceness of Mr. Disraeli's struggles, there was in his eyes nothing worth living for, if he were not inside the House of Commons. But he had got into the newspapers before he got into Parliament. The town was kept ringing with Mr. Disraeli's name. In London he was just as much talked of forty-seven years ago as he is to-day.

If the rudeness of a little terseness is passed over, I may fairly say that publicity was Mr. Disraeli's passion; in the circumstances of his position, audacity was his only means; and, with his style of character and intellect, inaccuracy was his necessity. A very few words will establish each point. Was he not studiously audacious? The first book he wrote was a skit on the whole of the higher circle of London society; the candidate he sought to set aside at his first Parliamentary contest was the son of the then Premier; before he was in Parliament he threatened O'Connell; he had not been in the House long before he attacked Sir Robert Peel. It was a glorious audacity on his part, considering the disadvantage of his race, to throw into the face of the British public the supremacy of "Semitic" blood, and to confound us all with the Asian Mystery. But, in turning next to his inaccuracies, we are positively awed by the number and the enormity of the blunders Mr. Disraeli and Lord Beaconsfield between them have committed, in, as it would seem, the most natural way. It was a mere trifle that, when propounding his second Budget, Mr. Disraeli should have thought that he had a surplus to the _bagatelle_ amount of £400,000, until Mr. Gladstone kindly explained to him and to the country that it was a deficiency of that small sum. Some people would be touched deeper to find that in his "Life of Lord George Bentinck" he is of opinion that the crucifixion of the Saviour took place in the reign of Augustus Cæsar. In the course of the debates on one of the early Reform measures, he thought, when Lord Dunkellin made a proposal relating to the "rental valuation" in connection with voting qualification, that it was payment of rates that was in question. In his oration on the death of the Duke of Wellington, he, as all Europe soon knew, mistook long passages from an article written by M. Thiers as being his own composition. He fell into just the same error as to some splendid sentences of Lord Macaulay and also, as to a fine burst of eloquence belonging really to the late Mr. David Urquhart. Very early in his career, when acknowledging his health proposed by mistake in the guise of an old scholar of the famous public school of Winchester, he became momentarily under the impression that he was really educated on that noble foundation, though he had never stood under its roof. Very late in his career, so late as the affair known as the Pigott appointment, he believed that the Rev. Mr. Pigott, the rector of his own parish, had voted against him at the poll in his own county some time after that reverend gentleman's death. But there is really no end to these instances of Lord Beaconsfield having innocently said the thing that is not. With respect to a number of examples of another kind, it would be puzzling to know whether to put them in the category of audacities or inaccuracies; the only way of quite getting over the difficulty would, perhaps, be to consider them as belonging to both. For instance, in 1847, he quoted Mr. J. S. Mill as a friend of Protection, and said Mr. Pitt was the author of Free Trade. On a not very far back occasion, he remarked: "I never attacked any one in my life." Perhaps, with that quotation, it is right to stop.

One of the peculiarities of Lord Beaconsfield's mind has seemed to some people an affectation, that, namely, by which, in reference to any case of much importance, he is sure to miss what seems to everybody else the significant feature of the business, and to fasten on some detail which arrests nobody else. Hardly any one will have yet forgotten the instance of the "Straits of Malacca," and only just the other day a new example was furnished. The revival of trade being the topic, while everybody else's thoughts went to cotton and iron and pottery, Lord Beaconsfield's lighted upon--chemicals. It is all explained on the footing I earlier hinted, that in Lord Beaconsfield's mind the imagination is in just the place the reason occupies in the minds of ordinary people. This makes it obligatory that he shall avoid the common facts, and make some opportunity for exaggerating the value of some detail overlooked by everybody else. It is only in this way that Lord Beaconsfield conclusively certifies to himself that his intellect has really acted.

I am myself quite sincere in saying that I believe there is in all this a certain kind of sincerity in Lord Beaconsfield. Where most people remember, his Lordship fancies; and in his case what is most convenient, naturally offers itself. This has very much increased his brilliancy, for the process leaves its practiser utterly unhampered. But nobody should ask for both strict accuracy and Lord Beaconsfield's quick, free wit. It is demanding an unreasonable combination. If other people had only _not_ remembered, his career would have been even still finer than it is. That is what has partially spoiled things for him. It is even possible that this amazing foreign policy of his may be in a measure explainable on certain suggestions of what we may call pictorial working rules, if we were only inside his mind. Certainly his home politics give some hints that they were framed on a principle of picturesqueness,--a very sophisticated canon of rustic taste can be detected dimly lying at the bottom of them. By only leaving out the towns, and repressing the growth of modern manufactures, and subduing foreign commerce, something might possibly--I cannot say--be made of them. In this foreign diplomacy, there is a certain imaginativeness in bringing dark-skinned soldiers from Asia into Europe, in turning our homely English Queen into an Oriental Empress, in becoming possessor of a fresh island in the Mediterranean, in shifting a frontier line in India, in adding a new province in Africa. All this has meant massacre, and fire, and bloodshed, with the imminent risk of very much more of all of them; and Sir Stafford Northcote, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been kept working as hard as a sprite in a pantomime pouring out millions of our taxation. But if it be Will-o'-the-Wisp we have at the head of affairs, nothing of this is likely very greatly to affect him. Assuredly, nothing of it has affected Lord Beaconsfield, and we may be sure he is ready to go over it all again to-morrow.

If it was worth while, very large deductions would have to be made from Lord Beaconsfield's seeming success if we look rationally at his whole career. No man who is supposed to have been anything like so successful as he is popularly held to be, ever had so many and such striking failures to look back upon. Looking at him as connected with letters, he is the author of works which have failed more completely than any written by any one who himself became known. Judged by their ambitious aims, these literary non-successes of Lord Beaconsfield are gigantic. The epic poem ("The Revolutionary Epick") which Mr. Disraeli supposed was to place him--he himself tells us so--by the side of, or else between, Homer and Milton, nobody would read; the play ("Alarcos") which he states he wrote to "revive the British stage," is never acted. Not one of his novels, when his political position has ceased to advertize them, will remain in the hands of the public. If you look back on his Parliamentary career, the dazzle came late, and after a dreary distance had been travelled. The political party he founded, "The Young England School," has for twenty-five years been as dead as the door-nail which typified the death of Marley. Nothing whatever came of it. The one only notable legislative measure that stands in his name,--the Reform Bill,--really belongs to the other side. Scrutinize his career how you will, and some abatements of this kind have to be made. He is supposed to have had a charm over men,--it has failed with the strong ones. Peel he tried very hard to win, but had to take up with Lord George Bentinck instead. At this moment he is supposed to be in favour with the Court: the impression he made upon the Prince Consort was far from satisfactory. He has quite recently lost Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon; and there was a time when the Marquis of Salisbury and he stood in a very different relationship.

Lord Beaconsfield's social system is that of a novelist; his finance was ever that of a Will-o'-the-Wisp; and he has now added a Jack-o'-Lantern diplomacy. Surely nothing more is needed to justify disbelief in him.

A WHIG.

[Footnote 1: Since writing the above I have met with an article in the October No. of _The North American Review_, on "Louis Napoleon and the Southern Confederacy," which puts this alleged friendship for the North in a very doubtful light. Among some State Papers found in Richmond, a despatch from Mr. Slidell says,--"Lindsay saw Disraeli, who expressed great interest in our affairs, and fully concurred in the views of the Emperor." Louis Napoleon was then intriguing hard to get the South recognised.]

CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND THOUGHT IN FRANCE.

SUMMARY.--_Politics_: Agitations during the Parliamentary Recess--Unjust Accusations levelled at the Ministry--Reforms carried out or projected in the Public Instruction--Justice--Public Works--Activity and Liberalism of the Ministry--Its want of Cohesion and Unity--Renewal of the Socialist Agitation--Return of the Amnestied--Election of M. Humbert in Paris--M. Blanqui's and M. Louis Blanc's Addresses in the Provinces--Socialist Congress at Marseilles--Reaction against these exaggerations--Dangers caused by the attitude of the Conservative Party inspired by the Clerical spirit--Efforts to create a Republican Conservative Party--"Le Parlement"--Unfortunate effect of the Ministry's Anti-clerical Campaign--Legitimist Banquets--The Bonapartist Party and its hopes--M. Naquet's Campaign in favour of Divorce. _Literature_: Novels--Mme. Greville, Mme. Bentzon, M. Lemonnier, M. Gualdi, M. Daudet, M. Zola, Flaubert, M. Theuriet--"L'Eglise Chrétienne," by M. Renan--"Rodrigue de Villandrando," by M. Quicherat--"Mémoires de Mme. de Rémusat"--"Nouvelle Revues". _Science_: Geographical Studies--"Géographie Universelle"--"La Terre et les Hommes," by Elisée Reclus--Map of France on scale of 1/100000--Lectures on Historical Geography, by M. A. Longnon. _Fine Arts_: Subjects opened to Competition--Death of MM. Viollet Le Duc, Cham, Taylor. _Theatres_: Le Grand Opera, l'Opéra Populaire, Pasdeloup and Colonne Concerts--Professor Hermann--The Hanlon-Lees--"Jonathan," by M. Gondinet--"Les Mirabeau," by M. Claretie--Le Théâtre des Nations.

The Parliamentary recess is generally a time of political tranquillity for the country, and leisure or peaceful occupation for the Ministers; not so, however, in France this year. M. Blanqui's candidature at Bordeaux; M. Humbert's election in Paris; the return of the amnestied from New Caledonia; the Workmen's Congress in Marseilles; the Legitimist banquets of September 29; MM. J. Ferry's, Louis Blanc's, and Blanqui's tours in the provinces; the inauguration of Denfert-Rochereau's, Arago's, and Lamoricière's monuments, have kept France in a state of perpetual agitation, if not disturbance. And even the business world, which generally slumbers quietly through the summer months, has been stung with a craze for speculation. A number of financial companies have sprung up, based chiefly on most unsound and absurd combinations, some of which threaten to collapse before they have even begun to work. The great jobber, M. Philippart, who so upset the Bourse some years ago, reappeared in greater force than ever, only to get another ducking at the end of a couple of months. Even the Republican party, which hitherto seemed to have kept out of the way of dangerous speculations, has been drawn into the current, and names of Republican deputies, senators, and municipal councillors have appeared on the lists of the administrative councils by way of an advertisement to subscribers. Nor, with so many causes of disturbance at home, was the country free from anxieties abroad: the settlement of the financial supervision to be exercised conjointly with England in Egypt; the difficulties raised with regard to the same by Italy, who would have wished to form a third in this new order of syndicate; and Turkey's opposition to the decisions of the Berlin Congress concerning Greece, must have caused M. Waddington more than one sleepless night.