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right way to work to recommend himself to the confidence of Sir R. Peel. But he was vindicating his independence with his usual intrepidity, and with an originality to which Peel's mind was a stranger.

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Mr Froude, in a spirit of heroworship remarkable at his time of life, is delighted to find that Disraeli's views on the condition of the poorer classes, as set forth in Sybil,' harmonise in a wonderful way with those preached by Carlyle in his Past and Present. A qualification follows, founded on pre-existing prejudice in his mind. The harmony was only so far as the thoughts of a gaudy coxcomb in satin waistcoats could have any affinity with those of the stern ascetic who, in the midst of accumulating splendour, was denouncing woe and desolation. Disraeli, he adds, did not believe any more than Carlyle that the greatness of a nation depended on the abundance of its possessions. He did not believe in a progress which meant the abolition of the traditionary habits of the people, the destruction of village industries, and the accumulation of the population into enormous cities, where their character and physical qualities would be changed and probably degenerate. When Sir Robert Peel became Prime Minister, Disraeli was left out in the cold. Between the two men there was evidently nothing in common. Disraeli's mind was full of theories by which the religious, commercial, and political life of the country could be renovated. Peel was cautious, prudent, a master of finance, and an ideal Minister in the eyes of those tenpound householders from whom he, with singular want of prescience, had done all he could to withhold political power. Peel may be

regarded as the founder of the system of surrendering at discretion both the principles and the policy which leaders and followers alike have vehemently pledged themselves to maintain. The surrenders in 1829 and 1846 shook the political world at the time; but greater developments of the policy of surrender have cast those two famous acts of apostacy into the shade. Splendide mendax was Lord John's epithet for Peel as regards his conduct in 1846. The mendacity since that time has gone on increasing, till no one puts unlimited confidence in the pledges of our public men; but the splendour of the performances has somewhat paled. The artist's skill is overlooked from our familiarity with his performances. Hand-to-mouth policy of this sort was abhorrent to the mind of Disraeli, to whose far-reaching purposes, stretching from the commencement to the close of his public life, Mr Gladstone himself has done justice in his memorial speech. The attacks by Disraeli on Peel invested with a kind of dramatic interest the fall of the leader; they marked out the assailant for his successor in the Tory leadership.

No one could withhold from Disraeli at the close of Peel's administration credit for unrivalled audacity. He had not merely sought in successful conflict the leading athletes of parliamentary debate, but he had asserted the supremacy of genius in a House full of far more experienced members. And on the very eve of his assuming the leadership of his party, which was eventually to give him the leadership of the House, he was describing Parliament itself, in Coningsby,' as an effete institution, doomed to fall from the increasing unpopularity which in this country surrounds

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the depositary of power. His real career as a statesman dates from his assuming the responsibility of leadership, which for all practical purposes may be said to have devolved upon him in 1846. Mr Froude says he did little or nothing to carry out his peculiar views; but considering that he never had a majority till he was in his seventieth year, that is not very surprising. But it must be said of him, that besides restraining the practice of parliamentary opposition within effective constitutional limits, his policy and political conduct show more of forethought and of insight into the future, and of regard for ulterior consequences, than those of any public man of his day. He

stands in marked contrast in those respects both to Peel and his chief disciple Mr Gladstone. Disraeli's criticism of Peel was that he wanted imagination, and wanting imagination he wanted prescience. As Mr Froude says, quoting, unless we are mistaken, from the Life of Lord George Bentinck'

"No one was more sagacious when dealing with the circumstances before him. His judgment was faultless, ess provided that he had not to deal with the future. Insight into consequences is the test of a true statesman, and because Peel had it not, Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, and the abrogation of the commercial system, were carried in haste or in passion, and without conditions or mitigatory arrangements."

secure its expression at the polls, and manipulate a majority. Responsibility for the consequences is easily shifted to the Parliament which carried the measure, and the statesman who may have achieved the success may also be the first to lament its consequences, and ask for a renewed lease of power to enable him to pursue still further the downward course, which grows more and more easy of accomplishment.

For thirty-five eventful years Disraeli led the Tory party-the longest political leadership recorded in parliamentary history. On this period Mr Froude is unable to throw any new light, and declines to follow his actions with any minuteness. "The outer side of them," he says, "is within the memory of most of us. The inner side can only be known when his private papers are given to the world." The disappointing part of this biography is that Mr Froude has nothing new to tell us, and appears not to have seen any of the papers himself, except some correspondence with Mrs Bridges Willyams, in which the old lady was gratified with some Court and other gossip. One remarkable

incident mentioned is the offer of the Greek crown, on its refusal by the Duke of Edinburgh, to Lord Stanley, the present Lord the Derby.

Forethought, whether in home or foreign politics, is the rarest gift for statesmen to possess. It is the fault of parliamentary institutions, party politics, and democratic constituencies, that they discourage forethought. The prizes are all to those who can discern the immediate desire of the public,

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that Lord Stanley was well advised in preferring the English earldom of Derby to the crown of such a race as the modern Greeks, at all events as they were then understood.

As the papers confided to Lord Rowton have none of them at present seen the light, the interest of this biography lies in the verdict which a historian of considerable experience and conscientious judgment pronounces on Disraeli's career ten years after it is closed. Mr Froude takes no very keen interest in parliamentary matters. He is delighted when the monotony was broken in upon by incidents from without-Continental revolutions, Crimean campaigns, Indian mutinies, civil wars in America, and suchlike. As for parliamentary work pure and simple, he says, it may be claimed for Disraeli that he discharged his "sad duties" all this time with as little insincerity as the circumstances allowed. He was never wilfully obstructive. He conducted himself as a party chief with dignity and fairness. Any proposals which he considered good he helped forward with earnestness and ability, especially if they were for the improvement of the condition of the masses. It would be difficult to name a party chief on the present front Opposition bench of whom as much could be said. A still higher praise is his due, that he never sought to make party capital by increasing any difficulties which might arise in our foreign relations. There was always constitutional and caustic criticism of the actual conduct of affairs by the Minister, but there was no spend ing of days and nights in the endeavour to thwart his policy. On the contrary, a loyal support was given to the Crown.

Mr

Froude selects several instances. There was the denunciation of the claptrap addresses to their constituents of two Ministers in the Coalition Cabinet, Sir James Graham and Sir C. Wood, whose eagerness to pose as the friends of justice and humanity led them into the use of language to the ruler of France shortly after the coup d'état which might easily have provoked a war. It was the speech in which he inaugurated his opposition to the Ministry of Lord Aberdeen. And he asserted his authority as leader of Opposition to correct and restrain the imprudence of the Ministers, and placed forcibly before the country that we had no right to dictate to France her form of government, or to provoke the resentment of the French army by unwise ministerial invectives.

The next case was that of the Crimean war. Disraeli stands clear of all responsibility for the diplomatic blundering which led to that unnecessary war. But he loyally supported the Crown in its arduous enterprise. Mr Froude's criticisms on English policy at this time are hard to reconcile with his criticisms later on of Lord Beaconsfield's conduct when the Eastern question again broke out during his premiership. He says that in 1854 public opinion forbade the acceptance of the Emperor Nicholas's overtures to Sir Hamilton Seymour, and also the joint pressure of Europe on the Turks to reform. In the alternative something was to be said for adhering firmly from the first to the integrity of the Turkish empire, but that nothing was to be said for hesitation and waiting on events. Indecision and vacillation, produced by divided counsels, brought on the war, in Mr Froude's judgment as

well as in that of all sensible of intervention. It must be repeople. corded to the undying credit of Disraeli that that word was never spoken. On the contrary, his influence was with a patriotism which recent events have shown to be rare in an Opposition chief thrown on the side of non-intervention. He, with the cordial sympathy of Sir Stafford Northcote, supported Sir George Cornewall Lewis in his resistance to his colleagues in the Cabinet. He advised and insisted that the Americans must be left to shape

Mr Froude also gives Disraeli credit for helping to restrain the ferocity with which the Indian Mutiny was being suppressed. That mutiny was the outcome of our military failures in the Crimea. It had been stained by every atrocity on the part of our revolted subjects; but here, as on other occasions, Disraeli was ready to oppose and restrain public feeling rather than gain temporary advantage by stimulating it to frenzy. The Indian atrocities were far worse than the Bulgarian atrocities, and they were committed on helpless English women and children. The crisis was one in which first our empire, and next our national character, was at stake, and the leader of the Opposition disdained to turn the public excitement to party advantage.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of that personal ascendancy which Disraeli derived from his genius of insight into surrounding circumstances and their probable consequences, independently of the numerical weight of his parliamentary following, was our nonintervention in the Amerian Civil War. Had we taken part in it, we should have roused a feeling of rancour and animosity which it would have taken generations to quell. The Emperor of the French invited us to join in recognising the South and breaking the blockade. were

The Tory party, as a rule, in favour of the South. Lord Palmerston, with a good many of his colleagues-notably Mr Gladstone, with his genius for political blundering-was notoriously willing to take action. A word from Disraeli would have turned the scale and given an overwhelming majority in favour

their own fortunes in their own way. The Palmerston Cabinet blundered into letting the Alabama escape, and Mr Gladstone's speech in support of Jefferson Davis rankled for years in the minds of the Americans. When retribution overtook Mr Gladstone as Premier in the shape of increasingly urgent demands for compensation from the other side of the Atlantic, it was to the wise moderation and patriotic support of the leader of the Opposition that he was indebted for being extricated without a war from troubles which he had mainly brought upon himself by his rash meddling and muddling. Not merely was moral support given to him in Parliament, but one of Disraeli's most important colleagues, Sir Stafford Northcote, was associated with his own envoys in the work of pacification, obviously for the purpose of strengthening his hands and assuring him beforehand of a free course, unfettered by the risk of parliamentary censure. It forms a precedent which we hope will not be too readily followed, for it is not, as a general rule, advisable that the Opposition should share in Ministerial responsibility, or part with any portion of its freedom to deal with circumstances

as they arise. Even Mr Gladstone acknowledged at the time the patriotism of Disraeli's conduct, and it would have been well for his reputation if he could have imitated the same self-control and magnanimity when his rival in his turn had to deal with the perplexities of the Eastern situation, created by treaties, for the last of which Mr Gladstone himself was primarily responsible. Disraeli's conduct during and after the American Civil War, in relation to the international questions raised by that tremendous struggle, is one of the leading features of his career. It exhibited patriotism, insight, and foresight, and its success resulted from that strictly personal ascendancy and influence which genius and high character can alone confer. "Hereafter," says Mr Froude, "when the changes and chances of the present reign are impartially reviewed, Disraeli will be held to have served his country well by his conduct at this critical contingency."

No one can point to any part of Disraeli's long tenure of the Opposition leadership as showing any desire to reap party advantage out of the foreign difficulties of the country. Not merely was a loyal and effective support given to Mr Gladstone in his blundering efforts to rescue England from the Alabama difficulty, and the international ill-feeling which his own rashness and error of judgment had done much to provoke, but an equally loyal support and abstention from all harassing interference were observed in his difficulties during the Franco-German war. Mr Gladstone's Continental influence may be judged from the fact that, although parliamentary support was not withheld, France was defeated, the German empire

established, and negotiations at least entered into for the destruction of Belgium, while England was not even consulted, and had no voice in the new arrangements. Russia followed the example of the other great Powers, and retired from further observance of the Black Sea Treaty, which had closed the Crimean war. To put the case in Mr Froude's words

"Russia took advantage of the confusion to tear up the Black Sea Treaty, and throw the fragments in our faces. The warmest Radical enthusiast could not defend the imbecility with which A the outrage was submitted to. Minister was sent to Paris to inform Prince Bismark that if Russia persisted he should go to war. When Russia refused to be frightened,”—or shall we say, finding that there was no hope of Bismark's interference ?— "the uncertain Premier said in Parliament that the Minister had exceeded his instructions. It appeared, on inquiry, that the instructions had not been exceeded, but that nothing had been meant but an idle menace, which had failed of its effect."

Is there anything in the whole history of our foreign relations more thoroughly contemptible and humiliating Mr Gladstone, of course, gave way, and the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of 1856 were cancelled at the dictation of Russia. The only thing by which our honour as a party to that treaty was attempted to be saved was that Russia, while repudiating a part of it, consented to ratify the rest. Five years later the whole Eastern question was opened. The public law of Europe relating to it was the Treaty of 1856, reaffirmed and ratified by the Treaty of 1871, for which Mr Gladstone's Government was responsible-a ratification which was represented to have been extorted from Russia as the price of her repudiation of clauses which to her were specially obnoxious.

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