ΧΙ BEACONSFIELD AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE [BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Earl of Beaconsfield; born, London, December 21, 1804; died, London, April 19, 1881; baptized in the Church of England, 1817; privately educated; studied law in a solicitor's office, 1821-24; 1825, published his first novel "Vivian Grey"; 1830-31, traveled in Europe and the Levant; his novel "Contarini Fleming" attracts notice 1832; after defeats becomes Member of Parliament for Maidstone 1837; marries Mrs. Wyndham Lewis 1839; leads the "Protectionist" attack on Peel 1846; leader of opposition 184952, 1852-58, 1859-66, 1868-74; Chancellor of Exchequer 1852, 1858-59, 1866-68; Premier 1868, 1874-80.] The expansion of the English domain by discovery and colonization or by war and conquest has been one of the distinguishing features of the nineteenth century. The movement may be said to have begun with the planting of the North American colonies two hundred years before. A century later the victories of Lord Clive and the administration of Warren Hastings, the empire-builder, laid a broad foundation for British dominion in India. Before the dawn of the nineteenth century the voyages of Captain James Cook in the South Pacific had opened new doors to Anglo-Saxon expansion in Australia, New Zealand, and the neighboring islands. In 1806 England wrested from the Dutch the sovereignty of Cape Colony at the southern extremity of Africa, the strategic half-way station on the main traveled sea-road to India and the East. Gibraltar, Malta, and Cyprus in the Mediterranean, Aden, Singapore, and Hong Kong in the Far Eastern seas were acquired and fortified in order to protect British commerce. It could be said with truth that the sun never set upon the flag of England, and that the morning drum-beat of her garrisons saluted the sun in his daily journey around the world. At the close of the century the foreign possessions of Great Britain amounted in area to ten million square miles, and in population to three hundred and fifty million souls. The problems which have sprung from this vast colonial empire have been among the most serious which English statesmen have been compelled to face. The colonies in America and Australia were English in blood, language, and institutions. In South Africa a large proportion of the inhabitants were Dutch "Boers," transferred without their consent and against their will to a foreign sovereignty. In India and Burma the English established their authority and maintained it by force of arms over teeming native populations of another race and religion. How to hold together an empire so vast and various; how to adapt administrative methods to its novel and changing needs; how, if possible, to organize the incongruous multitude of dependencies, colonies, and protected states into some sort of federal empire-these are among the newer problems of British statesmanship. Americans know how imperfectly the ministers of George III. were prepared to deal with such problems, and how their blundering resulted in the independence of the United States. The lesson of 1776 has not been forgotten, as the history of England's conciliatory policy toward Canada and the Australasian commonwealth abundantly testifies. Lord Tennyson's verses, written in the year of the Queen's jubilee, give expression to the altered relation of the mother-country toward her colonial offspring: "Britain fought her sons of yore, Britain failed; and nevermore, Drove from out the eagle's nest "Sharers of our glorious past, Brothers, must we part at last? 'Sons be welded each and all Into one imperial whole, One with Britain, heart, and soul! One life, one fleet, one flag, one throne! Although as yet no statesman has arisen who has been able to frame a plan of federation which should weld all into "one imperial whole," the idea is abroad, and has occupied many minds. Perhaps the man whose powerful imagination first grasped the "imperial" idea and began to look upon Greater Britain as having common interests, and being capable of assuming common responsibilities, was Lord Beaconsfield, or Benjamin Disraeli-to use the name by which he first came into public notice. Death hushed his active mind before he could give form and substance to his great concept, and it was left to others trained in his school to propagate the idea, and just at the century's close to demonstrate its significance and worth. Yet what he did for England through a long life spent in conspicuous public service renders it impossible to exclude him from any list of Ten Great Englishmen of the nineteenth century. Nor is there in the entire group a personality more interesting than that of the ambitious, determined, witty, eloquent, and amazingly clever Israelite who raised himself by sheer force of intellect from an object of ridicule and contempt to the leadership of the hereditary aristocracy, membership in the House of Lords, chief minister of England, friend of the sovereign, and arbiter of the destinies of nations. On that January night in 1846, when Sir Robert Peel, as Prime Minister, confessed to the House of Commons his conversion to the theory of free trade, and his purpose to repeal the Corn Laws, he was answered by Benjamin Disraeli in a speech which for bitterness of sarcasm, brilliancy of wit, and savagery of denunciation, has seldom been equaled in parliamentary history. (See Appendix.) He denounced Peel as "a man who never originates an idea; a watcher of the atmosphere; a man who takes his observations, and when he finds the wind in a particular quarter turns his sails to suit it. Such a man may be a powerful minister, but he is no more a great statesman than the man who gets up behind a carriage is a great whip!" Such an attack, voicing the feelings of the Tory protectionists, and coming from Peel's own side of the House, at that critical moment, made the political fortune of the speaker. From that hour Benjamin Disraeli was looked upon as the hope of the remnant of the Tory party, which could no longer follow Peel. Disraeli was in his tenth year of membership in the House of Commons. He was a descendant of a line of Spanish and Venetian Jews who had sought refuge in England and prospered there. His father, Isaac Disraeli, had broken with the family traditions, devoting himself to literature instead of getting gain, and had renounced the faith of his fathers. The son, Benjamin, was baptized into the Church of England at the age of thirteen, educated among his father's books and in private schools, and at seventeen articled to a firm of London solicitors. Instead of practicing law the young clerk practiced authorship so cleverly as to make a sensation in his twenty-first year with a novel "Vivian Grey" (1826), the first of eleven ("Young Duke," 1831; "Contarini Fleming," 1832; "Alroy," 1833; "Henrietta Temple," 1836; "Venetia," 1837; "Coningsby," 1844; "Sybil,” 1845; "Tancred," 1847; "Lothair," 1870; "Endymion,' 1880), besides several long poems, burlesques, and political pamphlets, and "The Life of Lord George Bentinck." "Vivian Grey" was very smartly done, and fashionable Lonaon was captivated by its clever satire and witty dialogue. On the profits of his earlier books he traveled extensively in Europe and the Levant, where his Oriental imagination was strongly stimulated. Before he was thirty he had won his way into the most exclusive circles of London society, the vogue of his novels and the brilliancy of his conversational powers commending him to the "smart set" of the metropolis. His determination "to be somebody" in spite of the disadvantages of blood, birth, and lack of money led him to ridiculous affectations—yet, however ridiculed at the time, they served his turn, and brought |