TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE SOLICITOR-GENERAL AS A LIBERAL DISRAELI.
IT was generally rumoured when Mr.Vernon Harcourt entered Parliament, that next to the duty of representing his con- stituents, he regarded it as his chief mission to "put down" Mr. Disraeli. Whether that legend had any basis of fact in it, we do not pretend to know, but if it had, he has indeed performed the office of a Liberal Balsam, and instead of cursing him, has blessed him altogether. Nay, more, he has paid Mr. Disraeli the compliment of carefully studying him, and reproducing, with as much fidelity as is consistent with the freshness of original genius, Mr. Disraeli's own political pose. The very clever speech at Oxford last Monday, is, from beginning to end, conceived in the Disraeliish vein, and we may frankly admit that that vein seems to become Mr. Vernon Harcourt very well. We are not sure that here and there he does not even surpass his master. His sharp reply to Lord Salisbury's aspiration for a "toothless Liberal Government" is entirely after Mr. Disraeli's manner, and in the best style of that master,—" For my part, when the Liberal Government becomes incapable of political masti- cation, I hope it will not resort to a set of false teeth, but that it will undergo that process of regeneration which will renew its incisors and its molars in their native vigour." And so is his happy description of Lord Salisbury as "the Comte de Chambord of the Conservative party, the impossible chieftain of political reaction;" though, whether it will do Mr. Disraeli any good with his own party to have elicited a strong testimonial in his own favour, and against Lord Salisbury, from the Solicitor-General of the Liberal Government, is ex- ceedingly doubtful. In France, the fact that members of the Left thought the Comte de Chambord impossible, was the Right's great reason in his favour. It was not till members of the Right began to think him equally impossible, that his chances began to dwindle. The Solicitor-General is, no doubt, quite capable, like Mr. Disraeli himself, of giving an unprejudiced judgment as to the best possible leader of the opposite party. But will any of that party think so ? Will they make allowance for that supreme detachment of mind which enables men of this calibre to look at the in- terests of opponents in a purely intellectual light ? We fear not. And if not, Mr. Harcourt may have done Mr. Disraeli a bad turn while intending to do him a good one. But however that may be (and it may well have been too small a considera- tion for Mr. Harcourt to take into account), the Solicitor- General's whole speech is pervaded by the Disraeliish style and method,—the happy personal epigrams, the grandiose and rather windy statements of principle, the ideal superiority to matters of fact, the apophthegm that sounds so big and has so little in it, the picturesque autobiographical glimpses, and the laboured, even stilted peroration. We have given an in- stance of the personal satire in the attack on Lord Salisbury. What can be more Disraeliish,—indeed, it is Mr. Disraeli's own remark, given in his own manner,—than the observation that reform ought to be usually administrative rather than legislative,—by the way, it is the only thing Mr. Disraeli never makes it,—since "the principal business of an Adminis- trator is to administer"? The Solicitor-General uses the remark to prove that it is much better to reform the law of Conspiracy, which appears to us to be as much a legislative change as any other, than to give the county fran- chise to the agricultural labourers, whom Mr. Harcourt com- pliments after Mr. Disraeli's fashion, while he postpones indefinitely their main request on the strength of the very gratuitous assumption that you cannot give household suffrage in the counties without embarking on the interminable task of redistributing seats. Then how Disraeliish is the panegyric on ambition, "the noblest of all passions ;" and how completely after the same master is the free and very false translation of it into the desire to become "something higher and better" than you are ! Does Mr. Harcourt suppose that in becoming Solicitor-General he has not gratified his ambition ? Or does he sincerely think that in taking that office he has become something "higher and better" than he was ? If he could answer either question in the affirmative, he is not the shrewd man we take him to be. Yet if he replies in the negative to both, it is clear that ambition, whether as a passion it be " noble " or simply morally indifferent, does not consist in desiring to become higher and better than you were. Nothing can be more like Mr. Disraeli and Vivian Grey than that panegyric on ambition and that wonderful sleight-of-hand metamorphosis of it into something rich and strange. Again, what can be more emptily grandilovent than the Solicitor General s panegyric on peace ?—" it is not in the whirlwind of passion, nor in the earthquake of war, but it -is in that still small voice that speaks to the consciences a states- men that has been revealed the ineffable benediction on those who seek peace and ensue it." If that means anything, it means that the blessing on peaceinakers is not revealed through the spasms of passion and the commotions of war, a remark which is so exceedingly obvious, that we are quite astonished at the art which wraps it up in such noble words. The Solicitor- General was inveighing against two classes,—those who think the policy of the country sometimes, too pacific, who think that sometimes our statesmen pay too high a price for peace, —for example, by signing treaties which they explain in the same breath as meaning nothing serious,—and -next, against those who think that the best guarantee of peace is not te be quite unprepared for war. And instead Of discussing what is teo high a price for peace,—he himself evidently thinks there is such a price,—he indulges in stilted nonsense about the blessing on peace not being revealed in whirlwinds of passion and earthquakes of war. Then on the second point, —the wisdom of penurious peace establishments in Army and Navy,—he preaches what seems to us wretchedly bad sense, a doctrine refuted most miserably in our Crimean ex- perience, and refuted in a way that statesmen still remember with a shudder. It may be and is wise to maintain a sys- tem which keeps in full service but small numbers of soldiers and seamen, but to pretend that a nation can be drilled at a few weeks' notice, that great and most compli- cated machines, artillery trains of the modern kind, and iron- clads, can be produced and got into order at a few weeks' notice, is not even sense, but simply nonsense. Yet that is the drift of Mr. Harcourt's remarks on this head. Like Mr. Disraeli, he discovers an inapplicable principle to cover the weak array of his facts. Again, like Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Harcourt gives us the most picturesque autobiographical glimpses into his own life. We have referred in another connection to his frank confession of a noble ambition. But his reason for not attacking the Church of England, though he joins the Dissenters in inveighing against the Education Act of 1870, is still more after Mr. Disraeli's manner. He "owes all that is best and dearest to him in life to a youth spent in an English parsonage." That seems to us, though a more picturesque, a worse reason for supporting the Church, than the very bad, because wholly erroneous excuse he gives for continuing to dislike the Education Act. The existing Denominational system, he says, has not educated the people ; yet it has been in operation 35 years, more than a generation of men Now, first, the existing system is not denomina- tional, but a compound system, a denominational system sup- plemented. And next, what has been in operation for 35 years? A denominational system, no doubt, but not a denominational system with power to gather in and educate the children. Even Mr. Disraeli could hardly surpass in audacity the criti- cism that because schools which cannot get children into them, and cannot keep them in regular attendance when they come, have not taught effectually those children who did not come, or attended irregularly when they did come, therefore they are useless instruments for teaching children who are compelled to come, and to come regularly to their lessons.
And then, again, as regards apophthegms with a great sound in them and but a little meaning, where could we find one with a more characteristic ring of the Tory leader's in it than the Solicitor-General's "Patience is the secret of politics, for time is the artificer of nations"? The last part of the sentence was, as the context shows, only a magnificent way of saying that all big things take time, and was intended to lead up to the elaborate peroration on that time-honoured theme, the grandeur of the British oak, which is so stout and firmly rooted, and has been so long in growing. But then this magnificent way of saying that big things take time was also a very bad way. It would have been quite true, for instance, to say, Patience is the secret of professional ambition, for it takes time to make a Solicitor-General ;' but it would be a very bad way of asserting that pro- position to have said, Patience is the secret of professional ambition, for time is the artificer of Solicitors-General.' Mr. Disraeli has a monopoly of this kind of saying, and no one grudges him his Vivi An-Greyish licences. But what is question- able taste in Mr. Disraeli is bad taste in his imitators. Indeed, the whole peroration about that time-honoured British oak of oars was exactly in the style of the Conservative-Renaissance oratory, a style approaching to the flamboyant,- without its namely, the necessity of artificially exciting a lively motion of, reverence towards the past, as the only possible antidote to the desire for improvement in the present. Mr Disraeli is bpuricl to find romantic artificial attractions for an unpopular doctrine. Mr. Harcourt follows him in 'decorative' art of the same degenerate style, though professing to be the exponent of a popular doctrine. No doubt, however, on the whole, the Solicitor-General's speech_ was much cleverer and more telling than this analysis of its peculiarities would suggest. We should describe the general idea of it as an attempt to set forth the Pahnerstonian type of Conservative Liberalism,—the type most nearly approaching to Mr. Disraeli's Liberal Ponservatism,—and to convey pretty distinctly the idea that the Solicitor-General lobirs very high for himself as the destined exponent of this type of Liberalism in the time to come. Mr. Harcourt apologised for the action of the_Lords, even when they, threw out his own carefully- drawn Bill to amend the Law of Conspiracy; he wishes to regard the Lords as belonging to the great tradi- tions, which are to be always revered. He will never attack the Established Church, for he was reared in a country parsonage, whose memories are to him sacred. He will not banish religion even from the schools though he looks down on Mr. Forster's great work; he only wants to make the teaching unsectarian. lie won't hear of doctoring the Constitution again, even to give the agricultural labourers the vote. He wishes the Muse of Commons to devote itself -chiefly to improving the Administration, and to leave great legislative efforts alone. There is altogether the ring in the speech of consciously expressing a want of the hour, of embodying a current of Liberal public opinion not sufficiently considered, and in addition, a very strong opinion that the man as well as the hour for this line of thought has arrived. Possibly it may be so. But while we admire the wit of the speech, and recognise its general ability, there is to our ears a Brummagem Palmerstonianism about it, a sort of British Bow- wow Philistinism, which, however sincere for the moment, does not ring of deep conviction, and which we fancy we can see giving way to almost any other line of policy, if some other line of
policy were more suitable for the purposes of a noble ambition ? Indeed where a politician avowedly says, as Mr. Harcourt does,
that almost all modern statesmen have to do is to register public opinion, we may be prepared to see the same man praising the British oak for its slow growth one day, and the mustard-seed for its rapid increase the next. Mr. Disraeli at least professes to educate a party. Mr. Harcourt professes to go to school to public opinion on all subjects, without appar- ently needing much protection even from a conscience-clause.
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