TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE DISRAELI-ARNIM AFFAIR.
MR. DISRAELI has committed what, in any other man but himself, would be considered an act either of unexpected weakness or remarkable imprudence. Speaking in the Guildhall, at the banquet given to Ministers on the 9th November, he stated, in language with which we cordially agree, the reasons for which an ordinary English workman, without land and without capital, may temperately approve the institutions under which he lives. Those institutions secure to him at all events a degree of personal freedom which exists in no other European country,—not even in Switzerland, where the Cantons invest their police with very extensive powers. Alluding, as every one thought, to a case which had been in every one's mouth, Mr. Disraeli said :—" The working-classes of this country have inherited personal rights which the nobility of other nations do not yet possess. Their persons and their homes are sacred. They have no fear of arbitrary arrest or domiciliary visits. They know, as the Lord Chancellor has justly reminded us, that the administration of law in this country is pure and that it is no respecter of individuals or classes. They pure, very well that their industry is unfettered—that by the law of this country they may combine to protect the interests of labour, and as the Commander-in-Chief has well reminded us, they know that, though it is open to all of them to serve their Sovereign by land or sea no one can be dragged from his craft or his hearth to enter a Military service which is repugnant to him." There was no overt reference in that sentence to any government, no allusion to any individual, merely a state- ment that our laws do not allow the arbitrary arrests and chmiciliarli visits allowed by the laws of other countries ; but everybody believed, and most newspapers said, that the pas- sage contained an allusion to the arrest of Count Arnim and the domiciliary visits to his house, and Mr. Disraeli allowed that impression to prevail uncorrected for an entire week. On Monday morning, the 16th inst., however, he allowed a corn- munigue'to appear, stating that "an entirely unwarranted con- struction having been, in some quarters, placed on the expres- sions used by the Prime Minister, at Guildhall, on the subject of arbitrary arrests, the Times is authorised to state that, in making those observations, the ease of Count Arnim was not present to his mind, for the sufficient reason that the arrest of Count Arnim was not arbitrary, but in accordance with the laws of his country." A more extraordinary disclaimer was never made by a man in Mr. Disraeli's position, and it is difficult to believe that it was made entirely without some light pressure from Berlin. There was no English necessity for making it whatever. Mr. Disraeli, of course, knows what was in his mind far better than any one else can, but he is, or ought to be, by this time well used to misinterpretation, and particularly to misinterpretation in a too favourable sense. The meaning placed upon the sentence was a very natural one, and one in no degree unbecoming Mr. Disraeli's position as the first Minister of a great State, and though it was erroneous, the error could only serve to create an impression that Mr. Disraeli had observed the marked difference between the Prussian laws and our own, as revealed in the Arnim case, and on the whole preferred those of his own country. There was no need for a dis- claimer at all, still less for one which deprives Mr. Disraeli's argument of all coherent meaning whatever. He says he could not have referred to Count Arnim's arrest, for that "was not arbitrary, but in accordance with the laws of his country," which is just the very point upon which he was descanting. He was not asserting the freedom of Englishmen from illegal arrest, which would have been an absurdity—no arrests, even in Turkey, being made illegally—but from laws authorising arbitrary arrest, as the laws of all countries blessed with a preventive police do authorise it. And now, he says, because Count Arnim's arrest was warranted by law, therefore he could not have had it in his mind. Why not, when he was talking of the very state of the law under which Count Arnim was arrested? As a matter of fact, Mr, Disraeli is of ,course correct, and he was thinking of the arrest of Prince Kung in Pekin, or refractory Beys in Constantinople, but as a reason to be given by a man of his intelligence, Ms statement is little short of ludicrous.
The worst of it is that the whole world will persist in believing that Mr. Disraeli published his disclaimer in conse- quence of some impression, or some hint, or some informal representation that Prince Bismarck, among others, had mis- taken his meaning, and that his speech was calculated to cause
those " misunderstandings " which, according to the semi- official North-German Gazette, have been so happily prevented by the explanation. It was not so, of course. The German Chancellor, great as his position is in the world, could scarcely have presumed to rebuke an English Premier for giving in lain own capital, and in an after-dinner speech, an opinion on the comparative value to the working-class of certain institutions.. He could not, we say, have done so ; first, because he is him- self the frankest of men, and says on occasion whatever he pleases of any system or any person • and secondly, because Mr. Disraeli must have repudiated any such interference. One promise at least made by this Government was a resolute foreign policy. One hope of the people about it was that a certain air of sub- missiveness in external politics would, with the accession of the Tories to power, disappear from the attitude of Great Britain. One secret of the belief in Mr. Disraeli was that he had a certain audacity of disposition, a certain habit of looking on England as a great Power, which would of itself produce for her at least the external courtesies of official respect. Had Mr. Disraeli published his disclaimer under pressure, however slight or• friendly, from Berlin, the promise, the hope, and the reason for belief would have been falsified together. He would have pub- lished at the bidding of a Foreign Minister a humble apology for a perfectly true statement made in the most ordinary way, and in itself almost a platitude. He would, in fact, have set a precedent which would almost compel him, whenever- there is a foreign debate in Parliament, to disclaim any mean- ing in his speech offensive to the dignity of any Minister whose country he might happen to have mentioned in its course. Nothing more derogatory to the honour of a great country or the independence of its Sovereign could pos- sibly have occurred, the utter insignificance of the occa- sion only accentuating the visible effect of the inter- ference. We entirely acquit Mr. Disraeli of stooping so. low, but we may, we think, having acquitted him fairly, ask what interpretation the Tories would have put upon such an incident, had it occurred during Mr. Gladstone's re'gime? The- air would have rung with insults. The Standard—which, we do it the justice to say, is annoyed even now—would have mourned over the depths to which England had fallen under the rule of a Premier so careless of her honour; the Globe would have asked to whom Mr. Gladstone was responsible ; the Times would have hinted that a bolder bearing would better pro- tect Mr. Gladstone's dignity ; and the Pall Mall Gazette would have asked whether any aristocratic Premier, great as his faults might have been, would ever have stooped so low. All the explanations in the world would have been of no use. Mr. Gladstone's denials would have been treated with scorn. The Geneva Arbitration would have been once more brought for- ward, and the Liberals would once more have been suspected of wilfully trailing the Imperial Flag. The disclaimer would have been the stock subject at every public meeting, and Mr. Smollett would probably, if Mr. Whalley would only second him, have moved a vote &censure. The incident would have been ad- mitted to be slight, but described as one which showed the temper of a Ministry intent as usual only on accumulating a surplus. Everyone who remembers the language employed in 1872 knows that we do not exaggerate, and that Mr. Gladstone could not have done without severe reproof what Mr. Disraeli has done with the easiest sang-froid. Everybody knows that the latter is the head of the Tory party, and that the Tory party always maintains in mall things as well as great the European position to which their country is entitled ; and so there is no more to be said, except that Mr. Disraeli, from excess of candour, or a wish to be absolutely understood, which is not always his distinguishing characteristic, has made himself liable to a misinterpretation which will not hurt him, but which might have been fatal to his rival, and which, it is clear, will exist and will be most injurious in Germany. There the good folk will say that it is safer—as John Lemoinne already says, though in other words, in the Debate—for a Ger- man Deputy to attack Prince Bismarck in Berlin, than for an English Premier to utter in London a sentence which could be perverted into criticism of any act, however much discussed, approved by the German Chancellor.
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