MR. DISRAELI ON HIS OWN TEACHINGS.
%JR. DISRAELI is a little chagrined at the low literary I estimate formed in England of " Lothair," and in a very vulgarly conceived passage of ilia new preface attri- butes it to the English jealousy of success. The same remark has probably been made by Mr. Tupper, and probably with equal truth. On the whole, there is singularly little lite- rary jealousy felt in England of great literary powers. Who ever heard of a conspiracy to crush Thackeray or defraud Sir Walter -Scott of his great fame ? We are apt to be sharp on the vanity and eccentricity of Mr. Carlyle, but who ever heard that Mr. Carlyle's great powers were ignored by the literary class ? If
Lothair" has been generally depreciated in England, it must be either that the book is bad, or exceptionally beyond the range of ordinary English intelligence. There is no disposition in England to ignore Mr. Disraeli's talents. When he utters an epigram on Lord Shaftesbury, or Mr. Lowe, or Mr. Beresford Hope, the English Press echoes and re-echoes with it till it is popularized in our literature. The sketches of Taper and Tadpole, of Mrs. Guy Flouncey and her parties, of the gentle Leander, whose part in life it was to " educate" the neglected taste of the English aristocracy in culinary affairs, and many others of like brilliancy have always been favourites with English readers. If Mr. _Disraeli still finds it necessary to recall to the public mind the higher purposes of his works, it is not because England has been too prejudiced to give genius its due, but because she failed to find a serious purpose in these higher flights of Mr. Disraeli's fancy. They have been recollected like the India Bill, No. 2 of 1858,—like the theory of 1868 that the Roman Church in Ireland is an established Church, like the doctrine of 1870, broached on the outbreak of the war, that England was bound to _give effect to the guarantee of 1814 which secured to Prussia her Saxon provinces, as laborious freaks of historical fancy intended to lighten a wearisome subject by novelty and paradox, rather than as the reflections of serious conviction. A writer who can suggest that Charles I., in fighting and dying for tonnage and poundage, was " the holocaust of direct taxation," is hardly likely to be very seriously construed when he comes to explain the oppres- sion of our " Venetian Constitution," to expound the duties of the Church of England, and to develop the relations between the Christian revelation and the theory of race.
Mr. Disraeli seems quite hurt that these " views " of his have not been accepted as landmarks for a new philosophy of history, and in an elaborate preface to a new edition of his works, he has recalled the important doctrines which he -intended to unfold in that great " trilogy " of the modern politi- cal drama,—" Coningsby ; or, the New Generation,"—" Sybil ;
or, the two Nations," "Tancred; or, the New Crusade." But we fear it will be in vain that he recalls to us his political evangel. We shall continue to laugh and refuse to ponder deeply Mr. Disraeli's creed. It is the first condition of a successful propaganda that the evangelist shall believe heart and soul in his own gospel. Mr. Disraeli obviously toys and trifles with his. He betrays more pleasure in its paradoxes than in its truths. He is most amusing when he is diving deepest into his own prophetic announcements. He can never quite help satirizing himself. ' He heralds a great discovery by a witticism and crowns it with bathos. The great social reformer of his most " earnest " novel, " Sybil," exclaims at one of the crises of his destiny, "No, I never smoke,— tobacco is the tomb of love ;" and the " New Crusade," having betrayed the New Crusader into a sentimental embarrass- , ment, the great political trilogy ends with the evidently intentional anti-climax, that Papa and Mamma, "the Duke and Duchess of Bellamont," " had arrived at Jerusalem." Nay, the passages which most carefully simulate earnestness and eloquence are gaudy and pretentious. Tancred's revela- tion on Mount Sinai is delivered to him by a ' mighty form' which declares itself the ' angel of Arabia,' and slowly waves a sceptre fashioned like a palm tree,' and which rolls out grandiloquent periods about primeval forests, wild woods, Caesars, Galilean Arabs, " throws of a great birth," and so forth. This remarkable speech begins with, Child of Christendom,' and starts afresh after it has got to the end of its first burst of eloquence, with " Yet again," —an extremely improved style of Revelation, no doubt, but we may be quite sure that if that had been the style of the revelations on Sinai and in Galilee and Jerusalem, instead of only finding many disbelievers, they would have commanded no believers at all. This sort of thing, especially when elaborately arranged in a setting of satiric brilliants, will never inspire in Englishmen the respect for strong convictions.
But if Mr. Disraeli's style debars his readers from taking much account of the political and theological creeds he inculcates with so much grandeur, his practical career as a statesman makes this still more difficult. What does he tell us in this manifesto as to the " long-meditated views " which he expressed to his country ? First, that it was one of his great objects " to change back the oligarchy into a generous aristocracy round a real throne." What has he done to this end ? or is it, indeed, an end capable of transla- tion into practical measures at all? Has he attempted anything of which the object could be said to be to make the aristocracy more generous ? Was his first lead of the country gentlemen in oppo- sition to Sir Robert Peel's free-trade measures an attempt to infuse generosity into the aristocratic party ? When the starving people cried for remission of the duties on corn, and Mr. Disraeli pro- nounced the severest invective on the Conservative Minister who was taking pity on them, was he carrying out his grand policy of breaking down the narrow oligarchical spirit, and trying to raise the aristocracy into the natural leaders of the people ? What, again, may he have ever done or attempted towards making the throne "a real throne "? He has given one very flowery and somewhat sickly description in " Sybil" of the royal maiden receiving in a garden the oath of allegiance from grey-headed statesmen and warriors, to which he refers in his new manifesto with much pride. But beyond that we cannot remember that he has ever said a word or done a deed tending to make the throne more ' real ' than he found it. Then his second grand object was "to inspire life and vigour into the Church as the trainer of the nation by the revival of Convocation, then dumb, on a wide basis, and not as has been since done in the shape of a priestly section." What has he ever said or done as a states- man giving us any reason to believe that this is an object really near his heart? If he described in " Sybil " a fancy Church of the people, he lavished plenty of well-calculated ridicule on the Church of England in " Tancred " without even hinting that it had in it any vitality or hope of vitality. Tancred describes the Church thus :—" I find its opinions conflicting, its decrees contradictory, its conduct inconsistent. I have conferred with one who is esteemed its most eminent prelate, and I have left him with a conviction of what I had for some time suspected, that inspiration is not only a divine but a local quality," and is limited,—so Mr. Disraeli's teaching goes, to Churches which have received a " magnetic " stimulus from a Hebrew founder. What
is there in Mr. Disraeli's acts to do away with the effect of this contemptuous view of the English Church, or to justify the remarkable statement of his new manifesto, that he looked to the English Church twenty-five years ago as one of the great instruments for saving the English nation ; or that he really then believed, as he now asserts,
that " resting on the Church of Jerusalem modified by the divine school of Galilee, it would have found that rock of truth which Providence, by the instrumentality of the Semitic race, had promised to St. Peter." Now he reproaches Dr. New- man with " seeking refuge in mediaeval superstititions which are generally only the embodiments of pagan ceremonies and creeds," but when he wrote " Tancred " he professed that Rome had a great advantage over the English Church which Englishmen could not understand,—in that it " was founded by a Hebrew and that the magnetic influence lingers." On Church as on other matters Mr. Disraeli can hardly reproach Englishmen for regarding his political faith as a fancy article, freely modified from time to time, and never supported by the actions of the statesman. Mr. Disraeli's policy as a statesman has carefully confirmed the impression produced by his literary work,—that his various creeds, though highly "orna- mental to debate," as he once said of Mr. Beresford Hope's invectives, are not serious.
Or, at least, if any of these creeds is serious, it is the one which was suggested more or less in all his novels, elaborated in " Tancred," distinctly defended in his own name in the " Life of Lord George Bentinck," and thus enunciated in " Tancred,"—" All is race ; there is no other truth, because
it includes all others." To that, we imagine, Mr. Disraeli does do a little real homage in his heart. Whether he entirely believes the geographical inspiration of the soil of Arabia, he does, no doubt, seriously believe in the magnetizing powers of the race which comes from it, and his language gives one the impres- sion that he thinks this " magnetism" may be ascribed with almost as much probability of truth to the hypothesis of a special relation between this race and the Creator, as to any other cause. But his faith in the fact of the magnetism is evidently far deeper than his faith in the cause of the magnetism. That the " Celtic insurrection " of the last century against the Semitic principle,—the Voltairean movement,—failed, and that the Teutonic insurrection of this century, which may be called the Straussian and Darwinian movement, will fail also, Mr. Disraeli seemingly believes, and in this new preface he ascribes its necessary failure to the " organic demand" of man for "direct relations with the Creator." This phrase, however, is probably used in political deference to English Church opinion. If Mr. Disraeli has a serious conviction in the world,—which is not certain,—it is that the only relation which ordinary men can have with the Creator is indirect, through the agency of the Semitic race and the magne- tism of the Arabian soil. What he really seems to bold (lan- guidly) is, that whatever the Semitic race believes as to the grand truths of religion, the rest of the world must necessarily believe in a sort of helpless deference to the impulse of a superior organ. Churches are powerful, or the reverse, in exact pro- portion to the freshness of the supply of magnetic forces from a Semitic stock. " The Crusades were of vast advantage to Europe," says Sidonia, " and renovated the spiritual hold which Asia has always had upon the North. It seems to wane at pre- sent, but it is only the decrease that precedes the new develop- ment." In short, the inferior races will always believe on this point what the Semitic race dictates, but whether what the Semitic race dictates is or is not absolutely true,—that is a profound question the difficulties of which Mr. Dis- raeli has probably discussed with himself without feeling that the answer is by any means a very vital matter. Mr. Disraeli is more than half, if not wholly, a fatalist, and no fatalist can distinguish clearly between God and Fate. He trans- lates even theological conceptions into the language of fatalism. In his life of Lord George Bentinck, he describes the Crucifixion as an act of expiation, in which " the immolators were pre- ordained like the victims, and the holy race supplied both. The human mind cannot contemplate the idea that the most important deed of time could depend upon the human will." Starting from the doctrine that the philosophy of race explains more of the course of human affairs than any other philosophy, he treats the jealousies felt of higher races by the lower as helpless murmurs of humanity which must simply be disregarded ; but as to the secret of the power exercised by the higher race, whether the grand doctrine it teaches is true, or only the spell by which it fasci- nates and subdues, we doubt extremely whether Mr. Disraeli has any fixed opinion. Clearly he does not hold that the " Celtic insurrection " of the last century against "the Semitic principle " was put down by reason. Clearly he does not hold that the Teutonic insurrection of this century will be put down by reason. It is all a matter of intellectual destiny. " When the tumult subsides, the Divine truths were found to be not less prevalent than before, and simply because they are divine." Though it may seem
to be a question about scientific evidence and about the minutiae of historical criticism,—that is all seeming. What it really is, is the gradual reassertion of the power of the creed of the higher race over the mind of the lower.
It is obvious, indeed, that this creed, that the true philosophy of race includes all other philosophy, must be sceptical. If the higher race ceases,—as the Semitic race at least as distributed in Europe seems to be ceasing,—to hold its old creed, has it not still its privilege of race to dictate a new creed ? Indeed, what creed can be less Hebrew than Mr. Disraeli's own creed as to the prerogative of race ;—the old Hebrews thought their race an exceptionally servile one. And what the Hebrew Spinoza disproves and the Hebrew Heine mocks, must not Mr. Disraeli necessarily doubt? Of course ; and what is more, with this creed as to race, he must doubt of nearly everything except his own superiority to Celts and Teutons. And this we take to be the state of mind really betrayed in this curious manifesto. He looks upon all that he has written and finds it very good,—because he, an Israelite of the Israelites, wrote it. No doubt it is full of inflation, paradox, in- consistency, and cynicism ; but inflation, paradox, inconsistency,. and cynicism are sanctified by the mouth that utters them, and better than sobriety, logic, consistency, and earnestness from any organization less closely in contact with the "local inspiration"' of Arabia.
Previous page
