TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ILLNESS OF LORD BEACONSFIELD.
THE alarm of Wednesday and Thursday concerning the serious illness of Lord Beaconsfield told the country what, at such times only it ever really appreciates, how great is the impression which has been made by Lord Beaconsfield's genius on the nation's mind and history. Lord Beaconsfield's re- moval from the head of his party would be the end of an era, and of one of the most singular of the eras, in its political life. Like all alien genius, genius totally unlike that of the nation it is destined to rule, the genius of Disraeli has made the English people, and especially the most English of the English people, the Conservative Squires, something of a riddle to themselves. Just as France under a Corsican chief was hardly France, but something quite distinct both from France and Italy, so the Tories under Mr. Disraeli and Lord Beaconsfield have not been so much Tories, as something quite distinct both from Tories and from the singular man who has led and moulded them. The uses of the ashen or oaken staff are not more changed by the steel point with which they are fitted to make them into spears, than the uses of the political fibre of the English country gentle- men, farmers, and merchants, who make up the Conservative party, have been changed by the leader whom they adopted, and who has given their organisation an entirely now significance and new drift. Indeed, this does not apply solely to the Tory party. We may say of all England, that Mr. Disraeli's keen perception in 1867 that democracy was coming, and that when it came it would not be wholly an agency of the so-called Liberal kind, but also one which might be turned to great account in the interest of those who have more sympathy with brilliant Dictators than with plodding Consti- tutions, has transformed the country into a different country —a country that has not clearly known itself, any more than it has clearly known him while he has been at the head of one of the great parties in the State. It is this which is the chief cause of the blank feeling with which any keen perception of the danger of losing Lord Beaconsfield fills the English people. One of the chief excitements of their political life would be gone. That great variable quantity, the exact effect of which on the public life of their State no one could ever accurately calculate, would go with him. While he is with us,—while it is possible that at any time he may be at the head of affairs,—the country feels like a fleet sailing under sealed orders, and knowing neither the purpose nor the nature of the expedition. There has probably never been a political sensation in England during the century equal to that which was felt three years ago, about this timo, when the summons of the Indian troops to Malta became known, or, later, again, when the Anglo-Turkish Convention was published. While Lord Beaconsfield remains at the head of the Tory party, the country lives under the suppressed excitement of knowing that a genius utterly heterogeneous from its own, may at any time do or say something which the Tory party will assuredly support, even though it changes the con- dition of the national life. And there is, of course, a high and by no means wholly unpleasurable excitement in living
under a suspense of that nature. It braces up politics to a point of interest which, under ordinary leaders, is never known. It is indeed this which gives most of the keenness and intensity to the more national genius of the rival leader. His faculties too, are braced up to a higher point, by the very unexpected assaults and still less expected evacuations of positions previously supposed to be strong Tory positions, which result from the commanding oracles of the Tory Sphinx. The whole political world is indeed transformed, both on its Tory and on its Liberal side, by the authority of the singular man who has not only reconstituted his party on a democratic basis, but having so reconstituted it, has accustomed us to see it redeeming its birthright in the old Semitic way, by passing off its hands for the hands of Esau, even though the voice was unmis- takably the voice of Jacob.
And besides his unique influence on political events, the mere personal career of Lord Beaconsfield has been a very stimu- lating constituent among the political influences of his time.
That a man so entirely separate from the society in which lie lifed, so little in sympathy with it, so powerfully endowed with the qualities needful for finding out its weakest points and holding them up to ridicule, so deficient in the qualities needful for appreciating its more solid capaci- ties, should have outshone all his political rivals, con- quered the very party to which his genius seemed least. akin, reconstituted it, and risen to the first place within. it, has lent a certain air of Oriental romance to recent. English politics, which but for him, of course, they could not. possibly have had. The conquest of Saxon England by the Normans was hardly so remarkable a feat, as the conquest of Conservative England by the author of " Tancred." Lord. Beaconsfield has shown what is possible to cool courage and discriminating observation, under conditions which, to any other man, would have seemed absolutely fatal to high. success. We have heard too exclusively perhaps of the power of sympathy. The power of sympathy is groat, but the power of real,—not of feigned,—intellectual indifference• to sympathy is great too, only that it is so very rare. The• power of the lion-tamer is not the power of sympathy, but the power of fearlessness and indifference. And that has always• been the characteristic power of Lord Beaconsfield. He has- succeeded partly because, while his will was set upon success, his heart was not oppressed by failure. He has never been tamed, because the usual tamers of the human spirit, diffi- culty, ridicule, and failure, never made any impression upon him, except by way of suggesting that he had not yet found the right approaches to his ends. A man so indomitable_ cannot but lend a sort of halo to political life ; and though it is a kind of halo which attracts men of all kinds and char-. acters, not only those fitted to adorn the political career, but, also many fitted only to render, it more dangerous and slippery,. we can ill spare any attraction that brings capacity to the' front, and redeems politics from the reproach of dull and monotonous ignobility. Lord Beaconsfield's whole career has been meteoric ; and a meteor often sheds, though a fitful,. yet a brilliant and revealing light.
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