MR. DISRAELI'S INFLUENCE IN THE POLITICAL WORLD
MRDISR ATILT'S repeated returns of ill-health have caused his party to be visited by great searchings of heart. What are they to do, supposing he should be too unwell to hold on
his way as Prime Minister ? When the master retires from the school, who would carry on the work of Conservative edu- cation ? Would it be Mr. Gathorne Hardy, whose sympathy with the hearts of country vicars and country squires almost rivals that which the motherly head of the school-house should display with the tender fears and anxieties of the mothers of the pupils? Or would it be Sir Stafford Northcote, whose studies under the great rival schoolmaster have taught him something of the secrets of the foe, and whose serious and didactic candour is eminently adapted to keep before the slower pupils of his class the useful though humiliating lesson that Conservative con- victions are neither intuitions of the conscience nor distinctive characteristics of patriotism, but only arguable opinions, though with perhaps more to recommend them just now to British con- stituencies than the convictions of the opposite party ? These are anxious, though at present, fortunately, only hypothetical, questions ; and they have been eagerly debated lately in many a Conservative group, not perhaps the less eagerly that a political party has, except in very rare cases, little or no freedom of action
in such matters,—the etiquettes of political precedent exercising,
as they must do, a very much more paramount influence than the wire-pullers of the party are ever willing to admit. But though the succession to Mr. Disraeli's place in the House of Commons is not a matter, we suspect, on which political dis- cussion, even within the Conservative party itself, is likely to take much effect, it is natural, and may be useful, now that the moment of special anxiety about him has passed away, to examine what his peculiar function in political life has been, and how far it would be possible or impossible to supply it from the other political resources of his party. It seems, then, to us that Mr. Disraeli's chief characteristic as leader of the Conservative party has been that, in mind, he has never been a Conservative. With equal truth, of course, it may be said that in mind he has never been a Liberal,— nor a Radical, nor a Tory,—nor anything but a keen and critical observer of the strife, who has lent his counsel to the Conservative side. His views have at least tended to dissolve all the different political cements by which party unity is created. His own party have been chilled by his didactic expedients into distrust of themselves ; his opponents have been puzzled into distrust of themselves and their leader. Both parties alike have learnt to expect that under the spell of his enigmatic influence all sorts of reversals of the ordinary rules of politics might take place,—that the brier might spring up in place of the myrtle-tree here, and the rose instead of the thorn tree there —indeed, that the worst rule for judging correctly of the true character of modern political in- fluences would be "By their fruits ye shall know them." Both Mr. Disraeli's mistakes and his successes have been due to his entire intellectual disembarrassment of anything like interior party prepossessions. He has taught his own party that all its own instincts are tainted with a sort of original sin of dog- matism, which it may often be quite necessary to expose and even to cauterise ; and this is always a kind of lesson which paralyses party earnestness. Moreover, he has also taught his own party that, under that new dispensation wherein it is not considered in any way discreditable to it to outbid its opponents in the ap- peal to ignorant sympathies and blind habits of thought, great victories are possible for it which it could never have won by acting on the old traditions and treading in the old ways. And this, again, is another bewildering lesson which is apt to bring about, amongst the first learners of it, a fit of political giddiness. On the other hand, he has succeeded almost equally well in the last year or two in bewildering the party of his opponents. They have begun at last to connect popular power with reactionary tendencies, and to associate the notion of democratic institutions with measures intrinsically hostile to the people's welfare.
If, then, Mr. Disraeli were to resign his place, we cannot doubt that he would leave a very different political world be- hind him to that which he found on assuming the post of tutor to the Conservative party. But we are strongly inclined to think that the most permanent effect of his influence would be its effect not on the party of his friends, but on the party of his opponents. The prepossessions of the landowner and the country clergy are too strong to have been very profoundly affected, even during the thirty years or thereabouts during which Mr. Disraeli has contrived to keep their minds at a somewhat painful stretch for the reception of new ideas. When the pinching boot is taken off the last, the leather too often shrinks back to its old dimensions ; and were Mr. Disraeli removed, we are sure that the first observable effect on the Conservative party would be a similar shrinking-back into something approaching at least to its old dimensions of thought. As a carefully cultivated type of flower is always tending to revert to its wild character, so an artificially-produced type of Liberal Conservatism is always tending to recur to its hereditary stock. It takes a good deal of "pressure," as Mr. Disraeli him- self told a Scotch audience some years ago, to keep the mind of the Conservative party open to new conceptions, especially to the idea of its own possible short-sightedness. Mr. Gathorne Hardy would not even attempt to use that pressure, for he himself has often resented its application. His innate sympathies have always been treacherous to his probably sincere efforts to learn Mr. Disraeli's lessons. He belongs by nature to the very type of Conservatives which Mr. Disraeli has been striving by new grafts, and new soil, and new modes of training, to modify and expand. Sir Stafford Northcote, on the other hand, would try hard to discharge the task of his present chief, but he would hardly succeed in the attempt. He does not possess the resources, and pertinacity, and weight of character for discharging such a task in his own, —that is, the best,—way, by persuasion, by exhortation, by illus- tration, by line upon line, and precept upon precept of mild and yet earnest exposition of wider thoughts ; and still less does he possess the gift for discharging it in Mr. Disraeli's fashion, by making his party from time to time feel to their very hearts the intellectual indifference, and sometimes even the scorn, with which their own most precious ideas in- spire their leader and master. Mr. Disraeli once gone, both the genius of the single genuine Tory in the Ad- ministration, and the complete inability of the party to furnish anyone able to keep both his own mind and that of his colleagues above the under-currents of the old party ideas, would combine to bring back the character of Conservative states- manship in some degree towards that of the old days, when it meant the supremacy of squirearchical habits and proprietary prejudice, the adhesion to the old institutions in their old forms, the enthusiasm for the privileges of caste, and the resistance to innovation. Even last Session, with Mr. Disraeli at the head of affairs, it was hard, it was only just possible for him to neutralise this tendency towards a reversion of type to the
Conservatism of the old regime. If his 'detached' intellect were to disappear from the supreme place, we should very soon
find the hereditary habits of generations exerting, not indeed, their old force, but a very considerable force, and completely predominating over those feeble and alien influences which would then have lost their chief spell. The wild crab-apple
of natural Conservatism would reassert itself once more, even in the very tree grafted by the present Premier's genius, with the view of producing the elaborate Disraeli pippin of Tory democracy. Mr. Disraeli only just keeps down the influence of the wild stock by all his tending, and digging, and manuring, and succeeds more because he really does not himself recognise the force of the old influences, than because he effectually subdues them. He is like the captain of the ship which carried Ulysses past the abode of the Sirens. His ears are deaf to the sounds which charm his party. He does not even catch the strains which strike to their very heart, and so he can keep the helm down and avoid the rocks on which they would run the ship. But is there any one who could in this respect take his place ? Mr. Gathorne Hardy has not unfrequently been heard to utter something very like maledictions on the insensibility of his chief to those sweet, squireen strains of custom and tradition. Even Sir Stafford Northcote catches the notes of magic now and then, and even when he does not, he is hardly proof against the passionate entreaties of those who do. No statesman left in the Tory party would.be strong enough to prevent at least a very considerable reversion to the old influences and ideas, if once Mr. Disraeli were removed. At the same time we must re- member that though a very decided reversion of type must be expected, there would be no danger of a complete return to the Toryism of thirty years ago. The great social changes, the vastly greater permeation of one class by the ideas of the others, would itself prevent that. Mr. Disraeli has not been the only, nor perhaps the most powerful monitor of the Tory party. Time and culture have worked on his side. Statesmen like Lord Derby and Sir Stafford Northcote, though they do not at all represent the average views of the party, are much more intelligible to the average Conservative than they were. There was a time when Lord Stanley was regarded by his party as little better than a Radical in disguise. Now, though he is probably thought unsound, he is looked up to as a real, though too Liberal, Conservative. Even when Mr. Disraeli retires, the reversion of type in the Conservative party will be com- paratively moderate to what it would have been ten years ago ; and it would be quite conceivable that with a leader of rather more force holding Sir Stafford Northcote's views, the Conser- vatives would be much safer in their tenure of power, than they ever will be under a chief so incalculable in his ways of thought, so apt to blunder from sheer ignorance of English feeling, and from scorn for the pettiness (as he conceives it) of the issues put before him, as is Mr. Disraeli. Under Liberal Conservatives who shared the feelings of the party while commanding a wider intellectual range, it is quite likely that the present Conservative party would be far better satisfied, far less uneasy, far more united, than they can ever be while they are led by a finite political incarnation of the Unknown and Unknowable.
We suspect, however, that one real change would be likely to result from Mr. Disraeli's retirement, namely, a change in the Liberal party caused by the relapse of Conservatism into a moderate form of its old type, as we have been anticipating. Hitherto, for some time back, the extreme Radicals have always cried out that, if they cannot mould their own leaders to their own views, they are pretty sure to get from Mr. Disraeli -what they cannot get from Mr. Gladstone, or Mr. Goschen, or Mr. Forster. That state of mind, which has led to a good deal of captious strategy,—would probably disappear directly we had a known statesman, instead of an embodiment of the unknown, at the head of the Tory party. And it would be an additional reason for the moderation of the Radi- cals that they have learnt so uncomfortable a lesson lately from Mr. Disraeli himself, as to the previously unsuspected affinities of " the Residuum " with Conservative institutions. A great element of chaos has been introduced into party rela- tions by the ambiguous purposes and character of the Tory chief ; and that element of chaos has been exaggerated by the discovery that democratic institutions may be made under clever management to lead to very much the same class of results as oligarchical institutions. The undefined hope
which Mr. Disraeli has excited in Radical breasts, has tended to demoralise the revolutionary wing of the Liberal party ; but the lesson as to the Toryism of mobs, has probably tended to sober and restrain it. And with Mr. Disraeli's retirement, we think we might expect not only a more intelligible, though probably a duller type of Conservatism, but also a better disciplined and more coherent loyalty among the genuine Liberals. We do not regard Mr. Disraeli as in any way necessary to the success of his party. We are not sure that, —at all events if there were one or two really strong men of Sir Stafford Northcote's and Lord Derby's type to succeed him, —the Tory party would not gain indefinitely in strength by his retirement. But we do believe that the effect on the discipline of the Liberals to be caused by his retirement would be a good one, especially after the lesson they'have recently learned of the veins of Conservative feeling running through the class of house- hold voters. Mr. Disraeli has acted on both parties as all great uncertainties are said to act on human character,—by exciting unreasoning expectations, and leading men to hope for incal- culable results from incalculable causes. We shall be much duller, but perhaps also not a little soberer, whenever his disturbing and eccentric influence is removed.
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