POLITICAL CRITICISM OF MR. DISRAELI.
THE Duke of Argyll and Mr. Goldwin Smith have both, during the last week, made formidable onslaughts on Mr. Disraeli, the one speaking, of course, as a politician in the House of Lords, the other writing as a literary man in the Press. Both of these criticisms laboured under the disad- vantage of being directed against a man who was unable to answer them,—a real and very right disadvantage, which attaches to all such estimates in the minds of all just readers, —and yet not a disadvantage which by any means deprives them of value and force. We by no means agree with those who condemn the Duke of Argyll's vigorous and effective criticism, on the ground that Mr. Disraeli was only represented by Lord Cairns in the Upper House. Nor do we condemn Mr. Gold- win Smith's rasping and almost savage onslaught in the Man- chester Examiner, except for its unmeasured and onesided wrath. There is no discussion of political life which is really more important for the public, more educating to the public, than the accurate estimate of public men. If fair opportunity arises in either House in legitimate relation to public business, as it did in the House of Lords in relation to the rating principle, no debates are more generally useful than those which help to fix and regulate the public estimate of public men. Ordinary politicians form rather prejudices than reasoned estimates, or else form no accurate impressions at all. To dissect the truth of the assertions made in Mr. Disraeli's recent letter to the Times, was a political duty which only a considerable politician could discharge with any weight, and which needed to be conscientiously discharged by a man of real weight. But though the Duke of Argyll took up but one passage in Mr. Disraeli's life, and Mr. Goldwin Smith took up the whole,—the effect of the Duke's sifting of Mr. Disraeli's letter will be far greater than that of Mr. Goldwin Smith's too brilliant invective. And this, not because the one critic was a Duke, and the other only a literary man, but because the solid Duke's criticism was painstaking, and, to the last degree, loaded with proof ; while Mr. Goldwin Smith's letter a little strains the facts, and certainly violently exaggerates the evil motives of Mr. Disraeli's career. Mr. Goldwin Smith misses his mark by overdoing the in- vective. No public man has ever been more sharply criticized in this journal than Mr. Disraeli. His success makes us melancholy rather than bitter. We regard it as a sign of decaying political morality in the classes by whose suffrage he has risen. But when Mr. Goldwin Smith accuses Mr. Disraeli of using " the arsenic which kills noble reputa- tions," we deny the truth of his charge. Mr. Disraeli's attacks on Sir Robert Peel, to which we suppose allusion is made, were unscrupulous and savage in the highest degree ; but not only did they not kill Sir Robert Peel's reputation, but they were retracted and replaced by an estimate of Sir Robert Peel at once generous and wonderfully true, in Mr. Disraeli's final review of the struggle—his life of Lord George Bentinck. Nor do we remember any other instance of ungenerous and malig- nant personal criticism from Mr. Disraeli. To Lord Russell he has uniformly been singularly respectful ; to Mr. Gladstone as respectful as we have any right to expect from a personal rival of any but the highest calibre of character. To Mr. Cobden's memory he paid a tribute which showed even delicacy of feel- ing. It may be that these candid estimates of opponents are, in his eyes, politic rather than just.. It may be so. Still, such is the case. Except in the one instance of unscrupulous in- vective by which he rose into notoriety,—and in that case he deliberately rectified at a later period his own savage injustice,—Mr. Disraeli has never been so reckless in his criticism of his opponents, as Mr. Goldwin Smith is in his criticism of Mr. Disraeli. Mr. Disraeli's treatment of Mr. Stansfeld in relation to the conspiracy against the Emperor was, in a party sense, unscrupulous in a high degree, but it was not personally malicious. He did not use " the arsenic which kills noble reputations." We doubt if personal malice belongs to Mr. Disraeli's nature. Again, when Mr. Goldwin Smith says that both Mr. Disraeli's administrations of our finance have been " incompetent and unsuccessful," he is also unfair. In 1852 no doubt Mr. Disraeli's budget was a false and flashy failure. But in 1858 he had no chance of reform ; his budget was a common- place budget, which every one approved, because there was no room for anything better ; and in 1867,—a budget Mr. Goldwin Smith has no right to ignore,—he won the emphatic and generous approbation of Mr. Gladstone. We shall not diminish the ignoble worship of Mr. Disraeli by shading his political career all equally black. A critic should not hate, or he can scarcely criticize. Mr. Goldwin Smith is, we are sure, either entirely uninfluenced, or, at all events, com- pletely unconscious of being in any degree influenced, by his own personal encounter with Mr. Disraeli. But he writes under a sentiment of keen moral indignation,—no doubt full of the noblest elements of feeling—which is yet too deep and passionate for fair criticism. His invective runs the risk of re- exciting, by its bitter animosity, that very feeling of admira- tion which we, no less than he, utterly condemn.
The Duke of Argyll has not all the vivacity and verve of Mr. Goldwin Smith. He is a painstaking Duke of rather more force than brilliance, but his speech will do more to preserve the public mind from the chronic disease of Disraeli-worship than the more pungent invective of his literary rival. He did really show up, in one particular instance, the dexterous and unworthy finesse of which Mr. Disraeli is so often guilty. He proved to demonstration that when Mr. Disraeli spoke of " educating " the Tories for Reform, he could not have meant. educating them on the five points mentioned in his letter and speech ; that he must have meant educating them to accept household suffrage. On three of the five points,—the necessity of having a " com- plete " measure,—the necessity of neither absolutely abolish- ing nor merging any historical constituency,—the necessity of
basing the suffrage on rating rather than rental,—the issue had not, in fact, been raised at all as a party ques- tion, nor seriously and pressingly in any other way, till it became convenient to carp at Mr. Gladstone's Bill in 1866. The Tories, if they had any " education " on these points, had only one year's schooling, not seven ; and indeed till 1866 the Liberal leaders had as often taken this line as the Tories. The other two points,—clearing the counties of borough con- stituencies, and increasing the county representation,—had no doubt, as we think the Duke of Argyll did not sufficiently admit, been favourite views of Mr. Disraeli's. But why t Not because the Tories needed " educating " upon them, but because they were also favourite views of the Tory party, and always " drew " cheers. The new " doctrine of develop- ment " then certainly did not apply to any one of the five points. The only real " development " has been, as the Duke showed, on the borough franchise, and how secret, how care- fully veiled from the world, how esoteric a development this has been, could not have been more strikingly shown than by the- Duke's quotation from the speech of April 27, 1866, where Mr. Disraeli gives it as "the impartial and intelligent opinion which really regulates the country, that though they [the best judges] are desirous that the choicest members of the working classes should form a portion—and no unimportant portion—of the- Estate of the Commons, they recoil from and reject a gross andindiscriminate reduction of the franchise," and this, mind, in opposition to a 71. franchise as too gross and indiscriminate. Such an opinion, delivered at a time when he afterwards avowed that both Lord Derby and himself had been in favour of a household- rating suffrage, was certainly a specimen of a kind of develop- ment of doctrine which might be called not only esoteric, but treacherous. And this was the point which the Duke of Argyll. so strongly and vividly brought out,—that Mr. Disraeli says one thing and means another,—that when he says he is educating his party towards five conclusions, three of which were never raised as party questions till 1866, and on two of which they needed no education, he means merely to distract attention,— by dangling out these " five " unimportant points, on which he has been tolerably consistent,—from what he actually did do on a far more important sixth point, namely, encourage the Tories up to the last moment in a prejudice which was useful to them so long as they were in Opposition, but which he hoped to make them relinquish, and did make them relin- quish, directly they came into power. As the Duke of Argyll said, this was an unmanly and deceptive policy. It was not " manfully avowing " the true objects for which he was contending, or even when vanquished, manfully avowing the objects for which he had ceased to contend. It was a policy of intrigue and decep- tion,—putting in the front of the battle not the true colours for which the Minister intended to fight, but false colours, which might serve as a disguise and veil for the true. This love of intrigue is Mr. Disraeli's great political vice. He is always running up false colours,—inventing plau- sible standards of action to cover his advance. So, the other night again, he tried to dazzle and bewilder Parliament by making " the principle of endowment " the battle-field of the Irish Church. He loves a masked battery, even though the mask is to be false principles. He is not, what Mr. Goldwin Smith calls him, a political " bravo," for he denies to• no man his fair reputation, except perhaps in the heat of a party fight. But he is a student of stratagem, a master of manoeuvre. He is, moreover, a politician perfectly indifferent to popular welfare, except so far as the popular welfare may conduce to his own victories,—perfectly indifferent to great ideas, except so far as great ideas are the servants of great ambitions,—perfectly indifferent, too, to constitutional in-
terests, except so far as constitutional interests make excellent cries. The Duke of Argyll has demonstrated this in one most important instance still fresh in all our memories. Mr. Goldwin
Smith has gone beyond this, and by going beyond this, has injured the force of his own brilliant invective.
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