TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD BEACONSFIELD'S POLITICAL LEGACY TO THE TORIES.
PRThiROSE Day is at least of some kind of use in fixing our attention on those great changes in the creed of the Tory Party which Lord Beaconsfield certainly greatly hastened, if he did not positively introduce them. The emblem which has been chosen to remind us of him is in one respect singularly apt,—namely, that as representing rather the antithesis of all his qualities than those qualities themselves, it reminds us of the skill with which he con- cealed from view that political education of his party on which his heart was fixed. So far as we remember, much the most remarkable reference to the primrose in Mr. Disraeli's writings is that characteristic comparison in " Coningsby " of poached eggs on a rasher of bacon, to "tufts of primroses." We know that Mr. Disraeli's favourite bird was the peacock, and certainly the peacock and the prim- rose are not likely to stand side by side as types of the same man's taste in birds and flowers. The peony would have been a better emblem for Mr. Disraeli, if his flower had been chosen to express his full-blown and rather florid tastes, rather than to show what he would wish to be identified with in the imagination of the people. Cer- tainly the eleven years which have elapsed since Lord Beaconsfield's death have not produced the impression that there was any marked simplicity or wild-flower char- acter in Mr. Disraeli's political influence and career. But the eleven years have done much to indicate his sagacity in holding, what he certainly did hold more firmly than any man of his time, that it would be quite possible to devise a "blend," as the grocers call it, between demo- cracy and aristocracy, which would be at least as powerful as democracy pure and simple, while it would retain many of the romantic associations, and some even of the useful qualities, of aristocratic forms of government. No one knew better than Mr. Disraeli that it would be impossible to give the masses substantial power, and yet withhold from them the gratification of their most eager political desires. But what he seems to have discerned with much more clearness than any other man of his age, was that it would be at least possible so to mould their political desires as to render it very unlikely that they would wish to dispense with the traditional forms and outcome of the Constitution under which they have so long lived,—that is, with the Monarchy, the aristocracy, the Church, and the grandeur of the Empire. His idea was, and it was a just idea, that there is little in the rigid simplicity of a Republic to gratify the taste of the masses of the people for the variety, colour, and picturesqueness of a great historical tradition, and that it might be quite possible so to work the old machinery of Monarchy and aristocracy as to give the people all they really care for, without depriving them of their picturesque historical tradition. No English statesman has conceived- so clearly the possibility of grafting a democratic polity on an aristocratic stock as Mr. Disraeli. And we who believed that the design was as unpromising as its conception was rococo, are bound to admit that it seems likely to have far more significance in it than twenty-five years ago we could possibly have foreseen. What has come of Mr. Disraeli's strategy ? Certainly a party which bids fair to flourish even better under the aus- pices of democracy, than it flourished for all the thirty-five years which elapsed between the defeat of pure aristocracy and the beginning of the reign of pure democracy. No one can now say that the Tory Party has no future. And though it is ectuaRy true that the word "Tory" has got a new meaning, and that the kernel of that meaning is entirely different from that of which Toryism could boast in the days when it secured to the high- born the privilege of all political initiative and of almost all political power, yet the new meaning is not a mere pre- tence, a mere mask for Liberalism under the auspices of a different set of men, but does imply a certain amount of continuity with the past, which Liberalism could not secure equally well. It has been asserted, indeed, though not with truth, that through Mr. Disraeli's agency, the whole core of the ancient Toryism was scooped out, and something substi- tuted for it which is quite inconsistent with anything but Liberalism. As matter of fact, however, though we do not in the least agree with those who maintain that Toryism has never changed its essence, and that it is as thoroughly anti- popular at heart now as it ever was, it must be admitted that it still represents that very large section of the people who are sufficiently wedded to old traditions and historic precedents to offer a hearty resistance to any change for which they do not clearly and strongly perceive the need. This has shown itself clearly enough in relation to the Irish demand for Home-rule. Neither Mr. Disraeli nor Lord Salisbury seemed at one time to be at all disin- clined to endorse the Irish claim. There was a time when Mr. Disraeli himself suggested it as the true remedy for Irish ills ; and at a much later period, in the autumn of 1885, Lord Salisbury, in the celebrated Newport speech, gave the impression to almost all who read it, that he was seriously preparing for a great volteface of that nature. But, in fact, neither Minister ventured to face the resistance which they found to any such change among the popular supporters of the Tory Party. The Parliamentary Tories were, of course, against so great a change of front, and, what was more im- portant, the Ministers discovered that there was no excuse by which they could justify such a change to their provincial supporters. Even where measures of large concession to the demands of the Irish tenants met with great approval, such a constitutional revolution as this met with no approval at all. Mr. Gladstone, indeed, could wheel round the phalanx of the party of change by the breath of his mouth, but Lord Salisbury could not effect the same change of front in the party of constitutional precedent. He found his supporters amenable to authority where authority resisted needless change, but by no means amenable to authority where authority was disposed to tamper with great experiments of a kind which only adherents of change for the sake of change could effectually take up. Thus, though Mr. Disraeli could "educate his party" to accept a democratic policy which promised it a popular backing for its Conservative instincts, he and his successors could not put that party to the same revolutionary and capricious uses to which it was possible for Mr. Gladstone to put the rank and file of the party of change. Conservative instincts with which Mr. Disraeli himself had a very moderate amount of sympathy, though of course he manipulated them for the immediate benefit of the party of which he had the com- mand, reappeared even in the ranks on which he had grafted the democratic temper and the democratic jealousy of privilege. And these Conservative instincts show them- selves more and more, wherever a Conservative leader is found to assume boldly an attitude of authority and independence like that which has gained for Mr. Balfour so great a reputation. The Conservative Party are still the party in which representatives can most safely and successfully repudiate the function of mere delegates ; in which leaders can claim most confidently to lead ; in which statesmen can still venture to demand for patriotic ends sacrifices from which the organisers of mere spasmodic popularity would recoil. In support of the Constitution, in support of the Church, in support even of the House of Lords with at most a minimum of change, Conservative instincts will be found to muster strong, and to derive even more strength from the new democracy than they could ever have derived from the middle class which reigned between 1832 and 1867. We doubt whether Mr. Disraeli really foresaw this, or would have congratulated. himself on it if he had foreseen it, for Mr. Disraeli was an opportunist to the core. But whether he foresaw it or not the fact that it is so is the better aspect of the great political revolution which he hastened, if he did not bring it about..
On the other hand, Lord Beaconsfield's example has had. a very mischievous effect in reconciling the minds of statesmen of all parties to changes of front which break down popular confidence in their sturdiness of principle and sincerity of purpose, and accustom the popular mind_ to regard with indifference, or even approval, the willingness of leaders to " dish " their opponents. Since Mr. Disraeli's great "leap in the dark," leaps in the dark have become commoner on both sides ; and we venture to doubt whether, if Mr. Disraeli had not set the example, Mr. Gladstone would ever have made that less successful and more ambitious leap in the dark of which the political tribulations of the last six years have been the disastrous consequences. Mr. Disraeli not only grafted democratic buds on an aristocratic stock, but he grafted habits of audaciously speculative experimentation on the old ideal of consistent statesmanship. Mr. Balfour may recover the popular con- fidence and respect which Mr. Disraeli by this levity and audacity of his, cast to the winds ; but, for a time at least, whatever may be the compensating advantages of Mr. Disraeli's democratic policy, he shook the faith of the people in the robustness and sincerity of English statesmanship, and put it into the heads not only of his followers but of his rivals, to follow in his footsteps and emulate his political coups de nadirs.
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