BOOKS.

LORD BEACONSFIELD.* Tim first of these biographies is really a terrific exposure of the public career of Lord Beaconsfield. Mr. O'Connor writes from a hostile point of view; but what makes his book so damaging is the array of facts which he marshals along the line of his narrative. Many of these facts will doubtless be new to most of his readers, and not less startling than new. That a man of whom such a biography is capable of being substantiated by facts should have become the leader of a great and proud party,. and the Primo Minister of England, suggests some curious and not altogether comfortable reflections. The author claims to "have made no statement for which he does not give autho- rity," to "have pronounced no judgment without supplying the facts by which it can be tested," and to "have endeavoured to convince the reader of nothing of which he has not convinced himself." The reader must, of course, take the author's word. for the last of these three declarations. The other two he can easily verify for himself. Mr. O'Connor's book bristles with facts, for which he is always careful to give references, so that the reader may test his accuracy and good-faith step by step. An elaborate indictment like this cannot be upset by the device of calling the- assailant names, and imputing unworthy motives to him. Unless he can be proved guilty of a gross and systematic mis- representation of facts, the verdict of candid minds must be in his favour. M. Hitchman's two portly volumes are evidently,. though not avowedly, intended to parry Mr. O'Connor's assault. Mr. Hitchman is an ardent and undiscriminating admirer of Lord

* Lord Beaconefield : a Biography. By P. II. O'Connor, ALA. London and Belfast: William Atullan and Son. 1879,

The Public life of the Right Honourable the earl of Bnaeon.tfield, K.O. By Francis; Bitehman, 2 vols. London: Chapman and hell. 1879.

Beaconsfield. He writes of his hero with enthusiasm, and not -without some But how does he meet the terrible accumulation of facts which Mr. O'Connor's industry has brought together ? Mr. Hitchman has gone over the same ground, and if he .could have convicted Mr. O'Connor of invent- ing or distorting facts, we may 'be sure that he would have done so with avidity. But what Mr. Hitchman has done, after sur- veying the whole field of facts, is to decline altogether a direct encounter with -Mr. O'Connor. Despairing of upsetting Mr. O'Connor's case, he has-endeavoured to weaken the force of the blow by setting up a counter-case. We cannot congratu- late him on his success. His book, in so far as it may have any effect at all, is likely to do Lord Beaconsfield more harm than good. Mr. Hitchman relies too much on the credulity of his readers. The present generation knows far too little of the career of Lord Beaconsfield, but it knows a good deal more

of it than Mr. Hitohnaan appears to imagine. Let us take a few illustrations. Lord Beaconsfield's "leading characteristic," says Mr. Hitchman, " was and is a certain grand stoicism, which, however deeply he may have been wounded, never allows his assailant to feel the effect of his blow." And Mr. Hitchmau has the temerity to appeal, but without giving the facts, to Lord Beaconsfield's ancient controversy with the Globe as a proof in point. It may have been safe to assume that very few of Mr. Hitehman's readers would make a journey to the British Museum to -hunt up among old files of the Globe this edifying incident in Lord Beaconsfield's life. But it was hardly prudent to assume that none of Mr. Ilitchman's critics was familiar -with facts forty-three years old, and, he has done his hero a poor service in compelling ourselves, and probably others, to exhume them. The Globe, having bantered Mr. Disraeli on the chameleon complexion of his politics, Mr. Disraeli replied through the Times, in a letter of portentous length, of which the following may suffice as a specimen :—" The thing who concocts the meagre sentences and drivels out the rheumy rhetoric of the Globe may, in these queer times, be a senator, or not." To the Globe itself Mr. Disraeli wrote a civil letter of expostulation, in ...which he emphatically denied having ever coquetted with Mr. Daniel O'Connell and the Radicals. The 'Globe commented on his letter in a bantering vein, but declined to gratify Mr. Disraeli's "passion for notoriety" by continuing -the controversy. Mr. Disraeli replied in another long letter to the Times, which concluded thus :— "The editor of the Glebe must have a more contracted mind and a paltrier spirit than even I imagined, if he can suppose for a moment that an ignoble controversy with an obscure animal like himself can gratify the passion for notoriety of ono whose works at least have been translated into the languages of polished Europe, and circulated by thousands in the New World. It is not, then, my passion for notoriety that has induced me to tweak the nose and inflict sundry kicks on the baser part of his base body,—to make him eat dirt, and

; his own words, fouler than any filth but because I wished to show to the world-what a miserable poltroon, what a craven dullard, what a literary scare-crow, what a more thing staffed with straw and rubbish, is this soi.disant director of public opinion and official organ of Whig politics."

The Globe retaliated by proving, on the evidence of Mr. Lytton Bulwer (then a Wig, and afterwards Lord Lytton), and of Mr.

,

Joseph Hume and Mr. O'Connell that Mr. Disraeli had really tried to got into Parliament under the protection of Mr. Hume and Mr. O'Connell, and as an advocate of the principles asso- ciated with the names of those two gentlemen. Smarting under this damaging exposure, Me. Disraeli gave vent to his spleen by violent attacks on Mr. Hume and Mr. O'Connell. The former he assailed through his favourite organ, the Times, in a strain of which one specimen may suffice. He stigmatised Mr. Hume as "that man who, after having scraped together a fortune-by jobbing in Government contracts in a colony, and entering the House of Commons as the Tory representative of a close corporation, suddenly becomes the apostle of economy and unrestricted suffrage, and closes a career, commenced and matured in corruption, by spouting sedition in Middlesex and 'counselling rebellion in Canada." Mr. O'Connell he denounced as an "incendiary" aud a "bloody traitor." The great tribune retaliated with a vengeance in that savage speech in which he expressed his belief that Mr. Disraeli must be ." descended from the impenitent thief who died upon the cross, Avhose name, I verily believe, must have been Disraeli." This speech drove Mr. Disraeli wild, and he rushed again into the Times, with a long letter, beginning, "Mr. O'Connell, although you have long placed yourself out of the pale of civilisation, still I am one who will not be insulted, even by a Yahoo, without chastising it."

And this is the man whose ." leading characteristic," according to Mr. Hitehman, " was and is a. certain proud and lofty stoicism, which, however deeply he may have been wounded, never allows his assailant to see the effect of his blow 1" And Mr. Hitchman goes on to reiterate and amplify this astounding assertion. " Lord Beaconsfield," he tells us, " has invariably given credit to those who assailed him or his policy for purity of motive, no matter how strongly he may have condemned their public acts ; and more than this, he has always kept his temper." Of Lord John Russell we are assured Lord Beaconsfield "habitually spoke with deference and courtesy." "And so with every opponent, not excepting Mr. Gladstone himself." We are perplexed how to deal with a man who, professing to write history, seriously publishes fictions like these. No politician of our time has indulged in so many virulent personalities and imputations of unworthy motives as Lord Beaconsfield. To say nothing of the philippics against Peel, whose personal character was savagely assailed, has Mr. Hitchmau forgotten the Aylesbury speech, in which Mr. Gladstone's conduct on the Eastern Ques-

tion was attributed to the basest motives, and himself charac- terised by innuendo as a viler criminal than Chefket Pasha? Has he forgotten the outrageous attack on Mr. Gladstone in

the Knightsbridge speech of last year P Does he remember the denunciation of Mr. Gladstone's " profligate " finance,—the pro- duct, in Mr. Disraeli's opinion, of "time distempered ambition of an individual P" Mr. Hitchman does remember, for he quotes,

Lord Beaconsfield's wild attack on Mr. Gladstone in 1868 as an intriguer who had "long been in secret combination," and

was "now in open confederacy with High-Church Ritualists and the Irish followers of the Pope," in order "to seize upon the supremo authority of the realm." Nor did "Lord John Russell and every opponent," race Mr. Hitchman, fare better than Mr. Gladstone at Mr. Disraeli's bands. Witness the following language, addressed to Lord John Russell:—" You have exiled from the Cabinet, by your dark and dishonourable intrigues, every man of talent who could have held you in cheek. A miniature Mokanna, you are now exhaling upon the Consti- tution of your country all that long-hoarded venom and all those distempered humours that have for years accumulated in your petty heart, and tainted the current of your mortified ex- istence You have revenged yourself upon the Sovereign, who recoiled from your touch, by kissing, in spite of his royal soul, his outraged hand." Lord John Russell's "feeble intel- lect " is sneered at, and he is abused as an "insect," "an infinitely small scarabasus." It is true that nine years later Lord John Russell was eulogised as having "a thoughtful mind and a noble spirit." But that was when Mr. Disraeli was courting the aid of the Whigs in his successful effort to supplant Sir Robert Peel as tho lead of the Tory party.

Nor was Lord John Russell the only member of the Govern- ment of the day whom Mr. Disraeli pelted in that peculiar style

which displays, in Mr. Hitchman's opinion, so much stoical self-restraint and such rare absence of personalities. Lord Landsdowne is described as "time ox-like form of the Lands- downe Apis," and two other members of the Cabinet are char- acterised, the one as "an ape," the other as "a cat-like col- league," "Palmerston and 0-rant" (afterwards Lord Glenelg) are "two sleek and long-tailed rats," the former, by a strange

;iambic of similes, being compared in addition to " a favourite footman on easy terms with his mistress." And then the whole

Cabinet of Lord Melbourne is apostrophised in this fashion :— "What a crow! 1 can compare them to nothing but the Swal- bach swine in the Brunnen bubbles, guzzling and grunting in a bed of mire, fouling themselves, and bedaubing every luckless passenger with their contaminating filth."

Will it be pleaded that these are the "wild oats" of youthful folly ? They are "wild oats" of a kind which even the wildest of our English youth are not in the habit of sowing. But the plea does not avail in Lord Beaconsfield's case. The most re- mote of the personalities which we have quoted belong to Lord Beaconsfield's thirty-second year, and the most outrageous of them—that in which Mr. Gladstone is compared disadvant- ageously to the foulest criminal known to our generation—is only three years old.

-It is with reluctance that we have dwelt at so much length on Lord Beaconsfield's extraordinary outrages on good taste and sped. feeling. But when we are challenged—not by his latest biographer merely, but by the chief organs of his party—to admire him as a model of self-command, of good-temper, and of generoeity to- wards opponents, it is time to tell the plain truth. The fact is, the British public has never been able to regard Lord Beacons- field as a serious political character. In the public imagination,

as in the cartoons of Pa/nck, he is always playing a part,

and his personalities are commonly regarded as belonging to the character which he finds it convenient to assume for the moment, rather than to the temper of the man himself. The belief in his theatrical temper is so deep-rooted that the public will not believe him sincere even in those passionate outbursts of temper which still occasionally break . down the barriers of a severely disciplined self-restraint, and serve to revive the fading memory of "Disraeli the Younger" and "Runnymede." Lord Beacousfield's stoical indifference to criticism is one of the many fictions which have gathered round his name, as any one who witnessed the something like frenzy of his last attack on Mr. Lowe in the House of Commons will bear witness. He has been incomparably the most vituperative and the most bitterly personal of the political controversialists of the last half-century. The real attitude of his mind towards nearly all the political questions of his time has probably been an attitude of calm indifference, viewed simply on their merits, Their in- terest for him has been due to their bearing on his political fortunes. Hence the facility with which he has in turns advo- cated and opposed the same measures. These measures have been to him nothing more than the implements of a game, of which the main object is to win. Is this too severe a judgment?

Lot us test it by facts.

At the age of thirty, Lord Beaconsfield made his third at- tempt to secure a seat in Parliament. The speech in which he proclaimed his views and principles on that occasion contains the following frank profession of political ethics :—

"A statesman is essentially a practical character ; and when he is called upon to take office, he is not to inquire what his opinions might or might not have boon upon this or that subject ; he is only to as- certain the needful, and the beneficial, and the most feasible manner in which affairs are to be carried on. The fact is, the conduct and opinions of public men, at different periods of their career, must not be too curiously contrasted, in a free and aspiring country. The people have their passions, and it is even the duty of public men to adopt sentiments with which they do not sympathise, because the people must have leaders. Then the opinions and the prejudices of the community must necessarily influence a rising statesman. I say nothing of the weight which great establishments and corporations, and the necessity of their support and patronage, Must also possess with an ambitious statesman I laugh, therefore, at the objection against a man that, at a former period of his career, he advocated a policy different to his present one."

Perhaps the most remarkable thing in this remarkable vindi- cation of political insincerity is the evident sincerity of the vindicator. There is not a trace of conscious cynicism. It is plainly an ingenuous avowal of the speaker's political creed, and no suspicion crosses his mind that he is saying anything shock- ing or immoral. He is enunciating what seems to him a mere truism of politics, too self-evident, when put into plain language, to need either apology or explanation. He " laughs " at the

dullard whose mind, can still harbour any " objections." Here, then, is Lord Beaconsfield standing on the threshold, of his Parliamentary career, with the candid declaration that the man

is a fool who thinks that there ought to be such a thing as a conscience in politics. Is it surprising that the career itself should be in harmony with that declaration ? ." If there is any- thing on which I pique myself it is my consistency," is one of the proud boasts of Mr. Disraeli. And the boast is not ill- founded. When he started on his political adventures he gave the public fair warning that he intended to discard conscience as a factor in political warfare, and to adapt his public conduct on all occasions to the personal exigencies of "a rising" and " an ambitious statesman." If, therefore, the public has ever expected Lord Beaconsfield, to be faithful to his past professions one inch further than such professions would help him towards the goal of his ambition, the public, and not Lord Beaconsfield, is to blame. He had given public and timely notice that "when called upon to take office," he would discard" his opinions upon this or that subject," and give effect to the " policy " (however "different from his present one") which was most conducive to

the advancement of" an ambitious statesman." That pledge he has redeemed with a scrupulous exactness which it has been given to few politicians to rival. Let us compare the promise with its fulfilment on a few capital occasions, and let our first

illustration be Lord. Beaconsfield's conduct on the question of Free-trade.

After his election as Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury, in 1841, he eulogised. Sir Robert Peel as "the greatest states-

man of his age." And. it soon appeared that the prime cause of Mr. Disraeli's admiration was Sir Robert's enlightened policy in the direction of Free-trade. That policy was not consummated till 1846, but its first instalment was presented to the nation in 1842, much to the chagrin of the Protectionists. Among the malcontents were the Dukes of Buckingham and Richmond, the former of whom retired from Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet. Mr. Disraeli, on the other baud, supported Sir Robert Peel's commercial policy in an elaborate speech, in which he endeavoured to prove that the Tories were the inventors of Free-trade, and had always been its warm supporters. It followed, therefore, that "the conduct pursued by the right honourable baronet [Sir R. Peel] was in exact harmony, in perfect consistency, with the principles in reference to Free-trade laid down by Pitt ; and his reason for saying thus much was to refute the accusations which had been brought against the present Government that, in order to get into, and being in office, they had changed their opinions on those subjects." Mr. Disraeli was followed in the debate by Mr. Joseph Hume, who greeted him as "the honourable Member who had claimed credit for his party as Free-traders." In 1841-2, then, Sir Robert Peel was, in Mr. Disraeli's opinion, "time greatest statesman of his age," because Sir Robert Peel had then begun to lay the axe to the root of the tree of Protection. On August 19th, 1843, Mr. Disraeli rejoiced the hearts of the Protec- tionist Adullamites, by denouncing Sir Robert Peel as the incar- nation of all that was "perfidious," base, and despicable in English politics, for having betrayed "the sacred cause of Pro- tection." In defence of that cause, Mr. Disraeli, "faith- ful found among the faithless," now nailed his colours to the mast. " I believe," he said, "I belong to a party which can triumph no more, for we have nothing left us but the consti- tuencies which we have 60 betrayed," What is the explana- tion ? Sir Robert Peel retorted on the spot that Mr. Disraeli had made unsuccessful application for office, and Mr. Disraeli was fain to admit that if "he had. been offered some slight office he should, have accepted it." In making himself the organ of Protectionist vengeance he also probably saw an oppor- tunity of taking the place from which the Tory leader was about to be expelled. Lord Beaconsfield's opinion was, perhaps,. derived from his own experience when he praised Burke for having poured "his hoarded vengeance on the Whigs for having neglected him." In 1852 Mr. Disraeli was himself in office as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. Tenure of office depended on abjura- tion of "time sacred cause of Protection," and Mr. Disraeli made. a fresh discovery. "The spirit of the age," he said, tends to' free intercourse, and no statesman can disregard with impunity the genius of the epoch in which he lives." " The sacred cause- of Protect-ion" was accordingly flung overboard by the champion who had vowed to perish with it. A few Tories murmured, and the Marquis of Granby ventured to say that "some reparation was due to the memory of Sir Robert Peel." "If you wish to see humiliation," said Mr. Sidney Herbert, pointing at Mr..

"look there !" But why should Mr. Disraeli feel humiliated ? In his alternate patronage of Protection and Free-trade, according us either chanced to serve the purpose of "an ambitious statesman," he was simply faithful to the rule of political conduct which he had publicly laid down for himself at the beginning of his political career.

With one more illustration of Lord Beaconsfield's fidelity to his own ideal of a statesman we will conclude. In the year

1859 he made his first experiment in the field of Parliamentary reform. This was the Bill of the" Fancy Franchises." Instead of lowering the borough franchise, he proposed to give votes to a. select few, namely, graduates of universities, ministers of religion, members of the medical profession, certificated school- masters, pensioners to the amount of 220 a year, possessors of R60 in a savings-bank, holders of stock of the value of 210 a year, and lodgers of 8s. a week. Mr. Bright complained that the success of Mr. Disraeli's scheme would preclude "the chance of ever reducing the suffrage in towns." "Why, that was the very object we wished to attain," replied Mr, Disraeli ; "and it is something to have such an admission from the honourable Member for Birmingham himself." In the same speech he drew a terrible picture of the dangers which would in- evitably follow in the wake of household suffrage. " Ln- patience of the public burdens," "great increase of the public expenditure," "wars entered into from passion and not from reason," "submission to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained," "property less valuable, freedom less complete," "disaffection and dismay," eventuating in a despot who would destroy liberty, but make property secure. Such were some of the evils which Mr. Disraeli predicted as the necessary consequence of household stiffrage in boroughs. "If you establish a democracy you must, in due season, reap the fruits

of a democracy That being my opinion, I cannot look upon what is called reduction of the franchise in boroughs but with alarm." This is the doctrine which Mr. Disraeli preached down to 1867, and which he deliberately revised and published at the time in a volume of speeches on Parliamentary reform. He denounced the "degradation," that is, the lowering of the borough franchise, and strenuously advocated its "lateral extension." The new voters must not be "an indiscriminate multitude ;" "they must be choice, the best of every class." On this ground Mr. Disraeli succeeded, with the help of the Adul- lamites, in defeating Mr. Gladstone's very moderate Reform Bill in 1866.

The next year Mr. Disraeli found himself obliged, as a Minister of the Crown, to deal with the question of Parliamen- tary Reform, and then he made the opportune discovery that "the time had come when the question of reform should no longer involve the fate of Ministries." Protesting that he was not "angling for a policy," he moved a series of resolutions which forcibly reminded his hearers of his own description of Sir Robert Peel, as "a man who never originates an idea ; a mere watcher of the atmosphere ; a man who takes his observations, and when he finds the wind veers towards a certain quarter, trims to suit." The resolutions were laughed out of the House, and after various devices for reconciling old professions with present exigencies, a Tory Reform Bill, bristling with safeguards against democracy, was introduced into the House of Commons. The safeguards were given up one by one, together with some of Mr. Disraeli. s colleagues, including Lord Salisbury ; and a Bill was at length passed which, when it received the Royal assent, retained nothing of its original iden- tity "except," to quote the bitter criticism of the Duke of Buccleuch, "the first word, 'whereas.'" And now Mr. Disraeli made another of his notable discoveries. On April 27th, 1866, he had laid down the following propositions in opposition to Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill :— " I ventured to put before the House to-night the principles upon which Parliament ought to proceed with this question of Reform, if it proceed at all. Those principles are English, and not American. It ought to proceed upon the principle that NVO are the House of Com- mons, arid not the House of the People. and that we represout a great political order in the State, end not an indiscriminate multitude." But Mr. Gladstone's Bill was, in M. Disraeli's opinion,

i perilously democratic ; t was based on 'American principles, in their widest sense." For actually "it will introduce 400,000 additional voters into the constitueucies," and that "is a very great addition to the Estate of the Commons." In the summer of 1867,

Mi. Disraeli found himself in the position of being obliged to make a much larger "addition than Mr. Glad- stone had proposed to the Estate of the Commons," or of resigning office, and, it did not take him long to make his choice. In a speech at Merchant Taylors' Hall, on June 11th, he published his new discovery. "Believe me," he said, "that the elements of a democracy do not exist in England. . . . . • I am warned by the example of America. but there is no analogy between the United States and the United Kingdom." The doctrine of enfranchising a select few by skimming the cream off the surface of the" indiscriminate multitude "—a doctrine of which Mr. Disraeli was himself the inventor, and till then the zealous apostle—was dismissed with scorn. The miracle which caused this sudden conversion to "the faith which once he destroyed" is unrecorded, and the strangest part of it is that Mr. Disraeli himself declared that there was neither miracle nor conversion. The passage is so remarkable that we must quote it. Its date is July 15th, 1867, and its occasion the third reading of Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill :— " The consequence of what you call a moderate reduction of the borough franchise would have been that a certain portion of the working-classes—a favoured portion— wore to be assured that they were much superior to any other portion of the working-classes, and therefore they were to be invested with the franchise on the implied condition that they were to form a sort of Pretorian Guard, in order to prevent another portion of the working-classes from getting the franchise. This system of policy, under different shapes and in different degrees, was constantly before the public. We were highly opposed to it. We believed it was a dangerous policy, more dangerous to the institutions of the country than if we admitted into the political arena the great body of the working-classes." A more daring exhibition of contempt, for the memory and intelligence of the House of Commons and the British nation it is impossible to imagine. Yet nobody ought to have been sur- prised, for had not Mr. Disraeli plainly avowed, when he began his political career—and had he not studiously acted up to that avowal on all occasions—that he meant on principle to advo- cate, not necessarily the opinions which he believed to be true, but those which he believed most likely to further the ends of "a rising" and "an ambitious statesman P" That such a man should for upwards of five years have ruled the British Empire like a despot is, perhaps, the most startling fact in the history of England. It may possibly prove the most disastrous' as well, should the electorate see fit to renew his lease of power.