BOOKS.
THE YOUNG DISRAELI.*
Mn, GEORGE TREVELYAN, in a recent interesting essay on the writing of history, says that the first and principal duty of an historian is to compile an accurate narrative of events. Carrying this order of ideas one stage further, it may be said that anyone minded to deal with what may be termed the curiosities of politics might write a small volume on the far- reaching effects produced at times by incidents which appeared to contemporaries to be mere trivial or unimportant detail A classical instance of this kind is the flight of the French Royal Family to Varennes. M. Lenotre has shown that " Old- Dragoon Drouet " did not play nearly so important a part in that episode as Carlyle supposed, but we have it on the authority of one so well versed in Revolutionary history as the late Lord Acton that if Louis XVI. had not wasted a couple of hours at Etoges in order to dine with a member of his household named Chanilly, he would probably have got across the frontier. Had he done so the history of France, and possibly also that of Europe, would have been changed.. Similarly, it may be said that accident contributed in no small degree to mould the thoughts and to give direction to the action of a British statesman of the Victorian era whose influence was not only at one time predominant, but has also survived his decease. Sir Robert Peel little thought that his refusal, in 1841, to find a place for one whom he deemed a minor and highly eccentric young politician would exercise a decisive influence not only on his own career, but also on the future of the Conservative Party, and therefore on the domestic history of England. Long before that period, however, blind Chance, the goddess whom the Greeks deified as "Saviour Fortune, the child of Zeus," had been busy with the fate of Disraeli. His frame of mind when he first entered political life was very similar to that of the eighteenth-century statesman for whom he enter- tained an unbounded admiration, and whom he certainly regarded to some extent as his mentor. Bolingbroke, Mr. MacKnight says, "went into Parliament, as so many young men even in our day go into Parliament, without any acquired political knowledge, and without any decided views except to make a speech and to become distinguished." In 1832, Mr. Hu tcheon says, Disraeli was, politically speaking, "unlabelled." Whatever opinions he entertained were distinctly democratic. Toryism, he thought, was "worn out." He spoke slightingly of those " patricians " of whose cause he was ultimately to become so doughty a champion. He was alarmed lest the Irish revenues of the Church of England should. fall into "the ruthless and rapacious grasp of some bold absentee baron." On the other hand, personal interest speedily led him to the conclusion that Whiggism, if it were to serve as a stepping-stone to high position and fame, must be innate. A Whig, like a poet, was born ; he could not be manufactured. Conscious, therefore, of his own abilities, and realizing that he must for ever remain out- side the circle of a close corporation into which full admission could only be gained by the accident of birth and lineage, he was, from the outset of his political career, quite clear and consistent on one point. He would not "con- descend to be a Whig." Hence, being excluded, either by conviction or self-interest, from both the Tory and the Whig camps, the only alternative apparently left was to join the Radicals. He was, in fact, invited by the Radical Lord Durham to stand for Aylesbury. He spoke publicly in
• Whigs and Whiggism : Political Writings by Benjamin Disraeli. Edited by William Hutcheon. London: John Murray. [12s. net.]
favour of election by ballot and the repeal of the Septennial Act. It was at this stage of his career that Chance intervened in the person of the Tory Lord Lyndhurst. "Lyndhurst had ambitions, and needed Disraeli's pen ; Disraeli had ambitions, and needed Ly-ndhurst's influence." The "powerful noble," whose advent had been foreshadowed in Vivian Grey, bad evidently appeared on the scene. The alliance was concluded. Disraeli threw himself with ardour into the Tory cause.
He was far too intelligent not to read aright the signs of the times. He saw that the tide of democracy was rising, and that both the aristocracies who were then contending for place and power were wholly out of sympathy with demo- cratic ideas. He rightly judged that they could not or would not combine. He noted that the Tory plan of stolid resistance to reform was doomed to failure, and that the Whigs' alleged sympathy with the democracy, which he regarded as by no means genuine, but a mere opportunist posture, gave them a certain advantage over their antagonists. The remedy which at once suggested itself to his powerful and subtle brain was that the aristocracy with which he was connected should outbid its rivals in the democratic market. Toryism, he said in a characteristic euphemism, which has virtually served as the apology for all demagogues in all countries and in all ages, "must occasionally represent and reflect the passions and prejudices of the nation, as well as its purer energies and its more enlarged and philosophic views." Hence the genesis of the Tory Democracy.
The idea was not merely plausible. It may be said to a certain extent to have been statesmanlike. There was no sort of reason why the Whigs of seventy years ago, any more than the Liberals of the present day, should enjoy a monopoly as leaders in the cause of moral and material improvement. But the peculiar method by which Disraeli sought to give effect to his project, and to which he held with unswerving tenacity throughout all the vicissitudes of his eventful career, was foredoomed to complete failure. The inauguration of this method was heralded by a somewhat fantastic reconstruc- tion of the history of England, which was given to the world in 1835 under the title of a Vindication of the English Con- stitution. The main feature of Disraeli's scheme was that the House of Commons should be decried and the House of Lords exalted. The former, he urged, was not really repre- sentative, albeit it was elected. The House of Lords, on the other hand, was "the most eminent existing example of representation without election." There was, indeed, no guarantee that an hereditary legislator would excel in wisdom, but the "legislative descendant of a great legislator" was quite as likely to turn out "a Moses or a Minos, a Numa or a Solon, a Saxon Alfred or a Czar Peter," as any representative returned to Parliament by a "body of ten-pounders." An alliance was therefore to be made between the House of Lords and the people. The Tories were to become "the really democratic party of England." Disraeli's general con- ception of democratizing the Tory Party eventually led to the enactment of the Reform Act of 1867, and that measure, which was his own handiwork, has culminated in the destruc- tion of the hereditary Chamber the predominance of which formed the corner-stone of his scheme. The edifice was cleverly planned, but was essentially rococo. It has tumbled about the ears of Disraeli's political descendants.
It was, of course, a necessary part of Disraeli's plan that he should indulge in the most unmeasured diatribes against the Whigs. Mr. Hutcheon, whose work may be regarded as a supplement to that of Mr. Monypenny, reproduces the "Letters of Runnymede," and other pieces in which the "lick-spittle, place-loving, pelf-adoring spirit" of the Whigs is denounced with an exuberance of vituperation which bears some resemblance to the language used by the eighteenth. century Junius, but to which the present generation is unaccustomed. Much of it is written in the vein of the Eatanswill Gazette. Disraeli was pre-eminent as a phrase. monger. Many of the expressions which be used in later days, when by long thought and practice he had carried the art to perfection, were singularly felicitous and have become classical. Mr. Hutcheon's pages, however, record for the most part the failures in phrasemongering. Disraeli's style is euphe- mistically termed extravagant. It would be more correct to say that, inasmuch as it sinned against every canon of good taste, it was altogether execrable. He could not express the most ordinary idea in simple language. When he wished to allude
to Sir Robert Peel's hurried journey from Rome in 1834 in order to form an Administration, he said that the Minister had been "summoned by the confidence of his Sovereign and the hopes of his country from the galleries of the Vatican and
the city of the Caesars." Lord Grey, when out of office, is described as "wandering, like a dethroned Caliph, in the halls of Eblis." Allusion is made to Lord Palmerston as "the Sporus of politics, cajoling France with an airy compliment, and menacing Russia with a perfumed canc." Mr. Bickersteth was first educated for the medical profession and was subse-
quently created Lord Langdale. Disraeli, therefore, speaks of the "spick and span coronet falling from the obstetric brow of the baronial Bickersteth." Lord Campbell is likened to an " ourang-outang of unusual magnitude dancing under a banana-tree and licking his hairy chaps." The Whig Ministers are called " Gallomaniac apes." The English idea of equality is termed " sublime " and "celestial," but as to French equality it is said that "that blooming prostitute had shrunk by this time into a most shrivelled and drivelling harridan."
Solecisms and absurdities of this sort abound. It is clear that Disraeli devoted great attention to their elaboration and was often proud of his literary creations. With slight variants, he repeated several times and applied to successive contemporary statesmen the metaphor that "bad wine pro- duces good vinegar." But these extravagances should not blind us to the fact that a vein of real prescience and acute political observation runs through Disraeli's utterances, how- ever much it is obscured by the fantastic forms in which his ideas are presented. The weak points of the Benthamite philosophy are indicated with a firm and reasonable touch. The danger of democratic tyranny, which was a favourite theme of Lord Chatham's, is foreshadowed in a manner which the present generation has good reason to know is not exaggerated. At a time when a marked tendency was exhibited throughout the world to neglect the fact that English institutions were the outcome of naiional character and traditions, a well-timed warning was given against endeavouring to plant those institutions in uncongenial soil, whether in the Old or New World. Amidst all this are to be found sweeping generalizations of a far more debatable character, as, for instance, that revolutions are never the work of a nation but always of a faction—a view which exaggerates the part played by the French Jacobins and unduly minimizes the general effect produced by a long course of misgovernment.
Nevertheless, the outpourings of this strange and singularly un-English man of genius, in spite of their virulently partisan character, can still afford some instruction to those who wish to meditate on the general principles which should dictate the government of nations. As for the merits and demerits of the Whigs, their case has been stated by Mr. Bagehot, who was a far more impartial political observer than Disraeli, in the following lines :—
"Perhaps as long as there has been a political history in this country there have been certain men of a cool, moderate, resolute firmness, not gifted with high imagination, little prone to enthu- siastic sentiment, heedless of large theories and speculations, careless of dreamy scepticism, with a clear view of the next step, and a wise intention to take it; a strong conviction that the elements of knowledge are true, and a steady belief that the present world can, and should, be quietly improve& These are the Whigs."
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