LORD BEACONSFIELD'S MAGIC.
WHATEVER may be the explanation of Sir Stafford Northcote's visit to the Midland Counties, there was one sentiment., twice repeated in his speeches, which must hiave surprised those who knew him best, though there is no denying that it was the one which obtained most popular applause. We refer to the animated tribute he gave to his "noble chief," Lord Beaconsfield. If any member of the Government was accounted as likely in a considerable degree to counteract the showy policy of Lord Beaconsfield, it was Sir Stafford Northcote. When Lord Beaconsfield was talking in the most magnificent manner of the duty of sustaining the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire, Sir Stafford Northcote talked in the most frigid manner of the necessity of getting it to reform its administration, if it were to continue to exist, and made the letter of our Treaties the chief excuse for the feeble- ness of our interference. When Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Cross were sounding the alarm as to the advance of the Russians, Sir Stafford Northcote spoke in the most complacent manner of the prospects of peace and the needlessness of panic. When Lord Beaconsfield brought back from Berlin "peace, with honour," Sir Stafford Northcote only apologised for the com- promise agreed upon, as, on the whole, the one that seemed to promise most chance of conciliating the antagonistic interests. During the whole of last Session his language was always the same,—frigid, unenthusiastic, making the least of the fancied triumphs of the Government, and the most of the diffi- culties before them. Of Turkey he always spoke apologetic- ally, of Russia temperately ; of war he spoke with dread ; of the cost of military preparations with regret ; and of coups de therdre with deprecation. When the constitutional question was raised as to the right of the Government to bring the Indian troops to the Mediterranean without asking the assent of Parliament, instead of boasting of the Royal preroga- tive which the Government had exercised, his tone was mildly apologetic. What else could they do, he asked, with an apparent urgency for the troops, and a certainty of increasing the difficulty of getting them and their cost of transport, if the design were published to the world ? In short, till this last campaign in the Midlands, Sir Stafford Northcote has remained the one member of the Govern- ment who, whatever its political eccentricities might be, always tried to make them seem less, not more, re- markable than they really were. He continued to be the one ally of the Government who tried to defend it in a matter- of-fact strain, who threw cold-water on its ostentation, and endeavoured to rationalise its policy as much as possible for the sake of the rational part of mankind. But common- place as his speeches in the Midlands were, in manner, this feature was absent. Not only did he twice emphatically bear witness to the political triumph of his noble chief, Lord Beacons- field, but for the first time he emphatically adopted his policy, —the conservation of the Turkish Empire, the repression of Russia by all the means in our power,—the apology for a great expenditure, and the indifference to the advice of Parliament in all cases where it might be possible to secure the subsequent adhesion of Parliament through the favour of the Constitu- encies for a dictatorial policy of Ministerial origin. For the first time since the Ministry was formed, Sir Stafford North- cote has spoken as a genuine adherent,—if a moderate adherent, —of all the chief aims of Lord Beaconsfield, and has expressed his personal loyalty and admiration, as well as his political fidelity to his chief. It looks very much as if the cold and reticent part of the Cabinet,—tie make-weight against the policy of fireworks and braggadocio,—were being gradually absorbed, and the Cabinet were likely in a short time to become a really united body, not merely doing the will of its head, but doing it with the heart, as well as the will.
What is the talisman by which Lord Beaconsfield achieves
these strange victories over men who seem to offer so little
that is promising to his manipulation? Lord Salisbury seemed to be even a tougher political morsel for Lord Beaconsfield to assimilate than Sir Stafford Northcote him- self, but Lord Salisbury, too, has been assimilated. One by one, all the many atoms of plain English common-sense which are so co-ordinated as to form the brain of the Cabinet, have been reduced to follow the guidance of the Prime Minister, except the two members who resigned last spring, Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby. Lord Cranbrook is a typical "John Bull" enough, but Lord Cranbrook appears to have given no trouble. Colonel Stanley has all the sobriety of the soberest Stanley brain, but Colonel Stanley has succumbed. Mr. Smith has a mind trained in business, but Mr. Smith has apparently never rebelled against the policy of extravagance and glitter. Mr. Cross is a perfect specimen of the Quarter-Sessions type of sagacity and common-sense ; but Mr. Cross has been as malleable from the first as if his mind had been fed from infancy on " Coningsby " and " Alroy." Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has often attracted attention by his in- cisive and peremptory judgment, but Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has volunteered for the defence of the worst of the Ministerial freaks. And now at last Sir Stafford Northcote, whose wet- blanket seemed always ready for anything like a romanticist interpretation of the Government policy—even Sir Stafford Northcote—seems, like a moth which had long resisted the attraction of the candle, almost to have given up the vain struggle, and fluttered within the reach of its scorching and singeing flame. What is the talisman by which Lord Beacons- field achieves these wonders ?—by which he metamorphoses typical Englishmen till they become the most plastic of all materials to his rococo genius and his flamboyant style It is pretty certain that it is not what men ordinarily call personal attraction. Lord Beaconsfield, it is generally admitted, appears to have no intimates, and but few close friends. Even Lord John Manners is probably more of a political than a personal adherent, and as for Lord Cairns, who is some- times said to be Lord Beaconsfield's most efficient second officer in the Cabinet, his frigid, legal intellect shows no indication at all of having taken fire at the Oriental dreams of the Prime Minister. We believe the truth to be that of personal fascina- tion, as personal fascination is usually understood, there is no ele- ment at all in the influence of Lord Beaconsfield over his Cabinet. It is true that his victory over Lord Salisbury is more analogous to the victory of Mr. Rarey, the horse-tamer, over a vicious horse, than to anything one knows of in political literature • and it is also true that Mr. Rarey, the horse-tamer, was always supposed to act by the spell of some curious personal fascina- tion. And of fascination of this kind there may be something in Lord Beaconsfield. But that is not the sense in which we apply the word 'fascination' when we mean by it the attractive- ness which acts through admiration and through love. We have no reason to suppose that Mr. Rarey's horses felt any special admiration and love for Mr. Rarey ; and the mag- netism, therefore, if magnetism it was, under the spell of which the horse lost its inclination to resist,—and in speak- ing of magnetism, we only use a physical simile to conceal our ignorance,—was not a moral so much as a physical quality. And we are inclined to think that Lord Beaconsfield's magic is a spell of a somewhat similar kind, certainly not moral, and though not exactly physical, yet a matter partly of physical tem- perament and partly of intellectual tactics. There is nothing which in his old novels Mr. Disraeli was so fond of depicting as a genius of this kind, which subdues without attracting,—by audacity, by coldness, by presence of mind, by manipulating skilfully the weaknesses, of those on whom it operates, often by stimulating ambition, more often by alarming that deep self- distrust which is so frequently found a little below the surface of our apparently self-confident countrymen. That Lord Beaconsfield has almost illimitable audacity, no one who knows his career and his books can doubt. It has been his greatest inheritance. Very few of his colleagues have shared that audacity, and consequently, perhaps, their genius has quailed beneath his. The Minister who shared this quality most with Lord Beaconsfield was the first to leave him ; and more of them, probably would have left him, but for the inner timidity which distrusted itself, directly it found itself face to face with his- cold judgment and his flashy skill. But of course, in so great a game as politics, mere audacity goes for very little. Lord Beaconsfield could never have sub- dued hostile judgments as he has, if he had not had much more than audacity. And he has had much more than audacity. All his books show that he has had as keen an insight into the weak side of multitudes, as he has had into the weak side of individuals. His leading ideas,— those upon which he has drawn most consistently and most skilfully,—are founded on his keen apergu for the weaknesses of popular feeling. He very early saw, for instance, how great
an influence the monarchy, skilfully worked, might be made to exercise—not indeed over the true politicians, but over the popular masses of the English people ; and he very early saw how powerful an engine the monarch might be made by a skilful First Minister to control the dissensions of a miscel- laneous Cabinet. One of his earliest squibs was the repre- sentation of the monarch in " Popanilla " as a wonderful statue, to whom twelve counsellors whisper whatever counsels they please, which are immediately reproduced by the statue, whether they be wise or silly,—the statue, moreover, on the suggestion of the same twelve men, opening" its mighty mouth to vomit forth a flood of ribbons, stars, and crosses." His earliest serious suggestion on the same subject is that the Monarchy needs "enfranchise- ment," in the interest of the multitude. And no one can study Lord Beaconsfield's history without seeing clearly how ably he has worked the influence of the Throne, both over the ignorant masses, and over the immediate colleagues with whom he had most difficulty in dealing. He has made its powers at once a show or charm for the non-political, and a bridle for the statesmen who might otherwise have given trouble. It has been his policy all through to eliminate as far as possible the influence of the trained middle-class which has a political mind, and to bring the cheers of the unthinking to the direct support of the counsels of the crafty. And doubtless audacity so guided has been of immense use to him in the manipula- tion of his colleagues.
Then, again, observe how pliant Lord Beaconsfield has always been, as well as how apt in handling pseudo-popular ideas. He has not only abandoned his own ideas repeatedly,— though only to recur to them again on a fitting opportunity,— but he has abandoned them with a good grace, and him- self consented to try the most opposed ideas. This arises from his infinite indifference to the ideas themselves. He looks at them as keys to unlock particular locks, and if he can pick the lock with the wrong key, he is quite ready to do so. Long before 1859 he had convinced himself that the true policy of Toryism was to operate on the prejudices of what Mr. Bright calls the "residuum." But he could not convince his Conservative colleagues of it, and in 1859 accordingly he actually proposed the very opposite idea, to limit the suffrage to the middle-class in both counties and boroughs alike,—to make a £10 rental the uniform franchise for all constituencies. Probably he knew the proposal would be rejected. But at that time he had not the power to overrule his Conservative col- leagues ; so he humoured them, and tried the wrong key. Doubt- less it has been so again and again during the present crisis. It is impossible to forget that as long ago as 1846,—seven years before the Crimean war,—he wrote in " Tancred," "The English will not do the business of the Turks again for nothing." "The English want Cyprus ; they will take it, as compensation." Well, the Crimean war came, and the English did do the business of the Turks again for nothing ; and twenty-two years went past before Mr. Disraeli's idea was to bear fruit. But when the time came to try it, it was tried, and answered his purpose.. He brought troops from the East,—a course also suggested in the same work, " Tancred," in which he anticipated the taking of Cyprus, —and moved the centre of English policy Eastwards. Then he explained that we must have room in the Mediterranean for the use of such troops, and demanded Cyprus, as his price for helping Turkey. Slowly the years came round, till at last he could really flaunt the showy fancies of his Oriental mind be- fore the constituencies which he himself had enlarged for the purpose of such operations ; and when they came they found the man, as well as the hour. It is by this ingenuity in manipulating the weaknesses of men and the weaknesses of multitudes,—by this inexhaustible patience in waiting for the moment when he can do so to the best advantage,—by this un- limited audacity in action when the moment comes,—that Lord Beaconsfield's genius subdues the genius of Lord Salis- bury, and also of far less powerful, though far more sensible men, and wins its short-lived triumphs over Saxon sense and earnestness.
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