TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. DISRAELI IN HIS PATERNAL POSE.
DISRAELI with a majority at his command is a new
man. The Mr. Disraeli who governed with the acqui- escence of a divided Opposition, more powerful when united than his own party, was a strategist who meditated deeply on the moral alternatives at his command, who sometimes used the rod and sometimes dispensed his smiles, but almost always drew his resolve from the depths of a deeply considerate, though inscrutable judgment. If he was irritating and imperti- nent in his remarks on Mr. Gladstone's demeanour, it was easy to see that there was no impulse in the part, that for his own good purposes he wished to call out the impetuous side of his opponent. If he were disposed to beckon to the Radicals, the completely unconscious mode in which he effected his purpose, by inserting some highly Conservative guarantee against the effects of an otherwise very Radical provision, and allowing it to escape, as if in an overheard reverie, that even without that guarantee he personally should not have been afraid of the results of the provision, afforded quite a new study in the diplomacy of peace and war. But the result of all this study of the best conserva- tion of political force was unfavourable to unity of effect. Mr. Disraeli was a sphinx, but hardly a captain. His own side were always uneasy when he gave the orders to march ; his opponents were always dubious whether they ought to resist, or whether something better might not be in store for them under his leadership than their own leaders could offer. A Pythoness on her Delphic tripod or a priestress interpreting the murmur of the wind in the oak-leaves of Dodona, is, of course, an interesting character ; and it was in a great measure Mr. Dis- raeli's, but it was hardly the character most appropriate to the Prime Minister of England. And accordingly, now that Mr. Disraeli has a majority at his back, he has exchanged it for one very different. If a good deal of the oracular lingers in him still—and no man can entirely put off the ground-work of his character—he gives the paternal instead of the darkly threatening or captivating tone to the oracles he utters ; while the reluctance he affects to administer even the shadow of a reproof, and the benevolent manner in which he always tempers even the most sparing adverse criticism by accents of gracious encouragement, are perfect miracles of magnificent, though almost domestic condescension. How fatherly in his concession, how fatherly, too, in his rigid enforcement of the logical consequence of his concession, he was on Tuesday night, when the Home-rulers pressed so anxiously for an adjournment of the debate 1 "I understand there is a wish, not confined to one side of the House, for adjournment, and if a concession of that kind is to be made, the handsomest way of making it is the best. I therefore agree that this debate should be continued on Thursday, but I do so with the generous confidence that it will be concluded on that night. But it will be necessary that we should have a morning sitting on Friday." The permission is given in the " handsomogt way," and with "generous confidence" that the kindness of the giver will not be trespassed upon, but a day of double work is to be the consequence. Again, how affectionately didactic was his manner some weeks ago, in reminding the House of the value of time It almost recalled to us the children's books of our grandmammas, with their exhortations to little girls, such as "Maria, let the passing hour thy youthful reason warn, and strive, my dearest, to improve the time that can't return." "I think the House will agree with me that under the circumstances, and remembering that this is the 8th of June, we should husband our resources to the utmost, and that every effort should be made on both sides of the House not unnecessarily to waste that precious possession of time, which is not sufficiently appreciated, I think, by the House until the month of June commences." But even this mild reproof was given with paternal tender- ness, and with intimations that by.able and skilful co-opera- tion the past negligence might be retrieved, and a not too distant vacation deserved. And how carefully he extends his fatherly interest to both sides of the House. He never forgets that he is the Prime Minister of England, not merely a party leader. This was, of course, the motive of his declaration at Merchant Taylors' last week, that he was about to resume the task abandoned by Pitt and Grenville at the com- mencement of the great French war,—in fact, to apply to his policy those large constitutional ideas which he declined to call Liberal only because he regards "Liberal opinions" as identified with theoretic Continental carica- tures of the earlier ideas, but which certainly could not be
in any intelligible sense termed either Conser vative or Tory. In that speech, Mr. Disraeli represented himself in the light of the Minister of a Government which was in its best sense paternal, a Government seeking the elements of truth in the views of both parties, and refining them from the grosser admix- ture of party error till they were purely" national." Just so, he said at the Royal Academy dinner that " all that he claimed for the political style of Art to which the present Government belonged, was that it was "of the British School," and he was careful to indicate that it differed therein from all the recent Governments of this country, some of which had been "Roman," some had been marked by the "severer outlines of the -Tuscan," but none appt?.Intly till this had been eminently British. Last year at Manchester his mind was harping on the same idea. The Liberals of the day were, he said, not national, but cosmopolitan ; he wished himself and his followers to represent, without narrowness, the true national genius of England. And of course, to be truly national is to be superior to party, even to his own. Hence the majestic air with which he at once recognises the admirable though one- sided aims of the party which opposes him, even while he curbs its impatience, and leads up his more immediate followers— in some sense he affects to treat almost the whole House as his supporters—to larger views of political truth than any to which they have hitherto been accustomed, and even insists on their submitting to the painful process of gradually enlarging their mental horizon. Towards the Tories for some time back, towards both parties recently almost equally, his attitude has been precisely what the Apostle defines as that of a father,—" What son is he whom the father chasteneth not ? If ye be without chastisement, of which all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons." He is determined that, now at least, when he is the Prime Minister elected of the nation, none shall be bastards and not sons. He chastens all alike, distributing to all alike, " howe'er unjustly they complain, to each his well-appointed share of joy and sorrow, ease and pain."
The effect is really,—well, not grand, but grandiose. There is, as Mr. Disraeli justly said of his own school of Art, a" firm and flowing outline" in his manner. The costume of his policy is impressive, but he is a thought self-conscious and pompous. In observing his paternal pose, we can never quite get rid of the impression that he is something between a Prime Minister and. a Bishop. Dr. Magee said the other day that Bishops were often told they ought to be fatherly, that their proper function in life was to be 'fathers-in-God' to their clergy, but that ycu could not well be fatherly unless there were at least a dis- position to be filial,—which, on the whole, the recusar ts amongst the clergy do not at present show. But is there not a reason why aggrieved clergymen find it so difficult to be filial ? Is there not in the Bishops,—we do not say in Pr.. Magee, who is in many respects more the man for a Home. Minister of genius than for a Bishop,—a certain pomp of fatherhood which makes the whole relation slightly histrionic ? At all events, in Mr. Disraeli there is such a pomp and such a_ self-consciousness. He listens to the Opposition like a Bishop hearing a " plaint," and replies to them,—as, for instance, in his exhortation to the Irish Members on Thursday night,— a s if he were removing spiritual scruples, and throwing into his ex- planations a vein of hortatory love. That is very amusing, for a time, both to Parliament and the English people ; but after all,. everyone knows just the same that it is "only Dizzy," and that the great part of father of the Nation, which he is acting so carefully, is one which he, as he is in himself, is the last man in the world to suit. If Lord Selborne were to take up such a part, the nation would know perfectly well that it was his own, though they would soon tire of it, for the English people hardly like to be benevo- lently preached to, as Lord Selborne sometimes benevolently preaches to his tenants. But one reason why they do not feel bored while it is Mr. Disraeli who is doing it, is that they are so delighted and amused at the talent with which the part is played. They all know as well as possible that there is the rollicking, unscrupulous daring of a Vivian Grey beneath this admirably-acted "heavy father" of the nation. Various stories indicative of the ever-springing fountain of careless and trenchant scorn for all the great " British " traditions to which Mr. Disraeli now so carefully adapts himself as Minister, fly about in the drawing-rooms, and add a certain piquancy to the skill of this grave national performance. But that is a kind of piquancy which will not last. The British nation undoubtedly likes a Prime Minister who has, like Lord Palmerston, certain sympathies with both parties ; but above
all, it likes naturalness, and it is not accustomed to associate with naturalness the assumption of a position above that of a party leader. Lord Palmerston was, no doubt, half Conserva- tive in his heart ; but he never flaunted his Conservatism befere the House, and always endeavoured to give the most Liberal possible aspect to his Conservative leanings. It was as a party leader that he chiefly excelled, and that dread of Radical doctrine which was undoubtedly deep in him, was never avowed in the form of active sympathy with Conser- vatism. The British people in their ordinary mood are dis- posed to prefer a statesman who gives proof of more real sympathy with his opponents than he professes ; but they do not like him to displarit ostentatiously. The machinery of party, the play of competitive principles, is become so completely part and parcel of the British Constitution, that anything like an avowed air of superiority to that machinery, looks to them like an affectation to be discountenanced. In Mr. Disraeli they know pretty well that it is an affectation,— that he is not really attached either to the principles of "Pitt and Grenville," or to the principles of Bentinck and Derby, or to the principles of Palmerston, or to the principles of Gladstone. All views are probably in their essence equally indifferent to him, and therefore the spiritual tenderness with which he tempers and chastens all parties alike, is, though a capital joke and an agreeable interlude in the struggle of political life, not a characteristic which will wear well. Mr. Disraeli has long had a fixed idea that Mr. Gladstone failed from being too much of a party leader ; and he is going accordingly into the opposite extreme, and like the actor who blacked himself all over in order to play Othello the better, affecting a paternal solicitude for the interests of both sides of the House, which everybody knows he cannot feel. His apercu is not bad, but he overdoes it. We recommend him, if he wishes to prosper, to throw off the part of Shepherd and Bishop of the Souls of Liberals and Tories alike, and to resume the more natural manner of an adroit leader, who cares more for success than for anything else in the world. After all, if he really belongs to the "British School," there is nothing in the world so British as standing firmly on your own legs and not attempting to play an artificial part.
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