CONSERVATIVE DEFEAT
Mr. Gladstone brought forward his famous resolutions,carried them against Mr. Disraeli’s Government, and at the dissolution was rewarded by a majority so sweeping that resistance was impossible. Disraeli resigned without waiting for the meeting of Parliament—a sensible example which has been since followed. With his usual calmness he rallied his distracted followers and waited patiently while the two great branches of the upas-tree were being hacked off, well aware that the hot stage would be followed by a cold one when the effects of this new departure began to show themselves. The Irish Church was reduced to a voluntary communion. Tenants and landlords were made joint owners of their lands—ill-mated companions set to sleep in a single bed, from which one or other before long was likely to be ejected. Ireland made its usual response; and within two years the state of Westmeath became so serious that the Cabinet which was to have won the Irish heart was obliged to move for a secret committee to consider how the administration was to be carried on. Disraeli on leaving office might if he had chosen have retired to the Upper House. He pleased himself better by prevailing on the Queen to confer a coronet on his faithful companion, and no act of his life gave him greater pride or pleasure. Mrs. Disraeli[10]became Viscountess Beaconsfield, and he himself remained in the House of Commons, where he could watch and criticise.
EFFECTS OF MR. GLADSTONE’S POLICY
A secret committee is only moved for on grave occasions. An evidence so rapid and so palpable of the results of Mr. Gladstone’s operations was an opportunity for the exercise of Mr. Disraeli’s peculiar powers. Of late years he had been sparing in his sarcasms. His speeches had beenserious and argumentative, and the rapier and the whip lash had been laid aside. But they were lying ready for him, and he had not forgotten his old art. He did not again object as he had objected in Peel’s case to granting extraordinary powers to a Government which he distrusted. He was willing to assist the Cabinet, since they needed assistance, in maintaining order in Ireland; Lord Hartington had reminded him that he had himself made a similar application in another Parliament. But he confessed his astonishment that such an application should be necessary. ‘The noble lord,’ he said, ‘has made some reference, from that richness of precedent with which he has been crammed on this occasion, to what occurred in 1852; and in the midst of the distress of this regenerating Government of Ireland supported by a hundred legions and elected by an enthusiastic people in order to terminate the grievances of that country and secure its contentment and tranquillity, he must needs dig up our poor weak Government of 1852 and say, “There was Mr. Napier, your attorney-general: he moved for a committee, and you were a member of his Cabinet.” If I had had a majority of a hundred behind my back I would not have moved for that committee. I did the best I could. But was the situation in which I was placed similar to the situation of her Majesty’s present Ministers? Look for a moment to the relations which this Government bears to the House of Commons with regard to the administration of Ireland. The right hon. gentleman opposite (Mr. Gladstone) was elected for a specific purpose. He was the Minister who alone was able to cope with these long-enduring and mysterious evils that had tortured and tormented the civilisation of England. The right hon. gentleman persuaded the people of England that with regard to Irishpolitics he was in possession of the philosopher’s stone. Well, sir, he has been returned to this House with an immense majority, with the object of securing the tranquillity and content of Ireland. Has anything been grudged him—time, labour, devotion? Whatever has been proposed has been carried. Under his influence, and at his instance, we have legalised confiscation, we have consecrated sacrilege, we have condoned treason, we have destroyed Churches, we have shaken property to its foundations, and we have emptied gaols; and now he cannot govern one county without coming to a Parliamentary committee. The right hon. gentleman, after all his heroic exploits, and at the head of his great majority, is making government ridiculous.’
‘We have legalised confiscation, we have consecrated sacrilege, we have condoned treason,’ pronounced with drawling alliteration, was worth a whole Parliamentary campaign. Everyone recollected the words from the neatness of the combination; everyone felt and acknowledged their biting justice. No one was a match for Disraeli in the use of the rapier. The composition of such sentences was an intellectual pleasure to him. A few years later, when the Prince Imperial was killed in South Africa, he observed, on hearing of it, ‘A very remarkable people the Zulus: they defeat our generals, they convert our bishops, they have settled the fate of a great European dynasty.’
No Government was ever started on an ambitious career with louder pretensions or brighter promises than Mr. Gladstone’s Cabinet in 1868. In less than three years their glory was gone, the aureole had faded from their brows. The bubble of oratory, which had glowed with all the colours of the rainbow, had burst when in contact with fact, and the poor English people had awoke to the drearyconviction that it was but vapour after all. In April, 1872, the end was visibly coming, and Disraeli could indulge again, at their expense, in his malicious mockery. In a speech at Manchester he said:
‘The stimulus is subsiding. The paroxysms ended in prostration. Some took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury bench, the Ministers reminded me of those marine landscapes not unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea.’
The calm of satisfied ambition—A new novel—‘Lothair’—Survey of English society—The modern aristocracy—Forces working on the surface and below it—Worship of rank—Cardinal Grandison—Revolutionary socialism—Romeward drift of the higher classes—‘Lothair’ by far the most remarkable of all Disraeli’s writings.
‘LOTHAIR’
Once again in Opposition, Disraeli found leisure to return to his early occupations. As a politician, and at the head of a minority for the time hopelessly weak, he had merely to look on and assist, by opportune sarcasms, the ebb of Liberal popularity.
In this comparative calm he resumed his profession as a novelist, which he had laid aside for more than twenty years, and delivered himself of a work immeasurably superior to anything of the kind which he had hitherto produced. ‘Vivian Grey’ and ‘Contarini Fleming’ were portraits of himself, drawn at an age of vanity and self-consciousness. ‘Henrietta Temple’ and ‘Venetia’ were clever stories—written, probably, because he wanted money—but without the merit or the interest which would have given them a permanent place in English literature. The famous trilogy, ‘Coningsby,’ ‘Sybil,’ and ‘Tancred,’ though of far greater value, have the fatal defect, as works of art, that they were avowedly written for a purpose. ‘Lothair’ has none of these faults—Disraeli himself is imperceptible; the inner meaning of the book does not lie upon thesurface. It was supposed, on its first appearance, to be a vulgar glorification of the splendours of the great English nobles into whose society he had been admitted as aparvenu, and whose condescension he rewarded by painting them in their indolent magnificence. The glitter and tinsel was ascribed to a Jewish taste for tawdry decoration, while he, individually, was thought to be glutted to satiation in the social Paradise, like ‘Ixion at the feasts of the gods.’ The divinities themselves were amused and forgiving. They did not resent—perhaps they secretly liked—the coloured photographs in which they saw themselves depicted. The life which Disraeli described was really their own, drawn naturally, without envy or malice; a life in which they enjoyed every pleasure which art could invent or fortune bestow, where they could discharge their duties to society by simply existing, and where they had the satisfaction of knowing that, by the mere gratification of their wishes, they were providing employment for multitudes of dependents. They had cultivated the graces of perfected humanity in these splendid surroundings, and ‘Lothair’ was accepted as a voluntary offering of not undeserved homage.
In all Disraeli’s writings, from his earliest age, there is traceable a conviction that no country could prosper under a free Constitution, without an aristocracy with great duties and great privileges; an aristocracy who, as leaders of the people, should be their examples also of manliness and nobility of character. He had observed how, as political power had passed away from the English peers, while their wealth remained, and increased, their habits had become more self-indulgent—they had become a superior but socially exclusive caste. They were still an estate of the realm,but they had become, like the gods of Epicurus, lifted above the toils and troubles of this mortal world, still feeding on the offerings which continued to smoke upon the altars, but of no definite use, and likely, it might be, to lose their celestial thrones, should mankind cease to believe in them. The occupation of the Elysians in the ‘Infernal Marriage’ was to go to operas and plays and balls, to wander in the green shades of the forest, to canter in light-hearted cavalcades over breezy downs, to banquet with the beautiful and the witty, to send care to the devil, and indulge the whim of the moment. It was easy to see who were meant by the Elysians. Privileged mortals they might be, but mortals out of whom, unless they roused themselves, no future rulers would ever rise to govern again the English nation. The Emperor Julian imagined that he could galvanise the dead gods of Paganism; Disraeli, believing that an aristocracy of some kind was a political necessity, had dreamt of an awakening of the young generation of English nobles to the heroic virtues of the age of the Plantagenets.
A quarter of a century had gone by since he had sent Tancred for inspiration to Mount Sinai. During all that time he had lived himself within the privileged circle. He had not over-estimated the high native qualities of the patrician lords and dames, but he had recognised the futility of his imaginations. They were as little capable of change as Venus and Apollo, and in his enforced leisure he drew their likenesses, with a light satire—so light that they failed to perceive it. The students of English history in time to come, who would know what the nobles of England were like in the days of Queen Victoria, will read ‘Lothair’ with the same interest with which they read‘Horace’ and ‘Juvenal.’ When Disraeli wrote, they were in the zenith of their magnificence. The industrial energy of the age had doubled their already princely revenues without effort of their own. They were the objects of universal homage—partly a vulgar adulation of rank, partly the traditionary reverence for their order, which had not yet begun to wane. Though idleness and flattery had done their work to spoil them, they retained much of the characteristics of a high-born race. Even Carlyle thought that they were the best surviving specimens of the ancient English. But their self-indulgence had expanded with their incomes. Compared with the manners of the modern palace or castle, the habits of their grandfathers and grandmothers had been frugality and simplicity: and they had no duties—or none which they had been taught to understand. So they stand before us in ‘Lothair.’ Those whom Elysian pleasures could not satisfy were weary of the rolling hours, and for want of occupation are seen drifting among the seductions of the Roman harlot; while from below the surface is heard the deep ground-tone of the European revolution, which may sweep them all away. We have no longer the bombast and unreality of the revolutionary epic. Disraeli has still the same subject before him, but he treats it with the mellow calmness of matured experience. He writes as a man of the world, with perfect mastery of his material, without a taint of ill-nature—with a frank perception of the many and great excellences of the patrician families, of the charm and spirit of the high-born matrons and girls, of the noble capabilities of their fathers and brothers, paralysed by the enchantment which condemns them to uselessness. They stand on the canvas like the heroes and heroines of Vandyck; yet the sense neverleaves us that they are but flowers of the hothouse, artificially forced into splendour, with no root in outer nature, and therefore of no continuance.
The period of the story was the immediate year in which Disraeli was writing. The characters, though in but few instances portraits of living men and women, were exactly, even ludicrously, true to the prevailing type. We are introduced on the first page into a dukery the grandest of its kind; the owner of it,theduke, being too great to require a name, while minor dukes move like secondary planets in the surrounding ether.
Theduke has but one sorrow—that he has no home, his many palaces requiring a periodic residence at each. He is consoled each morning in his dressing-room, when he reviews his faultless person, by the reflection that his family were worthy of him. The hero is an ingenuous, pure-minded youth, still under age, though fast approaching his majority, the heir of enormous possessions, which, great as they descended from his father, have been increased to fabulous proportions by the progress of the country. His expectations rather oppress than give him pleasure, for he is full of generous aspirations, to which he knows not how to give effect. He feels only that his wealth will give him boundless powers for good or evil, and all that his natural piety and simplicity can tell him is that he ought to do something good with it. In an ordinary novel, a youth so furnished would be the natural prey of scheming mothers. Disraeli makes him the intended victim of a far more subtle conspiracy. His rank is vaguely indicated as only second to that of the duke himself. An absurd and unnatural consequence attaches to him in society, and he is marked as a prey by the power which aims at recovering England to the Churchof Rome by the conversion of lords and ladies. He is exposed to temptation through the innocence of his nature. Of his guardians, one is a Scotch Presbyterian earl, narrow, rugged, and honest; the other, a distinguished clergyman of the Anglican Church, an early friend of his father, who has ‘gone over’ to Rome, risen to high rank, and is at the head of the English Mission. The personality of this eminent man is visibly composed of the late Cardinal Wiseman and his successor, who is still present among us, and is so favourably known by his exertions for the improvement of the people. The function of Cardinal Grandison, as Disraeli represents him, is the propagation of Catholic truth among patrician circles. He has operated successfully on young and beautiful countesses, who, in turn, have worked upon their husbands.
The first converts of the apostles were the poor and the unknown. The Cardinal’s superficial, but not altogether groundless, calculation, was that if he could convert earls and countesses, the social influence of those great persons would carry the nation after them. Lothair, with his enormous fortune, would be a precious acquisition. His boyhood had been spent in Scotland, and, through his guardians’ precautions, the Cardinal has no opportunities of influencing him—indeed, had scarcely seen him. They meet when he enters the world. Their connection places them on terms of immediate intimacy, and the web is spun round the fly with exquisite skill. Lothair is naturally religious, and no direct attempts are made upon his faith. Theological differences are treated with offhand ease; but he finds himself imperceptibly drawn into Catholic society. Accomplished Monsignori are ever at his side. Great ladies treat him with affectionate confidence, and he is delighted with an elementwhere the highest breeding is sanctified by Spiritual devotion. More delicate attractions are brought to bear—a lovely girl, so angelic that she is intended for a convent, lets him see that her destiny may, perhaps, be changed if she can find a husband with a spirit like her own. Lothair sinks rapidly under the combination of enchantments. An immense balance lies at his bankers, the accumulations of his minority. His conversations with Miss Arundel convince him that he must build a cathedral in London with it. It never occurred to him—nobody had even suggested to him—that his rent-roll entailed responsibilities towards the thousands of working families who were his own dependents, and by whose toil that wealth had been created. To build a cathedral, at any rate, would be a precious achievement—whether Catholic or Protestant might be decided when it was completed. He was, himself, the only person who seemed ignorant which it was to be.
The spell which was cast by a lady, could be broken only by another lady’s hand. Before Lothair is finally subdued, accident brings him in contact with Theodora, the wife of a rich American, dazzlingly beautiful, the incarnation of the Genius of the European revolution, to which her devotion is as intense as that of Miss Arundel to the Catholic Church. Two emotional impulses divide at present the minds of the passionate and the restless. The timid see salvation only in the reunion of Christendom and the returning protection of the Virgin. The bold and generous, weary of the cants, the conventionalisms, and unrealities of modern life, fling themselves into the revolutionary torrent, which threatens the foundations of existing civilisation.
In the convulsions of 1848, the revolutionary societies had shaken half the thrones in Europe. Disraeli, whosevision, unlike that of most contemporary statesmen, was not limited to the coming session, but looked before and after, had watched these two tendencies all through his life, well aware that they would have more to do with the future of mankind than the most ingenious Parliamentary manœuvrings. While Premier he had learnt much of the working of the republican propaganda in France, Germany, and Russia. In the Irish Conspiracy, Catholic priests had been found, curiously, co-operating with American Fenians. Particular persons had fallen under his notice who were unknown to the outside world. At the moment when Lothair’s future is hanging in the balance, he is led into relation with the fascinating representative of the revolutionary spirit. Theodora, whom Disraeli evidently likes better than any one else in the book, had been devoted from childhood to the cause of liberty. Her father and brothers had been killed in the fights of 1848. She herself, an orphan and an exile, had wandered to Paris, had sung in the streets, had been received into the secret associations, where, for her beauty and her genius, she had been regarded as a tutelary saint.
Pure as snow, Theodora had no thought but for the cause. The women worshipped her, the men idolised her. Like Rachel, she had electrified the Paris mob by starting forward at a great moment, and singing the ‘Marseillaise.’ She was the Mary Anne of the universal conspiracy against the existing tyranny which was called order, and a word from her at any moment could kindle the fire into a blaze. At the moment when this lady, an idealised Margaret Fuller, is introduced upon the scene, her thoughts are concentrated on the delivery of Rome from the Papacy. Thus simultaneously the two enthusiasms were centred on the same spot. The Catholicdevotees were dreaming of the reunion of Christendom. Pio Nono was to summon an Ecumenical Council which was to be the greatest event of the century. To the revolutionists Rome was the mystic centre of European liberty. Rome being once free, and the detested priests made an end of, the Genius of Evil would spread its wings and depart, and mankind would at last be happy. Louis Napoleon was the uncertain element in the situation. Would he continue to support the Pope, or leave him to his fate?
The two parties watched each other, waiting the decision, and Theodora and her husband are in England, living at Belmont, a villa on the edge of Wimbledon, with an artistic and intellectual circle of friends. Here Lothair is introduced. He finds himself in an atmosphere delightful, yet entirely strange to him, presided over by a divine being. The lady is ten years older than himself, on the best terms with her American, and without further room in her heart for any but ideal objects. Disraeli contrives, with extraordinary skill, to let the fascination exercise its full power without degenerating into a vulgar intrigue. All is airy and spiritual. Lothair was on the edge of becoming a Catholic, because ‘society ought to be religious.’ Theodora is as ‘religious’ as Miss Arundel, but with a religion independent of dogma. He confides in her, tells her of his struggles, confesses his devotion to herself. When his passion takes too warm a tone she gently waves it aside with a grace which intensifies the affection without allowing it to degrade itself.
Cardinal Grandison and his countesses are watching for their council, which is to be the ‘event of the century.’ To Lothair the great ‘event’ is his own coming of age, and the celebration of it at his magnificent castle. Dukes and earls, bishops and cardinals, Monsignori and English clergy,sheriffs and county magistrates, gather at Muriel for the occasion, and Theodora and her husband are specially-invited guests. All that is loyallest and brightest in the English nation is brought out in Lothair’s welcome to his inheritance. The object is to show the unadulterated respect which still remains for our great nobles, the future which is still within their reach if they know how to seize it—a respect, however, tinged slightly with artificiality and unreality in the exaggeration of the outward splendour. As a by-play, the chiefs of the two Churches continue their struggle for Lothair’s soul. The ‘Bishop,’ a well-known prelate of those days, and a college friend of Cardinal Grandison before their creed had divided them, now meet in the lists, followed by their respective acolytes. The Bishop and the Anglican countesses arrange an early ‘celebration’ in the chapel, where Lothair is to renew his vows to the Church of his fathers. The Catholics look at it as a magical rite, which may spoil the work which they are hoping to accomplish. The sureness of foot with which Disraeli moves in these intricate labyrinths, the easy grace with which the various actors play their parts, might tempt one to forget what a piece of gilded tinsel it all is, but for the disbelieving interjections of common sense from less devout spectators. St. Aldegonde, the most attractive of all the male characters in the book, a patrician of the patricians and the heir of a dukedom, affects Radicalism of the reddest kind. Bored with the emptiness of an existence which he knows not how to amend, a man who in other times might have ridden beside King Richard at Ascalon, or charged with the Black Prince at Poitiers, lounges through life in good-humoured weariness of amusements which will not amuse, and outrages conventionalism by his frank contempt for humbug. Him they had not dared to invite to be present at the ‘celebration.’ On a Sunday morning, when the party generally were observing the ordinary proprieties, he appears in the breakfast-room in rough and loose weekday costume, pushes his hands through his dishevelled locks, and exclaims, as he stands before the fire, regardless of the Bishop’s presence, ‘How I hate Sundays!’ The Bishop makes a dignified retreat. When St. Aldegonde’s wife gently reproves him, he adds impenitently to his sins, saying, ‘I don’t like bishops, I don’t see the use of them; but I have no objection to him personally. I think him an agreeable man, not at all a bore. Just put it right, Bertha,’ &c. St. Aldegonde is a perfect specimen of a young English noble, who will not cant or lie; the wisest and truest when counsel or action is needed of him, yet with his fine qualities all running to waste in a world where there is no employment for them.
Neither Bishop nor Cardinal secure their prey. Theodora carries the day. The French withdraw from Rome; she has secret information that they are not to return, and that the secret societies are ready to move. The opportunity has arrived. Nothing is wanted but arms and money. The cathedral is abandoned, the accumulations of Lothair’s minority are thrown into Theodora’s hands, and he himself enters into the campaign for the liberation of Rome.
A republican general, who has been incidentally seen before, a friend of Mazzini and Garibaldi, now appears on the scene. From Muriel we pass to an Italian valley on the Roman frontier, where a force is collecting to join Garibaldi and advance on the Holy City. Theodora is in the camp. Rome itself is ready to rise on the first glinting of their lances. The General moves forward, and fights andwins a battle at Viterbo; but in the moment of victory all is lost. Louis Napoleon has changed his mind, and the French return; a stray shot strikes Theodora, and mortally wounds her. The sound of the guns at Civita Vecchia saluting the arrival of the French ships reaches her ears as she hangs between life and death. Her heart breaks; her last words are to tell Lothair that ‘another and a more powerful attempt will be made to gain him to the Church of Rome,’ and she demands and obtains a promise from him that ‘he will never enter that communion.’
When he wrote ‘Coningsby’ and ‘Sybil,’ Disraeli regretted the Reformation. The most ardent admirer of the Middle Ages did not regard the overthrow of the ecclesiastical rule, and the suppression of the religious houses, with more displeasure, or believed more devotedly in the virtues of the abbots and the beneficent working of the monastic system. In his ‘Life of Lord George Bentinck’ he had so far changed his mind that he refuses toRoman Catholicthe dignity of capital letters. Twenty additional years of experience had taught him that the modern Roman hierarchy was as unscrupulous as the Reformers had described their predecessors, and that, of the many dangers which threatened England, there was none more insidious than the intrigues of ultramontane proselytisers.
The battle of Mentana follows, and Garibaldi’s defeat by the French. Lothair is shot down at the General’s side, and is left for dead on the field. Being found breathing, he is taken up with the other wounded. His English Catholic friends are in Rome for the winter, and devote themselves to the care of the hospitals. An Italian woman brings word to Miss Arundel that one of her countrymen is lying at the point of death, who may be recovered if shetakes charge of him. He is found to be Lothair, and the opportunity is seized for a thaumaturgical performance as remarkable as the miracle-working at Lourdes. The woman who brought the account is discovered, by a halo round her head, to have been the Virgin in person; Lothair, unknown to himself, to have fallen not as a Garibaldian but as a volunteer in the Papal army. He is carried, unconscious, to the enchanter’s cave, in the shape of a room in the Agostini Palace. He is watched over while in danger by a beautiful veiled figure. He is surrounded in convalescence by adroit Monsignori, and prevailed on to assist in a ceremony which is represented to him as a mere thanksgiving for his recovery, but in which he finds himself walking first in a procession, candle in hand, at Miss Arundel’s side, she and he the special objects of the Virgin’s care. The next morning the whole performance is published in full in the ‘Papal Gazette,’ and his Cardinal guardian then appears on the stage, to tell him that he is ‘the most favoured of men,’ and that the Holy Father in person will immediately receive him into the Church.
Too weak from illness to express his indignation in more than words, he protests against the insolent deceit. Nowhere in English fiction is there any passage where the satire is more delicate than in the Cardinal’s rejoinder. Lothair opens a window into Disraeli’s mind, revealing the inner workings of it more completely than anything else which he wrote or said. For this reason I have given so many pages to the analysis of it, and must give one or two more.
‘“I know there are two narratives of your relations with the battle of Mentana,” observed the Cardinal, quietly. “The one accepted as authentic is that which appears in thisJournal; the other account, which can only be traced to yourself, has, no doubt, a somewhat different character. But considering that it is in the highest degree improbable, and that there is not a tittle of collateral or confirmatory evidence to extenuate its absolute unlikelihood, I hardly think you are justified in using, with reference to the statements in this article the harsh expressions which I am persuaded on reflection you will feel you have hastily used.”
‘“I think,” said Lothair, with a kindling eye and a burning Cheek, “that I am the best judge of what I did at Mentana.”
‘“Well, well,” said the Cardinal, with dulcet calmness, “you naturally think so; but you must remember you have been very ill, my dear young friend, and labouring under much excitement. If I was you—and I speak as your friend—I would not dwell too much on this fancy of yours about the battle of Mentana. I would, myself, always deal tenderly with a fixed idea. Nevertheless, in the case of a public event, a matter of fact, if a man finds that he is of one opinion, and all orders of society of another, he should not be encouraged to dwell on a perverted creed. Your case is by no means an uncommon one. It will wear off with returning health. King George IV. believed he commanded at the battle of Waterloo, and his friends were at one time a little alarmed; but Knighton, who was a sensible man, said, ‘His Majesty has only to leave off Curaçoa, and, rest assured, he will gain no more victories.’ Remember, sir, where you are. You are in the centre of Christendom, where truth, and alone truth, resides. Divine authority has perused this paper, and approved it. It is published for the joy and satisfaction of two hundred millions of Christians, and for the salvation of all those who, unhappily for themselves, are not yet converted to the faith. It records themost memorable event of this century. Our Blessed Lady has personally appeared to her votaries before during that period, but never at Rome; wisely and well she has worked, in villages, as did her Divine Son. But the time is now ripe for terminating the infidelity of the world. In the Eternal City, amid all its matchless learning and profound theology, in the sight of thousands, this great act has been accomplished in a manner which can admit of no doubt and lead to no controversy. Some of the most notorious atheists of Rome have already solicited to be admitted to the offices of the Church. The secret societies have received their deathblow. I look to the alienation of England as virtually over. I am panting to see you return to the home of your fathers, and recover it for the Church in the name of the Lord God of Sabaoth. Never was a man in a greater position since Godfrey or Ignatius. The eyes of all Christendom are upon you, as the most favoured of men, and you stand there like St. Thomas.”
‘“Perhaps he was bewildered, as I am,” said Lothair.
‘“Well, his bewilderment ended in his becoming an apostle, as yours will. I am glad we have had this conversation, and that we agree. I knew we should. To-morrow the Holy Father will himself receive you into the bosom of the Church. Christendom will then hail you as its champion and regenerator.”’
Conscious that he was the victim of a lying conspiracy, yet as if his will was magnetised, he finds himself driven to the slaughter, ‘a renegade without conviction.’ He is virtually a prisoner, but he contrives at night to pass the Palace gate, wander about the ghostly city, and at last into the Coliseum, where Benvenuto Cellini had seen a vision of devils, and Lothair imagines that he sees Theodora, whoreminds him of her warning. He is brought back, senseless, by a spiritual sleuth-hound who had been sent after him; and the result was, that on the morning which was to have made the unfortunate Lord of Muriel a Papist against his will, he is visited by an English doctor, ‘who abhorred priests, and did not particularly admire ladies.’ He is ordered instant change of scene, and is sent to Sicily—still in the custody of ‘familiars’; but he evades their vigilance, embarks in a fishing-boat, reaches Malta and an English yacht—and thenceforward his fortunes brighten again. He visits the Greek islands. Of course he must go to Jerusalem—all Disraeli’s heroes who want spiritual comfort are sent to Jerusalem—not, however, any longer to see visions of angels, but to find a ‘Paraclete’ in a Syrian Christian from the Lake of Gennesaret, an Ebionite of the primitive type, whose religion was a simple following of Christ.
In recovered health of mind and body, Lothair returns to England, where he finds the world as he had left it. He supposes his adventures would be on everyone’s lips. His acquaintances ask him, coolly, what he has been doing with himself, and how long he has been in town. The Cardinal is again gliding through the gilded drawing-rooms, but ignores the Roman incident as if it had never been. Miss Arundel subsides into her sacred vocation. The hero, freed from further persecution, marries the beautiful daughter of the duke, who had been the object of his boyish affection—a lady, needless to say, of staunchest Protestant integrity.
Such is ‘Lothair,’ perhaps the first novel ever written by a man who had previously been Prime Minister of England. Every page glitters with wit or shines with humour. Special scenes and sentences are never to be forgotten: the Tournament of Doves at the Putney Villa, where the ladies gather to see their lords at their favourite summer amusement; the wounded blue rock, which was contented to die by the hand of a duke, but rose and fluttered over a paling, disdaining to be worried by a terrier; the artist who hesitates over a mission to Egypt, but reflects that no one has ever drawn a camel, and that, if he went, a camel would at last be drawn; the definition of critics—as those who had failed in literature and art. But the true value of the book is the perfect representation of patrician society in England in the year which was then passing over; the full appreciation of all that was good and noble in it; yet the recognition, also, that it was a society without a purpose, and with no claim to endurance. It was then in its most brilliant period, like the full bloom of a flower which opens fully only to fade.
The exhausted volcanoes—Mr. Gladstone’s failure and unpopularity—Ireland worse than before—Loss of influence in Europe—The Election of 1874—Great Conservative majority—Disraeli again Prime Minister with real power—His general position as a politician—Problems waiting to be dealt with—The relations between the Colonies and the Empire—The restoration of the authority of the law in Ireland—Disraeli’s strength and Disraeli’s weakness—Prefers an ambitious foreign policy—Russia and Turkey—The Eastern Question—Two possible policies and the effects of each—Disraeli’s choice—Threatened war with Russia—The Berlin Conference—Peace with honour—Jingoism and fall of the Conservative party—Other features of his administration—Goes to the House of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield and receives the Garter—Public Worship Act—Admirable distribution of patronage—Disraeli and Carlyle—Judgment of a conductor of an omnibus.
CONSERVATIVE REACTION
The destinies were fighting for Disraeli. The exhausted volcanoes continued on the Treasury bench; but England had grown tired of them. They had been active when their activity had been mischievous. In quiescence they had allowed the country to become contemptible. The defeat of France and the establishment of a great German empire had changed the balance of power in Europe. England had not been consulted, and had no voice in the new arrangements. Russia took advantage of the confusion to tear up the Black Sea Treaty, and throw the fragments in our faces. The warmest Radical enthusiastcould not defend the imbecility with which the outrage was submitted to. A Minister was sent to Paris to inform Prince Bismarck that, if Russia persisted, we should go to war. When Russia refused to be frightened, the uncertain Premier said in Parliament that the Minister had exceeded his instructions. It appeared, on inquiry, that the instructions had not been exceeded, but that nothing had been meant but an idle menace, which had failed of its effect. The English people, peculiarly sensitive about the respect paid to their country abroad, because they feel that it is declining, resented the insult from the Russians upon the Cabinet, which was charged with pusillanimity. The settlement of the Alabama claims, though prudent and right, was no less humiliating. The generous policy which was to have won the Irish heart had exasperated one party without satisfying the other. The third branch of the upas tree still waited for the axe. The minds even of Radicals could not yet reconcile themselves to the terms of a concordat which would alone satisfy the Catholic hierarchy. The Premier, deceived by the majority which still appeared to support him, disregarded the rising murmurs. He had irritated powerful interests on all sides, from the army to the licensed victuallers; while of work achieved he had nothing to show but revolutionary measures in Ireland, which had hitherto been unattended with success. The bye-elections showed with increasing distinctness the backward swing of the political pendulum, and very marked indeed at this time was the growth of the personal popularity of Disraeli. At least, he had made no professions, and had ventured no extravagant prophecies. He had always stood up staunchly for the honour of his country. Brief as had been his opportunities of office, hehad accomplished, after all, more positive practical good than his rivals who boasted so loudly. Their function had been to abolish old-established institutions, and the effect had been but a turn of the kaleidoscope—a new pattern, and nobody much the better for it. Disraeli had been contented with a ‘policy of sewage,’ as it was disdainfully called. He had helped to drain London; he had helped to shorten the hours of children’s labour. His larger exploit had been to bring the Jews into Parliament, and to bring under the crown the government of India. Sensible people might question the wisdom of his Reform Bill, but he had shown, at any rate, that he was not afraid of the people; and the people, on their side, were proud of a man who had raised himself to so high a place in the face of thirty years of insult and obloquy. His position was the triumph of the most respectable of Radical principles—the rule to him that deserves to rule. They came to call him Dizzy; and there is no surer sign that a man is liked in England than the adoption of a pet name for him. His pungent sayings were repeated from lip to lip. He never courted popular demonstrations, but if he was seen in the streets he was followed by cheering crowds. At public meetings which had no party character he was the favourite of the hour. At a decorous and dignified assembly where royalties were present, and the chiefs of both political parties, I recollect a burst of emotion when Disraeli rose which, for several minutes, prevented him from speaking, the display of feeling being the more intense the lower the strata which it penetrated, the very waiters whirling their napkins with a passion which I never on any such occasion saw exceeded or equalled.
DISRAELI RETURNS TO POWER
Mr. Gladstone was inattentive to the symptoms of thetemper of the people, and proceeded with his Irish Education Bill. The secularist Radicals were dissatisfied with a proposal which gave too much power to the Catholic priests. The Court of Rome and the Irish bishops were dissatisfied because it did not give enough. Impatient of opposition, Mr. Gladstone punished Parliament with a dissolution, and was astonished at the completeness of his overthrow.
For the first time since 1841 a strong Conservative majority was returned, independent of Irish support—a majority large and harmonious enough to discourage a hope of reducing it either by intrigue or by bye-elections. England, it really seemed, had recovered from her revolutionary fever-fit, and desired to be left in quiet after half-a-century of political dissipation. Seven or six years of Conservative administration were now secured. There were those who shook their heads, disbelieved in any genuine reaction till lower depths had been reached, and declared that ‘it was only the licensed victuallers.’ Mr. Gladstone’s long Parliamentary experience led him to think that, at any rate, it would last out the remainder of his own working life, and that his political reign was over. Disraeli had taken Fortune’s buffets and Fortune’s favours with equal composure, and had remained calm under the severest discomfitures. Mr. Gladstone retired from the leadership of the Liberal party, and left Lord Hartington to repair the consequences of his own precipitancy. ‘Power,’ the Greek proverb says, ‘will show what a man is.’ Till this time Disraeli had held office but on sufferance. He was now trusted by the country with absolute authority, and it remained to be seen what he would make of it. He could do what he pleased. He could dictate the foreign and colonialpolicy. He was master of the fleet and the army. He had made himself sovereign of England, so long as his party were true to him; and the long eclipse through which he had conducted them to eventual triumph guaranteed their fidelity. He had won his authority, not by the favour of a sovereign, not by having been the champion of any powerful interest, but by the personal confidence in himself which was felt by the body of the people.
PRIME MINISTER
He was now to show whether he was or was not a really great man. In his early career he had not concealed that his chief motive was ambition. He had started as a soldier of fortune, and he had taken service with the party among whom, perhaps, he felt that he would have the best chance of rising to eminence. Young men of talent were chiefly in the other camp—among the Conservatives he might expect fewer rivals. But the side which he had chosen undoubtedly best suited the character of his own mind; under no circumstances could Disraeli have been a popular apostle of progress, or have taught with a grave face the doctrines of visionary freedom. He regarded all that as nonsense, even as insincere nonsense, not believed in even by its advocates. On all occasions he had spoken his mind freely, careless what prejudice he might offend. Even on the abolition of slavery, on which English self-applause was innocently sensitive, he alone of public men had dared to speak without enthusiasm. The emancipation of the negroes, he said in a debate upon the sugar trade, ‘was virtuous but was not wise.’ Politics was his profession, and as a young barrister aspires to be Lord Chancellor Disraeli aspired to rise in the State. He had done the Conservatives’ work, and the Conservatives had made him Prime Minister; but he had committed himself to fewdefinite opinions, and, unlike most other great men who had attained the same position, he was left with a comparatively free hand. Lord Burghley was called to the helm to do a definite thing; to steer his country through the rocks and shoals of the Reformation. His course was marked out for him, and the alternatives were success or the scaffold. Disraeli had the whole ocean open, to take such course as might seem prudent or attractive. There was no special measure which he had received a mandate to carry through, no detailed policy which he had advocated which the country was enabling him to execute. He was sincerely and loyally anxious to serve the interests of the British Empire and restore its diminished influence, but in deciding what was to be done it was natural that he would continue to be guided by an ambition to make his Ministry memorable, and by the cosmopolitan and oriental temperament of his own mind.
Two unsettled problems lay before him after his Cabinet was formed, both of which he knew to be of supreme importance. Ireland, he was well aware, could not remain in the condition in which it had been left by his predecessors. The Land Act of 1870 had cut the sinews of the organisation under which Ireland had been ruled since the Act of Settlement. The rights of owners were complicated with the rights of tenants, and the tenants had been taught that by persevering in insubordination they might themselves become the owners altogether. The passions of the Irish nation had been excited; they had been led to believe that the late measures were a first step towards the recovery of their independence. Seeds of distraction had been sown broadcast, which would inevitably sprout at the first favourable season. A purely English Minister with no thought but for English interests, and put in possession of sufficientpower to make himself obeyed, would, I think, have seized the opportunity to reorganise the internal government of Ireland. The land question might have been adjusted on clear and equitable lines, the just rights secured of owners and occupiers alike. The authority of the law could have been restored, nationalist visions extinguished, and a permanent settlement arrived at which might have lasted for another century. No one had said more emphatically than Disraeli that the whole system of Irish administration demanded a revolutionary change. He was himself at last in a position to give effect to his own words. This was one great subject. The other was the relation of the colonies to the mother country. In the heyday of Free Trade, when England was to be made the workshop of the world, the British Empire had been looked on as an expensive illusion. The colonies and India were supposed to contribute nothing to our wealth which they would not contribute equally if they were independent, while both entailed dangers and responsibilities, and in time of war embarrassment and weakness. A distinguished Liberal statesman had said that the only objection to parting with the colonies was that without them England would be so strong that she would be dangerous to the rest of the world. These doctrines, half avowed, half disguised under specious pleas for self-government, had been acted on for a number of years by the Liberal authorities at the Colonial Office. The troops were recalled from New Zealand, Canada, and Australia. Constitutions were granted so unconditional, so completely unaccompanied with provisions for the future relations with the mother country, that the connection was obviously intended to have an early end. These very serious steps were taken by a few philosophical statesmen who happenedto be in power without that consultation with the nation which ought to have preceded an action of such large consequence. The nation allowed them to go on in unsuspicious confidence, and only woke to know what had been done when the dismemberment of the Empire came to be discussed as a probable event. One is tempted to regret that the old forms of ministerial responsibility have gone out of fashion. They might have served as a check on the precipitancy of such over-eager theorists. The country, when made aware of what had been designed, spoke with a voice so unanimous that they disclaimed their intentions, sheltered themselves behind the necessity of leaving the colonies to manage their own affairs, and assured the world that they desired nothing but to secure colonial loyalty; but these hasty measures had brought about a form of relation which, not being designed for continuance, had no element of continuance in it; and the ablest men who desire the maintenance of the Empire are now speculating how to supply the absence of conditions which might have been insisted on at the concession of the colonial constitutions, but which it is now too late to suggest.
Disraeli’s attention had been strongly drawn to this question. He was imperialist in the sense that he thought the English the greatest nation in the world and wished to keep them so. At the Crystal Palace in 1872 he had spoken with contempt and indignation of the policy which had been followed, and had indicated that it would be the duty of the Conservatives as far as possible to remedy the effects of it. His words show that he thought a remedy not impossible, and it is worth while to quote them.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘if you look to the history of this country since the advent of Liberalism forty years ago youwill find there has been no effort so continuous, so subtle, supported by so much energy, and carried on with so much ability and acumen as the attempts of Liberalism to effect the disintegration of the Empire of England. And, gentlemen, of all its efforts this is the one which has been the nearest to success. Statesmen of the highest character, writers of the most distinguished ability, the most organised and efficient means have been employed in this endeavour.
‘It has been proved to all of us that we have lost money by our colonies. It has been shown with precise, with mathematical demonstration that there never was a jewel in the crown of England that was so truly costly as the possession of India. How often has it been suggested that we should at once emancipate ourselves from this incubus? Well, that result was nearly accomplished. When those subtle views were adopted by the country under the plausible plea of granting self-government to the colonies I confess that I myself thought that the tie was broken. Not that I, for one, object to self-government. I cannot conceive how our distant colonies can have their affairs administered except by self-government. But self-government, in my opinion, when it was conceded ought to have been conceded as part of a great policy of imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accompanied with an imperial tariff, by securities for the people of England for the enjoyment of the unappropriated lands which belonged to the sovereign as their trustee, and by a military code which should have precisely defined the means and the responsibilities by which the colonies should be defended, and by which, if necessary, this country should call for aid from the colonies themselves. It ought, further, to have been accompanied by some representative council in the metropolis which would have broughtthe colonies into constant and continuous relations with the home Government. All this, however, was omitted because those who advised that policy—and I believe their convictions were sincere—looked upon the colonies of England, looked even upon our connection with India, as a burden on this country, viewing everything in a financial aspect, and totally passing by those moral and political considerations which make nations great and by the influence of which alone men are distinguished from animals.
‘Well, what has been the result of this attempt during the reign of Liberalism for the disintegration of the Empire? It has entirely failed. But how has it failed? Through the sympathy of the colonies with the mother country. They have decided that the Empire shall not be destroyed; and in my opinion no Minister in this country will do his duty who neglects any opportunity of reconstructing as much as possible our colonial empire and of responding to those distant sympathies which may become the source of incalculable strength and happiness to this land.’
A few persons, perhaps many, had hoped from these words that Disraeli, when he came into power again, would distinguish his term of rule by an effort which, even if it failed by immediate result, would have strengthened the bonds of good feeling, and if it succeeded, as it might have done, would have given him a name in the world’s history as great as Washington’s. Difficult such a task would have been, for the political and practical ties had been too completely severed; but the greatness of a statesman is measured by the difficulties which he overcomes. Whether it was that Disraeli felt that he was growing old, and that he wished to signalise his reign by more dazzling exploits which would promise immediate results; whether it was that he saw theEnglish nation impatient of the lower rank in the counsels of Europe to which it had been reduced by the foreign policy of his predecessors, that he conceived that the people would respond to his call and would repay a Tory Government which was maintaining the honour of the country by a confirmed allegiance; whether there was something in his own character which led him, when circumstances gave him an opening, to prefer another course to that which he had sketched in the words which I have quoted; or whether—but it is idle to speculate upon motives. He is said to have believed that there was a Conservative Trade Wind which would blow for many years; he may have thought that Ireland and the colonies might lie over to be dealt with at leisure. ‘Ceux qui gouvernent,’ says Voltaire, ‘sont rarement touchés d’une utilité éloignée, tout sensible qu’elle est, surtout quand cet avantage futur est balancé par les difficultés présentes.’ The two great problems which he could have, if not settled, yet placed on the road to settlement, he decided to pass by. He left Ireland to simmer in confusion. His zeal for the consolidation of the Empire was satisfied by the new title with which he decorated his sovereign. And his Administration will be remembered by the part which he played in the Eastern question, and by the judgment which was passed upon him by the constituencies. Disraeli particularly prided himself on his knowledge of the English character. He had seen that no Ministers were ever more popular in England than the two Pitts; and they were popular because they maintained in arms the greatness of their country. He had seen Lord Palmerston borne triumphantly into power to fight Russia, and rewarded for the imperfect results of the Crimean war with a confidence which was continued till his death. But in these instances there hadbeen, or had seemed to be, a real cause which the nation understood and approved. Lord Chatham was winning America for the Anglo-Saxon race. His son was defending the independence and commerce of England against the power of Bonaparte. And Lord Palmerston had persuaded the country that its safety was really threatened by Russian preponderance. Disraeli strangely failed to perceive that times were changed, that the recollections of the Crimean war no longer excited enthusiasm, that it was no longer possible to speak of Turkey with a serious face as the ‘bulwark of civilisation against barbarism.’ He was right in supposing that his party would go along with him, and that of the rest the scum and froth would be on his side. The multitude would shout for war out of excitement, and for war with Russia because Russia was a Power with which they supposed we could fight with a chance of success. But the serious thought of the nation, which always prevails in the end, was against him and he could not perceive it. The English bishops persuaded Henry V. to pursue his title to the crown of France to detach him from schemes of Church reform. Louis Napoleon attacked Germany to save his own shaking throne. Disraeli hoped to cool the Radical effusiveness by rousing the national pride. The barren conquests of Henry prepared the way for the wars of the Roses. Louis Napoleon brought only ruin upon himself. Disraeli failed, as he deserved to fail. He thought that he was reviving patriotic enthusiasm, and all that he did was to create jingoism.