Fall of the Whigs in 1867—Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer—Reform Bill, why undertaken—Necessities real or fancied of a Party Leader—Alternatives—Split in the Cabinet—Disraeli carries his point—Niagara to be shot—Retirement of Lord Derby—Disraeli Prime Minister—Various judgments of his character—The House of Commons responsible for his elevation—Increasing popularity with all classes.

Something else too as well as the Castilian pedigree Disraeli might have done better to leave to others. In 1865 he had uttered his memorable warning in the House of Commons against playing tricks with the Constitution. Other countries might emerge out of a revolution and ‘begin again.’ England could not begin again. Lord John Russell’s Reform Bill was thrown out. The Whig Ministry fell in 1867, and Lord Derby came a third time to the helm with Disraeli for his Chancellor of the Exchequer. They at least, it might have been thought, would have let alone a subject on which the latter had pronounced so recently so emphatic an opinion. But they were still a Ministry on sufferance, and how to turn a minority into a majority was still an unsolved problem. The spectre of Reform was unexorcised. Both parties had evoked it at intervals, when they wished ultimately to pose before the world as the people’s friends. Yet no experienced statesman, Whig or Tory, unless from unworthy jealousy, would have opened his lips to recommend a change from which he could not honestly expect improvement. Even the working classes themselves, who were to be admitted to the suffrage, were not actively demanding it. No good had come to them from the great Bill of 1832. ‘I don’t care who is in or who is out,’ said a rough artisan to me. ‘I could never see that any of them cared for us.’ They had been told that they were living in a world where everyone was to look out for himself, that their interests would never be attended to till they had representatives who would force attention to them. But their general sense was that the ills which they complained of were out of reach of Parliament, and they were looking for a remedy in combination among themselves which would take the place of the old Guilds. The ancient organisation of labour had been destroyed in the name of Liberty. Their employers had piled up fortunes. They had been left ‘free,’ as it was called, with their families to multiply as they would, and to gather their living under the hoofs of the horses of a civilisation which had become an aggregate of self-seeking units. To this they had been brought by a Parliamentary government, which, as far as they were concerned, was no government at all; and they were incredulous of any benefit that was to arrive to them from improvements in a machine so barren. Thus they were looking rather with amused indifference than active concern while the parties in the House of Commons were fencing for the honour of being their champion.

And yet Reform was in the air. The educated mind of England had been filled to saturation with the new Liberal philosophy. In the old days a ‘freeman’ was a master of his craft, and not till he had learnt to do, and do well, some work which was useful to society did he enter upon his privileges as a citizen. The situation was now reversed. To be ‘free’ was to have a voice in making the laws of the country. Those who had no votes were still in bondage, and bondage was a moral degradation. Freedom was no longer a consequence and a reward, but the fountain of all virtue; a baptismal sacrament in which alone human nature could be regenerated. In Great Britain and Ireland there were some thirty millions of inhabitants. Of these, under the Reform Bill of 1832, three hundred thousand only were in possession of their birthright. What claim, it was asked, had a mere fraction to monopolise a privilege which was not only a power in the State but the indispensable condition of spiritual growth and progress? We heard much about generous confidence in the people, about the political stability to be expected from broadening the base of the pyramid, about the elevating consciousness of responsibility which would rise out of the possession of a vote—beautiful visions of the return of AstrÆa, the millennium made into a fact by the establishment of universal liberty. Of all this Disraeli believed nothing. No one hated empty verbiage more than he. His dislike of cant was the most genuine part of him. But he too had once imagined that the working-men were safer depositaries of power than the ten-pound householders; and even old Tories, though they thought an extension of the franchise foolish and needless, did not suppose it would be necessarily dangerous unless accompanied with a vast redistribution of seats. Thus, although the mass of the existing voters were content with their privileges, and were not eager to share them, the House of Commons had already committed itself by second readings to the principle of Reform. The question would return upon them again and again till it was settled, and as things stood either party had a Parliamentary right to deal with it.

What were Lord Derby and Disraeli to do? Accident had brought them into power, and accident or some adverse resolution of the House might at any time displace them. Experienced Parliamentary politicians had observed that the shake of the Constitution from the Act of 1832 had arisen more from the manner in which it was carried than from the measure in itself. A second Radical Reform Bill, which might be passed in a similar manner, was evidently imminent; the multitude, who were so far quiet, might again be stirred; and if once the classes and the masses were pitted against one another the breaking loose of a torrent might sweep away Church, House of Lords, landed estates, and all that was left of the old institutions of England. Such were the arguments on public grounds; to which, though it was unavowed, might be added the pleasure of ‘dishing the Whigs.’

But if Disraeli had looked back upon his own past career he might have remembered to have once said that there were considerations higher than any of these—that public men ought to be true to their real convictions. The Liberals had professed to believe in Reform. The Tories had never looked on it as more than an unwelcome and a useless necessity. Lord Derby had been a member of Lord Grey’s first Reform Cabinet. Disraeli in his enthusiastic youth had called himself a Radical. But Lord Derby had been cured of his illusions; and Disraeli had learnt the difference between realities and dreams. They might think that the danger of concession was less than the danger of resistance, but that was all. There were persons credulous enough to hope that there might be found men at last among their Parliamentary leaders who would adhere in office to what they had said in Opposition. In the opinion of the Conservatives, the need of England was wise government, not political revolution. They might have said that if the experiment of Democracy was to be tried it should be tried by those who were in favour of the change on their own responsibility. They themselves would have no hand in it. They might be turned out of office, but the country would know that they had been faithful to their word, and could be relied upon when there was need of them again. Tories of the old school would have said so and dared the consequences, which might not have been very terrible after all, and Parliamentary government would have escaped the contempt into which it is now so rapidly falling.

Unfortunately political leaders have ceased to think of what is good for the nation, or of their own consistency, or even of what in the long run may be best for themselves. Their business is the immediate campaign, in which they are to outmanoeuvre and defeat their enemies. On this condition only they can keep their party together. The Conservatives had been out of office, with but short-lived intervals, for thirty-five years. Peel’s Government had been, as Disraeli said, not Conservative at all, but an organised hypocrisy. If they were to regard themselves as condemned to be in a perpetual minority, with no inducement to offer to tempt ability or ambition into their ranks, they would inevitably become disheartened and indifferent. The Parliamentary Constitution depended on the continuance of two parties, and if one of these disappeared the constitution would itself cease to exist.

Disraeli’s notion that the aristocracy were to recover their power by an alteration of their ways had proved ‘a devout imagination.’ The ancient organisation was visibly crumbling, and progress, whether it was upwards or downwards, was the rule of the hour. Lord Derby was old and out of health, and Disraeli himself was the ruling spirit of the Cabinet. Though born an Englishman, and proud of the position which he had won, he had not an English temperament, and he was unembarrassed by English prejudices. He surveyed the situation with the coolness of a general and the impartiality of a friend who had no personal interests at stake. He prided himself on his knowledge of the English character; and to some extent he did know it, though he mistook the surface for the substance. He believed—and the event a few years later seemed to show that he was right—in the essential Conservatism of the great mass of the people, and he resolved upon a ‘leap into the dark.’ He regretted the necessity. He did not hide from himself that he too was ‘stealing the Whigs’ clothes while they were bathing.’ History was repeating itself. His situation too much resembled that of his old leader whom he had overthrown. His own language could be retorted upon him, and the more violent he had been at Peel the more severe would be his condemnation. But a strategist must be governed by circumstances, and he could plead that the position was not entirely the same. Peel had been pledged to Protection, and was at the head of an unbroken majority returned in the Protectionist interest. In going over to Free Trade he had made a social revolution and destroyed his party. Disraeli could say that he had never opposed the principle of an extension of the suffrage, that he had more than once openly advocated it. He had always protested against the assumption that the Liberals had a monopoly of the question.

All agreed that reform was inevitable; if conducted by the Conservatives with a drag upon the wheel, it might be harmless, and might add to their strength. To persuade himself was more easy than to convince his party. Old-fashioned Toryism was stubborn and distrustful—distrustful of the measure in itself, and distrustful of the leader whom, for want of ability in themselves, they were compelled to follow. He found it necessary to ‘educate’ them, as he scornfully said. He told them that they could not hold together on the principle of mere resistance to the spirit of the age. Change was the order of the day. To cease to change would be to cease to live. They must accept the conditions. Party government is perhaps an accident of a peculiar period. To divide the intellect of the country into hostile camps, each struggling to outwit or outbid the other, is not a promising, and may not be a permanent, method of conducting the affairs of a great country. But it is a present fact, theoretically admired and practically accepted and acted on, and while it continues, the opposing chiefs have to disregard the reproaches of inconsistency. They have to do what occasion requires—attack, defend, snatch advantages, and improve opportunities.

In earlier years, Disraeli, by speech and writing, had tried for a nobler policy. He had hoped for a real government again, to be brought about by an aristocratic regeneration. But the aristocracy had not regenerated themselves. The American war, which was to have shown the superiority of aristocracies to democratic republics, had had precisely the opposite effect. He was carrying on the administration with a minority. His business now as a general was to go with the times, and if possible change his minority into a majority. Tory principles were dead. His best chance was in the daring stroke, on which Carlyle so scornfully commented, and in throwing himself boldly upon the masses of the people.

All admit Disraeli’s dexterity as a Parliamentary commander. To succeed, he knew that he must outbid the highest offers of his opponents. He shook his Cabinet in the process. Three of his most distinguished supporters—Lord Salisbury, Lord Carnarvon, and General Peel—threw up their offices and left him. But the body of his army consented to go with him. He could be confident in the general support of the Opposition. Their consent could not be refused. For form’s sake, and to satisfy his followers, he introduced a few limitations of which he must have foreseen that the Liberals would demand the surrender, and to which his easy sacrifice of them showed that he attached no importance. He carried a bill which in its inevitable developments must give the franchise to every householder in the United Kingdom; and he gained for his party the credit, if credit it was, of having passed a more completely democratic measure than the most Radical responsible statesman had as yet dared to propose. The reproaches which were heaped upon him are fresh in the memories of many of us. Carlyle roused himself out of the sorrows into which he had been plunged by his wife’s death to write his ‘Shooting Niagara.’ In Carlyle’s opinion, the English people had gone down the cataract at last, and nothing was left to them but to continue their voyage to the ocean on such shattered fragments of their old greatness as they could seize and cling to. A quarter of a century has gone by and the Constitution still holds together. The prophet of Chelsea may yet prove to have been clear-sighted. There are sounds in the air of cracking timbers, and signs of rending and disruption. But a powerfully organised framework does not break with a single shock, and Disraeli scored a victory. Enemies said that he had covered himself with ignominy; but the disgrace sat light upon him, and by his manoeuvres he had secured for his party at least one more year of office. Time must pass before the newly enfranchised voters could be placed upon the register. If the Liberals forced a dissolution before the process was completed, a new Parliament would have to be chosen by the old constituencies, and they would gain nothing even if they were again in a majority, for there would be an appeal to the fresh electors, whose votes no one could count upon. Two general elections close one upon another would be so inconvenient that the country would resent it upon them. They had therefore to wait and digest their spleen, while new honours descended upon the triumphant Disraeli. Lord Derby’s health broke down; he was no longer equal to the work of office. He retired, and the author of ‘Vivian Grey’ became Prime Minister. The post which in the extravagance of youthful ambition he had told Lord Melbourne could alone satisfy his ambition was actually his own, and had been won by courage, skill, and determination, and only these. He libertino patre natus, a libertinus himself—without wealth, without connection, for the peers and gentlemen of England resented his supremacy while they used his services—had made himself the ruler of the British Empire. He had not stooped to the common arts of flattery. He had achieved no marked successes in the service of the country. It was supposed, perhaps without ground, that he was not even a grata persona to the highest person in the realm, till Her Majesty was compelled to accept his supremacy. He had won his way by parliamentary ability and by resolution to succeed. Whether it be for the interest of the nation in the long run to commit its destinies to men of such qualifications is a question which it will by-and-by consider. If a time comes when party becomes faction, and the interests of the empire are sacrificed visibly in contention for office, when the wise and the honest hold aloof from politics as a game in which they can no longer take part, Parliamentary government will fall into the contempt which Disraeli himself already secretly felt for it. The system will collapse, and other methods will be tried. Disraeli, however, had risen by the regular process, and according to the representative principle was the chosen of the country. Among rival politicians his elevation created irritation more than surprise, for it had been long regarded as inevitable. Outside Parliamentary circles there was no irritation at all, but rather pride and pleasure. Englishmen like those who have made a position for themselves by their own force of character. Disraeli’s public life was before the world. He had made innumerable enemies. A thousand calumnies had pursued him. His actions, good, bad, and indifferent, had been coloured to his least advantage. He had been described as an adventurer and a charlatan, without honesty, without sincerity, without patriotism; a mercenary, a gladiator; the Red Indian of debate.

If this was the true account of him, one has to ask oneself in wonder what kind of place the House of Commons must be, when such a man can be selected by it as its foremost statesman. There he had sat for thirty years, session after session, ever foremost in the fight, face to face with antagonists who were reputed the ablest speakers, the most powerful thinkers whom the country could produce. Had his enemies’ account of him been true, why had they not exposed and made an end of him? The English people had too much respect for their institutions to believe in so incredible a story. The violence of the attacks recoiled upon their authors. With his accession to the Premiership he became an object of marked and general regard. When he went down to Parliament for the first time in his new capacity, he was wildly cheered by the crowds in Palace Yard. The shouts were echoed along Westminster Hall and through the lobbies, and were taken up again warmly and heartily in the House itself, which had been the scene of so many conflicts—the same House in which he had been hooted down when he first rose to speak there.

And the tribute was to himself personally. He was not the representative of any great or popular cause. Even in carrying his Reform Bill he had not stooped to inflated rhetoric, or held out promises of visionary millenniums. He was regarded merely as a man of courage and genius, not less honest than other politicians because his professions were few.