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.

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 enthusiast could 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, he had 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.

Mr. Gladstone was inattentive to the symptoms of the temper 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 colonial policy. 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.

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 few definite 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 sufficient power 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 happened to 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 you will 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 brought the 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 the English 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 had been, 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.

Of the tens of thousands who gathered in Hyde Park to shout for war how many had considered what a war with Russia might involve? Bismarck could not understand Disraeli’s attitude. ‘Why cannot you be friends with Russia and settle your differences peacefully?’ he said to him at the beginning of the dispute. ‘Why not put an end once for all to this miserable Turkish business, which threatens Europe every year or two with war?’ Why not, indeed? Russian interests and English interests divide the continent of Asia. These two Powers between them are engaged in the same purpose of bringing the Eastern nations under the influence of Western civilisation. It would be a misfortune to humanity if either they or we should cease our efforts. The world smiles when we complain of Russian aggression. The Asiatic subjects of the Queen of England are two hundred millions. The Asiatic subjects of Russia are forty millions. The right on both sides is the right of conquest.

They have annexed territories and we have annexed territories. Annexations are the necessary results of the contact of order with anarchy. If we work together the regeneration of Asia may proceed peacefully and beneficently. If we quarrel in earnest, as things now stand, the whole enormous continent will be split into factions, nation against nation, tribe against tribe, family against family. From the Bosphorus to the Wall of China, and perhaps inside it, there will be an enormous faction-fight, with an amount of misery to mankind of which no recorded war has produced the like. It will be a war, too, which can lead to no atoning results. England staggers already under the vastness of her responsibilities, and even if she conquers can undertake no more. That we might not conquer is an eventuality which our pride may refuse to entertain; yet such a thing might happen, and if we are defeated we are a lost nation. Russia might recover, but we could not; a disaster on the Dardanelles or the Afghan frontier would cost us our Indian Empire.

In such a war we stand to lose all and to gain nothing, while in itself it would be nothing less than a crime against mankind. We are told that a cordial co-operation with Russia is impossible. It will not be made more possible by a quarrel over Turkey. Yet to a peaceful arrangement we must come at last if the quarrel is not to be pursued till one or other of us is destroyed. These are the broad facts of the situation, to which the fate of the Principalities or of the Bosphorus itself are as feathers in the balance. Disraeli, in whose hands for the moment the tremendous decision rested, chose to overlook them. He persevered in the policy of upholding the Turkish Empire. It was the traditional policy of England, and, as he professed to consider, the most consistent with English interests. It may be that he remembered also that the Turks had befriended his own race when the Russians had been their bitterest enemies. It may be that something of his early vanity still lingered in him, and that he was tempted by the proud position of being the arbiter of Europe. But fact was against him. Turkish rule in Europe is an anachronism, and neither force nor diplomacy can prevent the final emancipation of Christian nations from Mahometan dominion. He chose a course which gave him for a moment an ephemeral glory, but it was at the cost of undoing the effects of his whole political life, wrecking again the party which he had reorganised and giving a fresh lease of power to the revolutionary tendencies which threatened the dismemberment of the Empire.

The Eastern question was beginning to simmer when Disraeli came into power, but the symptoms had not yet become acute and he had leisure for internal politics. He desired to strengthen Conservative institutions. Of these the Church of England ought to have been the strongest, but it was distracted by internal disorders. The Romanising party was the counterpart of Radicalism. The original Tractarians had imagined themselves to be champions of old Tory principles, but revolutionary movements draw instinctively together. Romanisers and Radicals had the common belief that they were wiser than their fathers, that they must have something ‘deeper and truer than satisfied the last century.’ The reformers of the State wished to remodel the Constitution, the Ritualists to restore Church principles and bring back the Mass. The Radical chief sympathised with both of them. They returned his regard; and vast numbers of the clergy fell off from their old allegiance.

Disraeli, keenly as he observed the outer features of the situation, was not entirely at home in such subjects. He did not see that the lay members of the Church, who had once been earnest Protestants, had now grown indifferent about it. If the clergy liked to amuse themselves with altars and vestments and elaborate services the clergy might have their way for all that the laity cared about the matter. Old Tory families still hated Puritans and Puritanism, and had not realised the change of front which made Protestants Conservatives and Radicals into allies of the Papacy. Disraeli believed that an Act of Parliament could check a tendency which ran in a current where legislation could not reach. He passed a Public Worship Act to put down ritualism,[11] and it has been scarcely more effective than Lord John Russell’s demonstration against Papal aggression. This disease has not been checked; acrimonious lawsuits promoted by a few antediluvian Protestant parishioners have failed, and will continue to fail, because public opinion refuses to support the promoters. Suffering priests and bishops pose as martyrs, and there is unwillingness to punish them. By the Constitution the Church of England rests on an Act of Parliament, but sooner than effectively use its controlling power Parliament will consent to disestablishment. The Public Worship Act exasperated the enthusiastic clergy and their friends. It secretly offended not a few of Disraeli’s aristocratic followers. For the purpose for which it was passed it was as ineffectual as, to use President Lincoln’s simile, ‘a Pope’s Bull against a comet,’ and demonstrations which are not followed by action do not add to a statesman’s influence.

This, however, and all other internal subjects lost their interest when Servia rose against the Turks, when the Servian defeat brought the Russians across the Danube, and the passions, the alarms, the panics of the Crimean episode revived in all their frenzy. Circumstances had altered. England had no longer France for an ally. Turkey had then been saved, and allowed a fresh lease of life on condition of mending her administration and behaving better to her Christian subjects. Turkey had amended nothing, and could amend nothing. So far as Turkey was concerned, the only result had been a Turkish loan, and on this the interest had ceased to be paid. Nevertheless the familiar cries rose again. Our old ally was in danger. The Dardanelles were the keys of India. We were threatened on the Indus, we were threatened in the Mediterranean. Quiet voices could get no hearing, and eloquence could be only met by eloquence. Mr. Gladstone, if by his Irish action he had let loose the winds at home, did a service then which must be remembered to his honour. He forced the country to observe what the rule of Turkey meant. He insisted, not entirely in vain, on the indignity, the shame, the dishonour which we should bring on ourselves by taking the side of the Bulgarian assassins. He succeeded in making Disraeli pause at a critical time and preventing measures which might have led to an immediate conflict, and the Turkish successes at Plevna and in Armenia seemed for a time to dispense with the necessity of armed interference. The Turk, it was hoped, would be able to defend his provinces with his own hand. But, as Disraeli said truly, the English are the most enthusiastic people in the world. They have an especial love for courage, and the bravery of the Turks in the field made them forget or disbelieve in the ‘atrocities.’ When Kars fell and Plevna fell, when the Russian armies forced the Balkans in the dead of winter, and the Ottoman resistance collapsed, the storm rose again into a hurricane. Mr. Gladstone and the ‘Daily News’ stood their ground. Disraeli waved aside the horrible story of Turkish cruelties, as, if not false, yet as enormously exaggerated. Such as it was the ferocity had not after all cut deep into Bulgarian memories. If the dead have any knowledge of what is passing upon earth he must laugh in his grave when the Bulgarian survivors of these horrors are now inviting the Turks into an alliance with them against their Russian deliverers. Deeds of violence have been too common in some countries to make a deep impression. The fugitive Macdonalds from Glencoe were lost in astonishment at the interest which political passion had created in the murder of their kinsmen. Public opinion, so far as it expressed itself in words, continued strongly in Disraeli’s favour. He said amidst general applause that he would not allow Turkey to be crushed. He did not desire war, but he was prepared for war if the Russians entered Constantinople, and on two occasions peace hung upon a thread. A plan of campaign was formed, not for local resistance but for war on an universal scale. The British fleet went up within sight of the Golden Horn to cover the Turkish capital. Gallipoli was to be occupied. Turkestan was to be set on fire through the Afghan country; and, I believe, so ambitious was the scheme, another force was to have advanced from the Persian Gulf into Armenia. Not all the Cabinet were prepared for these adventures. Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby resigned, and caused some passing hesitation, and as the Russians left Constantinople unentered that particular crisis passed away. But the Russian conquerors had dictated their own terms of peace, and when Disraeli insisted that the terms should not stand till they had been revised at a European Conference England again applauded and admired. He determined to attend the Conference in person, and the remarkable impression which he produced there was the culminating point of his singular career. On Prince Bismarck, who respects firmness more than eloquence, it was an impression eminently favourable. French is the language generally used at the meetings of European plenipotentiaries. Disraeli spoke French tolerably, and had prepared a French address. It was represented to him, however, that his peculiar power of creating an effect would be impaired by his accent, and he spoke actually in English. There were two points, I believe, on which the peace of Europe hung in the balance, one referring to Batoum, which was not to be fortified; the other to the division of the two Bulgarias, which the treaty of San Stefano had joined. Heavy guns are now mounted at Batoum, and we are none the worse for it. The large Bulgaria, so much dreaded, has become a fact again, with the warm approbation of the anti-Russian Powers. Yet on threads so slight as these the lives or deaths, perhaps, of millions of men at that moment depended. After a stormy debate on the Balkan question Disraeli broke up the Conference and announced that he should return home and take other measures. Russia, at Bismarck’s entreaty, yielded a point which had no substantial significance. Disraeli had the glory of extorting a concession by a menace. We imagine that the days are past when nations can go to war for a point of honour, but we are no wiser than our fathers after all.

War, however, was avoided, and Disraeli had won his diplomatic victory. He returned to London in a blaze of glory, bringing peace with honour, and all the world sang the praises of the patriot Minister. He thought himself that he had secured the ascendency of the Conservatives for a quarter of a century at least. In 1876 he had passed from the leadership of the House of Commons to the House of Lords, reviving in an earldom the title which he had given to his wife, and which had died with her. He now received the Garter, the most coveted of all English decorations, because bestowed usually of free grace and not for merit, but for him the reward of his unequalled services. Yet it was all hollow. The public welfare, the public security of the Empire had not been advanced a step. Before the shouts had died away we were astonished by a secret treaty with Turkey, by which we had bound ourselves to the future defence of her Asiatic dominions, an obligation which we shall fulfil as much and as little as we fulfilled a similar obligation to Denmark. We had bound ourselves to secure a better administration of the Turkish provinces, an undertaking which we cannot fulfil; and we had acquired an addition to our Empire in Cyprus, a possession of which we can make no use. The country was surprised, and not particularly pleased, but on the whole it was still proud and gratified, and if Disraeli had dissolved Parliament when he returned from Berlin there is little doubt what its verdict would then have been. But he waited, believing himself secure in his achievements, and Fortune, which had stood his friend so long, now turned upon him. The spirit of a great nation called into energy on a grand occasion is the noblest of human phenomena. The pseudo-national spirit of jingoism is the meanest and the most dangerous. A war had been lighted in Afghanistan as part of the Eastern policy. It was easier to kindle than to extinguish. Sir Bartle Frere in South Africa imagined that he too could have an Imperial policy. He went to war with the Kaffirs. He went to war with the Zulus, whom, if he had been wise, he would have helped and favoured as a check upon the ambition of the Boers. A British regiment was cut to pieces. The Zulus in expiation were shot down in thousands and their nationality extinguished. Frere’s policy was his own; Lord Beaconsfield was not responsible for it, and did not approve of it. Yet the war went on.

The Transvaal had been annexed against the will of the people. Disraeli had fallen before that measure had borne its fruits, but he lived to hear of Majuba Hill and the ignominious capitulation in which, in that part of the world also, jingoism came to its miserable end.

The grand chance had been given to English Conservatism, and had been lost in a too ambitious dream. Like drunkards recovering from a debauch and revolting at their own orgies, the constituencies once more recalled the Radicals to power with a fresh impulse to the revolutionary movement, and Disraeli may have reflected too late on the uselessness of embarking on ‘spirited policies,’ which the next swing of the democratic pendulum may reduce to impotence.

His administration was not useless. Unambitious home measures were passed for the comfort or benefit of the people, which may be remembered gratefully when the Berlin Conference is forgotten. His patronage, and especially his literary and art patronage, was generously and admirably exercised. John Leech had for twenty years made him ridiculous in the cartoons in ‘Punch.’ Leech had a pension which would have died with him. Disraeli continued it to his widow and his children. Most notable was his recognition of the duty of the country to bestow some public honour on Thomas Carlyle. For half a century Carlyle had worked his way in disregarded poverty. The wise throughout Europe had long acknowledged in him the most remarkable writer of his age. He had been admired for his genius and reverenced for his stern integrity; the German Empire had bestowed upon him its most distinguished decoration; but in England it is held that the position which an eminent man of letters makes for himself can receive no added lustre from the notice of the Government; and Carlyle had been left severely alone in his modest home at Chelsea under all the changes of Administration, while peerages and titles were scattered among the brewers and the City millionaires. Disraeli, who was a man of intellect as well as a politician, perceived the disgrace which would attach to all parties if such a man as this was allowed to pass away as one of the common herd. Carlyle, indeed, had never spoken of him except with contempt, but it was Disraeli’s special credit that while he never forgot a friend he never remembered a personal affront. He saw at once that no common pension or decoration at so late an hour could atone for the long neglect. In a letter as modest as it was dignified he implied that he did not offer Carlyle a peerage because a hereditary honour would be a mockery to a childless old man; but he did offer in the Queen’s name, and pressed him to accept, the Grand Cross of the Bath, a distinction never before conferred upon any English author, with a life income corresponding to such a rank. Carlyle in his poorest days would never have accepted a pension. Stars and ribands had no attraction for him at any time, and less than none when he had one foot in the grave. He declined, but he was sensible of the compliment, and was touched at the quarter from which it came.

‘Very proper of the Queen to offer it,’ said the conductor of a Chelsea omnibus to me, ‘and more proper of he to say that he would have nothing to do with it. ’Tisn’t they who can do honour to the likes of he.’ But Disraeli saved his country from the reproach of coming centuries, when Carlyle will stand among his contemporaries as Socrates stands among the Athenians, the one pre-eminently wise man to whom all the rest are as nothing.