Before Disraeli had entered public life, at a time when public opinion remained stagnant regarding the reciprocal needs and splendid future of the Mother Country and her children, while it was still thought optional whether the parent supported the offspring or the offspring the parent, Disraeli had pondered on the problem, and brought imagination to bear upon it. The colonies were not merely commercial acquisitions, they were the free vents for the surplus energy of a great race, and the nursery gardens of national institutions.

In Contarini Fleming he thus muses, dreaming of things to come, in sight of Corcyra—

“... There is a great difference between ancient and modern colonies. A modern colony is a commercial enterprise, an ancient colony was a political sentiment. In the emigration of our citizens, hitherto, we have merely sought the means of acquiring wealth; the ancients, when their brethren quitted their native shores, wept and sacrificed, and were reconciled to the loss of their fellow-citizens solely by the constraint of stern necessity, and the hope that they were about to find easier subsistence, and to lead a more cheerful and commodious life. I believe that a great revolution is at hand in our system of colonisation, and that Europe will soon recur to the principles of the ancient polity.” In 1836 he thus satirises the impending King’s speech in his Runnymede Letter to Lord Melbourne—

“... It will announce to us that in our colonial empire the most important results may speedily be anticipated from the discreet selection of Lord Auckland as a successor to our Clives and our Hastings; that the progressive improvement of the French in the manufacture of beetroot may compensate for the approaching destruction of our West Indian plantations;113 and that, although Canada is not yet independent, the final triumph of liberal principles, under the immediate patronage of the Government, may eventually console us for the loss of the glory of Chatham and the conquests of Wolfe.”

Once in the House of Commons, he never ceased to urge the claims of sentiment and the bonds of interest, while he enforced the necessity for cementing them by federation and by tariffs. In 1848, when Lord Palmerston, with his “perfumed cane,” was dictating a constitution to Narvaez, Disraeli, who on principle deprecated interference with foreign powers unless British interests were endangered, here supported him, just because he considered it a case with contingencies affecting our colonial welfare and our own prestige. It was in 1848, too, that, descanting on the narrowing aspects of the Manchester School, and their “unblushing” advocacy of the “interests of capital,” he indicted their “colonial reform with ruining the colonies.” It was in the same year that he taxed the self-righteous Peelites with “turning up their noses at East India cotton as at everything else Colonial and Imperial.”114

Under Governments, of which Disraeli was the leading spirit, a constitution was framed for New Zealand in 1852, and in the summer of 1858 the colony of British Columbia was established. It was not more than a few months afterwards that disturbances arose; and the Times, in its review of the year 1859, found in these elements only the “incubus” of ubiquitous colonies and commerce. To this standing snarl about “the millstone of the colonies and India” Disraeli adverted thirteen years afterwards, when he said: “... 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.... How often has it been suggested that we should emancipate ourselves from this incubus!” It was Disraeli’s Government that in the ’sixties was to confederate Canada, and in the ’seventies to devise a scheme for confederating South Africa. In his earliest pamphlets Disraeli had announced that the genius of the age was one of a transition from the “feodal” to the “federal.” In his whole outlook throughout he sought to reconcile the higher spirit of the one with the material interests of the other. And yet, astounding to relate, it was stated in a speech some seven years or so ago, that Disraeli himself had endorsed such melancholy and shortsighted pettiness. The sole foundation that I have been able to find is a stray sentence in a light letter to Lord Malmesbury; just as in 1863 he made merry in Parliament over those who regarded the “colonial empire” as an “annual burden.”

This sentence, jesting of the “millstone,” but sighing over the chance of severance, was penned in 1853—the very year after the New Zealand Constitution. It was a time of despondency, following on fourteen years of colonial crisis. During it both Canada and the Cape had rebelled. The former’s Constitution had been suspended. The repeal of the Sugar Duties had estranged mutinous Jamaica. Peel had been constrained to exclaim that in “Every one of our colonies we have another Ireland,” and Peel was an imperialist. In a raw state, and in the crudity of earlier hardships, the colonies always clash more readily with home government than when the mellowing progress of experience enables them to take a less partial view, and to accept help in working out their own salvation. Moreover, the choice still lay between pure democracy and democracy monarchical and national. The democratic idea during this period was working in absolute detachment from the ancient institutions which should have been easily transplanted. In the colonies these were all in danger. It was difficult here to find a rallying centre for them there, and that difficulty was heightened by the two new schools of Radical thought—the older, that of the philosophical Molesworth and the utilitarian Hume, who tested policy by the criterion of immediate success; the newer, that of the dry “Physical Equalitarians” of Manchester, which regarded Great Britain as a huge co-operative store. Disraeli from first to last urged the especial need in England for strong as well as good government. The faculties for government were being lessened and weakened. It was not one side only that despaired; Lord John Russell himself had no faith in the bare democracy of the colonial feeling. And yet we have seen what Disraeli wrote of Lord John in The Press at this very period. The home example then was unpropitious for the colonies. Monarchy was yet far from popular. What Disraeli feared in England—what may still be dreaded in our midst—was the possible reaction—in the face of limited employment of labour and growing tyranny of capital—from detached democracy to moneyed despotism. “Nor is there”—wrote Disraeli, with premature penetration, in The Press of March 21, 1853—“a country in the world in which the reaction from democracy to despotism would be so sudden and so complete as in England, because in no other country is there the same timidity of capital; and just in proportion as democratic progress by levelling the influences of birth elevates the influences of money, does it create a power that would at any time annihilate liberty—if liberty were brought into opposition with the three-per-cents.” The effects of this fermenting leaven both in England and among her colonies had to be weighed; and Disraeli many years afterwards avowed in a speech that for a moment he too had wavered. That moment was the one of this passing phrase. But it stood for a phase as momentary. Disraeli, like Strepsiades in the Attic burlesque, had only “mislaid his cloak, not lost it.”115 Ten years later he could advocate our colonial empire with effect and authority. The colonies had become—as the Crown had become—a popular institution, and a requisite for the fresh air, fresh vents, and fresh health of an expanding population cramped by now overcrowded towns. They might still prove a recruiting ground for labour. Peel’s adoption of the “physical happiness” principle, which postulates unlimited employment of industry, had not settled that problem by his “liberation of commerce.” And, as Disraeli pointed out in 1873, if it were only to be settled by natural forces, the “unlimited employment” of labour made for the erasement of the national idea. To the theoretic Radical, however, the colonies, like all our institutions, were still obstacles. “... To him the colonial empire is only an annual burden. To him corporation is an equivalent term for monopoly, and endowment for privilege....”

Together with Disraeli’s name, in the mention of early colonial aspirations, that of the then Sir E. Bulwer Lytton should assuredly be commemorated. He, too, treated colonial concerns, during his brief period of secretaryship, with firmness, insight, and adroitness. Nor should it be forgotten that between the two was a link of romantic imagination as well as of long-standing friendship. Years before, they had both contributed to the New Monthly Magazine. Both were men of striking originality, untempered by a public school education; and it is amusing to note that the fantastic strain, enabling both to view the prospect spaciously, and censured as “un-English”116 in Disraeli—often when he was really quoting from our classics117—was only criticised as “extravagant” in Lytton, or, at a later period, as “ornate” in Lord Leighton. Both were students and interpreters of Bolingbroke. They had each the faculty of regarding history as a whole, and from a high vantage-ground, instead of perverting their vision of progress by the paltry rancours of the moment. Such an instinct is invaluable in attaching new settlements to the nest of their nurture. In 1863, summarising the aspirations of Conservatism, he spoke of “our colonial empire, which is the national estate, that assures to every subject, ... as it were, a freehold, and which gives to the energies and abilities of Englishmen an inexhaustible theatre.” He was swift to discern the bearing of crucial alterations in America on the colonies. In 1864, while the civil conflict was raging in the United States, he urged, regarding them: “... What is the position of the colonies and dependencies of her Majesty in that country? Four years ago, when the struggle broke out, there was very little in common between them. The tie that bound them to this country was almost one of formality; but what has been the consequence of this great change in North America? You have now a powerful federation with the element of nationality strongly evinced in it. They count their population by millions, and they are conscious that they have a district more fertile and an extent of territory equal to the unappropriated reserves of the United States. These are the elements and prognostics of new influences that have changed the character of that country. Nor is it without reason that they do not feel less of the ambition which characterises new communities than the United States, and that they may become, we will say, the ‘Russia of the New World.’... If from considerations of expense we were to quit the possessions that we now occupy in North America, it would be ultimately, as regards our resources and wealth, as fatal a step as could possibly be taken. Our prosperity would not long remain a consolation, and we might then prepare for the invasion of our country and the subjection of the people.” And he next insisted on the need of Canada’s adequate defence, saying that while we would not force our connection on any dependency, yet, finding our colonies now asserting the principle of their nationality, “... and ... foreseeing a glorious future, ... still depending on the faithful and affectionate assistance of England, it would be the most short-sighted and suicidal policy to shrink from the duty that Providence has called upon us to fulfil.” In 1866, again, he advocated colonial interests in Parliament, and, by a fine phrase, warned us to “... recollect that England is the metropolis of a colonial empire; that she is at the head of a vast number of colonies, the majority of which are yearly increasing in wealth; and that every year these colonies send back to these shores their capital and their intelligence in the persons of distinguished men, who are naturally anxious that these interests should be represented in the House of Commons.”

But it was in 1872 that Disraeli first propounded a colonial policy which was the sum of many previous pronouncements, and is even now being pondered, and not by one party alone. He recognised that a united empire implies a united nation; that, as he always maintained, Parliament represents national opinion, and that colonial opinion and sentiment at last formed part of it.

“Gentlemen,” urged Disraeli, “there is another and second great object of the Tory party. If the first is to maintain the institutions of the country, the second is, in my opinion, to uphold the empire of England. If you look to the history of this country since the advent of Liberalism—forty years ago—you will find that 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. 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.” Alluding next to the “incubus” in the passage I have already cited, he thus frankly continues: ... “Well, that result was nearly accomplished when these 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, ought to have been conceded, as part of a great policy of imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accompanied by 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,118 and by which, if necessary, the country should call for aid from the colonies themselves. It ought further to have been accompanied by the institution of 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 upon 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.”

Here we have a foreseeing and a far-seeing policy. Not a point of this forecast but has engaged, or will soon engage, national attention. With what courage and sagacity did Disraeli hand on the torch of Bolingbroke, who, first of English statesmen, had emphasised the significance of Gibraltar, who foretold England’s mission as “a Mediterranean power,”119 and pictured her then scanty colonies as so many “home farms”! None can now doubt the sagacity; and if any doubt the courage, they have only to peruse the warnings of that commercial Cassandra, Mr. Bright, who, during the manufactured reaction of 1879, unconsciously justified Disraeli’s predictions of seven years before. After cataloguing his “annexations” like an auctioneer, he thus proceeded to stir passion and impute motives—

“... All this adds to your burdens. Just listen to this: they add to the burdens, not of the empire, but of the 33,000,000 of people who inhabit Great Britain and Ireland. We take the burden and pay the charge. This policy may lend a seeming glory to the Crown, and it may give scope for patronage and promotion, and pay a pension to a limited and favoured class. But to you, the people, it brings expenditure of blood and treasure, increased debts and taxes, and adds risk of war in every part of the globe.” Is sense more conspicuous than charity in this onslaught? Has it not been proved penny wise, pound foolish? Could a better instance be adduced of a contrast between England as an emporium and Great Britain as a united empire?120 In many respects I honour Mr. Bright. He at least had the courage of his honest convictions. He was against war altogether; but in being so he opposed the instincts of rising nationalities and tried to lull Great Britain into a fool’s paradise of international exhibitions. It is now asserted that Russia could not advance through Persia to India without a bristling series of bayonets. This is not to be wished, but is it to be feared? Of “Peace at any price,” Disraeli said with truth—and truth in the interests of general peace—that it was a “dangerous doctrine, which had done more mischief and caused more wars than the most ruthless conquerors.” What happened? Mr. Bright at a bound converted Mr. Gladstone. It was a mutual necessity. Neither of them without the other could have swayed the commercial classes and “the lower middles.” Mr. Gladstone was Don Quixote; Mr. Bright, Sancho Panza. Mr. Gladstone appealed to the nation; Mr. Bright, with sincere power and definite ideals, to a class. Mr. Gladstone appealed to the customs and institutions which he heroically assailed; Mr. Bright attacked more directly and without even the show of sympathy. Here Mr. Gladstone was Girondin; Mr. Bright, Jacobin. Mr. Gladstone’s conviction of being “the legate of the skies,” his electric temperament, devout genius, practical fervour and “connection,” both idealised and popularised the doggedness and the narrowness of Mr. Bright’s democratic doctrine. But Mr. Bright was consistent. He was against any fight for united nationality. He would never have embarked on war at all, and so could never have withdrawn from struggle at the wrong moment. He never deluded himself or others. It might be said that the author of the essay on “Church and State” led the “Nonconformist conscience” to the altar, and that the eloquent denouncer both of Church and State gave the bride away. But the chivalrous knight-errant could not quite forego the Dulcinea of his youth. It will be remembered that Mr. Gladstone, still by inadvertence, used occasionally to stumble upon the word “empire” in his speeches. Peel himself had called it “wonderful”! Lord John Russell had employed it in 1855. It was a word born with Queen Elizabeth, and familiar throughout the reign of Queen Anne. Chatham’s clarion rang with it. The poet Cowper, whom none can accuse of egotism or of bombast, repeats it with a glow of pride. But Mr. Bright, unless I mistake, never condescended to breathe the name or condone the thing. Mr. Gladstone regained power, and ran riot—the riot of the best intentions in the worst sense of the phrase. The policy of “scuttle” ensued—from what motives I stop not here to inquire. We abandoned Kandahar, “annexed” through a need caused by past vacillations and repulses of the Ameer; but, together with conditions for rendering him independent of Russia’s natural intrigues. We abandoned it just when the disasters of the Soudan again invited Russian encroachment. We abandoned the Transvaal at the first blush of defeat. “Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform” culminated in war, extravagance, and confusion. The trumpeters of impolitic economy, proposing expenditure and yet dangling the repeal of some tax to gratify “the interests or prejudices of the party of retrenchment,” were, in Disraeli’s phrase of 1861, “penurious prodigals.” Upright “prigs and pedants,” intruding private opinions on public affairs, honest hypocrites who deceived themselves and hoped to persuade the sceptics of the world, preachers of theories to the winds, all played with crucial issues and trifled solemnly with a cynical Continent. The school-master was abroad. We took Egypt against our will, and promised not to retain it. We cried, “Hands off, Austria!” and apologised for doing so. We prepared for necessitating the most exceptional war of modern times. It was the policy of panic and disunion, the policy of alternate weakness and bluster, the policy that by turns coaxed and coerced Ireland, allured and abandoned Gordon; it was a policy of private magnanimity at the public expense, and not the policy of wise consolidation and calculated outlets. It was not the policy of diplomacies at once instructed, firm, and gentle. Nor was it one of defined spheres, regulated boundaries, and fortified “gates of empire.” Yet it led us to “expenditure of blood and treasure.” And if we have since—and not, as I believe, in the spirit or with the precautions of Disraeli—been forced to retrace our steps, it is due to these retail maxims of Mr. Bright, and not to the wholesale creed of Lord Beaconsfield.

But the temper of his “Imperialism,” whatever may have been momentarily suspected or sneered at, was never aggressive, and always deliberate. It was for defence, not defiance; it was no grandiose illusion, no gaudy show of spurious glory; no froth or fuss of sound and fury signifying nothing.

It ran utterly counter, as he declared in 1862, to “that turbulent diplomacy which distracts the mind of a people from internal improvement.” Just as internally his statesmanship guarded against the predominance of any particular class, so externally the only ground for British intervention was for him the undue predominance of a particular power against English or the general interests. Throughout he sought what Lord Castlereagh had also attempted, the solidarity of Europe. No doubt, like all great men of action, he made mistakes and committed errors. He owned as much himself. But I believe that history will justify the height from which he surveyed the scene, his reach and sweep of vision, the depth, too, of an insight piercing far below the surface. In one respect at least he may be said to have resembled Napoleon—“his vast and fantastic conception of policy.” I do not deny that he wished to strike the imagination; I do not deny that occasionally the direct response may have missed fire; but I submit that on the whole his policy was right, that its final effects rarely disappointed intention, and that it has left pregnant and abiding results. His aim was what the late Lord Salisbury afterwards declared as his own, to “resume the thread of our ancient empire;” and, as Macaulay has remarked of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, who was also twitted with inconsistency: “... Through a long public life, and through frequent and violent changes of public feeling, he almost invariably took that view of the great questions of his time which history has finally adopted.” At home on leading issues he had strengthened the power of Government by representing worthy opinion, and by renewing the affection of the people for their institutions in the struggle to maintain united English nationality against disruptive forces. It was reserved for him to reawaken the slumbering sense of what had once been an arousing reality—the duties of an august empire over many associated races and religions, the due greatness of Great Britain, the high destinies and ennobling burdens of an ancient nation appointed to rule the seas.

The keynote was sounded in that very speech of 1862, when he repeated what he had often before objected to the robust Lord Palmerston’s frequently flustering methods, but added that “... we should be vigilant to guard and prompt to vindicate the honour of the country.” On an earlier occasion, he laid stress on the diplomatic duty of “... if necessary, saying rough things kindly, and not kind things roughly;” while from first to last, however, as head of opposition, he disapproved a foreign policy which landed us in superfluous engagements, he always supported the Government when the crisis became really national. In 1864, criticising the Palmerstonian management of the Danish imbroglio, he remarked: “... I am not for war. I can contemplate with difficulty the combination of circumstances which can justify war in the present age unless the honour of the country is likely to suffer.”

Two more of his ruling principles were, first, that the ripe moment is half the battle in national attitude towards distant complications; and second, the importance, under our system, of distinguishing between what a minister, backed by a large parliamentary majority, decides in home and in foreign affairs. His prescient criticisms on both the source and the course of the Crimean War illustrate the one; his deliverance, in a speech of May, 1855—a speech prescribing a most statesmanlike policy towards both Russia and Turkey, part only of which121 he was able more than twenty years later to execute, the other: “... A minister may, by the aid of a parliamentary majority, support unjust laws, and ... a political system which a quarter of a century afterwards may, by the aid of another parliamentary majority, be condemned. The passions, the prejudices, and the party spirit that flourish in a free country may support and uphold him.... But when you come to foreign politics things are very different. Every step that you take is an irretrievable one.... You cannot rescind your policy.... If you make a mistake in foreign affairs; if you enter into unwise treaties; ... if the scope and tendency of your foreign system are founded on a want of information or false information, ... there is no majority in the House of Commons which can long uphold a Government under such circumstances. It will not make a Government strong, but it will make this House weak....”

Throughout, his policy was that of confederation, not annexation; of “scientific frontiers” safeguarding ascertained “spheres of influence;” of binding, not loosing; of a strong front but a soft mien; of persuasion, if possible, rather than compulsion—as he always recommended in framing measures to protect labour and improve society; of a straight line steadfastly pursued, instead of wobble, worry, and flurry; first beating the air, and then—a retreat; at once headstrong and weak-kneed. Although his “Imperialism” was by no means that which has occasionally since usurped the name, assuredly, in upholding the burden of Great Britain’s destiny, he would never have recoiled from “the too vast orb of her fate.” Disraeli’s imperialism was not the bastard and braggart sort that he once styled “rowdy rhetoric;” nor the official sort to which he sarcastically alluded when Lord Palmerston, in 1855, took credit for accepting Lord John Russell’s resignation, and was “ready to stand or fall by him:” “The noble Lord is neither standing nor falling, but, on the contrary, he has remained sitting on the Treasury bench.” Associated with it, lay a deep sense of obligation in the choice of high character, ability, and spirit to carry it out; the sense too that a momentary mistake should never sacrifice excellent proconsuls to the “hare-brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity;” the resolve also never to shirk responsibility by making scapegoats. And, beyond all, a feeling that in dealing even with semi-barbarous nations, it was neither magnanimous, wise, nor dignified to crush them utterly, and that their feelings, prejudices, and customs ought to be respected.

Perhaps no better example could be given than his attitude regarding the events of 1879 in South Africa. The Zulus had threatened and harassed an impoverished and resourceless Transvaal. The Transvaal had requested and obtained “annexation” from Great Britain. But the Zulu chief, irritated by the suppression of the “suzerainty” arrogated by him over the Boer lands, began to beset the Natal borders. The Governor of Natal was for appeasing them. Sir Bartle Frere, however, that commanding High Commissioner of South Africa, took an opposite view, and favoured a course unmistakable for weakness. In his conferences with Cetchwayo he made requisitions, on his own initiative, exceeding his instructions from home. The result was war, with the disaster of Isandhlwana, the rally of Rorke’s Drift, and eventual success. During March the matter was brought before the House of Lords in a form arranged to censure the Government policy, but so worded as to restrict the debate to the advisability of Sir Bartle Frere’s recall on the ground of his unauthorised ultimatum.

Disraeli’s speech is worthy of close attention, if only because it forecasts the ultimate federation of South Africa. Disraeli defended Sir Bartle on the score that to succeed in impugning error, if error it was, of a distinguished public servant chosen by the Crown, was to impugn its prerogative. “Great services are not cancelled by one act or one single error, however it may be regretted at the moment. If he had been recalled ... in deference to the panic, the thoughtless panic of the hour, in deference to those who have no responsibility in the matter, and who have not weighed well and deeply investigated all the circumstances and all the arguments ... which ... must be appealed to to influence our opinions in such questions—no doubt a certain degree of odium might have been diverted from the heads of her Majesty’s ministers, and the world would have been delighted, as it always is, to find a victim.... We had only one course to pursue, ... to take care that at this most critical period ... affairs ... in South Africa should be directed by one, not only qualified to direct them, but who was superior to any other individual whom we could have selected for the purpose.”

It would be a bad precedent, he resumed, for the safety of the empire if an exceptional indiscretion were to efface a long record of signal ability; and he drew to the recollection of the House122 the case of Sir James Hudson at Turin, whose conduct had been similarly attacked, and whom he, as the leader of the Opposition, had refused to make a party question, and had himself then defended on the same public considerations. But adverting to policy, he used these weighty words—

“... Sir Bartle Frere was selected by the noble Lord (Carnarvon) ... chiefly to secure one great end—namely, to carry out that policy of CONFEDERATION in South Africa which the noble Lord had carried out on a previous occasion with regard to the North American colonies.

“If there is any policy which, in my mind, is opposed to the policy of annexation, it is that of confederation. By pursuing the policy of confederation, we bind states together, we consolidate their resources, and we enable them to establish a strong frontier; that is the best security against annexation. I myself regard a policy of annexation with great distrust. I believe that the reasons of state which induced us to annex the Transvaal were not, on the whole, perfectly sound. But what were these circumstances?... The Transvaal was a territory which was no longer defended by its occupiers.... The annexation of that province was ... a geographical necessity.

“But the ‘annexation’ of the Transvaal was one of the reasons why those who were connected with that province might have calculated upon the permanent existence of Zululand as an independent state. I know it is said that, when we are at war, as we unfortunately now are, with the Zulus, or any other savage nation, even though we inflicted upon them some great disaster, and might effect an arrangement with them of a peaceable character, before long the same power would again attack us, unless we annexed the territory. I have never considered that a legitimate argument in favour of annexation of a barbarous country.... Similar results might occur in Europe if we went to war with one of our neighbours.... But is that an argument why we should not hold our hand until we have completely crushed our adversary, and is that any reason why we should pursue a policy of extermination with regard to a barbarous nation with whom we happen to be at war? That is a policy which I hope will never be sanctioned by this House.

“It is, of course, possible that we may again be involved in war with the Zulus; but it is an equal chance that in the development of circumstances in that part of the world, the Zulu people may have to invoke the aid and the alliance of England against some other people, and that the policy dictated by feelings and influence which have regulated our conduct with regard to European states, may be successfully pursued with regard to less civilised nations in a different part of the world. This is the policy of her Majesty’s Government, and therefore they cannot be in favour of a policy of annexation, because it is directly opposed to it....”

The same considerations, those of settled and settling limits—considerations, let me repeat, directly opposed to a vague and wavering policy fraught with encroachments, alarm, and haphazard embroilment—were to actuate his policy towards Afghanistan during 1879, into the vexed details of which I shall not now enter, though they might be reviewed with instruction; the policy, too, that recognised that English vacillation would at once be magnified into weakness throughout the bazaars of the Orient.123

The “insane annexation” of that fortress-citadel, Kandahar, it has often been objected, was the most vulnerable of Disraeli’s schemes. There are many entitled to respect who still hold that it was rightly and profitably rescinded. Moreover, the tragic sequel of the heroic Cavagnari’s death prejudiced the public. But the chain of events which required, the conciliatory conditions which accompanied it, and the true causes, or pretexts, for its annulment with virulence, should be carefully remembered. A former Viceroy’s mistake in rebuffing the friendly overtures of the Afghans, the Muscovite move forward in Central Asia, while war was in the air, the consequent intrigues at Cabul, perturbed by dynastic broils—these were some of the warrants for its necessity. Fresh Russian manoeuvres and advances, owing to a fatally feeble policy in the Soudan, were parts of the lever for its relinquishment. The highest military authorities sanctioned it at the time, though other high military authorities disapproved a few years later. But when it is borne in mind that Disraeli’s previous occupation of Quetta, the key both to Kandahar and the Pishin valley, is now a large cantonment, that a railway is ready to be laid to within no great distance of Kandahar itself on any fresh emergency, it may well be pondered whether Disraeli was mistaken, and whether time has not confounded the triflers who caricatured him as a music-hall singer, with the refrain—

It was no mere question of a “buffer” state. It formed a weighty part of his great and pacific project for safeguarding the “gates” of our Indian Empire. Of the three main approaches then open to Russia—entitled in her own interests to use them, as he always admitted—the south-eastern limits of Afghanistan command the long high-road which leads to the distant north-western borders and the “gate” of Herat. Moreover, they dominate one of the important trade routes to Northern India. The remote side of the Indus can thus be used as a protection against the remoter side of the Oxus. At the same time, Disraeli subsidised the Afghans, and when their Ameer, under Russian influence, insulted our envoy, treated them at first “like spoiled children.” His aim was—as always in his whole policy—a compact independence. “Both in the East and West,” he observed, “our object is to have prosperous, happy, and contented neighbours. But these are things which cannot be done in a day. You cannot settle them as you would pay a morning visit.” He was building the foundations for a lasting peace. At any rate, the rectified frontier, which as he pointed out could be held by five thousand men, while a “haphazard” frontier demanded twenty times that number, is unimpugned. Nor should those who speak of a smoothed Ameer and an unruffled Cabul, after Kandahar was evacuated, forget that, since Merv has become Russian, the old dynastic intrigues and tribe feuds may, one day, readily recur at Cabul, fresh opportunities encourage Russia, and a reoccupation of this cancelled coign of vantage become imperative. “The science of politics,” as Macaulay well says, “is an experimental science.” Disraeli excelled most statesmen in his intuitive grasp of Indian affairs. Peel himself, shortly before his death, prophesied that Disraeli, “when his hour struck,” would be “Governor-General of India.”

The same principles, as will appear, prompted the masterly and masterful Treaty of Berlin. The same, caused him to exclaim of Russia, whose designs he had thwarted in India and foiled at Constantinople, in memorable language, that in Asia there was “room enough” for her and for us; yet that, though in the face of possible conflict, she was entitled to equip her expedition of courtesy to “cool the hoofs of its horses in the waters of the Oxus,” she must be induced to withdraw it by our own counter-preventions. But what I wish here particularly to illustrate is, the psychological point of respect for and reckoning with the habits, wants, and traditions of other or alien civilisations. It rested on an idea familiar to his youth, and which he thus expressed in a soliloquy of Alroy: “Universal empire must not be founded on sectarian principles and exclusive rights.... Something must be done to bind the conquered to our conquering fortunes.”

It was signally evinced in his treatment—his exceptional treatment when Opposition leader—of the Indian Mutiny. At that time Disraeli alone seemed to grasp the significance of the outbreak in its initial stage, which was viewed as a mere military rebellion, and regarded as lightly, and with as little reason, as the beginnings of the Boer War.

“It is remarkable,” he urged, before the crisis became recognised, “how insignificant incidents at the first blush have appeared which have proved to be pregnant with momentous consequences. A street riot in Boston and at Paris, turned out to be the two great revolutions of modern times. Who would have supposed when we first heard of the rude visit of a Russian sailor from a port in the Black Sea to Constantinople, that we were on the eve of a critical war and the solution of the most difficult of modern problems?” It was, he contended, a national revolt, not a military mutiny. In our policy of the immediate past we had forcibly destroyed native authority for the sole object of increasing revenue. “In spite of the law of adoption, which was the very corner-stone of Hindoo society, when a native prince died without natural heirs, though a son had been adopted as a successor, the Government of India annexed his dominions. Sattara, Berar, Jeitpore, Sumbulpore, Jhansi, were monuments of ‘nefarious’ acquisition. And Oude, of ‘a wholesale system of spoliation,’ for it had been annexed even without the pretext of a lawful failure of heirs.”

We had also disturbed the settlement of property by “a new system of government.” He analysed the popular law of adoption as the basis of Hindoo property, and as contrasted with its misuse in the hands of princes as a source of succession. He gave many instances, distinguishing each. “What man was safe, what feudatory, what freeholder who had not a child of his own loins, was safe throughout India?... The Government determined to exact all it could, not only from princes, but from the people.” The exemptions from the land tax—“the whole taxation of the State”—had, under pretences, been continually taken away. The resumption of estates in Bengal alone had yielded the Government half a million of revenue; in Bombay alone £370,000 a year. Moreover, hereditary pensions had been commuted into personal annuities. These disturbances had naturally fomented these discontents.

We had, moreover, tampered with the Hindoo religion. “... I think a very great error exists as to the assumed prejudice of Hindoos with regard to what is called missionary enterprise. The fact is that ... the Indian population generally, with the exception of the Mussulmans, are educated in a manner which peculiarly disposes them to theological inquiries.... They are a most ancient race; they have a mass of tradition on these subjects; a complete Indian education is to a great degree religious; their laws, their tenure of land depend upon religion; and there is no race in the world better armed at all points for theological discussion.... Add to this, that they can always fall back upon an educated priesthood prepared to supply them with arguments and illustrations.... But what the Hindoo does regard with suspicion is the union of missionary enterprise with the political power of the Government. With that power he associates only one idea, violence.... It appears to me that the legislative council of India has, under the new principle, been constantly nibbling at the religious system of the natives.” It had tried to adapt Western systems to Oriental habits. In its theoretical system of national education the “sacred Scriptures had suddenly appeared in the schools; and you cannot persuade the Hindoos that those holy books have appeared there without the concurrence and the secret sanction of the Government.” Systematic female education, again, had been commanded—a most unwise step, considering “the peculiar ideas entertained by Hindoos with regard to women.” But two acts had even more contributed to the ferment of native feeling. The first, that no man who changed his religion should be deprived of his inheritance. That struck at the main purpose of property in India, which consists in being a sacred trust for religious objects. The second, that a Hindoo widow might marry again, “which is looked upon by all as an outrage on their faith,” uncalled for, and fraught with alarm.

But the main blunder had been the annexation of Oude without excuse, and executed in such a manner that for the first time the Mahometan princes felt that they had an identity of interest with the Indian rajahs. “... You see how the plot thickens.... Men of different races and different religions ... traditionary feuds and long and enduring prejudices with all the elements to produce segregation, become united—Hindoos, Mahrattas, Mahommedans—secretly feeling a common interest and a common cause.” Princes and proprietors are against you. “Estates as well as musnuds are in danger. You have an active society spread all over India, alarming the ryot, the peasant, respecting his religious faith. Never mind on this head what were your intentions; the question is, what were their thoughts—what their inferences?” And a further aggravation had resulted. The Oude sepoy, who was a yeoman, had recruited the Bengal army. “Robbed of his country and deprived of his privileges, he schemed and plotted, and sent mysterious symbols from village to village, which prepared the native mind,” agitated by princes deposed, religion insulted, soldiery discontented, for an occasion and pretext “to overthrow the British yoke.” “The Mutiny was no more a sudden impulse, than the income tax was a sudden impulse. It was the result of careful combinations, vigilant and well-organised, on the watch for opportunity.... I will not go into the question of the new cartridges.... I do not suppose any one ... will believe that because the cartridges were believed to be, or were pretended to be believed to be, greased with pig’s or cow’s fat, that was the cause of this insurrection. The decline and fall of empires are not affairs of greased cartridges. Such results are occasioned by adequate causes and by an accumulation of adequate causes.”

And now what remedies would meet such emergencies? Force, it was agreed, must now be employed. The force proposed was inadequate. “There should be an advance from Calcutta through Bengal, and an expedition up the Indus. The Militia should be called out. An Empire, not a Cabinet, was in danger.”

“... But to my mind that is not all that we ought to look to. Even if we do vindicate our authority with complete success—revenge the insults that we have received, rebuild the power that has been destroyed ... although we will assert with the highest hand our authority, although we will not rest until our unquestioned supremacy and predominance are acknowledged, ... it is not merely as avengers that we appear. I think that the great body of the population of that country ought to know that there is for them a future of hope. I think we ought to temper justice with mercy—justice the most severe with mercy the most indulgent.... Neither internal nor external peace can in India,” he urged, “be secured by British troops alone. There must be no more annexation, no more conquest.... It is totally impossible that you can ever govern 150,000,000 of men in India by merely European agency. You must meet that difficulty boldly and completely.... You ought at once ... to tell the people of India that the relation between them and their real ruler and sovereign, Queen Victoria, shall be drawn nearer. You must act upon the opinion of India on that subject immediately; and you can only act upon the opinion of Eastern nations through their imagination. You ought to have a Royal Commission sent by the Queen from this country to India immediately, to inquire into the grievances of the various classes of that population. You ought to issue a royal proclamation to the people of India, declaring that the Queen of England is not a sovereign who will countenance the violation of treaties ... that she ... will respect their laws, their usages, their customs, and, above all, their religion. Do this, and do this not in a corner, but in a mode and manner which will attract universal attention, and excite the general hope of Hindostan in the Queen’s name and with the Queen’s authority. If that be done, simultaneously with the arrival of your forces, you may depend upon it that your military advance will be facilitated, and, I believe, your ultimate success insured.”

I have abstracted this significant speech, which took three hours to deliver, because it shows how his mind grasped such situations, and how his imagination played all around them. In the same way, in 1856, he deprecated the violent interference of Sir J. Bowring (a former secretary of the Peace Society) with the Chinese, and insisted that they were “the nation of etiquette,” and were not to be coerced by “a brutal freedom of manners.” “If you are not,” he then prophetically protested, “cautious and careful of your conduct now in dealing with China, you will find that you are likely not to extend commerce, but to excite the jealousy of powerful states, and to involve yourselves in hostilities with nations not inferior to yourselves....”

Such were the ideas that prompted the stroke of the Suez Canal shares, and his dramatic summoning of the Indian troops to Malta when Russia was before the citadel of the Levant, and India had to be impressed; that prompted, too, his proclamation of the Queen as Empress of India; and his choice of the late Lord Lytton as a poet suited for Indian Viceroyalty; these ideas, that made him announce, shortly before he died, that “London” was “the key of India.”

In this context I must dwell too for a moment on what I have already hinted concerning the temper of his diplomacy. Already, in 1860, he had recognised the full changes imposed by the spirit of the age. “... In the old days,” he observed, “diplomacy was conducted in a secret fashion, whilst now we had ‘a candid foreign policy.’ What in former times ... would have been a soliloquy in Downing Street, now becomes a speech in the House of Commons.” But that was no pretext, he also always asserted, as I shall again have to notice, for roughness and offence, for a high voice and a low hand; still less for playing censor, lecturer, or hector at once. Above all, he abominated the diplomacy which encourages by words and disappoints by deeds—the diplomacy that in 1864 promised defence to Denmark and then denied her even encouragement. Speaking then, Disraeli said: “... We will not threaten, and then refuse to act; we will not lure on our allies with expectations we do not mean to fulfil. And, sir, if ever it be the lot of myself or any public men with whom I have the honour to act, to carry on important negotiations on behalf of this country ... I trust that we at least shall not carry them on in such a manner that it will be our duty to come to Parliament to announce to the country that we have no allies, and then declare that England can never act alone.” In diplomacy, moreover, he laid great stress—as is witnessed by a striking passage in Endymion—on the need for a minister’s personal acquaintance with the chief actors on the foreign stage, and with the temper of the people whose fortunes are in their hands.124

All these governing issues underlay his great Berlin Treaty. Its first principle was to uphold the effective independence of Turkey. Several absurdities have been alleged on this head. It was also bruited for political ends that, as a Semite,125 he fostered the Moslem, whom, as a Briton, he should have suppressed. This is not only untrue, but inaccurate. It is the sort of mistake adopted by such as imagine Mahomet to have been a Turk. Disraeli had early in life travelled far into the East, had been present at Yanina during an insurrection, had known leading pachas (one of whom consulted him), and observed inner intrigues. But while the Moslem soldier and peasant always impressed him, he detested the system of the Sultan. An early passage records this detestation. Pondering, in Contarini Fleming, the failure of successive Governments to rid Asia of “the revelations of the son of Abdallah,” he calls its whole object one “to convert man into a fanatic slave.” His two earlier romances, Alroy and Iskander, both glow with this theme—rebellion against Islam. The picturesqueness, both in scenery and history, of all Mediterranean countries,126 fascinated him; so did the charm of the East, which, as a stripling, he defined as “repose.” But it was the habitation of the Turk, not the Turk, that exercised the spell. “Live a little longer in these countries before you hazard an opinion as to their conduct,” says one of his characters. “Do you indeed think that the rebel beys of Albania were so simple?... The practice of politics in the East may be described by one word, dissimulation....”

An adverse opinion also characterises his letters from the East, some of which are embodied in his books. Alroy, dedicated to Jerusalem, as Iskander127 is to Athens, are neither of them favourable to Turkey. And even the Turkish want of humour annoyed him. “I never offered an opinion till I was sixty,” says the old Turk in the last romance, “and then it was one which had been in our family for a century.” He detested fanatics as he detested bores, but he loved purpose; and the sole thing that recommended the Turk to him was that, though a fanatic and a bore, he was both for a purpose. Moreover, up to 1840 the Greeks were more favourable to the Jews than the Turks; and it can scarcely be contended that his attitude to the Afghans—who are Semite by race—was prejudiced by the fact. No; if we seek for a Semitic affinity in Disraeli outside that to Israel, we must find it in that to the Saracens of Spain.

But neither is the stricture of his principle valid. As is well known, in upholding the independence of Turkey, he was following in the steps of his predecessors and indorsing the known views of two skilled diplomatists, Sir Robert Morier and Sir Henry Layard, whose political tenets were opposite to Disraeli’s. He had long before made up his mind on this subject, had defined Turkey as a “barrier” against aggression. In a speech towards the close of the Crimean War—“the Coalition War”—a speech in which he blamed the Government for their treatment of Russia, and considered Russia’s “preponderance” towards Turkey, he observed: “... I believe that there are elements, when Turkey shall be more fairly treated—and never has any country been more unfairly treated than Turkey, especially within the last two years—for securing the independence of her empire, and (what is to us of vital interest) preventing Constantinople from becoming an appanage to any great military power.”

By a tripartite treaty we, conjointly with Russia, Austria, and France, were allies bound to maintain the territorial integrity of Turkey—that is, whatever dispositions might be made, she must retain a compact and self-inclosed dominion. And why had this become a necessity for England, which is an Eastern as well as a Western power? There was a double cause—our Indian Empire and our Mediterranean trade; it was in the interest of both that a comparatively weak power should occupy the very key of the position—an historical capital whose very name symbolises empire, and whose situation, facing both east and west, dominates the Levant and commands the high-road of the Orient. As between Greece and Russia, the first undoubtedly possesses the claims of race and inheritance. The second is an interloper, and her “Greekness” springs from ecclesiastical and political usurpation. The Greek Macedonians are more hostile to Russia than to Turkey. Before now the Greeks have expressed their gratitude that Disraeli saved them from being sucked into a huge Bulgaria. It was in the interest of European peace that Constantinople should not be in the hands of a power so small, so restive, so motley, so fluid as Greece. It was in the interest of India that the Moslem pope should be upheld. It was in the interest, moreover, of the Christian subjects of the Porte themselves that Turkey should be so tied and so pledged to the great military and maritime powers in concert, that they could exact real guarantees for their protection, should brutal misbehaviour re-arise, and that the work of humanity should be left to none of these powers apart, and exposed to the temptation of indulging separate ambitions and disturbing the peace of the world. If united selfishness has deterred them from doing their duty, that must not be laid to the treaty’s charge. “Those,” he said, in 1876, “who suppose that England ever would uphold, or at this moment particularly is upholding, Turkey from blind superstition and from a want of sympathy with the highest aspirations of humanity, are deceived. What our duty is at this critical moment is to maintain the Empire of England;” and before the Congress, he again solemnly pointed out that worse, more widespread, and far more lasting agonies would be caused to myriads abroad if the misguided excitement of several sections at home were to prevail, than even by any horrors which must move both indignation and sympathy in every heart.

Into the detailed controversies of the “Bulgarian atrocities” agitation I will not here enter. It is now generally confessed that Disraeli was right not to be led away by the sensational exaggerations manufactured for Russian purposes abroad, and retailed, sometimes, for political purposes at home. Horrible savageries, of course, happened on both sides in such a war, and those horrors, from the nature of their theatre, were Oriental. But that they were bound up with racial feuds, and were in full evidence on the other side, was vouched for to me—and in great detail—some ten years after their occurrence, by Sir William White, then Ambassador at Constantinople, and by the then consul, himself a leading member of the committee for their investigation. These authorities went much further in their declarations than ever Disraeli did, with his extreme reticence in public. Indeed, they told me that the whole source of the war had been engineered by the acute irritations of Russian diplomacy, which, as Lord Derby long ago expressed it, “has never proceeded by storm, but by sap and mine.”

The true facts should not be blinked. With regard to Turkey in Europe they are both racial, political, and ecclesiastical. The race aspect was powerful with Disraeli. He always believed it to be “the key of history, and the surest clue to the characters of men in all ages.” In England he discerned the blend of “Saxon industry and Norman manners.” While it was race again that had made national institutions “the ramparts of the multitude against large estates exercising political power derived from a limited class.” Practically, it is still a question of the Slav against both Greeks (whom they have murdered) and Albanians, who themselves massacre the Serbs. Politically, it is a question of Russian influence and both Austrian and Italian jealousy. Ecclesiastically, it is a question of the freed principalities against the Patriarch of Constantinople; who, since the very time when Russia first newly pretended to the Byzantine inheritance of the Greeks, became (oddly enough) a nominee of the Sultan. From the outset Disraeli determined to undo that larger Bulgaria, stretching to the Ægean, involving all the international conflicts just hinted, and ranging from the Danube to Salonica, which Russia proposed by the clandestine Treaty of San Stefano. As is familiar, he founded a smaller Bulgaria, barriered by the Balkans, dividing it into two portions—Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia—in the last of which he implanted autonomy. It has often been said that the sequel proved him futile, for the two slices of the big worm have since been repieced. But the events of 1885–86 which caused this reunion were the gift, not of Russian ascendency, but of those very institutions which Disraeli created. Again, it has been popularly put as if the treaty were not his own policy and had not endured. I could most easily prove the error of both these propositions. As regards the first, just as in the Reform Bill of 1867, the co-operation of both parties was necessary for the limited achievement of his views, so it fared with the need for European concert in the Berlin Treaty. But his ideas had been sketched out during the Crimean War, and the restoration of that very concert, which still subsists, was a birth of the treaty. The Berlin Treaty restored not only British prestige, but—as a foreign statesman remarked—Britain’s moral influence in the councils of Europe. It was so hailed in England, and this, as Mr. Roebuck acknowledged, was its ground for enthusiastic national support. Russia withdrew from Constantinople. Both the Dardanelles and the Turkish frontier in Europe were assured. A Sultan, then beset with bankruptcy and dynastic troubles, was given his chance of heading a party of reform championed by Midhat. Turkey was rendered compact, and lopped of mongrel provinces, while she obtained the port of Burgos on the Black Sea as a check to Russia. As regards Turkey in Asia, Disraeli’s aim, as I have already outlined, was Indian. Erzeroum, Bayazid, Alashkerd, proved powerful buffers against Russian predominance; and Russia still sways the mongrel Bessarabia then restored to her. It is now recognised that Russia, to traverse Persia, would encounter a British bayonet at every step. Disraeli’s great object, like Palmerston’s, was to prevent Turkey from becoming a fief to Russia, and the Black Sea from remaining a mere Russian lake, as the repudiation by Mr. Gladstone, in 1871, of the clause in the Treaty of Paris, for which the Crimean War had been resumed, subsequently empowered it to become. Turkey, Disraeli had written in The Press of May 21, 1853, was “a necessary evil in the European system,” but one preferable to some others, and more likely to prevent general anarchy and bloodshed. And he recalled Prince Potemkin’s old inscription on the gates of Chusan: “This is the road to Constantinople.” The standing danger was the interposal of Russian ambition on the perpetual plea of a Christian protectorate—resented by many of the Christian provinces themselves—in order to constitute Turkey a Russian province, and to spread a dominion less fanatical, perhaps, but even more merciless and repressive in Europe, however civilising it has proved in portions of Central Asia. His scheme, compassing autonomy here, independence there, compactness, the power to govern and the accountability to improve, everywhere was one of development. It held within it, as he said, the seeds of “Evolution.”

How did Disraeli diagnose Russia’s legitimate aspirations? He certainly neither ignored nor condemned them, but he distinguished between aspirations legitimate and illegitimate. Speaking in 1871, after Russia had violated and Mr. Gladstone had torn up the Black Sea Clause, Disraeli criticised the course which the Ministry had pursued.

“... Russia has a policy, as every great power has a policy, and she has as much right to have a policy as Germany or England. I believe the policy of Russia, taking a general view of it, to have been a legitimate policy, though it may have been inevitably a disturbing policy. When you have a great country in the centre of Europe, with an immense territory, with a numerous and yet, as compared with its colossal area, a sparse population, producing human food to any extent, in addition to certain most valuable raw materials, it is quite clear that a people so situated, practically without any seaboard, would never rest until it had found its way to the coast, and could have a mode of communicating easily with other nations, and exchanging its products with them. Well, for two hundred years Russia has pursued that policy; it has been a legitimate though disturbing policy. It has cost Sweden provinces, and it has cost Turkey provinces. But no wise statesman could help feeling that it was a legitimate policy—a policy which it was impossible to resist, and one which the general verdict of the world recognised—that Russia should find her way to the sea-coast. She has completely accomplished it. She has admirable seaports; she can communicate with every part of the world, and she has profited accordingly.

“But at the end of the last century she advanced a new view. It was not a national policy; it was invented by the then ruler of Russia—a woman, a stranger, and an usurper—and that policy was that she must have the capital of the Turkish Empire. That was not a legitimate, that was a disturbing policy. It was a policy like the French desire to have the Rhine—false in principle. She had no moral claim to Constantinople; she did not represent the races to which it once belonged; she had no political necessity to go there, because she already had two capitals. Therefore it was not a legitimate but a disturbing policy. As the illegitimate desire of France to have the Rhine has led to the prostration of France, so the illegitimate desire of Russia to have Constantinople led to the prostration of Russia....”

The means used by Disraeli for preserving the peace of Europe and protecting our Eastern Empire were, in the rough, on the lines I have tried to shadow. First of all, refusing to allow the creation of an unwieldy and anarchic province of discordant races which could not become a coherent nation, he reduced the Bulgaria designed under the San Stefano arrangement by two-thirds, created Eastern Roumelia, with a framed constitution, south of the Balkans, and yielded the rest to Turkey. By this measure not only was Bulgaria prevented from being bulky and hybrid, but the Macedonian Greeks (preponderant over Slavs and Serbs) were saved from absorption. Turkey was delimited in Europe by the natural fastnesses of the Balkans—one that even in his youth Disraeli marked as the real frontier. Turkey was pledged to reform her administration, while the signatories also guaranteed her from Russian aggression. Both Russia and Turkey, therefore—and, indeed, all Europe—knew that England was in earnest about her Indian Empire. Turkey’s position was ascertained, so was Russia’s. Russia was propitiated by Bessarabia, Kars, Ardahan, and Batoum; Turkey, gratified by the retention of the great portion of what was to have been Bulgaria’s, by the retention of Bayazid, by the great region of Erzeroum, and of the valley of Alashkerd.

Further, Cyprus fell to the lot of England as a post “of arms,” a strategical, a coasting and a coaling port of high value for our Indian Empire, commanding as it does the high-route which leads to the Euphrates Valley, and useful besides for Egypt. He had noted this island on his youthful trip in the East as most opportune for the purpose.128

Disraeli’s whole purview, in these arrangements, apart from the defence of Great Britain, was to ensure a feasible government under the watch of the European concert. This intention is well expressed by the late Master of Balliol, writing in 1877: “... I want to see the higher civilisation of Europe combining against the lower and offering something like a paternal government to ... the East. But then there is such a danger of taking away the government which they have and substituting only chaos. This might be avoided if the European Powers would jointly take up their cause....”

I may be allowed to recall, in relation to some of these matters, a few of Disraeli’s immediate after-utterances. They are too often neglected.

As regards the English guarantee of the Porte against Russian offence, attained by the Convention of Constantinople which supplemented the treaty, he observed—

“... Suppose now ... the settlement of Europe had not included the Convention of Constantinople and the occupation of the isle of Cyprus, ... what might ... have occurred? In ten, fifteen, or twenty years, the power and resources of Russia having revived, some quarrel would again have occurred, Bulgarian or otherwise, and in all probability the armies of Russia would have been assailing the Ottoman dominions, both in Europe and Asia; and enveloping and inclosing the city of Constantinople, and its all-powerful position. Well, what would be the probable conduct under these circumstances of the Government ... whatever party might be in power? I fear there might be hesitation for a time—a want of decision, a want of firmness; but no one doubts that ultimately England would have said, ‘This will never do; we must prevent the conquest of Asia Minor; we must interfere in this matter and arrest the course of Russia....’ Well, then, that being the case, I say it is extremely important that this country should take a step beforehand which should indicate what the policy of England would be.... The responsibilities of England are practically diminished by the course we have taken.... One of the results of my attending the Congress of Berlin has been to prove, what I always suspected to be an absolute fact, that neither the Crimean, nor this horrible devastating war which has just terminated, would have taken place if England had spoken with the necessary firmness. Russia had complaints to make against this country; that neither in the case of the Crimean War, nor on this occasion—and I don’t shrink from my share of the responsibility in this matter—was the voice of England so clear and decided as to exercise a due share in the guidance of European opinion.” Without such finality the treaty could only have been patchwork. “That was not the idea of public duty entertained by my noble friend and myself. We thought the time had come when we should take steps which would produce some order out of the anarchy chaos that had so long prevailed. We asked ourselves was it absolutely a necessity that the fairest provinces of the world should be the most devastated and the most ill-used, and for this reason, that there is no security for life and property so long as that country is in perpetual fear of invasion and aggression.... I hold that we have laid the foundation of a state of affairs which may open a new continent to the civilisation of Europe, and that the welfare of the world, and the wealth of the world, may be increased by availing ourselves of that tranquillity and order which the more intimate connection of that country with England will now produce....” And, added the late Lord Salisbury, “We were striving to pick up the thread—the broken thread—of England’s old imperial position.”

Before this utterance Disraeli had stated that the Convention’s object was not only to confirm “tranquillity and order,” but to safeguard India. “We have a substantial interest in the East; it is a commanding interest, and its behest must be obeyed.”—“In taking Cyprus,” he continued, “the movement is not Mediterranean, it is Indian;” and, speaking of Russia’s temptation to profit by a state of things which tended to resolve the societies of Asia Minor and the countries beyond into the anarchy of original elements, he used the familiar words: “... There is no reason for these constant wars, or fears of wars between Russia and England. Before the circumstances which led to the recent disastrous war, when none of those events which we have seen agitating the world had occurred, and when we were speaking in another place of the conduct of Russia in Central Asia, I vindicated that conduct, which I thought was unjustly attacked, and I said then, what I repeat now, there is room enough for Russia and England in Asia.”

On the other hand, in another speech alluding to Austria’s trusteeship of Bosnia, he said it permitted us to check, “... I should hope for ever, that Pan-Slavist confederacy and conspiracy which has already proved so disadvantageous to the happiness of the world.” Nobody acquainted with Austria’s desire for Salonica, Italy’s dread of that possibility, and the fear of one at any rate of these powers lest Greece should absorb Albania, can fail to grasp the relevance of this hope.

It should be borne in mind that at the time these deliverances were made Abdul Hamid129 was not what he seems since to have become. He was then—and the late Sir William White was my informant—an enthusiastic reformer, with the wise and accomplished Midhat for his inspirer. Had he remained so Turkey would have achieved much for Asia Minor. Even now, Abdul may perhaps be sometimes excused for mistrusting the cant of reform on the part of unreforming powers. Perhaps it is impossible long to be Sultan of Turkey without falling into the faults bred by habitual suspicion. Perhaps the varying conduct of Western Powers conduces to cynicism. But at this period the Armenians themselves were hopeful. With the Russian aspiration I sympathise. Russia is destined to expansion and greatness; she is a cold power desiring to be warm, pushed by a military power eager to be forward. But she is also that strange anomaly—a new empire with a mediÆval standard. With the freezing officialism of Russia, giant in profession and pigmy in practice, I entertain no sympathy at all. Nor are the Cossack barbarities a whit less infamous than those of the Bashi-Bazouks. What is always to be dreaded is the periodical recurrence of race-hatreds and barbarism on the confines of both countries. Turkey comprises many more races than Russia; at such times, therefore, when bad governors incense brutalised men, unspeakable horrors eclipse imagination and baffle even sympathy. Bulgarian or Servian Slavs massacre Macedonian Greeks, Albanians butcher Macedonian Serbs, and Turks both massacre and torture Macedonian Slavs. The name of the particular province inflamed at a specific time by revolutionary committees is constantly used as if designating the natural uprising of a united people or of a single race; but this is not the case. The recent blood-orgy, however, connived at by more than one of the powers, would seem to disgrace the Ottoman beyond any other single group concerned. And yet the normal Turk—soldier or peasant—is not naturally brutal. It is only when insulted fanaticism dements him that he becomes so; and his fanaticism seldom fans the flames unprovoked by foreign designs. Of course nothing could be more desirable than a practical, a permanent understanding with Russia; nothing more desirable than a complete reform of European Turkey, which the joint powers could enforce if they would unite. Both are consummations devoutly to be wished. But bearing in mind the panther tread of Russian diplomacies, their recent developments in China and Japan, their constant designs on India and in Persia, their stealthy hankering after Constantinople, their earlier annexation even of American territory, as Disraeli pointed out—is the former practical? By all means let Russia expand, as she has a right to expand; but by all means let England ascertain the due spheres of her expansion, and retain her own empire, that gives justice and freedom to countless races once oppressed. Nor let any cant of whatever nature blind her eyes to the hard issues.

Throughout his pronouncements on foreign affairs is to be discerned his construction of “balance of power” and of “interference.” As regards the first, his principles are well defined in a speech of 1864. “... The proper meaning of ‘balance of power’ is security for communities in general against a predominant and particular power.” It also follows “that you have to take into your consideration states and influences that are not to be counted among the European powers.” Every crisis in Europe bears on America and the colonies. So early as 1848 he had pointed out that, though insulted, “... yet our welfare as a great colonial power was so intimately connected with European politics, that in seasons of crisis we could only retire from interference at the expense not only of our prestige but of our safety.” The “balance of power” principle he derived from Bolingbroke; he also adopted from Bolingbroke his principle of “interference.”

“... There are conditions,” he laid it down in 1860, “under which it may be our imperative duty to interfere. We may clearly interfere in the affairs of foreign countries when the interests or the honour of England are at stake, or when, in our opinion, the independence of Europe is menaced. But a great responsibility devolves upon that minister who has to decide when those conditions have arisen; and he who makes a mistake upon that subject, he who involves his country in interference or in war under the idea that the interests or honour of the country are concerned, when neither is substantially involved, he who involves the country in interference or war because he believes the independence of Europe is menaced, when, in fact, it is not in danger, makes of course a great, a fatal mistake. The general principle that we ought not to interfere in the affairs of foreign nations, unless there is a clear necessity, and that, generally speaking, it ought to be held a political dogma that the people of other countries should SETTLE THEIR OWN AFFAIRS without the introduction of foreign influence or foreign power, is one which I trust the House ... will cordially adhere to....” To this let me add a passage from the great Denmark speech of 1864. It is its corollary—

“... By the just influence of England in the councils of Europe, I mean an influence contradistinguished from that which is obtained by intrigue and secret understanding; I mean an influence that results from the conviction of foreign powers that our resources are great, and that our policy is moderate and steadfast.... I lay this down as a great principle which cannot be controverted in the management of our foreign affairs. If England is resolved upon a particular policy, war is not probable.”

One illustration is worth many arguments. At the Berlin Congress affairs at a time began to march ill. The Russian plenipotentiary was making mischief. Disraeli quietly pencilled some requisitions on the part of England and forwarded them to him. “If you accept these,” he said, “peace—if not, war.”

Bearing these two further principles of foreign policy in mind, let me endeavour to sketch Disraeli’s attitude towards various other powers. With America I deal separately in the next chapter.

Friendship with France amounted with him almost to a passion, and none would have rejoiced more heartily at the amity which our King has recently renewed. He himself knew the French well, and in the ’forties had met with the most cordial welcome on two occasions from the King, the Court, the lights of literature and science, the politicians and the people. He thought that with French alliance other powers might exclaim as Shakespeare’s Constance exclaimed—

France was the nation of society, the nurse of arts and manners. England and France supplied reciprocal wants. Their friendship is a pledge for European peace. Had the Czar been made aware of it in time, the blunder and misfortune of the Crimean War would not have taken place. In Coningsby he called Paris “the university of the world,” and enlarged on commercial exchange between two first-class powers in a vein at once light and serious. In 1845, France regarded Peel as the guardian of Anglo-French cordiality, and feared the chance of Palmerston’s return to office as fraught with a possible treatment of “the French connection with levity or disregard.” Louis Philippe relieved his anxieties by consulting Disraeli on this point.130

“A good understanding,” was Disraeli’s interpretation in 1864, “between England and France is simply this—that so far as the influence of these two great powers extends, the affairs of the world shall be conducted by their co-operation instead of by their rivalry. But co-operation requires not merely identity of interest but reciprocal good feeling. In public as well as in private affairs, a certain degree of sentiment is necessary for the happy conduct of matters.” In another speech ten years earlier he also observed that Anglo-French relations were not dynastic, but depended on commercial interests.

Perhaps his most remarkable expression on this theme occurs in a speech of 1853,131 when Sir James Graham had gone about saying that the Emperor was a despot who turned his people into slaves, and when there was one of those periodical outbursts of Gallophobia to which we are accustomed. Disraeli pointed out that peace with France had then subsisted for forty years, that social relations had multiplied, that an identity of interest in high policy existed. He exploded the fallacy that national hostility was a true tradition. Even Agincourt and CrÉcy stood for a struggle between two princes rather than between two nations. “... No one can deny that both Queen Elizabeth and the Lord Protector looked to that alliance as the basis of their foreign connections. No one can deny that there was one subject on which even the brilliant Bolingbroke and the sagacious Walpole were agreed—and that was the great importance of cultivating an alliance, or good understanding, with France. At a later date the most eminent of the statesmen of this century, Mr. Pitt, formed his system on this principle....” The traditional prejudice, therefore, was the reverse of true. The natural tendency was to concord, for after the great European revolutions at the close of the eighteenth and dawn of the nineteenth centuries, a durable peace had emerged. Nor were the defences (which Sir Robert Peel had really inaugurated) due to the rise of the Third Napoleon; they were due to the changes in scientific warfare. It was true that in France there was then a military government. “But there is a great error also, if history is to guide us, in assuming that because a country is governed by an army, that army must be extremely anxious to conquer other countries.” The lust for conquest under militarism is due to home-uneasiness, and from a feeling in the army that its power is not felt. The real prejudice was that France had subverted her constitution. This prejudice had foundation, but it was the very cause of those acts which indiscreet journalism was now criticising so angrily. “Some years ago,” he resumed (and the glimpse of Louis Philippe is interesting), “I had occasion frequently to visit France. I found that country then under the mild sway of a constitutional monarch—of a prince who, from temper as well as policy, was humane and beneficent. I know that at that time the Press was free. I know that at that time the Parliament of France was ... distinguished by its eloquence, and by a dialectic power that probably even our own House of Commons has never surpassed. I know that under these circumstances France arrived at a pitch of material prosperity which it had never before reached. I know also that after a reign of unbroken prosperity of long duration, when he was aged, when he was in sorrow, and when he was suffering under overwhelming indisposition, this same prince was rudely expelled from his capital,132 and was denounced as a poltroon by all the journals of England, because he did not command his troops to fire upon the people. Well, other powers and other princes have since occupied his seat, who have asserted their authority in a very different way, and are denounced in the same organs as tyrants because they did order their troops to fire upon the people. I think every man has a right to have his feelings upon these subjects; but what is the moral I presume to draw upon these circumstances? It is this, that it is extremely difficult to form an opinion upon French politics; and that so long as the French people are exact in their commercial transactions and friendly in their political relations, it is just as well that we should not interfere with their management of their domestic concerns.”

The same ideas animated him in 1854, when he pointed out that ten years earlier the Czar had, by a secret manoeuvre, sought to provoke an estrangement which had not endured, but which the Czar was led to believe enduring when the Crimean War broke out. The same guided his hearty approval of Mr. Cobden’s aims in relation to France. What he objected to in the later Italian Treaty was that it embodied “reciprocity” too late—at a time when for England reciprocity could secure no more. In 1858—the Walewski affair—Disraeli termed our alliance with France “the key and corner-stone of modern civilisation.” After the Treaty of Villafranca, Disraeli advised England not “to go to congresses and conferences in fine dresses and ribands, to enjoy the petty vanity of settling the fate of petty princes,” but to have recourse to “your ally the Emperor of the French”—a monarch who, as Disraeli said some years afterwards, “... has been created and can only be maintained by the sympathies of his people—a proud, imperious, and apt to be discontented people.” In 1860, when many were jubilant over Italy’s united nationality, Disraeli, demonstrating its present incompleteness, asserted that its accomplishment must come not through the “moral influence of England,” but “by the will and the sword of France”—though this did not blind him to contingent perils.

“It is the will of France that can alone restore Rome to the Italians. It is the sword of France, if any sword can do it, that alone can free Venetia from the Austrians.” But in a long and splendid speech he urged, almost prophetically, that by forcing the French Emperor to a policy which he was unwilling to pursue, we should eventually give him a dangerous preponderance: “... It will be in his power ... to make those greater changes and aim at those greater results which I will only intimate and not attempt to describe.” In 1864, on the Danish crisis, advocating firmness of action following on firmness of statement, he once more repeated: “... If there is, under these circumstances, a cordial alliance between England and France, war is most difficult; but if there is a thorough understanding between England, France, and Russia, war is impossible.” Though here, again, this consideration would not deter him from the single object of England’s welfare.

Finally, he consulted French sentiment in the delicate arrangement at Berlin. “... There is no step of this kind that I would take without considering the effect it might have upon the feelings of France—a nation to whom we are bound by almost every tie that can unite a people.... We avoided Egypt, knowing how susceptible France is with regard to Egypt; we avoided Syria; ... and we avoided availing ourselves of any part of the terra firma, because we would not hurt the feelings or excite the suspicions of France.... But the interests of France ... are, as she acknowledges, sentimental and traditionary interests; and although I respect them, ... we must remember that our connection with the East is not merely an affair of sentiment and tradition, but that we have urgent and substantial and enormous interests which we must guard and keep.” I pass now to Germany. Prussia, in his early days, he had described as “the Persia” of Europe; the Austrians as “the Chinese.” Some thirty years before Germany became united, and Bismarck had brandished the mailed fist, Disraeli regarded much in the air as “dreamy and dangerous nonsense;” he considered theory and “inner consciousness” as distinctive of the German nature, and he failed to perceive the rising wave of its instinct for united nationality. Here certainly his foresight flagged. When Prussia dismembered Denmark, he pointed out that by the arguments used she, too, might be deprived of Posen. Here certainly his foresight failed. But when the great war broke out, he rose to the occasion and realised its meaning to the full. “It is no common war,” he said at the onset, “like that between Prussia and Austria, or like the Italian war in which France was engaged some years ago; nor is it like the Crimean War. This war represents the German revolution, a greater political event than the French Revolution of last century. I don’t say a greater or as great a social event. What its social consequences may be are in the future. Not a single principle, accepted by all statesmen for guidance in the management of our foreign affairs up to six months ago, any longer exists. There is not a diplomatic tradition that has not been swept away. You have a new world, new influences at work, new and unknown objects and dangers with which to cope, at present involved in the obscurity incident to the novelty of such affairs.... Lord Palmerston, eminently a practical man, trimmed the ship of State and shaped its policy with a view to preserve an equilibrium in Europe. But what has come to pass? The balance of power has been entirely destroyed, and the country which suffers, and feels the effects of this great change most, is England.” He recommended an attitude of “armed neutrality,” such as Austria’s occupation of the Danubian provinces, which certainly abridged the Crimean War. Such a policy tends to prevent, if possible, to shorten if it cannot prevent a conflict; and when that conflict is finished, to temper the terms for the vanquished. Had it been feasible in the then state of our armaments, it might have produced lasting results. As time went on Disraeli grew to understand Germany better, though he never ceased to regret the humiliation to France. In Bismarck, however, he found a powerful friend, and one of his last utterances regarding Germany was to praise her as a peacemaker.

At the Berlin Congress Lord Beaconsfield made his speeches in English. This was of design. A story was told that an eminent English diplomatist, in attendance on his chief, had adroitly suggested this course out of apprehension that “Dizzy’s” French accent might not impress foreign representatives. But however this may have been, I am convinced it was not the real reason, which was to assert the leadership of Great Britain.

Disraeli’s French was fluent, if insular. In Italian he was naturally proficient. Italian literature was familiar to him, and next to Dante, he was fondest of Alfieri, a fine passage from whom, it will be remembered, he quotes in Lothair. He knew German well enough to read it.

No sentiment surrounded his favour to Austria. It was her partition that he feared. So early as 1848 he objected, from the sole standpoint of England’s interest, to championing the Magyars and the Italians against Austria, the Sicilians against Naples. We should, he then said, “mind our own business.” And in 1856, when he combated the views of his opponents who sighed for the dismemberment of Russia, he also pointed out the dangers to European peace that must attend the dismemberment of Austria. The complete dismemberment of that empire—partly a few years later to be accomplished—would involve the independence of Hungary and the emancipation of Italy.

With Italy herself he nourished, indeed, an innate sympathy, and for her a sentimental attachment. In all his reveries Venice and Rome figure no less frequently than do Athens and Jerusalem; and afterwards none applauded Daniel Manin more than he. Italy is the haunting refrain of Venetia, Venice of Contarini Fleming, Rome romanticises Lothair. Perhaps a leaven of his old enthusiasm for “a cluster of small states” and “federal unions” still mingled with the practical outlook which also made him sacrifice many of his personal emotions to the cold requirements of statesmanship. “Federal unions,” he had sighed in Contarini, “would preserve us from the consequences of local jealousy.”—“There would be more genius, and, what is of more importance, much more felicity.”—“Italy might then revive.” However this may be—and I for one regret his forced attitude towards the first flutter of Italian freedom—or whether his late acquaintance with Metternich had coloured his ideas, there can be no doubt of their constraining cause. His public views always confined themselves to what he believed was for the benefit of Great Britain. And in this instance—“... If we, or any other power,” he urged, “should forcibly interfere in the affairs of Italy with the view of changing the political settlement of that country, the result will be, as in the case of an attempt to dismember Russia, one of those protracted wars that might fatally exhaust this country, and which, even supposing it to be successful, would leave Italy very possibly not in the possession of Austria, but under the dominion of some other power as little national.” It should be recollected that 1858–61 were critical years for Anglo-French relations. After Palmerston’s Orsini imbroglio we were more than once on the verge of war with France. Luckily, England was never forced into interference. Luckily, Italy regained her independence, through two commanding individualities. But it was history that warned Disraeli. Italy had been the battle-field of Austria and Spain, and a prolific source of war, disorder, and havoc throughout the eighteenth century. “A war in Italy,” he said in 1859, “is not a war in a corner. An Italian war may by possibility be an European war. The waters of the Adriatic cannot be disturbed without agitating the waters of the Rhine. The port of Trieste is not a mere Italian port. It is a port which belongs to the Italian confederation, and an attack on Trieste is not an attack on Austria alone, but also on Germany. If war springs up beyond the precincts of Italy, England has interests not merely from ... those enlightened principles of civilisation which make her look with an adverse eye on aught that would disturb the peace of the world, but England may be interested from material considerations of the most urgent and momentous character.” It was from England’s vantage-ground alone that he discussed these questions in public. He wished Italy to be free, but he feared the results of ineffective feeling. Italy, he held, must free herself, and her aid, if any, should be French, not English, for France heads the Latin League. In 1859 he rested on a mutual accord and disarmament between Great Britain and France. This would, he pleaded, be “a conquest far more valuable than Lombardy, or those wild dreams of a regeneration ever promised but never accomplished.” “National independence,” he urged in another speech on the same subject, “is not created by protocols, nor public liberty guaranteed by treaties. All such arrangements have been tried before, and the consequence has been a sickly and short-lived offspring. What is going on in Italy—never mind whose may have been the original fault, what the present errors—can only be solved by the will, the energy, the sentiment, and the thought of the population themselves.”

One word before I close this chapter about Greece and Poland. Of his own feeling for Hellas there can be no question. It pervades his works. “All the great things have been done by the little peoples.” He was offered, I have heard, the kingship of that country. But Greek ambitions, he felt, outgrew her capacities. Her hereditary dream has always been Constantinople. He bade her, in a famous passage, take the advice that he would give to a youth of genius and enterprise: “Be patient.” But he also insisted that she should be heard at the Conference of Berlin.

With Poland’s free aspirations he always sympathised, and more than once expressed the grounds of his sympathy in Parliament. The movement in Poland was one, natural, spontaneous, and national. It was not forced by agitators, nor fomented by despots, nor provoked elsewhere from ulterior motives. It was the genuine expression of a combined people, and not the plea of a single race overbearing its fellow components, or the pretence of a single locality to manage itself, both of which have so frequently proved the stalking-horse of “national rights;” pleas that, if sound, would bring back the Heptarchy in England, undo the union of Germany and of Italy, break up the faculty for government, and resolve into petty elements every great nation in Europe. Such an article of “liberal” faith is neither more nor less than political atomism; and its humanitarian guise too often the false philanthropy of “sublime sentiments.” In all his treatment of “Britain’s interests abroad,” Disraeli realised that whereas in England government can still be carried on by “traditionary influences,” the remaining ancient communities of Europe were falling more and more under the veiled sway of “military force.” These were the two alternatives. A “reconstruction” of England “on the great Transatlantic model” would only accentuate the discrepancy between the ineradicable features of her body politic, and the social standard which she would seek to imitate. The result would be that “after a due course of paroxysms for the sake of maintaining order and securing the rights of industry, the State quits the senate and takes refuge in the camp”—

“Let us not be deluded by forms of government. The word may be republic in France, constitutional monarchy in Prussia, absolute monarchy in Austria, but the King is the same. Wherever there is a vast standing army the government is the government of the sword. Half a million of armed men must either be, or be not, in a state of discipline. If not... it is not government but anarchy; if they be in a state of discipline, they must obey one man, and that man is the master.”133

I have tried to track a large subject deserving a longer space. At any rate, I hope to have justified Disraeli’s own language in the touching letter which breathed farewell to his constituents when failing health compelled him to accept an earldom—

“Throughout my public life I have aimed at two chief results. Not insensible to the principle of progress, I have endeavoured to reconcile change with that respect for tradition which is one of the main elements of our social strength; and in external affairs I have endeavoured to develop and strengthen our empire, believing that a combination of achievement and responsibility elevates the character and condition of a people.”

It is not a little remarkable that this farewell re-echoes the sentence quoted in my first chapter from his tract What is he? as well as that later Runnymede Letter which, forty years earlier, he addressed to Sir Robert Peel.134