BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Some Members of Parliament have lost their reason, the majority have lost their wits, all are without vision.
Lloyd George presents the curious spectacle of a man of the people who observes them through the glasses of a Welsh Calvinist. He is a democrat with the demeanor of a lord, a radical who has fallen between the two stools of the middle-class and the landed aristocracy. Nonconformist sentimentality, on one hand, and titled wealth on the other, have blinded him to the imperative needs of the time and the dangers that confront the Empire.
The English people of the past twenty years have suffered as much from misgovernment as the Germans and the Russians, but they cannot stop the present stream of progress by clatter in the House and appeals to patriotism.
For years England has been saddled with cabinets composed of professional humorists and hum-drum moralists.
Augustine Birrell was a diluted edition of Sydney Smith, and Bonar Law should have been a professor of theology in a Presbyterian seminary. Sir Edward Carson played the role of an unfrocked priest in the service of demiurgos. Earl Curzon is a political derelict whose presence in the Council Chamber prevents unity and impedes progress.
History will record their acts as the most amazing in the annals of Great Britain. I see nothing for the old order but unconditional surrender. The hand-writing on the wall was visible in 1909, but no preparation was made for the change which is now sweeping the country with cyclonic force.
We, from our side, can do no more than utter some words of warning for the few who have ears to hear, the tidal wave of change not being confined to particular countries or regions.
I, too, when Prime Minister, was blind to the reality, having been born and reared in an atmosphere as foreign to that of the masses as the atmosphere of the Winter Palace was foreign to the peasants of Russia.
We staggered under the load of a wealthy and titled upper class. They consumed the people’s time and imposed infinite misery on some millions of toilers, and for these things we rewarded the men at the top with fresh titles.
As you know, I led the Conservative Party in England for many years, but that Party was, and still is, avid for power.
The Liberal Party was made up of men using Nonconformity as an instrument of advancement. They placed opportunity above the truth, position above principle, power above progress. We were all intellectual automatons, set in motion by springs wound up by leaders who were themselves automatons.
England goes by machinery. Her very existence is mechanical. Now, when a loose screw stops the evolution of the wheels, the whole nation stops.
In what way can we be said to excel in probity of conduct the people of Ireland? In what way are we superior to Irish politicians? The scandals that occurred in London during the war would not have been tolerated in Dublin under an Irish Parliament. And still England is being led by a Welsh Calvinist, opposed by a Scottish humorist who says his prayers, backed by Anglican agnostics and middle-class dissenters overwhelmed with fear.
We always imitate the French, but while we accepted Voltairianism in principle, the French had the courage to put it into practice.
While the French became practical pagans in 1789, we became practical hypocrites.
It is this element that has created the moral indifference of the Anglican Church and the intellectual apathy of the so-called Nonconformist conscience. This is why there is no stability behind the old phraseology, the old ceremonials, the old confessions of faith—now so many catch-words which the people abhor. And this is why the working men find it so easy to send their leaders to Parliament. For the same reason Russian radicalism is certain of a warm welcome on English soil.
It is true that this hypocrisy is subconscious, having had its origin during the French Revolution. This renders it far more dangerous because political leaders in England today are mentally incompetent to realize the danger that lies before them.
We cannot reason with people whose vision is dulled by four generations of moral apathy. Hence they will continue to “kick against the pricks” to the bitter end. There will be strife added to strife, confusion to confusion, and they, themselves, will invite the drastic events which must follow so much stubborn resistance to the demands of common justice and the progress of civilization.