But Disraeli, though he fulfilled himself in many ways, was first of all a politician, and it is Disraeli the politician rather than Disraeli the man of letters, the dandy, or the human being, that principally provokes our interest. What were his real views on politics? How far can we distinguish between the official edition of himself which he displayed for public inspection and the original that he alone could read? Given his policy, how far was it justifiable, how far rational? The view of his most devoted, but yet in reality, quite unappreciative, admirers, that throughout a political career of over half a century he remained consistently and absolutely faithful to his original ideals, and that he introduced into politics an integrity and disinterestedness that Parliament had rarely witnessed, is even more absurd than the opinion of his blind and malignant enemies that he was a mere charlatan who juggled with parties and the people without possessing a single genuine political faith of his own. Disraeli, as was inevitable in a man of so detached and unprejudiced a nature, simply took the then party system at its true worth, and, of course, realised from the outset that before he could do anything worth doing he must first obtain that power which alone could give him the opportunity of doing it. His attack on Peel was, primâ facie, an occasion that it would have been the depth of folly to have missed, and Mr. Birrell's statement that Disraeli "ate his peck of dirt," and his comparison of him to Casanova, is mere petulance. For these preliminary stages of the higher politics Disraeli was admirably fitted, and the following autobiographic passages from Tancred show how congenial were his Herculean labours: "To be the centre of a maze of manœuvres was his empyrean, and while he recognised in them the best means of success he found in their exercise a means of constant delight"; and again, "'Intrigue,' cried the young prince, using, as was his custom, a superfluity of expression both of voice and hand and eyes, 'intrigue, it is life, it is the only thing. If you wish to produce a result you must make a combination, and you call combination intrigue.'" Disraeli viewed party politics from the dispassionate standpoint of a chess-player, "playing off the proud peers like pawns," skilfully manœuvring his knights and bishops beneath the shadow of the old mediæval castles, though it was "in his masterly manipulation of his queen" that he really surpassed himself. What a contrast to Gladstone's youthful frame of mind, who entered politics because he felt a strong moral duty to defend that Church which he was afterwards partly to disestablish against the insidious attacks of philosophic Radicalism. But Disraeli's point of view was, after all, merely that which was obvious and rational. It is well known that in Disraeli's day the whole efficiency of the party system as a means of carrying on the government was based on that sagacious inconsistency, so characteristic of this country, which, cheerfully accommodating the most untractable of facts to the most docile of theories, drew between the two parties no clear dividing line either of principle or of class. Those genuine lines of cleavage both of policy and interest that now tend to become more and more clearly marked did not then exist. The only vital political distinction then existing in England was that between the Ins and the Outs. Whigs and Tories were, in their origin, merely the names for the two rival organisations for the pursuit of political power into which the oligarchy of the time had divided itself, and the party catch-words then indicated as much essential difference as the badges by which the two sides of a "scratch" game symbolise a fictitious distinction.
Particularly interesting is the following quotation from a letter of Gladstone, written comparatively early in his career, which shows convincingly that the subsequent democratic idealist fully realised the intrinsic farce of the then party system: "Each of them, the Whig and the Tory Party, comprises within itself far greater divergencies than can be noticed as dividing the more moderate portion of the one from the more moderate portion of the other. The great English parties differ no more in their general outlines than by a somewhat different distribution of the same elements in each." It is impossible for the opportunist position to be more cogently stated. It is, indeed, a strange paradox that political integrity should be traditionally associated with the name of Gladstone, who accomplished more than any other of our statesmen in changing statesmanship into demagogy. His pronouncedly religious temperament, however, led to extraordinary results, and his psychological condition was best expressed in the well-known epigram that "he followed his conscience in the same manner that the driver of a gig follows the horse." It was not that he was deliberately insincere. He could deceive himself as well as others with his ingenious sophisms. His sincerity was merely so elastic, his enthusiasm so adaptable, that he found it easy to be sincere and enthusiastic, inter alia, about those things which coincided with his interests.
Carlyle hits the mark in dubbing Gladstone a deeper and unconscious juggler as contrasted with Disraeli, the clever, conscious juggler. The latter, at any rate, played the game straight with himself. He did not, like his rival, have recourse to super-natural inspiration for every argument that dropped from his specious lips, or degrade his deity into a veritable deus ex machinâ, whose function it was to sanction the most elementary dictates of Parliamentary tactics.
Yet, though he exhibited a prudent elasticity in his handling of the minor details of party politics, in the main outlines of his policy he remained consistent and true to himself throughout his career. The romantic strain in his temperament rendered him congenitally opposed to the cut and dried utilitarianism of the Whigs. The renovated Toryism of New England, for which he was largely responsible, though to a great extent merely a move in the game, is deeply stamped with the impress of his own nature. That his bias was naturally aristocratic no one can doubt who has read the passage in The Revolutionary Epicke on Equality, or has appreciated the tone of personal superiority and contempt for the mediocre that pervades all his writings. His Conservatism, however, was not the orthodox Conservatism of the Eldon school, "the barren mule of politics which engenders nothing," to use his own phrase, but a more picturesque and practical policy. He poured successfully the new wine of Democracy into the old bottles of Toryism, and thus, while no doubt indulging the more romantic side of his nature, placed, his party on a more modern and workable basis. Disraeli's policy, in fact, was always one of sane and rational opportunism. In the same way that Gambetta, the exponent of French Opportunism, opposed "a policy of results to the policy of chimeras" of the reactionaries, Disraeli opposed to Gladstone's dangerous and visionary ideals a policy that was at once feasible and salutary. Disraeli invariably treated England as a definite country with a definite personality of its own, requiring individual attention and delicate handling, while Gladstone regarded her as a mere tabula rasa on which the latest new-fangled doctrines could be easily imprinted. Precisely the same spirit induced Gladstone to treat the Queen as a department of State and Disraeli to treat her as a woman. In home politics he has grasped well that transition from feudal to federal principles which was the keynote of the last century politics. His detractors object that no great measures stand identified with his name; but here the fates were against him. It was a cruel paradox that when at last he obtained an untrammelled power he was too old and jaded to initiate any new creative measure in domestic affairs. I quote Mrs. Disraeli: "You don't know my Dizzy; what great plans he has long matured for the good and greatness of England. But they have made him wait and drudge so long, and now time is against him." In his foreign policy, however, he displayed his characteristic combination of practical and imaginative strength. In the same spirit in which he himself had obtained the foremost place in England, he desired that England should acquire the foremost rank among the nations; while, as is shown by his Imperial policy, he infused something of his own picturesqueness into the policy of the most prosaic Power in Europe. His Indian policy, in particular, proves with what practical imagination he had divined how much lay in a name, and that to the feudatory princes it meant all the difference whether they paid their allegiance to the Queen of England or to the Empress of India.
Disraeli's master-passion was ambition. But he was no monomaniac like Napoleon. In the same way that Sidonia, the complete and perfect man, according to Disraeli, played with a master-hand on the whole gamut of life, so did Disraeli, though in a lesser scale, live largely and fully. He lived in the solitudes of the Arabian deserts and in the crowded drawing-rooms of St. James's; in the halls of Westminster and the shady quietude of Bradenham; in the privacy of his own study, and in the historic chambers of Downing Street. To few men has it been given to express themselves in so many different ways. What matter if his feats of statesmanship were restricted by the limitations of the Parliamentary system and the handicap of his own failing health? To such a nature the joy of life lay rather in the winning than in the using of the prize. It is the romance and character of the man that perpetuate his memory rather than his political achievements. He lives as a great career. When yet a boy he had mapped out his future, and he realised his ambition in every detail. By sheer force of intellect and determination he lifted himself from the Ghetto to the highest position in England. As he himself said, in one of Mrs. Craigie's novels: "Many men have talent; few have genius; fewer still have character."