The Earl of Beaconsfield

by James Anthony Froude

‘But had it exercised a beneficial influence in the country? Had it elevated the tone of the public mind? Had it cultivated the popular sensibilities to noble and ennobling ends? Had it proposed to the people of England a higher test of national respect and confidence?... If a spirit of rapacious covetousness, desecrating all the humanities of life, has been the besetting sin of England for the last century and a half, since the passing of the Reform Act the altar of Mammon has blazed with a triple worship. To acquire, to accumulate, to plunder each other by virtue of philosophic phrases—to propose a Utopia to consist only of Wealth and Toil—this has been the business of enfranchised England for the last twelve years, until we are startled from our voracious strife by the wail of intolerable serfage.’[6]

EFFECTS OF THE REFORM BILL

Again: ‘Born in a library, and trained from early childhood by learned men who did not share the passions and the prejudices of our political and social life, I had imbibed on some subjects conclusions different from those which generally prevail, and especially with reference to the history of our own country. How an oligarchy had been substituted for a kingdom, and a narrow-minded and bigoted fanaticism flourished in the name of religious liberty, were problems long to me insoluble, but which early interested me. But what most attracted my musing, even as a boy, were the elements of our political parties, and the strange mystification by which that which was national in our Constitution had become odious, and that which was exclusive was presented as popular.

‘What has mainly led to this confusion is our carelessness in not distinguishing between the excellence of a principle and its injurious or obsolete application. The feudal system may have worn out; but its main principle—that the tenure of property should be the fulfilment of duty—is the essence of good government. The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants; but the divine right of government is the key of human progress, and without it governments sink into a police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.... National institutions were the ramparts of a multitude against large estates, exercising political power, derived from a limited class. The Church was in theory, and once it had been in practice, the spiritual and intellectual trainer of the people. The privileges of the multitude and the prerogative of the sovereign had grown up together, and together they had waned. Under the plea of Liberalism, all the institutions which were the bulwark of the multitude had been sapped and weakened, and nothing had been substituted for them. The people were without education, and relatively to the advance of science and the comfort of the superior classes, their condition had deteriorated and their physical quality as a race was threatened.

‘To change back the oligarchy into a generous aristocracy round a real throne; to infuse life and vigour into the Church as the trainer of the nation by the revival of Convocation, then dumb, on a wise basis; to establish a commercial code on the principles successfully negotiated by Lord Bolingbroke at Utrecht, and which, though baffled at the time by a Whig Parliament, were subsequently and triumphantly vindicated by his pupil and political heir, Mr. Pitt; to govern Ireland according to the policy of Charles I., and not of Oliver Cromwell; to emancipate the political constituency of 1832 from its sectarian bondage and contracted sympathies; to elevate the physical as well as the moral condition of the people by establishing that labour required regulation as much as property—and all this rather by the use of ancient forms and the restoration of the past, than by political revolutions founded on abstract ideas—appeared to be the course which the circumstances of the country required, and which, practically speaking, could only, with all their faults and backslidings, be undertaken and accomplished by a reconstructed Tory party.

‘When I attempted to enter public life, I expressed these views, long meditated, to my countrymen.... I incurred the accustomed penalty of being looked on as a visionary.... Ten years afterwards, affairs had changed. I had been some time in Parliament, and had friends who had entered public life with myself, who listened always with interest, and sometimes with sympathy.... The writer, and those who acted with him, looked then upon the Anglican Church as a main machinery by which these results might be realised. There were few great things left in England, and the Church was one. Nor do I doubt that if a quarter of a century ago there had arisen a Churchman equal to the occasion, the position of ecclesiastical affairs in this country would have been very different from that which they now occupy. But these great matters fell into the hands of monks and schoolmen. The secession of Dr. Newman dealt a blow to the Church under which it still reels. That extraordinary event has been “apologised” for, but it has never been explained. The tradition of the Anglican Church was powerful. Resting on the Church of Jerusalem modified by the Divine school of Galilee, it would have found that rock of truth which Providence, by the instrumentality of the Semitic race, had promised to St. Peter. Instead of that, the seceders sought refuge in mediæval superstitions; which are generally only the embodiments of Pagan ceremonies and creeds.’[7]

DISAPPOINTED HOPES

Writing after the experience of thirty years of Parliamentary life, Disraeli thus described the impressions and the hopes with which he commenced his public career. He was disappointed by causes which he partly indicates, and by the nature of things which he then imperfectly realised. But, carefully considered, they explain the whole of his action down to the time when he found his expectation incapable of realisation. His Church views were somewhat hazy, though he was right enough about the Pagan ceremonies.

After their marriage, the Disraelis spent two months on the Continent. They went to Baden, Munich, Frankfort, Ratisbon, Nuremburg, seeing galleries and other curiosities. In November they returned to England, to the house in Grosvenor Gate which was thenceforward their London home, and Disraeli took his place on an equal footing as an established member of the great world. He was introduced to the Duke of Wellington, who had hitherto known him only by reputation. He received Peel’s congratulations on his marriage with admitted pride and pleasure, and began to give dinners on his own account to leading members of his party. The impecunious adventurer had acquired the social standing without which the most brilliant gifts are regarded with a certain suspicion.

POWERS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS