The Earl of Beaconsfield

by James Anthony Froude

He falls in with all varieties of men bred in the confusion of the old and the new. An enthusiastic Catholic landlord tries to revive the customs of his ancestors, supported by his faith, but perplexed by the aspect of a world no longer apparently under supernatural guidance. ‘I enter life,’ says Mr. Lyle, ‘in the midst of a convulsion in which the very principles of our political and social system are called in question. I cannot unite myself with the party of destruction. It is an operative cause alien to my being. What, then, offers itself? The duke talks to me of Conservative principles, but he does not inform me what they are. I observe, indeed, a party in the State whose rule it is to consent to no change until it is clamorously called for, and then instantly to yield: but those are concessionary, not Conservative, principles. This party treats our institutions as we do our pheasants. They preserve only to destroy them. But is there a statesman among these Conservatives who offers us a dogma for a guide, or defines any great political truth which we should aspire to establish? It seems to me a barren thing, this Conservatism; an unhappy cross-breed, the mule of politics, that engenders nothing.’

Coningsby had saved the life of a son of a Northern mill-owner at Eton. They became attached friends, though they were of opposite creeds. Coningsby’s study of the social problem carries him to Manchester, where he hears from Millbank the views entertained in the industrial circles of the English aristocracy. Mr. Millbank dislikes feudal manners as out of date and degenerate.

‘I do not understand,’ he says, ‘how an aristocracy can exist, unless it is distinguished by some quality which no other class of the community possesses. Distinction is the basis of aristocracy. If you permit only one class of the population, for example, to bear arms, they are an aristocracy: not much to my taste, but still a great fact. That, however, is not the characteristic of the English peerage. I have yet to learn that they are richer than we are, better informed, or more distinguished for public or private virtue. Ancient lineage! I never heard of a peer with an ancient lineage. The real old families of the country are to be found among the peasantry. The gentry, too, may lay claim to old blood: I know of some Norman gentlemen whose fathers undoubtedly came in with the Conqueror. But a peer with an ancient lineage is to me quite a novelty. The thirty years’ Wars of the Roses freed us from these gentlemen, I take it. After the battle of Tewkesbury a Norman baron was almost as rare a being as a wolf.... We owe the English peerage to three sources—the spoliation of the Church, the open and flagrant sale of its honours by the elder Stuarts, and the borough-mongering of our own times. These are the three main sources of the existing peerages of England, and in my opinion disgraceful ones.’

‘And where will you find your natural aristocracy?’ asked Coningsby. ‘Among those,’ Millbank answers, ‘whom a nation recognises as the most eminent for virtue, talents, and property, and, if you will, birth and standing in this land. They guide opinions, and therefore they govern. I am no leveller; I look upon an artificial equality as equally pernicious with a factitious aristocracy, both depressing the energies and checking the enterprise of a nation. I am sanguine. I am the disciple of progress, but I have cause for my faith. I have witnessed advance. My father often told me that in his early days the displeasure of a peer of England was like a sentence of death.’

A more remarkable figure is Sidonia, the Hebrew financier, who is represented very much in the position of Disraeli himself, half a foreigner, and impartial onlooker, with a keen interest in the stability of English institutions, but with the insight possible only to an outsider, who observes without inherited prepossessions. Sidonia, the original of whom is as easily recognised, is, like Disraeli, of Spanish descent. His father staked all that he was worth on the Waterloo Loan, became the greatest capitalist in Europe, and bequeathed his business and his fortune to his son.

The young Sidonia ‘obtained, at an early age, that experience of refined and luxurious society which is a necessary part of a finished education.

‘It gives the last polish to the manners. It teaches us something of the powers of the passions, early developed in the hotbed of self-indulgence. It instils into us that indefinable tact seldom obtained in later life, which prevents us from saying the wrong thing, and often impels us to do the right. He was admired by women, idolised by artists, received in all circles with great distinction, and appreciated for his intellect by the very few to whom he at all opened himself; for, though affable and generous, it was impossible to penetrate him: though unreserved in his manners, his frankness was limited to the surface. He observed everything, thought ever, but avoided serious discussion. If you pressed him for an opinion, he took refuge in raillery, and threw out some grave paradox with which it was not easy to cope.... He looked on life with a glance rather of curiosity than contempt. His religion walled him out from the pursuits of a citizen. His riches deprived him of the stimulating anxieties of a man. He perceived himself a lone being without cares and without duties. He might have discovered a spring of happiness in the sensibilities of the heart; but this was a sealed fountain to Sidonia. In his organisation there was a peculiarity, perhaps a great deficiency: he was a man without affection. It would be harsh to say that he had no heart, for he was susceptible of deep emotions; but not for individuals—woman was to him a toy, man a machine.’

Though Sidonia is chiefly drawn from another person, Disraeli himself can be traced in this description. The hand is the hand of Esau; the voice is the voice of Jacob. ‘The secret history of the world was Sidonia’s pastime.’ ‘His great pleasure was to contrast the hidden motive with the public pretext of transactions.’ This was Disraeli himself, and through Sidonia’s mouth Disraeli explains to Coningsby the political condition of England. The Constitution professed to rest on the representation of the people. Coningsby asks him what a representative system means. He replies: ‘It is a principle of which only a limited definition is current in this country. People may be represented without periodic elections of neighbours who are incapable to maintain their interests, and strangers who are unwilling.... You will observe one curious trait in the history of this country. The depositary of power is always unpopular: all combine against it: it always falls. Power was deposited in the great barons; the Church, using the king for its instrument, crushed the great barons. Power was deposited in the Church; the king, bribing the Parliament, plundered the Church. Power was deposited in the king; the Parliament, using the people, beheaded the king, expelled the king, changed the king, and finally for a king substituted an administrative officer. For a hundred and fifty years Power has been deposited in Parliament, and for the last sixty or seventy years it has been becoming more and more unpopular. In 1832, it endeavoured by a reconstruction to regain the popular affection; but, in truth, as the Parliament then only made itself more powerful, it has only become more odious. As we see that the barons, the Church, the king, have in turn devoured each other, and that the Parliament, the last devourer, remains, it is impossible to resist the impression that this body also is doomed to be devoured; and he is a sagacious statesman who may detect in what form and in what quarter the great consumer will arise.’

‘Whence, then,’ Coningsby asks, ‘is hope to be looked for?’ Sidonia replies:

‘In what is more powerful than laws and institutions, and without which the best laws and the most skilful institutions may be a dead letter or the very means of tyranny: in the national character. It is not in the increased feebleness of its institutions that I see the peril of England. It is in the decline of its character as a community. In this country, since the peace, there has been an attempt to advocate a reconstruction of society on a purely rational basis. The principle of utility has been powerfully developed. I speak not with lightness of the disciples of that school: I bow to intellect in every form: and we should be grateful to any school of philosophers, even if we disagree with them: doubly grateful in this country where for so long a period our statesmen were in so pitiable an arrear of public intelligence. There has been an attempt to reconstruct society on a basis of material motives and calculations. It has failed. It must ultimately have failed under any circumstances. Its failure in an ancient and densely-peopled kingdom was inevitable. How limited is human reason the profoundest engineers are most conscious. We are not indebted to the reason of man for any of the great achievements which are the landmarks of human action and human progress. It was not reason that besieged Troy. It was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world, that inspired the Crusader, that instituted the monastic orders. It was not reason that created the French revolution. Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions, never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination. Even Mormon counts more votaries than Bentham. The tendency of advanced civilisation is, in truth, to pure monarchy. Monarchy is indeed a government which requires a high degree of civilisation for its full development. It needs the support of free laws and manners, and of a widely-diffused intelligence. Political compromises are not to be tolerated except at periods of rude transition. An educated nation recoils from the imperfect vicariate of what is called representative government. Your House of Commons, that has absorbed all other powers in the State, will in all probability fall more rapidly than it rose. Public opinion has a more direct, a more comprehensive, a more efficient organ for its utterance than a body of men sectionally chosen. The printing-press absorbs the duties of the sovereign, the priest, the Parliament. It controls, it educates, it discusses.’