The Earl of Beaconsfield

by James Anthony Froude

‘The right honourable gentleman,’ he continued, ‘being compelled to interfere, sends down his valet, who says in the genteelest manner, “We can have no whining here.” But, sir, that is exactly the case of the great agricultural interest, that beauty which everyone wooed and one deluded. Protection appears to me to be in the same condition that Protestantism was in 1828. For my part, if we are to have Free Trade, I, who honour genius, prefer that such measures should be proposed by the honourable member for Stockport [Mr. Cobden] than by one who, though skilful in Parliamentary manœuvres, has tampered with the generous confidence of a great people and a great party. For myself, I care not what may be the result. Dissolve, if you please, the Parliament, whom you have betrayed, and appeal to the people, who I believe mistrust you. For me there remains this at least, the opportunity for expressing thus publicly my belief that a Conservative Government is an organised hypocrisy.’

This speech became famous. O’Connell, who, like Disraeli himself, bore no malice, when asked his opinion of it said it was all excellent except the peroration, and that was matchless. Disraeli, who had calmly watched the effect of his assaults, told his sister that ‘Peel was stunned and stupefied, lost his head, and vacillating between silence and spleen, spoke much and weakly, assuring me that I had not hurt his feelings, that he would never reciprocate personalities, having no venom, &c. &c.’

A wasp which you cannot kill buzzing round your face and stinging when it has a chance will try the patience of the wisest. The Maynooth grant might have been a safe subject, for no one had advocated justice to Ireland more strongly than Disraeli; but he chose to treat it as a bid for the Irish vote. He called Peel ‘a great Parliamentary middleman,’ swindling both the parties that he professed to serve, and with deadly ingenuity he advised the Roman Catholic members to distrust a man ‘whose bleak shade had fallen on the sunshine of their hopes for a quarter of a century.’

Driven beside himself at last, either on this or on some similar occasion, I have been assured that Peel forgot his dignity and asked a distinguished friend to carry a challenge from him to his reviler. The friend, unwilling to give Disraeli such a triumph and more careful of Peel’s reputation than Peel himself, did not merely refuse, but threatened, if the matter was pursued farther, to inform the police.[9]

Disraeli asked Lord John Russell if he was not weary of being dragged at the triumphal car of a conqueror who had not conquered him in fair fight. ‘Habitual perfidy,’ he said, ‘was not high policy of state.’ He invited the Whig leader to assist him ‘in dethroning the dynasty of deception and putting an end to the intolerable yoke of official despotism and Parliamentary imposture.’

THE CORN LAWS

Though the Free-Traders were revolutionising the tariff old-fashioned statesmen on both sides still hesitated at the entire abolition of the Corn Laws. It had been long assumed that without some protection the soil of England must fall out of cultivation. The Corn Law Leaguers were prepared even for that consummation, although they denied the probability of it. Disraeli, laying aside his personalities, showed in a noble passage that when he chose he could rise to the level of a great subject. He said—

‘The leading spirits on the benches I see before me have openly declared their opinion that if there were not an acre of land cultivated in England it would not be the worse for this country. You have all of you in open chorus announced your object to be the monopoly of the commerce of the universe, to make this country the workshop of the world. Your system and ours are exactly contrary. We invite union; we believe that national prosperity can only be produced by the prosperity of all classes. You prefer to remain in isolated splendour and solitary magnificence. But, believe me, I speak not as your enemy when I say it will be an exception to the principles which seem hitherto to have ruled society if you can maintain the success at which you aim without the possession of that permanence and stability which the territorial principle alone can afford. Although you may for a moment flourish after their destruction, although your ports may be filled with shipping, your factories smoke on every plain, and your forges flame in every city, I see no reason why you should form an exception to that which the page of history has mournfully recorded, that you should not fade like Tyrian dye and moulder like the Venetian palaces.’

The great Whig peers, who were the largest of the territorial magnates, were not yet prepared to cut their own throats. Lord John was still for his eight-shilling duty. Peel was for a sliding scale which would lower the duty without extinguishing it. But, as Disraeli observed, ‘there is nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident than in politics. They baffle the forethought of statesmen and control even the apparently inflexible laws of national development and decay.’ In the midst of the debate on the customs duties came the Irish famine, and the Corn Laws in any shape were doomed. Protection might have been continued in a moderate form if this catastrophe had not occurred, provided the lords of the soil could have reverted to the practice of their forefathers and looked on their rents as the revenue of their estates, to be expended on the welfare of their dependents. But it was not in them and could not come out of them. On the top of distress in England followed the destruction of the sole means of support which the recklessness of the Irish proprietors had left to five millions of peasants. Sir Robert Peel informed his Cabinet that the duties on grain must be suspended by order of Council, and that if once removed they could never be reimposed. The Cabinet split; Lord Stanley left him. He felt himself that if the Corn Laws were to be repealed he was not the statesman who ought to do it. He resigned, but he could not escape his fate. Lord John Russell could not form a Ministry and ‘handed the poisoned chalice back to Peel,’ who was forced to return and fulfil his ungracious office. He announced at the opening of the session of 1846 that the debates had convinced him not only of the impolicy but of the injustice of the Corn Laws, and he warned his followers that if they defeated him on a question of their personal interests ‘an ancient monarchy and a proud aristocracy might not be found compatible with a reformed House of Commons.’ The intimation and the threat were received with silent dismay. Disraeli alone was able to give voice to their indignation, and in the style of which he had made himself such a master he said that he at least was not one of the converts; he had been sent to the House to advocate protection, and to protection he adhered. In bitter and memorable words he compared Peel to the Turkish admiral who had been sent out to fight Mehemet Ali, and had carried his fleet into the harbour at Alexandria, alleging as his excuse that he had himself an objection to war, that the struggle was useless, and that he had accepted the command only to betray his master. Up to this time the Tory party had but half liked Disraeli. Many of his utterances in the House and out of it had a communistic taint upon them. Now, forlorn and desperate, a helpless flock deserted by the guardian whom they trusted, they cheered him with an enthusiasm which is only given to an accepted chief. ‘So keen was the feeling and so spurring the point of honour that a flock deserted by their shepherds should not be led, as was intended, to the slaughter-house without a struggle, that a stimulus to exertion was given which had been rarely equalled in the House of Commons.’

Lord George Bentinck sold his racehorses and converted himself into a politician with a vigour of which no one had suspected him of being the possessor. Bentinck in youth had been Canning’s secretary. He was then a moderate Whig, but had deserted politics for the turf. He was roused out of his amusements by the menaced overthrow of the principles in which he had been bred. His sense of honour was outraged by this second instance of what he regarded as Peel’s double-dealing, and the Tories, whose pride would have been wounded by submitting avowedly to be led by an adventurer, were reconciled to Disraeli as second in command while they had Bentinck for his coadjutor and nominal chief. After the Peelites had separated from them they were still a powerful minority. If parties could but be forced back into their natural positions ‘they could still exercise the legitimate influence of an Opposition in criticising details and insisting on modifications.’ Free trade ‘could be better contended against when openly and completely avowed than when brought forward by one who had obtained power by professing his hostility to it.’ They were betrayed and they had a right to be angry; for Peel only, as parties stood, could carry repeal complete, and it was they who had given Peel his power.