The Crimean war he was unable to prevent, but as good a judge as Cobden believed that if Disraeli and Lord Derby had not been turned out of office in 1852 they would have prevented it, and a million lives and a hundred millions of English money, which that business cost, need not have been sacrificed over a struggle which events proved to be useless. Much was to be said for a policy which would have frankly met and accepted the Emperor Nicholas’s overtures to Sir Hamilton Seymour. If a joint pressure of all the European Powers had been brought to bear on Turkey, internal reforms could have been forced upon her, and preparation could have been made peacefully for the disappearance, ultimately inevitable, of the Turks out of Europe. If the state of public opinion forbade this (and Disraeli himself would certainly never have adopted such a course) something was to be said also for adhering firmly from the first to the traditionary dogmas on the maintenance of the integrity of the Turkish Empire, and this the Conservatives were prepared to do. Nothing at all was to be said for hesitation and waiting upon events. The Tzar was deceived into supposing that while we talked we meant nothing, and we drifted into a war of which the only direct result was a waste of money which, if wisely used, might have drained the Bog of Allen, turned the marshes of the Shannon into pasture ground, and have left in Ireland some traces of English rule to which we could look with satisfaction.
The indirect consequences of fatuities are sometimes worse than their immediate effects. It was known over the world that England, France, Turkey, and Italy had combined to endeavour to crush Russia, and had succeeded only in capturing half of a single Russian city. The sepoy army heard of our failures, and the centenary of the battle of Plassy was signalised by the Great Mutiny. The rebellion was splendidly met. It was practically confined to the army itself, and over the largest part of the peninsula the general population remained loyal; but the murder of the officers, the cruelties to the women and children, and the detailed barbarities which were paraded in the newspapers, drove the English people into fury. Carried away by generous but unwise emotion, they clamoured for retaliatory severities, which, if inflicted, would have been fatal to our reputation and eventually perhaps to the Indian Empire. Disraeli’s passionless nature was moved to a warmth which was rare with him. Such feelings, he said, were no less than ‘heinous.’ We boasted that we ruled India in the interests of humanity; were we to stain our name by copying the ferocities of our revolted subjects?
CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA
His influence was no less fortunately exerted at the more dangerous crisis of the American civil war. On all occasions English instinct inclines to take the weaker side, but for many reasons there was in England a particular and wide-spread inclination for the South. There was a general feeling that the American colonies had revolted against ourselves; if they quarrelled, and a minority of them desired independence, the minority had as good a right to shake off the North as the thirteen original States to shake off the mother country. The North in trying to coerce the South was contradicting its own principle. Professional politicians even among the Liberals were of opinion that the transatlantic republic was dangerously strong, that it was disturbing the balance of power, and that a division or dissolution of it would be of general advantage. Those among us who disliked republican institutions, and did not wish them to succeed, rejoiced at their apparent failure, and would willingly have lent their help to make it complete.
The Northern Americans were distasteful to the English aristocracy. The Southern planters were supposed to be gentlemen with whom they had more natural affinity. The war was condemned by three-quarters of the London and provincial press, and when the Emperor Napoleon invited us to join with him in recognising the South and breaking the blockade it perhaps rested with Disraeli to determine how these overtures should be received. Lord Palmerston was notoriously willing. Of the Tory party the greater part would, if left to themselves, have acquiesced with enthusiasm. With a word of encouragement from their leader a great majority in Parliament would have given Palmerston a support which would have allowed him to disregard the objections of some of his colleagues. But that word was not spoken. Disraeli was as mistaken as most of us on the probable results of the conflict. He supposed, as the world generally supposed, that it must leave North America divided, like Europe, into two or more independent States; but he advised and he insisted that the Americans must be left to shape their fortunes in their own way. England had no right to interfere.
Events move fast. Mankind make light of perils escaped, and the questions which distracted the world a quarter of a century ago are buried under the anxieties and passions of later problems. Hereafter, when the changes and chances of the present reign are impartially reviewed, Disraeli will be held to have served his country well by his conduct at this critical contingency.
In domestic politics he was a partisan chief. His speeches in Parliament and out of it were dictated by the exigencies of the passing moment. We do not look for the real opinions of a leading counsel in his forensic orations. We need not expect to find Disraeli’s personal convictions in what he occasionally found it necessary to say.
There did, however, break from him remarkable utterances on special occasions which deserve and will receive remembrance. Two extracts only can be introduced here, one on the state of the nation in 1849, when he spoke for the first time as the acknowledged Conservative leader, the other on Parliamentary Reform in 1865, the subject on which his own action two years later called out Carlyle’s scornful comment. The first referred to the changed condition of things brought about by the adoption of Free Trade.
EFFECTS OF FREE TRADE
‘In past times,’ he said, ‘every Englishman was taught to believe that he occupied a position better than the analogous position of individuals of his order in any other country in the world. The British merchant was looked on as the most creditable, the wealthiest, the most trustworthy merchant in the world. The English farmer ranked as the most skilful agriculturist.... The English manufacturer was acknowledged as the most skilful and successful, without a rival in ingenuity and enterprise. So with the British sailor; the name was a proverb. And chivalry was confessed to have found a last resort in the breast of a British officer. It was the same in the learned professions. Our physicians and lawyers held higher positions than those of any other countries.... In this manner English society was based upon the aristocratic principle in its complete and most magnificent development.