‘You set to work to change the basis on which this society was established. You disdain to attempt the accomplishment of the best, and what you want to achieve is the cheapest. The infallible consequence is to cause the impoverishment and embarrassment of the people. But impoverishment is not the only ill consequence which the new system may produce. The wealth of England is not merely material wealth. It does not merely consist in the number of acres we have tilled and cultivated, nor in our havens filled with shipping, nor in our unrivalled factories, nor in the intrepid industry of our miners. Not these merely form the principal wealth of our country; we have a more precious treasure, and that is the character of the people. This is what you have injured. In destroying what you call class legislation you have destroyed the noble and indefatigable ambition which has been the source of all our greatness, of all our prosperity, of all our powers.’
The noble ambition of which Disraeli was speaking was the ambition of men to do their work better and more honestly than others, and the rage for cheapness has indeed destroyed this, and destroyed with it English integrity. We are impatiently told that the schools will set it right again. Character, unfortunately, is not to be formed by passing standards, second or first. It is the most difficult of all attainments. It is, or ought to be, the single aim of every government deserving the name, and there is a curious remark of Aristotle that while aristocratic governments recognised the obligation and acted upon it, democracies invariably forget that such an obligation exists. They assume that character will grow of itself. Of character ὁπόσον οὖν, ever so little would suffice, and so the old republics went to ruin, as they deserved to go. No subject deserves more anxious reflection. Yet Disraeli is the only modern English statesman who has given it a passing thought.
The second passage referred to the playing with the Constitution which had been going on ever since 1832. Lord Grey had dispossessed the gentry and given the power to the middle classes. The operatives, the numerical majority, were left unrepresented. Neither party wished to enfranchise them, for fear they might be tempted to inroads upon property. Each was afraid to confess the truth, and thus year after year the extension of the suffrage was proposed dishonestly and dropped with satisfaction. Lord John Russell made his last experiment in 1865, and Disraeli gave the House a remarkable warning, which, if he afterwards neglected it himself, the statesmen who are now with light hearts proposing to break the Constitution to pieces may reflect upon with advantage.
A WARNING
‘There is no country at the present moment that exists under the same circumstances and under the same conditions as the people of this realm. You have an ancient, powerful, and richly endowed Church, and perfect religious liberty. You have unbroken order and complete freedom. You have landed estates as large as the Romans, combined with a commercial enterprise such as Carthage and Venice united never equalled. And you must remember that this peculiar country, with these strong contrasts, is not governed by force. It is governed by a most singular series of traditionary influences, which generation after generation cherishes and preserves because it knows that they embalm custom and represent law. And with this you have created the greatest empire of modern times. You have amassed a capital of fabulous amount. You have devised and sustained a system of credit still more marvellous, and you have established a scheme so vast and complicated of labour and industry that the history of the world affords no parallel to it. And these mighty creations are out of all proportion to the essential and indigenous elements and resources of the country. If you destroy that state of society remember this: England cannot begin again. There are countries which have gone through great suffering. You have had in the United States of America a protracted and fratricidal civil war, which has lasted for four years; but if it lasted for four years more, vast as would be the disaster and desolation, when ended, the United States might begin again, because the United States would then only be in the same condition that England was in at the end of the wars of the Roses, when probably she had not three millions of population, with vast tracts of virgin soil and mineral treasures not only undeveloped but undreamt of. Then you have France. France had a real revolution in this century, a real revolution, not merely a political but a social revolution. The institutions of the country were uprooted, the order of society abolished, even the landmarks and local names removed and erased. But France could begin again. France had the greatest spread of the most exuberant soil in Europe, and a climate not less genial. She had, and always had, comparatively a limited population, living in a most simple manner. France, therefore, could begin again. But England, the England we know, the England we live in, the England of which we are proud, could not begin again. I do not mean to say that after great trouble England would become a howling wilderness, or doubt that the good sense of the people would to some degree prevail, and some fragments of the national character survive; but it would not be the old England, the England of power and tradition and capital, that now exists. It is not in the nature of things. And, sir, under these circumstances I hope the House, when the question is one impeaching the character of our Constitution, will hesitate; that it will sanction no step that has a tendency to democracy, but that it will maintain the ordered state of free England in which we live.’
[CHAPTER XI]
Literary work—‘Tancred; or, the New Crusade’—Modern philosophy—The ‘Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation’—‘Life of Lord George Bentinck’—Disraeli’s religious views—Revelation as opposed to science—Dislike and dread of Rationalism—Religion and statesmanship—The national creed the supplement of the national law—Speech in the theatre at Oxford—Disraeli on the side of the angels.
‘TANCRED’