The Earl of Beaconsfield

by James Anthony Froude

The Eastern question was beginning to simmer when Disraeli came into power, but the symptoms had not yet become acute and he had leisure for internal politics. He desired to strengthen Conservative institutions. Of these the Church of England ought to have been the strongest, but it was distracted by internal disorders. The Romanising party was the counterpart of Radicalism. The original Tractarians had imagined themselves to be champions of old Tory principles, but revolutionary movements draw instinctively together. Romanisers and Radicals had the common belief that they were wiser than their fathers, that they must have something ‘deeper and truer than satisfied the last century.’ The reformers of the State wished to remodel the Constitution, the Ritualists to restore Church principles and bring back the Mass. The Radical chief sympathised with both of them. They returned his regard; and vast numbers of the clergy fell off from their old allegiance.

Disraeli, keenly as he observed the outer features of the situation, was not entirely at home in such subjects. He did not see that the lay members of the Church, who had once been earnest Protestants, had now grown indifferent about it. If the clergy liked to amuse themselves with altars and vestments and elaborate services the clergy might have their way for all that the laity cared about the matter. Old Tory families still hated Puritans and Puritanism, and had not realised the change of front which made Protestants Conservatives and Radicals into allies of the Papacy. Disraeli believed that an Act of Parliament could check a tendency which ran in a current where legislation could not reach. He passed a Public Worship Act to put down ritualism,[11] and it has been scarcely more effective than Lord John Russell’s demonstration against Papal aggression. This disease has not been checked; acrimonious lawsuits promoted by a few antediluvian Protestant parishioners have failed, and will continue to fail, because public opinion refuses to support the promoters. Suffering priests and bishops pose as martyrs, and there is unwillingness to punish them. By the Constitution the Church of England rests on an Act of Parliament, but sooner than effectively use its controlling power Parliament will consent to disestablishment. The Public Worship Act exasperated the enthusiastic clergy and their friends. It secretly offended not a few of Disraeli’s aristocratic followers. For the purpose for which it was passed it was as ineffectual as, to use President Lincoln’s simile, ‘a Pope’s Bull against a comet,’ and demonstrations which are not followed by action do not add to a statesman’s influence.

THE BERLIN CONFERENCE

This, however, and all other internal subjects lost their interest when Servia rose against the Turks, when the Servian defeat brought the Russians across the Danube, and the passions, the alarms, the panics of the Crimean episode revived in all their frenzy. Circumstances had altered. England had no longer France for an ally. Turkey had then been saved, and allowed a fresh lease of life on condition of mending her administration and behaving better to her Christian subjects. Turkey had amended nothing, and could amend nothing. So far as Turkey was concerned, the only result had been a Turkish loan, and on this the interest had ceased to be paid. Nevertheless the familiar cries rose again. Our old ally was in danger. The Dardanelles were the keys of India. We were threatened on the Indus, we were threatened in the Mediterranean. Quiet voices could get no hearing, and eloquence could be only met by eloquence. Mr. Gladstone, if by his Irish action he had let loose the winds at home, did a service then which must be remembered to his honour. He forced the country to observe what the rule of Turkey meant. He insisted, not entirely in vain, on the indignity, the shame, the dishonour which we should bring on ourselves by taking the side of the Bulgarian assassins. He succeeded in making Disraeli pause at a critical time and preventing measures which might have led to an immediate conflict, and the Turkish successes at Plevna and in Armenia seemed for a time to dispense with the necessity of armed interference. The Turk, it was hoped, would be able to defend his provinces with his own hand. But, as Disraeli said truly, the English are the most enthusiastic people in the world. They have an especial love for courage, and the bravery of the Turks in the field made them forget or disbelieve in the ‘atrocities.’ When Kars fell and Plevna fell, when the Russian armies forced the Balkans in the dead of winter, and the Ottoman resistance collapsed, the storm rose again into a hurricane. Mr. Gladstone and the ‘Daily News’ stood their ground. Disraeli waved aside the horrible story of Turkish cruelties, as, if not false, yet as enormously exaggerated. Such as it was the ferocity had not after all cut deep into Bulgarian memories. If the dead have any knowledge of what is passing upon earth he must laugh in his grave when the Bulgarian survivors of these horrors are now inviting the Turks into an alliance with them against their Russian deliverers. Deeds of violence have been too common in some countries to make a deep impression. The fugitive Macdonalds from Glencoe were lost in astonishment at the interest which political passion had created in the murder of their kinsmen. Public opinion, so far as it expressed itself in words, continued strongly in Disraeli’s favour. He said amidst general applause that he would not allow Turkey to be crushed. He did not desire war, but he was prepared for war if the Russians entered Constantinople, and on two occasions peace hung upon a thread. A plan of campaign was formed, not for local resistance but for war on an universal scale. The British fleet went up within sight of the Golden Horn to cover the Turkish capital. Gallipoli was to be occupied. Turkestan was to be set on fire through the Afghan country; and, I believe, so ambitious was the scheme, another force was to have advanced from the Persian Gulf into Armenia. Not all the Cabinet were prepared for these adventures. Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby resigned, and caused some passing hesitation, and as the Russians left Constantinople unentered that particular crisis passed away. But the Russian conquerors had dictated their own terms of peace, and when Disraeli insisted that the terms should not stand till they had been revised at a European Conference England again applauded and admired. He determined to attend the Conference in person, and the remarkable impression which he produced there was the culminating point of his singular career. On Prince Bismarck, who respects firmness more than eloquence, it was an impression eminently favourable. French is the language generally used at the meetings of European plenipotentiaries. Disraeli spoke French tolerably, and had prepared a French address. It was represented to him, however, that his peculiar power of creating an effect would be impaired by his accent, and he spoke actually in English. There were two points, I believe, on which the peace of Europe hung in the balance, one referring to Batoum, which was not to be fortified; the other to the division of the two Bulgarias, which the treaty of San Stefano had joined. Heavy guns are now mounted at Batoum, and we are none the worse for it. The large Bulgaria, so much dreaded, has become a fact again, with the warm approbation of the anti-Russian Powers. Yet on threads so slight as these the lives or deaths, perhaps, of millions of men at that moment depended. After a stormy debate on the Balkan question Disraeli broke up the Conference and announced that he should return home and take other measures. Russia, at Bismarck’s entreaty, yielded a point which had no substantial significance. Disraeli had the glory of extorting a concession by a menace. We imagine that the days are past when nations can go to war for a point of honour, but we are no wiser than our fathers after all.

PEACE WITH HONOUR

War, however, was avoided, and Disraeli had won his diplomatic victory. He returned to London in a blaze of glory, bringing peace with honour, and all the world sang the praises of the patriot Minister. He thought himself that he had secured the ascendency of the Conservatives for a quarter of a century at least. In 1876 he had passed from the leadership of the House of Commons to the House of Lords, reviving in an earldom the title which he had given to his wife, and which had died with her. He now received the Garter, the most coveted of all English decorations, because bestowed usually of free grace and not for merit, but for him the reward of his unequalled services. Yet it was all hollow. The public welfare, the public security of the Empire had not been advanced a step. Before the shouts had died away we were astonished by a secret treaty with Turkey, by which we had bound ourselves to the future defence of her Asiatic dominions, an obligation which we shall fulfil as much and as little as we fulfilled a similar obligation to Denmark. We had bound ourselves to secure a better administration of the Turkish provinces, an undertaking which we cannot fulfil; and we had acquired an addition to our Empire in Cyprus, a possession of which we can make no use. The country was surprised, and not particularly pleased, but on the whole it was still proud and gratified, and if Disraeli had dissolved Parliament when he returned from Berlin there is little doubt what its verdict would then have been. But he waited, believing himself secure in his achievements, and Fortune, which had stood his friend so long, now turned upon him. The spirit of a great nation called into energy on a grand occasion is the noblest of human phenomena. The pseudo-national spirit of jingoism is the meanest and the most dangerous. A war had been lighted in Afghanistan as part of the Eastern policy. It was easier to kindle than to extinguish. Sir Bartle Frere in South Africa imagined that he too could have an Imperial policy. He went to war with the Kaffirs. He went to war with the Zulus, whom, if he had been wise, he would have helped and favoured as a check upon the ambition of the Boers. A British regiment was cut to pieces. The Zulus in expiation were shot down in thousands and their nationality extinguished. Frere’s policy was his own; Lord Beaconsfield was not responsible for it, and did not approve of it. Yet the war went on.

The Transvaal had been annexed against the will of the people. Disraeli had fallen before that measure had borne its fruits, but he lived to hear of Majuba Hill and the ignominious capitulation in which, in that part of the world also, jingoism came to its miserable end.

The grand chance had been given to English Conservatism, and had been lost in a too ambitious dream. Like drunkards recovering from a debauch and revolting at their own orgies, the constituencies once more recalled the Radicals to power with a fresh impulse to the revolutionary movement, and Disraeli may have reflected too late on the uselessness of embarking on ‘spirited policies,’ which the next swing of the democratic pendulum may reduce to impotence.

DISRAELI AND CARLYLE

His administration was not useless. Unambitious home measures were passed for the comfort or benefit of the people, which may be remembered gratefully when the Berlin Conference is forgotten. His patronage, and especially his literary and art patronage, was generously and admirably exercised. John Leech had for twenty years made him ridiculous in the cartoons in ‘Punch.’ Leech had a pension which would have died with him. Disraeli continued it to his widow and his children. Most notable was his recognition of the duty of the country to bestow some public honour on Thomas Carlyle. For half a century Carlyle had worked his way in disregarded poverty. The wise throughout Europe had long acknowledged in him the most remarkable writer of his age. He had been admired for his genius and reverenced for his stern integrity; the German Empire had bestowed upon him its most distinguished decoration; but in England it is held that the position which an eminent man of letters makes for himself can receive no added lustre from the notice of the Government; and Carlyle had been left severely alone in his modest home at Chelsea under all the changes of Administration, while peerages and titles were scattered among the brewers and the City millionaires. Disraeli, who was a man of intellect as well as a politician, perceived the disgrace which would attach to all parties if such a man as this was allowed to pass away as one of the common herd. Carlyle, indeed, had never spoken of him except with contempt, but it was Disraeli’s special credit that while he never forgot a friend he never remembered a personal affront. He saw at once that no common pension or decoration at so late an hour could atone for the long neglect. In a letter as modest as it was dignified he implied that he did not offer Carlyle a peerage because a hereditary honour would be a mockery to a childless old man; but he did offer in the Queen’s name, and pressed him to accept, the Grand Cross of the Bath, a distinction never before conferred upon any English author, with a life income corresponding to such a rank. Carlyle in his poorest days would never have accepted a pension. Stars and ribands had no attraction for him at any time, and less than none when he had one foot in the grave. He declined, but he was sensible of the compliment, and was touched at the quarter from which it came.