I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live. There is no man in England who is less likely to speak irreverently of the crown and monarchy of England than I am; but crowns, coronets, mitres, military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge empire are, in my view, all trifles, light as air, and not worth considering, unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment, and happiness among the great body of the people. Palaces, baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make a nation. The nation in every country dwells in the cottage; and unless the light of your constitution can shine there, unless the beauty of your legislation and the excellence of your statesmanship are impressed there on the feelings and condition of the people, rely upon it you have yet to learn the duties of government.
I have not, as you have observed, pleaded that this country should remain without adequate and scientific means of defence. I acknowledge it to be the duty of your statesmen, acting upon the known opinions and principles of ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in the country, at all times, with all possible moderation, but with all possible efficiency, to take steps which shall preserve order within and on the confines of your kingdom. But I shall repudiate and denounce the expenditure of every shilling, the engagement of every man, the employment of every ship, which has no object but intermeddling in the affairs of other countries, and endeavoring to extend the boundaries of an empire which is already large enough to satisfy the greatest ambition, and I fear is much too large for the highest statesmanship to which any man has yet attained.
The most ancient of profane historians has told us that the Scythians of his time were a very warlike people, and that they elevated an old cimeter upon a platform as a symbol of Mars, for to Mars alone, I believe, they built altars and offered sacrifices. To this cimeter they offered sacrifices of horses and cattle, the main wealth of the country, and more costly sacrifices than to all the rest of their gods. I often ask myself whether we are at all advanced in one respect beyond those Scythians. What are our contributions to charity, to education, to morality, to religion, to justice, and to civil government, when compared with the wealth we expend in sacrifices to the old cimeter? Two nights ago I addressed in this hall a vast assembly composed to a great extent of your countrymen who have no political power, who are at work from the dawn of the day to the evening, and who have therefore limited means of informing themselves on these great subjects. Now I am privileged to speak to a somewhat different audience. You represent those of your great community who have a more complete education, who have on some points greater intelligence, and in whose hands reside the power and influence of the district. I am speaking, too, within the hearing of those whose gentle nature, whose finer instincts, whose purer minds, have not suffered as some of us have suffered in the turmoil and strife of life. You can mould opinion, you can create political power;—you cannot think a good thought on this subject and communicate it to your neighbors,—you cannot make these points topics of discussion in your social circles and more general meetings, without affecting sensibly and speedily the course which the government of your country will pursue.
May I ask you, then, to believe, as I do most devoutly believe, that the moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but that it was written as well for nations, and for nations great as this of which we are citizens. If nations reject and deride that moral law, there is a penalty which will inevitably follow. It may not come at once, it may not come in our lifetime; but rely upon it, the great Italian is not a poet only, but a prophet, when he says:
“The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite,
Nor yet doth linger.”
We have experience, we have beacons, we have landmarks enough. We know what the past has cost us, we know how much and how far we have wandered, but we are not left without a guide. It is true we have not, as an ancient people had, Urim and Thummim—those oraculous gems on Aaron’s breast,—from which to take counsel, but we have the unchangeable and eternal principles of the moral law to guide us, and only so far as we walk by that guidance can we be permanently a great nation, or our people a happy people.
LORD BEACONSFIELD.
In 1825 the novel-reading public of England was thrown into not a little excitement by the appearance of a curious but brilliant work of imagination entitled “Vivian Grey.” This piece of literary pyrotechny was rapidly followed by “The Young Duke,” “Henrietta Temple,” “Contarini Fleming,” “Alroy,” and other curious compounds of fiction and politics. The name of the author did not at first appear; but it soon came to be known that the series was the product of a student of law, not yet twenty-five years of age, and the son of Isaac Disraeli, the author of the “Curiosities of Literature.” This young novelist was described by the society journals of the day as a man who frequented Gore House, and not only poured out upon society there torrents of remarkable talk on literary and political affairs, but made himself amusingly conspicuous by his decorations of gaudy waistcoats and gold chains. It came soon to be universally known in London society that this eccentric genius, though educated in private under his father’s care, had been a great reader of literature and history, and had come to have very definite notions in regard to almost every question under the sun.
Flushed with the success of his literary experiences, young Disraeli travelled extensively in Europe and the East, and then returned in 1831, resolved to secure a seat in Parliament. In his first efforts he was not successful; but in 1837, the year of Queen Victoria’s accession, the electors of Maidstone gave him a seat, and accordingly he entered the House of Commons in the thirty-third year of his age.