It would, we believe, be scarcely unjust to apply the same remark to Disraeli, notwithstanding his literary fame. He is too crotchety ever to be the great leader of a great party. What Willis said of him was true: "In a great crisis, with the nation in a tempest, Disraeli would flash across the darkness very finely; but he will never do for the calm right hand of a premier." His literary reputation preceded his political celebrity, and will outlast it. His mixed politics—his dubious radical-toryism or tory-radicalism—like the plus and minus in an equation, cancelled each other, neutralized his influence, and confounded his arguments by mutual disagreement. He discarded triennial parliaments and vote by ballot, defected to the Tories after coquetting with the radicals, and thus laid himself open to O'Connell's keenest abuse. "His life," the Liberator said, "was a living lie. There were miscreants among the chosen people of God, and it must certainly have been from one of these that Disraeli descended. He possesses just the qualities of the impenitent thief who died upon the cross, whose name, I verily believe, must have been Disraeli." Certain it is, that even the friends and admirers of Mr. Disraeli repose in him little confidence. They never feel sure as to what he really is, or what he may become. He is an enigma and a sphinx. He has often embraced principles to make himself a name, and he has often sustained them in spite of unpopularity. "It is quite a mistake," he said on one occasion, "to suppose I ever hated Peel. On the contrary, he is the only man under whom I should like to have served. But I saw very clearly he was the only man it would 'make' me to attack, and I attacked him." Here is a key to Disraeli's character. The only premier he would like to have served under was one whose ruling principle was expediency; yet even this premier he was willing to oppose in order to rise in the political and social scale. So he, at the head of "Young England," denounced free trade in corn, and applied the system of protection to the state religion. He was, like Lord Derby, intensely opposed to the disestablishment and disendowment of the Protestant Church in Ireland; but he was willing to endow Catholicity in Ireland to a certain extent, and thus make the state to be, like himself, an assemblage of contradictions—a builder up at the same moment of Babylon and of Zion.
All roads, it is said, lead to Rome; and in like manner it may be affirmed that all English prime ministers since the revolution have led Rome-ward more or less. All have been employed in raising the valleys and levelling the hills, that a straight path might be made for the majestic march of the restored and ancient faith. Every thing has told in favor of the gens lucifuga, the despised and persecuted Catholics, who shunned the light of day. If one and the other premier sought to oppress them anew, as Walpole did in his day, and Lord John Russell in our own, the unrighteous attempt recoiled sooner or later on its promoters, and ample reparation was made in the long run by a sense of justice being awakened in the popular mind.
The prime ministers of England, be it remembered, have been in some sense its kings—nay, more than kings. The real king has often been a cipher; the queen—as for example, Queen Caroline—has been above her lord; and the premier—as, for instance, Sir Robert Walpole—has controlled them both. And if this was the case in the last century, much more is it so now. England is in fact a republic, though nominally a monarchy. It is an aristocratic republic; and the prime minister being responsible to parliament, and representing for the time being the voice of parliament and the popular will in the council chamber of the sovereign, is himself the chief executive in the government, and holds in his hands more real power than any one besides in the kingdom. The monarch before whom he bows, and to whom he seems to defer, is in reality a puppet of which he works the wires. King George IV. was as nothing compared to King Wellington, and King William IV. was but a middy under the command of Earl Grey. Queen Victoria at the present moment (and we say it with sincere respect for that excellent and sovereign lady) is but a shadow to the substance Gladstone, and will be but a shadow to any prime minister who may succeed him. It was not so entirely with her grandfather. He was really a king. He ruled himself, and often very unwisely; but times have changed. Political and religious emancipation has conferred on Catholics an importance in the state which is altogether new, and conversions on a large scale during a quarter of a century have been a concurrent cause of their occupying a high and honorable position in society. No prime minister, therefore, can now ignore them, much less can he molest them. In every session of parliament some obloquy cast on them in former ages is removed. The lord chancellor of Ireland is now a Catholic, and very soon the lord lieutenant of Ireland may be so too. Every office of state, even the highest, will in all probability be in a short time opened to the Catholics, and the unjust law which excludes them from the crown, and prohibits members of the royal family from marrying them, will be swept away. If a Catholic were to be made premier now, it would not be more surprising than it was that Wellington should emancipate Catholics in 1829 or that Gladstone should demolish the Irish establishment in 1869. Providence has wrought wonderfully in behalf of the church already in England, and what has been done should be taken by us as a pledge of what is yet to be. Meanwhile, it will be well to remember gratefully, where gratitude is due, the labors of Protestant prime ministers for the removal of Catholic disabilities; and in order to do so adequately, we must make every allowance for the prejudices in which they were brought up, and the obstacles which lay so thickly in their path. We must not deny them all merit because they have yielded to the force of circumstances, but believe that they probably would not thus have yielded if there had not been in them some noble and virtuous impulse, some personal attachment to truth and justice. The stronger their original repugnance to concession, the more deeply they felt convinced in earlier years of the importance of maintaining intact the Protestant constitution in church and state, the more credit assuredly is due to them for having broken the spell of their youth, admitted that their ideas were erroneous, and faced a thousand reproaches and unmeasured obloquy in their determination to place the liberties of their fellow-subjects on a broader and better basis. The day has arrived in England when the Protestant premier and the Catholic primate shake hands, not merely as private friends, but also as representative men; and when they were seen not long ago in familiar intercourse at the foot of the steps of the throne in the House of Lords, they were for the moment living signs and symbols of that vast and happy change which has come over the relations between the English government and its Catholic subjects.
FROM THE SPANISH.
LUCIFER'S EAR.
Fernan. Come, Uncle Romance, tell me one of your stories.
Uncle R. But, Señor Don Fernan, if they are not worth the telling?
Fernan. Never mind; you must know that many people are pleased with Andalusian stories, and I am told that they write them.
Uncle R. Then what I tell your honor is going to be printed! It makes me laugh; for you see I thought that those high-flying folks who go to college liked nothing but Latinity. However, with the help of God, I shall do as your worship commands, since those that give us good-will aid us to live, and gratitude is a duty that none but the base-born refuse to pay. I will go on telling; your worship will go on writing it down, and leaving out mistakes, and shaving off the roughness of my way of saying things, till it sounds like print; and your worship can write to those you-sirs, "My journeyman and I made this between us. If it is good, I did it; and my journeyman, if it is bad." Shall it be a story of enchantment?