Throughout the preceding century two broad aspects of politics, that is to say of applied national energy, present themselves in England. They were and remain divergent, but they are and remain mutually instructive and indispensable.
The one regards our kingdom as an elastic society, the outcome of native habits expressing national temperament; as a soil of distinctive character and capacity, to which new plants, if destined to flourish, must be acclimatised, but on to which, or against which, they must never be forced.
The other—the “philosophic” school—regards the soil as a mere medium to be exhaustively manured by chemical processes for the introduction of growths of every origin, as a sort of “subtropical garden.” It perceives an idea suitable to other communities or other conjunctures, and immediately hastens to transplant it. In like manner it perceives an institution suitable to the race and temper of England, but unsuitable to some alien race and temper. It is at once for forcible adoption. It prefers the rigid logic of abstract notions to the flexibilities of human nature. Its attitude is mechanical instead of being sympathetic.
The one is in its essence national; the other, if we reflect, international. The aim of the one is the evolution of individuality embodied in a nation; that of the other, the ultimate effacement of nations, and their replacement by cosmopolitanism.
These are the logical issues of each system. With the former Burke identified himself, when he recoiled from following his party into the anti-national abstractions of the French Revolution. With the latter Mr. Gladstone identified himself, when he broke loose from the national idea, and advocated the “right” of every small community to “govern” itself. The one depends on popular privileges and class responsibilities evenly distributed—the outcome of national treaty and compromise, the tact born of struggle, not of upheaval. The other hinges on inherent “rights,” which are infinite, ubiquitous, abstract, and indefinite.
Of the former, from first to last, Disraeli, like Canning before him, was a fearless exponent. “Change,” he said in his famous Edinburgh speech of 1867, “is inevitable, but the point is whether that change shall be caused only in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws, the traditions of the people, or whether it shall be carried in deference to abstract principles and arbitrary and general doctrines.... The national system, although it may occasionally represent the prejudices of a nation, never injures the national character, while the philosophic system, though it may occasionally improve ... the condition of the country, precipitates progress, may occasion revolution and destroy states....” His attitude to the repeal of the Corn Laws depended, as I shall prove in another chapter, on this dominant idea. It is in close connection with that idea of personality which I have already characterised, for nationality is itself the ideal personality which combines races in communion. It is also in close connection with that mode of government which seeks salvation from society and not from the State; and it is bound up with all the characteristics that distinguish a “nation” from a “people.” Disraeli’s achievement was to adjust the spirit of England to the spirit of the age.
Our two parties are, after all, only the strategical forces in the big campaign of ideas. Without great generals they constantly tend to forget the issues which nominally enlist them.
At the period when Disraeli first stood on the hustings, “Reform” had been forced on the Whigs by the “Radicals,” just as “Repeal” was to be forced some twelve years later on the Conservatives by the Cobdenites. To be a “Radical” committed one to neither of the legitimate camps. The Whigs had entered on their kingdom after long years of hopeless exclusion. They were bent on engrossing office, and none detested the new-fangled doctrines more than Lord Grey. Disraeli’s purpose from the very first was to widen and popularise Toryism, but never to maintain the exclusive system of the Whigs in power by the popular machinery to which they so often resorted. In a purged and quickened Conservatism lurked irresistible possibilities, true benefit to the nation and empire at large, and a golden occasion for himself.
I think that if the oil could have blent with the vinegar, if Peel could ever have coalesced with Lord John Russell, Disraeli would have had less chance in politics, and must have been thrown back on literature.
His consistency stands out prominent in review. It is one of ideas. It is only by dint of long retrospect over a whole career that we can decide in the case of any statesman whether he has controlled his phases, or drifted with them.