From the first Disraeli compassed his reconciliation of new ideas with ancient institutions on definite principles, at once national and constructive, as opposed to destructive and international theories. He desired it through engraftment, not uprootal; through the defence and development of a constitution which is, in fact, the British character expressed by the modulations of the national voice, and not by the shouts of mechanical majorities. He wished in every case to preserve its efficiency by strengthening its tone and enlarging its vents; while, in the process, he displayed an insight into the instincts of classes which the conversance of genius with ideas can alone empower. Of modern, of cosmopolitan “Liberalism,” he said, as late as 1872, that its drift and spirit were “to attack the institutions of the country under the name of reform, and to make war on the manners and customs of the people of this country under the pretext of progress.”
What then were the “new ideas” and the “old institutions”?
That form of government which is most national will be best, because the least liable to sudden and social revolutions; and that form will be most national which is most genuinely representative; while true representation is one of power distributed, not centred. It follows that any Government that does not mirror the nation will break down. This was the real meaning of the French Revolution.
“... ‘You will observe one curious trait,’ said Sidonia to Coningsby, ‘in the history of this country—the depository of power is always unpopular. As we see that the Barons, the Church, and the King have in turn devoured each other, and that the Parliament, the last devourer, remains, it is impossible to resist the impression that this body also is doomed to be destroyed.’—‘Where then would you look for hope?’—‘In what is more powerful than laws and institutions, and without which the best laws and the most skilful institutions may be a dead letter and the very means of tyranny, in the national character. It is not in the increased feebleness of its institutions that I see the peril of England; it is in the decline of its character as a community.... You may have a corrupt Government and a pure community; you may have a corrupt community and a pure Administration. Which would you elect?’—‘Neither,’ said Coningsby, ‘I wish to see a people full of faith, and a Government full of duty.’”
Are the modern ideas of untempered democracy—Carlyle’s “despair of finding any heroes to govern you”—compatible with real representation, as contrasted with the mechanism of elective systems or the shams of paper constitutions? Can these ideas ever prove expressive of true nationality—the character of a united people—as opposed to the conflicting instincts of unreconciled races, or the factious claims of divergent groups? Is not the mechanical subordination to the “State” of Socialism hostile to an individual “nationality”? How, in the ferment of modern progress, can the new wine be prevented from bursting the old bottles? How can government and free action, independence and inter-dependence, be allied in living reality? How can opinion be organised into allegiance to leadership? How can traditions be rendered less formal? How can discipline and development, authority and elasticity, combine? How can the machinery of national custom be brought into real accord with popular aspirations, and the mainstay of character with the modern speed of movement? “Certainly,” as Carlyle insisted, “it is the hugest question ever heretofore propounded to mankind.”
In the proem to the Revolutionary Epick, Disraeli says that the French Revolution marks the greatest political crisis since the Siege of Troy. The paroxysm of that Revolution produced two hollow fictions, the “Rights of Man” and “the Sovereignty of the People.”
Before illustrating the train of Disraeli’s ideas, let me touch on these two doctrines.
The Rights of Man. What is the real meaning of a dogma which annihilates the duties of citizens in declaring the licence of their “rights;” in affirming personal claims as distinguished from popular or legal privileges; in destroying the community by exalting the person?
It was based on Rousseau’s figment of a “Return to Nature.”
All “Returns to Nature” are, if we reflect, a harking back to chaos, a denial of the whole self-developing social state which God has ordained for man. They are the protests of instinct against order, of “the People” against “the Nation,” of isolation against fusion, of “naturalism” against “spiritualism.” One way or the other, they signify relapses into brute force and animal conflict.