Although “Equality” ignores alike the instinct and the clue of “race,” it asserts in practice the pandemonium of race-warfare; because in imagining that man is born equipped, it ignores his great acquirement of “nationality,” which blends the reconcilables of “race” into one ideal whole—a league of common traditions, language, habits, institutions, duties, and privileges—of “solidarity”—without the bond of blood or the necessity for bloodshed. Nationality thus brings the specific qualities of races into the common stock. Disraeli has often harped on the theme that a “nation” is no “aggregate of atoms,” but a corporate individuality; and indeed the force of individuality lies at the root of all his conceptions. But in truth the whole fiction of “natural equality” springs from a sort of native envy. As Goethe sings—
“Men stick at reaching what is great,
Yet only grudge an equal state.
To deem your equals all you know—
No envy worse the world can show.”
Crises, according to him in 1833, were determined by causes far other than these figments of “natural” laws—
“... When I examine the state of European society with the unimpassioned spirit which the philosopher can alone command, I perceive that it is in a state of transition—one from feudal to federal principles. This I conceive to be the sole and secret cause of all the convulsions that have occurred and are to occur.”[52]
All this has proved, and is proving true. The civil and legal “equality” of united nationality and of unifying empire is replacing the material “equality” of classes or of individuals.
“Natural” equality means “physical” equality, which was the true gist of the many cries of the French Revolution. But its hurricane swept away classes and privilege alone; the “equality” it created, that is to say, was social and civil. Of civil “equality” Disraeli was always the spokesman; for in England, civil equality means abolition of monopolies. Privilege, as the ennobling boon of merit, stands open to all, and the limits of the political orders or social classes to which it is attached, are corrected by the wide freedom of public opinion and discussion. “I hold that civil equality,” said Disraeli at Glasgow in 1873, “the equality of all subjects before the law, and a law which recognises the personal rights of all subjects, is the only foundation of a perfect commonwealth.” His most striking utterances in The Press from 1853 to 1859, and this Glasgow address, are perhaps his most notable commentaries on this theme.
These are no mere subtleties. “Physical equality” has exercised a very practical bearing on the doctrines of the Manchester School and their relations to Sir Robert Peel’s double reform, above all to those interests of Labour which both affected. I shall show this in my next chapter.[53] Suffice it now to say that Disraeli descried that in adopting the “Right to physical happiness” doctrine of Manchester, at the very moment when he unshackled commerce and undid the Corn Laws, Peel had adopted a principle which logically demands an “unlimited employment of labour”—a thing inconsistent at once with his restriction of Labour by removing the restraints on competition, and, as Disraeli thought, with the very existence of states and of nations. Peel thus became unconsciously cosmopolitan, at the very juncture when he settled commerce and unsettled labour—
“The leading principle of this new school,” explained Disraeli, treating of “equality” in 1873, “is that there is no happiness which is not material, and that every living being has a right to share in that physical welfare. The first obstacle to their purpose is found in the rights of private property. Therefore these must be abolished. But the social system must be established on some principle, and therefore for the rights of property they would substitute the rights of Labour. Now these cannot fully be enjoyed, if there be any limit to employment. The great limit to employment, to the rights of Labour, and to the physical and material equality of man is found in the division of the world into states and nations. Thus, as civil equality would abolish privilege, social equality would destroy classes, so material and physical equality strikes at the principle of patriotism, and is prepared to abrogate countries.”
It was just this perception that enabled Disraeli nearly thirty years earlier to predict—as we shall see—so much that has come and is coming to pass.
The third cry of the French Revolution was Human Brotherhood. The Christian ideal of inter-nationality, which, it is to be hoped, may ultimately be realised through the Brotherhood of Nations, is the Brotherhood of Man under the Fatherhood of God. But the fraternity of revolution eliminated both the Brotherhood of Nations and the Fatherhood of God. The result was a murderous anarchy—a Brotherhood of Cain.