Disraeli determined to settle this question himself, and to settle it by the admission to the franchise of the “working” classes of the country, and not by lowering it to the “man in the street,” or the submerged tenth. In these views he followed the Toryism of Cobbett rather than the Radicalism of Hume. Discussing Lord John Russell’s proposals of 1860 “for the representation of the people” (which, though it adopted the principle of rateability, was, in fact, merely a reduction of the borough franchise to £6, and of the county occupation to £10), Disraeli labelled its “simplicity” as “of a mediæval character, but without any of the inspiration of the feudal system, or any of the genius of the middle ages.” It sought only to scale down a property qualification. The “claims of intelligence, acquirement, and education” were ignored. As regarded the borough franchise, not fitness, but number was the principle; and the numerical addition accrued to one class only.
“... Let us now consider,” Disraeli continued, “whether the particular class upon whom the noble lord is about to confer this great political power, are a class who are incapable, or who are unlikely to exercise it. Are they a class who have shown no inclination to combine? Are they a class incapable of organisation? Quite the reverse. If we look to the history of this country during the present century, we shall find that the aristocracy, or upper classes, have on several very startling occasions shown a great power of organisation. I think it cannot be denied that the working classes, especially since the peace of 1815, have shown a remarkable talent for organisation, and a power of discipline and combination inferior to none. The same, I believe, cannot be said of the middle classes. With the exception of the Anti-Corn Law League, I cannot recall at this moment any great successful political organisation of the middle classes; and living in an age when everything is known, we now know that that great confederation ... owed its success to a great and unforeseen calamity, and was on the eve of dispersion and dissolution only a short time before that terrible event occurred.” The upper and lower classes, he argued, were capable of organisation and ideas, and the organisation of the latter had been secret as well as disciplined. Their intelligence and their discipline, then, were reasons for conferring the franchise, but their traditional organisation was also a reason for care in its bestowal, and such discrimination as would not give them a predominance. “... What has been ... the object of our legislative labours for many years, but to put an end to a class-legislation which was much complained of? But you are now proposing to establish a class legislation of a kind which may well be viewed with apprehension....”
Disraeli discerned that what in England is discontent, on the Continent is disaffection; and that revolution abroad corresponds to reform at home. Chartism verged perilously on the uprisings which endanger countries where government is out of touch with the governed. It was a sign that institutions might be on their trial, and it demanded that those institutions should resume reality, and win once more the affections of the people.
In his resolve to spread the franchise in his own manner, and to neutralise the revolutionary bias of agitators and secret societies, he never lost sight of the growing force of public opinion. He himself was “a gentleman of the press;” in the improved and multiplied newspapers he hailed the great safety-valve afforded to England by that “publicity” on which “the great fabric of political freedom” has been reared. “Free intercourse,” he exclaimed in the ’thirties, “is the spirit of the age!” So late as 1872, he observed, “... That has been the principle of the whole of our policy. First of all, we made our courts of law public, and during the last forty years we have completely emancipated the periodical press of England, which was not literally free before, giving it such power that it throws light upon the life of almost every class in this country, and I might say upon the life of almost every individual.” In the press (the light of which he perhaps valued more than the warmth), he welcomed an antidote against hidden and perilous associations; and believed that if the self-respecting hand-labourer received the vote (as he was entitled to do), he would exercise it in the cause of freedom, of loyalty, and of order. In 1862, he declared “parliamentary discipline founded on its only sure basis, sympathising public opinion,” to be the watchword of his propaganda. The passage summarises much that I have discussed.
“... To build up a community, not upon Liberal opinions, which any man may fashion to his fancy, but upon popular principles which assert equal rights, civil and religious; to uphold the institutions of the country because they are the embodiment of the wants and wishes of the nation, and protect us alike from individual tyranny and popular outrage; equally to resist democracy” (as a form of government) “and oligarchy, and to favour that principle of free aristocracy which is the only basis and security for constitutional government; ... to favour popular education, because it is the best guarantee of public order; to defend local government, and to be as jealous of the rights of the working man as of the prerogative of the Crown and the privileges of the senate;—these were once the principles which regulated Tory statesmen (i.e. Bolingbroke and Wyndham), and I for one have no wish that the Tory party should ever be in power unless they practise them.”
In his great speech during the summer of the following year on “popular principles” and “liberal opinions,” as well as on the introduction of his actual Reform Bill, he gave expression once more to his distinction between “popular privileges” and “democratic rights”—
“... If the measure bears some reference to the existing classes in this country, why should we conceal from ourselves that this country is a country of classes, and a country of classes it will ever remain? What we desire to do is to give every one who is worthy of it a fair share in the government of the country by means of the elective franchise; but at the same time we have been equally anxious to maintain the character of the House....”
As a matter of tactics, Disraeli had of design framed the bill on lines stricter than he was prepared to concede. He desired that the re-settlement should be enduring, and he deliberately appealed to the co-operation of both parties for this purpose. He had “leaped in the dark,” he had “shot Niagara.” The storm of obloquy, desertion, and censure broke over his head, but he was unmoved, because his proposals were based on principles long held and patiently matured. Of the lodger franchise he had long ago been the “father.” An unmitigated household franchise he refused as too “democratic.” The “direct taxation” franchise and the “dual vote,” which were intended as barriers for the middle classes, he surrendered. That educational franchise which was bound up with a cause that from boyhood had been dear to him; that “savings-bank” franchise which established the right of industrial thrift to representation, he was forced to abandon, by the clamour of the very party that desired education without religion, and labour as the mere instrument of capital. Looking back impartially, these derided “fancy franchises” seem to me a deplorable loss, and even now it would be well to recognise that the mind and the character should have representative faculties wholly apart from the power of property. Disraeli was forced to cast them overboard that he might preserve the vessel itself during the party hurricane. But the essential qualifications of residence and rateability he maintained in the teeth of Mr. Gladstone, and under all the modifications of the principle which ensued. His mind was fixed to steer between the extremes alike of those who, under the mask of emancipation, purposed the despotism of a single class, and of those who desired to form the government of this country by the caprice of an irresponsible, an unintelligent, and an indiscriminate multitude. And he proved his earnest sincerity by the appeal which closed his speech on the second reading: “Pass the bill, and then change the ministry if you like.”
It is not within my province to track the maze of altercations which attended every step of a bill on which Disraeli, contrary to his wont, spoke more than three hundred times, or to raise the dust of controversy this year revived. But, were it so, I could prove how faithful Disraeli remained to the central ideas which had animated him from his youth. So far from having passed a “liberal” measure, he had passed under colossal difficulties, that for which he had long striven, and in a manner which remedied the defects of 1832 without endangering the repose of the State. Indeed, for the second time he actually re-created the Conservative party, and, to the surprise of some of his friends and all his enemies, discovered in the unknown region of the toilers, with whom he had ever sympathised, whom he had always trusted, but whom the Whigs had driven to revolt, and to whom the “cheapest market” Radicals perpetually begrudged protection, health, and alleviation—discovered, I say, in these elements—the pawns of ignoble partisanship—his truest props of order and of allegiance. The measure and the events of 1884 were to prove the rightness alike of his confidence and of his caution. The counties with a lowered franchise became a prey to agitators. The towns remained staunch and steadfast. And this, though in 1867 Mr. Bright had sneered at Disraeli for having “lugged” his “omnibus” of stupid squires up the hill of democracy.
In his speech of 1859, Disraeli protested against any “predominance of household democracy.” He kept his word. Speaking at Edinburgh in the autumn of 1867, he remarked on this very topic—