“Young England” prepared the ground for social regeneration. It sought to raise the conditions of labour. It was no rose-water club, but, short-lived as it proved, was a real forerunner of measures. A word, therefore, upon it may be pardoned in this connection. Many in the past century have played the part of “saviours of society.” Robert Owen, Ferdinand Lassalle, Napoleon III., Karl Marx, and the eccentric Mr. Urquhart, who furnished some of the traits for Disraeli’s “Sidonia.”[79] But none in this country have been at once so genuine and effective as this association of “Young England;” for, enlisting the enthusiasm of the high and the young, it struck into the roots of national character, without which no development is feasible. Young England aimed further, at rendering leadership sympathetic with labour. It wanted to revive in the lowly a sense of privilege, and in the noble to quicken higher standards of obligation; it wished to recall the heroic; and this it tried to accomplish, not by social disturbance, but by seeking to arouse ancient ideals still slumbering in national traditions. For this purpose it appealed to youth—“the trustees of posterity;”[80] to the power of personal influence and example; and above all, it hoped, as I have already noticed, to counteract the soullessness of utilitarianism.
“Ah, yes!” (Disraeli makes Gerard observe in Sybil); “I know that style of speculation.... Your gentlemen who remind you that a working man now has a pair of cotton stockings, and that Harry the Eighth was not so well off. At any rate, the condition of classes must be judged of by the age and by their relations with each other.”
It was also a vigorous protest against that retort of the Liberal on the Radical—the sluggish doctrine of laissez-faire, the principle of “stew-in-your-own-juice,” “devil take the hindmost,” “muddling through,” and “let ill alone.” Disraeli had combated it from the first:—
“In Vraibleusia” (I quote from his early satire of Popanilla) “we have so much to do that we have no time to think—a habit which only becomes nations who are not employed. You are now fast approaching the great shell question; a question which, I confess, affects the interest of every man in this island more than any other.... No one, however, can deny that the system works well; and if anything at any time go wrong, why, really Mr. Secretary Periwinkle is a wonderful man, and our most eminent conchologist—he no doubt will set it right; and if by any chance things are past even his management, why, then, I suppose, to use our national motto, something will turn up.”
It further served as antidote to the self-complacence and retail outlook of the bourgeoisie. The “Middle-Middles,” healthfully and powerfully as they symbolise decency, order, and common sense, too often lack, even in their educated varieties, perception and sympathy. At present they pervade Parliament, while the Press—which since 1867 appeals more and more to the gallery—controls opinion. Hence the dearth of accord between the prate of Parliament and a nation that realises its unity. Hence springs the momentary decay of Parliament itself—not from party spirit, but from the inanition of parties representing principles, without which party sinks into faction.
Of the anti-middle class attitude of “Young England,” a notable instance occurs in “Angela Pisani,” the brilliant fiction of George Smythe, afterwards seventh Lord Strangford (in Disraeli’s words), “a man of brilliant gifts; of dazzling wit, infinite culture and fascinating manners,” who “could promulgate a new faith with graceful enthusiasm.” The tirade is placed on the lips of Napoleon, denouncing the “puddle-blooded” whom he had “made great men, but could not make gentlemen,” and its reproaches—certainly not characteristic of Disraeli—apply, of course, in an infinitely less degree to England.
The nucleus of “Young England” had begun in a close association of university friends. The Cambridge “Apostles” comprised Tennyson and Hallam, Monteith and Doyle, and “Cool-of-the-evening” Monckton-Milnes. Disraeli, Lord Strangford, and Lord John Manners reinforced this nucleus with Faber, Hope, Baillie Cochrane (afterwards Lord Lamington), and others; they gave them an ampler scope and a longer view, but not without murmuring jealousies. They taught that the spirit of reform transcended its letter, and that the English “romantic school”—just as later on the English pre-Raphaelites in Art—must reseek the fountainhead of original principles. Milnes wrote in 1844: “You must have been amused at the name of ‘Young England,’ which we started so long ago, being usurped by opinions so different and so inferior a tone of thought. It is, however, a good phenomenon in its way, and one of its products—Lord John Manners—a very fine, promising fellow. The worst of them is that they are going about the country talking education and liberality, and getting immense honour for the very things for which the Radicals have been called all possible blackguards and atheists a few years ago.”
The newer Radical reforms, however, were based on “the greatest happiness” principle of utility; whereas the league of “Young England” was founded on the expansion of traditions, and more especially on the immemorial rights of Labour. What “Young England” really effected was to infuse enthusiasm into institutions. In 1838 this same “Mr. Vavasour” of Tancred, and “Mr. Tremaine Bertie” of Endymion, had also written: “We have set agoing a new dining club which promises well. Twenty of the most charming men in the universe met last Tuesday. They won’t call it ‘Young England,’ however.” It is no disrespect to the memory of the late Lord Houghton to say that the vague eclecticism of his youth scarcely fostered a robust energy or a keen insight. His “remarks” on Coningsby in Hood’s Magazine under the name of “Real England” were a sympathetic commentary; but, a born dilettante, he “lionised” ideas as he “lionised” genius. He patted intuition on the back. He was the Mrs. Leo Hunter of politics; and he played admirably the part of “Bennet Langton” to Carlyle’s “Dr. Johnson.” He somewhat prattled of “silences” and “eternities.” Well does Disraeli make “Waldershare” in Endymion exclaim of him: “... What I do like in him ... is this revival of the Pythagorean system, and heading a party of silence. That is rich.”
Lord Lamington—the “Buckhurst” of Coningsby—who in his pleasant glimpse of the movement has supplemented its muster-roll by the names of Borthwick and Stafford, quotes Serjeant Murphy’s pasquinade of “Jack Sheppard.” Its last verse runs as follows:—
“We have Smythe and Hope with his opera-hat,
But they cannot get Dicky Milnes, that’s flat—
He is not yet tinctured with Puseyite leavening,
But he may drop in in the ‘cool of the evening.’”