“Gentlemen,” urged Disraeli, “there is another and second great object of the Tory party. If the first is to maintain the institutions of the country, the second is, in my opinion, to uphold the empire of England. If you look to the history of this country since the advent of Liberalism—forty years ago—you will find that there has been no effort, so continuous, so subtle, supported by so much energy, and carried on with so much ability and acumen, as the attempts of Liberalism to effect the disintegration of the empire of England. Statesmen of the highest character, writers of the most distinguished ability, the most organised and efficient means have been employed in this endeavour. It has been proved to all of us that we have lost money by our colonies.” Alluding next to the “incubus” in the passage I have already cited, he thus frankly continues: ... “Well, that result was nearly accomplished when these subtle views were adopted by the country, under the plausible plea of granting self-government to the colonies. I confess that I myself thought that the tie was broken. Not that I, for one, object to self-government. I cannot conceive how our distant colonies can have their affairs administered except by self-government. But self-government, in my opinion, ought to have been conceded, as part of a great policy of imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accompanied by an imperial tariff, by securities for the people of England for the enjoyment of the unappropriated lands which belonged to the sovereign as their trustee, and by a military code which should have precisely defined the means and the responsibilities by which the colonies should be defended,[118] and by which, if necessary, the country should call for aid from the colonies themselves. It ought further to have been accompanied by the institution of some representative council in the metropolis, which would have brought the colonies into constant and continuous relations with the home Government. All this, however, was omitted because those who advised that policy—and I believe their convictions were sincere—looked upon the colonies of England, looked even upon our connection with India, as a burden upon this country, viewing everything in a financial aspect, and totally passing by those moral and political considerations which make nations great, and by the influence of which alone men are distinguished from animals.”
Here we have a foreseeing and a far-seeing policy. Not a point of this forecast but has engaged, or will soon engage, national attention. With what courage and sagacity did Disraeli hand on the torch of Bolingbroke, who, first of English statesmen, had emphasised the significance of Gibraltar, who foretold England’s mission as “a Mediterranean power,”[119] and pictured her then scanty colonies as so many “home farms”! None can now doubt the sagacity; and if any doubt the courage, they have only to peruse the warnings of that commercial Cassandra, Mr. Bright, who, during the manufactured reaction of 1879, unconsciously justified Disraeli’s predictions of seven years before. After cataloguing his “annexations” like an auctioneer, he thus proceeded to stir passion and impute motives—
“... All this adds to your burdens. Just listen to this: they add to the burdens, not of the empire, but of the 33,000,000 of people who inhabit Great Britain and Ireland. We take the burden and pay the charge. This policy may lend a seeming glory to the Crown, and it may give scope for patronage and promotion, and pay a pension to a limited and favoured class. But to you, the people, it brings expenditure of blood and treasure, increased debts and taxes, and adds risk of war in every part of the globe.”
Is sense more conspicuous than charity in this onslaught? Has it not been proved penny wise, pound foolish? Could a better instance be adduced of a contrast between England as an emporium and Great Britain as a united empire?[120] In many respects I honour Mr. Bright. He at least had the courage of his honest convictions. He was against war altogether; but in being so he opposed the instincts of rising nationalities and tried to lull Great Britain into a fool’s paradise of international exhibitions. It is now asserted that Russia could not advance through Persia to India without a bristling series of bayonets. This is not to be wished, but is it to be feared? Of “Peace at any price,” Disraeli said with truth—and truth in the interests of general peace—that it was a “dangerous doctrine, which had done more mischief and caused more wars than the most ruthless conquerors.” What happened? Mr. Bright at a bound converted Mr. Gladstone. It was a mutual necessity. Neither of them without the other could have swayed the commercial classes and “the lower middles.” Mr. Gladstone was Don Quixote; Mr. Bright, Sancho Panza. Mr. Gladstone appealed to the nation; Mr. Bright, with sincere power and definite ideals, to a class. Mr. Gladstone appealed to the customs and institutions which he heroically assailed; Mr. Bright attacked more directly and without even the show of sympathy. Here Mr. Gladstone was Girondin; Mr. Bright, Jacobin. Mr. Gladstone’s conviction of being “the legate of the skies,” his electric temperament, devout genius, practical fervour and “connection,” both idealised and popularised the doggedness and the narrowness of Mr. Bright’s democratic doctrine. But Mr. Bright was consistent. He was against any fight for united nationality. He would never have embarked on war at all, and so could never have withdrawn from struggle at the wrong moment. He never deluded himself or others. It might be said that the author of the essay on “Church and State” led the “Nonconformist conscience” to the altar, and that the eloquent denouncer both of Church and State gave the bride away. But the chivalrous knight-errant could not quite forego the Dulcinea of his youth. It will be remembered that Mr. Gladstone, still by inadvertence, used occasionally to stumble upon the word “empire” in his speeches. Peel himself had called it “wonderful”! Lord John Russell had employed it in 1855. It was a word born with Queen Elizabeth, and familiar throughout the reign of Queen Anne. Chatham’s clarion rang with it. The poet Cowper, whom none can accuse of egotism or of bombast, repeats it with a glow of pride. But Mr. Bright, unless I mistake, never condescended to breathe the name or condone the thing. Mr. Gladstone regained power, and ran riot—the riot of the best intentions in the worst sense of the phrase. The policy of “scuttle” ensued—from what motives I stop not here to inquire. We abandoned Kandahar, “annexed” through a need caused by past vacillations and repulses of the Ameer; but, together with conditions for rendering him independent of Russia’s natural intrigues. We abandoned it just when the disasters of the Soudan again invited Russian encroachment. We abandoned the Transvaal at the first blush of defeat. “Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform” culminated in war, extravagance, and confusion. The trumpeters of impolitic economy, proposing expenditure and yet dangling the repeal of some tax to gratify “the interests or prejudices of the party of retrenchment,” were, in Disraeli’s phrase of 1861, “penurious prodigals.” Upright “prigs and pedants,” intruding private opinions on public affairs, honest hypocrites who deceived themselves and hoped to persuade the sceptics of the world, preachers of theories to the winds, all played with crucial issues and trifled solemnly with a cynical Continent. The school-master was abroad. We took Egypt against our will, and promised not to retain it. We cried, “Hands off, Austria!” and apologised for doing so. We prepared for necessitating the most exceptional war of modern times. It was the policy of panic and disunion, the policy of alternate weakness and bluster, the policy that by turns coaxed and coerced Ireland, allured and abandoned Gordon; it was a policy of private magnanimity at the public expense, and not the policy of wise consolidation and calculated outlets. It was not the policy of diplomacies at once instructed, firm, and gentle. Nor was it one of defined spheres, regulated boundaries, and fortified “gates of empire.” Yet it led us to “expenditure of blood and treasure.” And if we have since—and not, as I believe, in the spirit or with the precautions of Disraeli—been forced to retrace our steps, it is due to these retail maxims of Mr. Bright, and not to the wholesale creed of Lord Beaconsfield.
But the temper of his “Imperialism,” whatever may have been momentarily suspected or sneered at, was never aggressive, and always deliberate. It was for defence, not defiance; it was no grandiose illusion, no gaudy show of spurious glory; no froth or fuss of sound and fury signifying nothing.
“‘Twas not the hasty project of a day,
But the well-ripened fruit of wise delay.”
It ran utterly counter, as he declared in 1862, to “that turbulent diplomacy which distracts the mind of a people from internal improvement.” Just as internally his statesmanship guarded against the predominance of any particular class, so externally the only ground for British intervention was for him the undue predominance of a particular power against English or the general interests. Throughout he sought what Lord Castlereagh had also attempted, the solidarity of Europe. No doubt, like all great men of action, he made mistakes and committed errors. He owned as much himself. But I believe that history will justify the height from which he surveyed the scene, his reach and sweep of vision, the depth, too, of an insight piercing far below the surface. In one respect at least he may be said to have resembled Napoleon—“his vast and fantastic conception of policy.” I do not deny that he wished to strike the imagination; I do not deny that occasionally the direct response may have missed fire; but I submit that on the whole his policy was right, that its final effects rarely disappointed intention, and that it has left pregnant and abiding results. His aim was what the late Lord Salisbury afterwards declared as his own, to “resume the thread of our ancient empire;” and, as Macaulay has remarked of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, who was also twitted with inconsistency: “... Through a long public life, and through frequent and violent changes of public feeling, he almost invariably took that view of the great questions of his time which history has finally adopted.” At home on leading issues he had strengthened the power of Government by representing worthy opinion, and by renewing the affection of the people for their institutions in the struggle to maintain united English nationality against disruptive forces. It was reserved for him to reawaken the slumbering sense of what had once been an arousing reality—the duties of an august empire over many associated races and religions, the due greatness of Great Britain, the high destinies and ennobling burdens of an ancient nation appointed to rule the seas.
The keynote was sounded in that very speech of 1862, when he repeated what he had often before objected to the robust Lord Palmerston’s frequently flustering methods, but added that “... we should be vigilant to guard and prompt to vindicate the honour of the country.” On an earlier occasion, he laid stress on the diplomatic duty of “... if necessary, saying rough things kindly, and not kind things roughly;” while from first to last, however, as head of opposition, he disapproved a foreign policy which landed us in superfluous engagements, he always supported the Government when the crisis became really national. In 1864, criticising the Palmerstonian management of the Danish imbroglio, he remarked: “... I am not for war. I can contemplate with difficulty the combination of circumstances which can justify war in the present age unless the honour of the country is likely to suffer.”
Two more of his ruling principles were, first, that the ripe moment is half the battle in national attitude towards distant complications; and second, the importance, under our system, of distinguishing between what a minister, backed by a large parliamentary majority, decides in home and in foreign affairs. His prescient criticisms on both the source and the course of the Crimean War illustrate the one; his deliverance, in a speech of May, 1855—a speech prescribing a most statesmanlike policy towards both Russia and Turkey, part only of which[121] he was able more than twenty years later to execute, the other: “... A minister may, by the aid of a parliamentary majority, support unjust laws, and ... a political system which a quarter of a century afterwards may, by the aid of another parliamentary majority, be condemned. The passions, the prejudices, and the party spirit that flourish in a free country may support and uphold him.... But when you come to foreign politics things are very different. Every step that you take is an irretrievable one.... You cannot rescind your policy.... If you make a mistake in foreign affairs; if you enter into unwise treaties; ... if the scope and tendency of your foreign system are founded on a want of information or false information, ... there is no majority in the House of Commons which can long uphold a Government under such circumstances. It will not make a Government strong, but it will make this House weak....”
Throughout, his policy was that of confederation, not annexation; of “scientific frontiers” safeguarding ascertained “spheres of influence;” of binding, not loosing; of a strong front but a soft mien; of persuasion, if possible, rather than compulsion—as he always recommended in framing measures to protect labour and improve society; of a straight line steadfastly pursued, instead of wobble, worry, and flurry; first beating the air, and then—a retreat; at once headstrong and weak-kneed. Although his “Imperialism” was by no means that which has occasionally since usurped the name, assuredly, in upholding the burden of Great Britain’s destiny, he would never have recoiled from “the too vast orb of her fate.” Disraeli’s imperialism was not the bastard and braggart sort that he once styled “rowdy rhetoric;” nor the official sort to which he sarcastically alluded when Lord Palmerston, in 1855, took credit for accepting Lord John Russell’s resignation, and was “ready to stand or fall by him:” “The noble Lord is neither standing nor falling, but, on the contrary, he has remained sitting on the Treasury bench.” Associated with it, lay a deep sense of obligation in the choice of high character, ability, and spirit to carry it out; the sense too that a momentary mistake should never sacrifice excellent proconsuls to the “hare-brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity;” the resolve also never to shirk responsibility by making scapegoats. And, beyond all, a feeling that in dealing even with semi-barbarous nations, it was neither magnanimous, wise, nor dignified to crush them utterly, and that their feelings, prejudices, and customs ought to be respected.