CHAPTER VII
AMERICA—IRELAND

I have associated these two heads of discussion because they have long been coupled in home politics, at times disastrously, but now, it may be hoped, under favouring auspices. On the lighter side of American society and its first invasions of England he also touched. I shall touch these in the next chapter, reserving this for the political aspects of the question. My first chapter has already mentioned the paragraph in his earliest pamphlet, dedicated to Canning.

Disraeli was always intensely interested in America, and watched her development with vigilance. He predicted her imperial future. He deprecated jealousy of her power, and, while England was incensed at her conduct in 1871, he alone maintained that it was due to the prejudices of a class and the objects of a party, not to the national sentiment. He descried in America’s essential democracy, which adheres even to her republican forms, one wholly peculiar to herself—a democracy of the soil, of which the base and root is land, underlying the gigantic commerce and colossal finance which are merely the froth of her wealth; and in such a democracy he perceived an element of stability lacking to every other known democratic country. Before her crucial conflict was determined, he prophesied, too, among the difficulties that must confront her, that of a vast number of emancipated negroes. When the great struggle arose between the energy of the North and the traditions of the South, Disraeli also, alone among the leaders of his party, discerned both the probabilities of the winning side and its aptitude for moderation and self-control. For this sagacity he received Mr. Bright’s approbation in 1865. When the civil war was in process, the gentry of England, naturally and generously sympathetic with the Southerners, had suspected that Canada might be threatened, and had wished something “to be done;” Disraeli restrained and allayed them. Mr. Bright said: “With a thoughtfulness and statesmanship which you do not all acknowledge, he did not say a word from that bench likely to create a difficulty with the United States. I think his chief and his followers might learn something from his example.” I quote this meed from an opponent, because Mr. Bryce, in his recent monograph, implies the contrary; but then, Mr. Bryce sometimes trips, and has made the trifling mistake of naming “Lucian” as Disraeli’s pet classic, whereas surely it was “Tacitus.”

Disraeli’s leading idea as to America was that, although she had long achieved independence, her original spirit had remained colonial, but that her civil war would transform the past colony into a coming empire. Speaking in 1863, he said—

“I am bound to say that from the first—and subsequent events have only confirmed my convictions—I have always looked upon the struggle in America in the light of a great revolution.[135] Great revolutions, whatever may be their alleged causes, are not likely to be commenced, or to be concluded, with precipitation. Before the civil war commenced, the United States were colonies, because we should not forget that such communities do not cease to be colonies because they are independent. They were not only colonies, but colonising; and they existed under all the conditions of colonial life except that of mere political dependence. But even before the civil war, I think that all impartial observers must have been convinced that in that community there were smouldering elements which indicated the possibility of a change, and perhaps of a violent change. The immense increase of population; the still greater increase of wealth; the introduction of foreign races in large numbers as citizens, not brought up under the laws and customs which were adapted to a more limited, and practically a more homogeneous, race; the character of the political constitution, consequent, perhaps, on these circumstances; the absence of any theatre for the ambitious and refined intellects of the country, which deteriorated public spirit and lowered public morality; and, above all, the increasing influence of the United States upon the political fortunes of Europe;—these were all circumstances which indicated the more than possibility that the mere colonial character of these communities might suddenly be violently subverted, and those imperial characteristics appear which seem to be the destiny of man. I cannot conceal from myself the conviction that, whoever in this House may be young enough to live to witness the ultimate consequences of this civil war, will see, whenever the waters have subsided, a different America from that which was known to our fathers, and even from that of which this generation has had so much experience. It will be an America of armies, of diplomacy, of rival states and manœuvring cabinets, of frequent turbulence, and probably of frequent wars. With these views, I have myself, during the last session, exerted whatever influence I possessed in endeavouring to dissuade my friends from embarrassing her Majesty’s Government in that position of politic and dignified reserve which they appeared to me to have taken upon this question. It did not appear to me, looking at these transactions across the Atlantic, not as events of a mere casual character, but being such as might probably influence, as the great French Revolution influenced, and is still influencing, European affairs, that there was on our part, due to the existing authorities in America, a large measure of deference in the difficulties which they had to encounter. At the same time, it was natural to feel ... the greatest respect for those Southern States, who, representing a vast population of men, were struggling for some of the greatest objects of existence—independence and power....”

Long before this—in 1856—he had said, when America’s attitude towards Central American troubles was irritating England, that in his opinion “... it would be wise if England would at last recognise that the United States, like all the great countries of Europe, had a policy, and a right to have a policy. It was foolish for England to regard with jealousy any legitimate extension of the territory of the United States beyond the bounds originally fixed.” Such a jealousy would not arrest or retard the development of America; but it might involve disasters. He instanced California and the gloomy forebodings at home with regard to it, none of which had been realised; and he impressed upon the House that “It was the business of a statesman to recognise the necessity of an increase of power in the States.” The same year evoked another speech which forecasts the tenour of that in 1863, and is a fresh witness of the continuity of his imaginative insight, and his wakeful constancy of his purpose. After deprecating jealousy of America’s political and commercial progress, he thus proceeded—

“... I cannot forget that the United States, though independent, are still in some sense colonies, and are influenced by colonial tendencies; and when they come in contact with large portions of territory scarcely populated, or at the most sparsely occupied by an indolent and unintelligent race of men, it is impossible—and you yourselves find it impossible—to resist the tendency to expansion; and expansion in that sense is not injurious to England, for it contributes to the wealth of this country (let us say this in a whisper, lest it cross the Atlantic) more than it diminishes the power of the United States. In our foreign relations with the United States, therefore, I am opposed to that litigious spirit of jealousy which looks upon the expansion of that country and the advance of these young communities with an eye of jealousy and distrust.”

What he realised and first proclaimed, was that America was ceasing to be a mongrel blend or a colonial people, and was fast becoming a national community, with a voice, a vigour, a tendency, and in every department a twang, so to say, of its own; that, moreover, this consolidation would tend towards empire, and that England must prepare for and reckon with it, especially as a partial crudeness and rudeness are to some extent inseparable from developments so sudden. It had not always been thus. Even long after the Puritan settlement, the primæval charm of an aboriginal race clung to its forests and prairies. The strain, the science of race, fascinated Disraeli; the unsubdued and the untameable ever appealed to him. Races could only be replaced by nations; and the interval was always atomic and confused; but it was also one of primitive dash and daring. As a youth, Disraeli, in Contarini, had dreamed of such a life. In Venetia[136] he had wondered whether the Atlantic would ever be so memorable as the Mediterranean; whether pushfulness would ever attain refinement; whether its provincialism might not be doomed to weakness. “... Its civilisation will be more rapid, but will it be ... as permanent?... What America is deficient in is creative intelligence. It has no nationality. Its intelligence has been imported like its manufactured goods. Its inhabitants are a people, but are they a nation? I wish that the empire of the Incas and the kingdom of Montezuma had not been sacrificed. I wish that the republic of the Puritans had blended with the tribes of the Wilderness.”

Two dangers for England, however, emanated from America; and perhaps they were connected. The one was American Anglophobia, the other Fenianism. The one might estrange our North American colonies; the other was to imperil our national unity.

In 1865, Disraeli addressed himself to the former. The American war was not then decided. He was not of opinion that, when it ended, our connection with Canada would bring us into collision with America. He did not believe that if the North was vanquished, it would “feel inclined to enter immediately into another struggle with a power not inferior in determination and in resources to the Southern States of America;” and he saw many rocks ahead to divert the advancing tide—