Far more than this, however, he objected to the ultimate consequences of this revolutionary departure. Confiscation was contagious. What was now applied—and applied in a form aggravated by its complications—to the national property, might one day be applied to private property. What was now applied to Ireland might one day be forcibly applied to England. If the public disaster of the disestablishment and disendowment of the English Church ever took place, in deference to the jealousy of a class and not because of its own inherent decay as a great civil and ecclesiastical institution, it would be aided by the precedent of Ireland.
Such is the pith, though many of the details and much of the historical criticism are omitted; nor have I here dealt with the Maynooth and “Regium Donum” problems and their bearings on these matters, which Disraeli discussed in full. But I have condensed enough to point the path of his ideas.
Not all these dismal forebodings have yet been realised; but many of them, unfortunately, came to pass. Ireland’s discontent, Catholic discontent, were, neither of them, allayed by the disestablishment and disendowment of the Protestant Church. The clergy of that Church are still far from contented. The land question burst out within a brief space of Disraeli’s prediction. It brought with it a long and fatal series of cumulative troubles; and, as Disraeli had also predicted, the actual rights of civil property, the rights of civilised society, became invaded. “Compensation for disturbance” asserted the right to pay no rent. For a time the last state of Ireland was almost worse than the first. There were “months of murder, incendiarism, and every conceivable outrage.” “The Executive absolutely abandoned their functions.” Disraeli’s last trumpet-call was to warn the country, in his celebrated letter to the Lord-Lieutenant, that there were those who wished to sever Ireland from England as part of a scheme for the disruption of the Empire. In 1881 he adverted to that warning.
“... Now what was the consequence of that declaration? The present Government took an early opportunity soon after I had made that declaration, to express a contrary opinion. They said there was in Ireland an absence of crime and outrage, with a general sense of comfort and satisfaction.... I warned the constituencies that there was going on in Ireland a conspiracy which aimed at the disunion of the two countries, and probably at something more. I said that if they were not careful something might happen almost as bad as pestilence and famine.... My observations, of course, were treated with that ridicule which a successful election always secures....”
We all know the rest. The country was only saved by a secession of the light and leading of the Liberal party from their rash and misguided leader. Wisdom has been justified of her child.
In conclusion, let me say that none would have welcomed more gratefully than Disraeli the statesmanlike effort to settle the land question which has recently made England the landlord of Ireland. He might have descried in it elements of difficulty, and even of some danger for the future. But it would, in the main, I am confident, have received his unstinted support; for it is founded on the rock of conciliation—on Disraeli’s policy “To create and not to destroy.”
CHAPTER VIII
SOCIETY
Macaulay observes of Frances Burney that “while still a girl she had laid up such a store of materials for fiction as few of those who mix much in the world are able to accumulate during a long life. She had watched and listened to people of every class, from princes and great officers of State, down to artists living in garrets and poets familiar with subterranean cook-shops. Hundreds of remarkable persons had passed in review before her—English, French, German, Italian, lords and fiddlers, deans of cathedrals and managers of theatres, travellers leading about newly caught savages, and singing women escorted by deputy husbands.”