IT is with feelings of unmixed pain and regret, we were going to say, that we record the death of the Earl of Beaconsfield; but a truer appreciation at once suggests that there has been a glorious close to a splendid career-felix opportunitate mortis ! There is no instance in English history of a political leadership so long maintained. There is none in which greater qualities of sagacity, independence of judgment, and tenacity of purpose have been exhibited. There is none in which a leader has been able to call forth at will such marked and increasing devotion from his followers. And notwithstanding that for twenty-nine out of the thirty-five years over which it has practically extended, it has been a leadership of a minority, Lord Beaconsfield's headship has been one of rare personal and political achievement. It is one of which the Tory party may well be proud, and to which English history as long as it endures will do homage.

NEW SERIES.-Vol. XXXIV., No. 1

It is a striking testimony to the marvellous powers which Lord Beaconsfield possessed, that in spite of the singular isolation of his position, and the overwhelming disadvantage of always belonging to a minority, his influence and authority uniformly and steadily increased. The reins once grasped, no hand proved strong enough during all those years to wrest them away, or to divert him to any serious extent from the policy which he chose to pursue. In Opposition he steadily increased his authority over the course of legislation, over Parliament, over his colleagues, and in the country. Each time that he held office in a minority, he left it a stronger man than when he entered it, with reputation and prestige strengthened by an ordeal which, under far more favorable circumstances, frequently injures those of weaker men. And when at last, toward the close of a great career, he became Minister with an established majority, the man grew until his authority

I

not merely an effective instrument of government at present, but might at any time during any temporary and not improbable eclipse of the authority and prestige of the House of Commons, become a rallying point of inestimable value. The vulgar view of Mr. Disraeli's earlier years is that they exhibited levity of principle and conduct. But any one who regards them from the point of view of his writings, of the training which the works of Disraeli the elder show that the son must have received, of upward of forty years unrivalled consistency and tenacity of purpose in Parliament, will probably come to a different conclusion. There was no hereditary tie to either party; there was deep innate scorn for what he termed the pollution of Radicalism; there was an invincible distrust of anything like sectarianism or exclusiveness predominating in the spirit of Conservatism. From the hour that he entered Parliament, or, more properly, from the moment that he became a political figure of importance, he never swerved from the purpose of impressing his own ideal, which may be traced in his earliest writings and speeches, upon the character and aims of British Toryism.

He not unnaturally came into sharp collision with Sir Robert Peel-a man of a wholly different type and training, in many characteristics of statesmanship Mr. Disraeli's superior, but of far inferior intellectual power. Mr. Justin M'Carthy, in his history, has done justice to that stroke of true genius and insight which enabled Mr. Disraeli to stand forward, on the first night of the session of 1846, and practically wrest from Sir R. Peel's hands then and there the leadership of the party which he ever afterward retained. At that time Mr. Disraeli had only been eight years in the House; it was only his second Parliament; he had no powerful connections or official experience. There is no parallel to this incident in parliamentary history. The leadership thus seized was not merely retained for a session, or during a particular controversy. It never reverted to the experienced chief who had dominated successive Parliaments, and who was surrounded by men of matured reputation and experience. It was inevitable that,

in time, the man who could thus maintain his ground against a combination so powerful must succeed to office and to the lead of the House of Commons. In 1852 that event occurred. It is the only instance on Parliamentary record of a man vaulting at once into that difficult post without any antecedent official experience. Mr. Pitt's rise is the nearest approach to it. But in the first few months of Mr. Pitt's Chancellorship, the leadership, titular if not effective, was in other hands. There had, however, been at least two celebrated precedents of conducting the business of the House of Commons in a minority-that of Pitt, in 1784, and that of Peel, in 1835. The struggle in 1852 was maintained with gallantry and skill; but it ended, as all foresaw, in failure before the combined efforts of the most disas trous Coalition that England has ever witnessed. The closing scene of that struggle is of historic interest, and the lapse of nearly thirty years has not dimmed its brilliancy. Four nights of debate had left no doubt that the great financial scheme upon which the government had staked its existence was doomed, and that the Ministry stood face to face with an exulting and victorious combination. It was a crisis in Mr. Disraeli's career, and a disastrous defeat might have associated his name. with ignominious failure. But whatever the result of the division upon the prospects of the party, the leader had at least resolved to assert his own position as that of one of the most formidable personages and debaters in English. politics. Meeting bitter taunts with thundering invective, he stood up to that last almost unaided encounter with all the celebrities of the House, with desperate energy, and fought for his flag with all those dauntless qualities which belong to a natural and irresistible "king of men." It was one of the most remarkable orations ever made; and in his equally marvellous reply, in which Mr. Gladstone for the first time burst through the bonds of a deprecatory and somewhat sanctimonious eloquence, and abandoned himself to fierce and unsparing personal attack, the present Premier constituted himself the rival of the Conservative chief, and the future leader of the Liberal party. For

half of the succeeding years Mr. Glad stone remained under the protecting ægis of Lords Palmerston and Russell, and was saved from the consequences of his frequent imprudence. But for the remaining half of that period the two leaders have divided between them the respect and devotion of the country, with the result that, notwithstanding the almost uniform numerical superiority of the Liberals since the Reform Bill of 1832, the Conservatives have, since the death of Lord Palmerston, enjoyed a longer tenure of office than their opponents. In February, 1858, this Ministry of a minority returned to power. In the interval, the Eastern Question and the Crimean war had absorbed the attention of Europe. Almost every fresh disclosure has tended to discredit the conduct of the disastrous Coalition, and the mutual rivalries which weakened the Administration, till a vacillating and half-hearted policy landed us inevitably in war, and Lord Aberdeen was dismissed from a post to which he was unequal. But the conduct of the Opposition in those days received at the time the hearty acknowledgments of Lord Palmerston, and has been applauded in all subsequent publications, from Sir Theodore Martin's "Life of the Prince Consort" downward. It was a successful combination of uncompromising but constitutional opposition to the Ministry, with a steady consistent support to the policy which the nation was pursuing. It will be well if all suc ceeding Oppositions will, when the external fortunes of the country are hanging in the balance, distinguish with equal success between opposing and weakening the executive-between the official representatives of the whole country, who should be supported, and the mere leaders of a rival party, who may be fairly denounced and supplanted.

The Ministry of 1858 had its own foreign imbroglios to deal with, but found in Lord Palmerston, as Mr. Disraeli acknowledged at the time, a fair and scrupulous opponent. Its main achievements were the establishment of the direct dominion of the Queen in India in lieu of the old East India Company; and the production of a reform bill, which, equally with that of 1867, exploded the quack device of lowering

the suffrage by a pound or two at a time. Fancy franchises and lateral extension were resorted to, for opinion was not then ripe for a final settlement of the question (which had been prematurely raised by the Whigs) on the only intelligible basis of houshold rating.

The fall of Lord Derby led to the reestablishment of Lord Palmerston in power; and for six years Masterly Inactivity was the order of the day. During that time there occurred the great civil war in America. One of the most remarkable points in Mr. Disraeli's whole career lies in the prescience and resolutely independent judgment which he displayed during that crisis. Public opinion was to a great extent, we believe, in favor of the South. Some of the Ministers, notably, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, were strongly in favor of non-intervention, and of sympathy being directed in favor of the North. Others, and notably Mr. Gladstone, took a directly opposite view; and the famous speech of the present Premier about Jefferson Davis having created not merely an army and a navy, but a separate nation, long rankled in the minds of the Americans, and formed one of their items of charge against us in the celebrated Alabama controversy. Of all complicity and responsibility of this kind Mr. Disraeli kept himself and his party free, and firmly resisted all pressure to a contrary course. Whatever may have been the force of the arguments in favor of recognizing and supporting the South, there was none in favor of a policy of mere irritation, and of, as far as words and omissions could make it, a malevolent neutrality. It is not too much to say that during that momentous crisis, several of the most trusted leaders of the public, if they did not actually lose their heads, adopted a course not sufficiently well considered and far-seeing to stand the test of time and subsequent experience. It is to the lasting honor of Mr. Disraeli that his own conduct formed, in the judgment of all parties, a bright exception, and gave to him a peculiar personal authority throughout the course of the Alabama troubles. During those greatest of all the foreign complications with which Mr. Gladstone had to deal, his rival was ever at hand to sustain

and encourage his administration. Resolved that no party struggle should by any chance ensue over a question of such momentous interest to the whole civilized world as our relations with America, he abandoned the reserve of an Opposition so far as to sanction Sir Stafford Northcote's acting as one of the Commissioners to negotiate the Treaty of Washington. Although, fortunately, the Conservative party has no share in the responsibility for the Alabama arbitration, and its award, the country owes to the wise forbearance and patriotic sagacity of the Conservative chief its escape from still worse complications; and his policy during that trying epoch will form a chapter of solid merit in the annals of his life.

With the death of Lord Palmerston the question of parliamentary reform again was made the prominent subject of attention, and until it was settled the work of legislation was evidently at a standstill. Lord Russell's Ministry essayed the usual experiment of lowering the suffrage by a few pounds at a time -in this instance in the belief that £3 was the amount of diminution which was to save the State, and work a satisfactory reform. The scheme failed, and Lord Derby's Ministry of a minority was for a third time installed in office. The Reform Act of 1867 was, for good or evil, its great legislative work, based upon the principle of household suffrage. The achievement was due entirely to Mr. Disraeli. It was his individual task, entirely in keeping, both in its character and the mode in which it was passed, with his antecedents and special genius. It was described by the late Lord Derby as a process of "Dishing the Whigs, and as a "Leap in the Dark." There can be no doubt from the perusal of Mr. Disraeli's speeches, as they were at that time corrected and published, that, with the exception of his first speech upon reform, as far back, we think, as 1848, before it became of urgent or present importance, these are consistent with the design of associating his name with its settlement, upon principles which might insure a fair chance of permaHe had, in fact, made the subject his own, while Mr. Gladstone was busy with finance, and Lord John Rus

nence.

sell was distracted by his own personal vicissitudes. The strategy and resource with which he accomplished his purpose, dumbfounding his opponents without, as the result showed, unduly straining the allegiance of his supporters, are well known.

But if Mr. Disraeli, in the matter of Parliamentary reform, achieved success, completely snatching it out of the hands of his rival, Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, was ready with his bid for popular support. The first question submitted to the new constituencies was an issue, framed by Mr. Gladstone, whether or not the Irish Church should cease to exist as an established institution. A majority of more than 100 determined that it should cease, and Mr. Gladstone succeeded to the Premiership. A series of harassing and sensational measures followed, upon a small detail in one of which, the Education Act of 1870, the great Liberal party began to crack and divide. All the activity of the Government was swallowed up in legislation, of a kind which alienated as many as it conciliated. Great administrative blunders resulted from this absorption of attention elsewhere; and as regards foreign politics, the authority, and even the legitimate influence of England seemed to be entirely effaced. In fact, at the time of the Berlin Memorandum, the manner in which that famous document was presented to our notice appeared to indicate that in the transaction of European business, foreign statesmen regarded us as entitled to less than courtesy. It was not surprising, therefore, that in little more than four years Mr. Gladstone's authority was gone, and his Ministry was wrecked on the Irish University Bill.

Mr. Disraeli now entered upon the last, the most eventful, and the most famous chapter of his wonderful history. It began with his declining office for his party in May, 1873, just eight years ago. The disintegration of the Liberal party was rapidly progressing, the tide of opinion had turned. Mr. Disraeli refused, with his usual prescience and authority over his followers, to have his hand forced. He resolved that his opponent should go to the country with all his sins upon his shoulders, instead of being absolved by the process of resig