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moral paradox of his rival's attainment of the prize. His teeth were set on edge, as Gathorne Hardy observed. In this race for power the metallic had beaten the fluid mind. In a few months they were destined to change places. On becoming Prime Minister Disraeli was faced with the eternal problem of Irish misgovernment. For the next thirty years that unhappy country was to be the battle-ground of politicians in a fix. Disraeli throughout his long life never set foot on Irish soil; Mr Gladstone, whose Irish policy was destined to disrupt parties and divide kingdoms, was once a whole fortnight in Ireland. This example of reserve has been followed by their successors in the post of Prime Minister, with the notable exception of Mr Balfour.

When Mr Gladstone began, in a series of Parliamentary Resolutions, to lay his axe to the Upas tree, he commenced by denouncing the Established Church of Ireland. Disraeli immediately joined issue. His intention, so he said, was to govern Ireland in accordance with the policy of Charles I and not that of Cromwell. He warned the House of Commons that, after a period of great disquietude, doubt and passion, 'events may occur which may complete that severance of the Union [between England and Ireland] which to-night we are commencing.' He justified, from the Roman Catholic standpoint, the attempt that he foresaw would be made by the Papal power to obtain ascendancy. Would the Protestants of Ireland submit? he asked. 'Is England to interfere? Are we again to conquer Ireland? Is there to be another Battle of the Boyne?' In prophetic words he foretold March 1914. Although Disraeli pretended to see nothing more in Irish discontent than the effects of a damp climate and a lack of amusement, the English constituencies took an opposite view; and a General Election in the autumn of 1868 gave Mr Gladstone his chance and his revenge. An unusual amount of patronage had meanwhile fallen to Disraeli during his short tenure of power. He had filled the Archiepiscopal See of Canterbury, the Sees of Peterborough and London, and the Deanery of St Paul's. It was due to the knowledge and insight of the Queen rather than to Disraeli that the appointments of Tait and Magee were made.

Disraeli's crude attempts during the year 1868-never

repeated-to use Church patronage for political purposes were foiled by the Queen, acting, as she often did, upon the sane advice of Wellesley, the Dean of Windsor. Disraeli, however, was permitted to select a Viceroy for India and a Governor General for Canada. And, on relinquishing office, he had the gratification of obtaining the Queen's assent to bestow the title of Viscountess Beaconsfield upon Mrs Disraeli.

The electoral defeat of Disraeli reopened the schism in the Conservative Party. Hatreds revived and mistrust blossomed afresh. During the years that immediately succeeded he took no pains to conciliate his followers. He had, during the months of his Premiership, established a firm hold on the regard of the Sovereign. She had condescended to send him flowers from Osborne. The cult of the primrose had been unconsciously inaugurated. He retained the confidence of his old chief, Lord Derby, to the end of that statesman's life. He had attached to himself the tepid affection of Lord Derby's son, for he never neglected the House of Stanley. But his ecclesiastical policy, which he explained as tending to induce the two parties in the Church to cease their internecine strife and to combine against their common enemies, the Rits and the Rats, had failed, and he had alienated the powerful mind of Lord Cranborne. Nor had he, at this time, captured the confidence of Cairns, the most virile intellect of the Conservative phalanx.

Disraeli was accused of indifference, untimely reserve, a lack of political offensive, and lukewarm leadership. The current explanation given by his biographer was that he deliberately adopted Fabian tactics as the most suitable in the first days of political disaster. The more probable reason was a certain sulkiness of temperament in moments of defeat, and his reversion to the literary passion of twenty years before. He became absorbed in the composition of 'Lothair.' The novel was written with secrecy; even the faithful Monty was not told. The sensation was phenomenal. It was not limited to Europe. In spite of contemptuous criticism-the novel was denounced in the 'Quarterly Review' as an outrage against good taste, as dull as ditch-water and as flat as a flounder-its sale was enormous, and the effect upon Disraeli's ever-disordered finances highly satisfactory.

The Quarterly article was written by Hayward, a bilious essayist, whose venom had increased with age. But Lord Houghton followed up the attack with acid reprobation. The Conservative Party was bewildered. All the submerged prejudice against Disraeli floated again to the surface. It was remembered that the Sidonias had secretly adhered to the faith of their fathers. One of them even had been an Archbishop of Toledo, but had retained his faith in the Unity of the God of Sinai and the rites and observances of the Law of Moses.' Although Mr Canning had dabbled in verse, no Prime Minister had been guilty of writing so trivial a thing as a work of fiction, which the critics, including a Bishop, had denounced as vulgar nonsense. Why could he not, if he wished to scribble, make contributions to the controversy about Vaticanism,' like his great rival?

In this and many ways the face of the world was changing. Our old enemies the French had been crushed out of the European polity. A great military Empire had risen in Central Europe. Although there was a King in Rome other than the Pope, that Pontiff was once more claiming infallible jurisdiction over British subjects; and Cardinal Manning, his agent in England, was increasing his influence over the common people. It was true that Catholics admitted that they feared the damaging satire of 'Lothair' far more than magazine articles on the Vatican decrees; but these men were using Jesuitical wiles to discredit their satirical foe. Still, no one who lived then can doubt that 'Lothair' damaged the hold of Disraeli over the Conservative Party. The chasm widened between him and his colleagues. In the lobbies of the House of Commons and the drawing-rooms of Mayfair the future leadership of Lord Stanley, who had now succeeded his father as Lord Derby, was openly advocated. Meanwhile Mr Gladstone's Government held undisturbed possession of Parliament. Measures of first importance were passed into law. The nation was choked with legislation. The Opposition was powerless and, according to the views of Disraeli's critics, ill led. Discontent with his leadership culminated in February 1872, when at Lord Exeter's house at Burghley, the wiseacres of the Party nodded over the failure of their leader; and his old colleagues, with the exception of Sir Stafford

Northcote, but including Lord Cairns, met to disavow his leadership, and to plump for Lord Derby as his successor.

Although it is probable that no one ventured to give Disraeli the details of the cabal against him, he was not left for long in ignorance of its purport. Within a month his Achillean spirit burst into flame. A reception of unexampled warmth from the London populace as he proceeded to St Paul's to commemorate the restoration to health of the Prince of Wales, showed Disraeli that, if society had been adversely influenced by the critics of 'Lothair,' the people had been amused. He had become a popular favourite. His courage rose and his determination hardened. While intimating that he was prepared to cede the leadership and retire below the gangway-a suggestion that sent a shiver down the backs of his colleagues-he chose Manchester for the delivery of a speech that placed his leadership beyond question. He had himself taken in hand the reorganisation of the Conservative Party in the constituencies, and had chosen Eldon Gorst- who was afterwards to be a member of the Fourth Party-as his working organiser.

The Manchester speech was delivered to the grouped Conservative Associations recently formed, the forerunner of the Caucus, which in after years another Imperial statesman instituted at Birmingham. The Manchester speech fixed for many years to come the creed of the Tory Party. Based on an active hereditary Monarchy, an unreformed House of Peers, and an uncompromising Erastianism, Disraeli's contention was that the Constitution was the best available instrument for ensuring the progressive welfare of the people. In the forefront of Conservative policy he placed the people's health, and, transmuting a famous passage from the Vulgate, gave to his Party a motto in the phrase, 'Sanitas Sanitatum, omnia Sanitas.' He taunted Mr Gladstone's administration with violence and plunder, and accused it of encouraging sedition.

But the field of domestic politics was not the only one to be traversed. Disraeli turned to foreign affairs. After ephemeral criticisms which have now lost their interest, he gave his audience the cue to the policy with which his last Administration was to be identified. While repudiating turbulent and aggressive diplomacy, he counselled

firmness and decision. He had been the lifelong opponent of Palmerstonian methods. He warned his countrymen that Europe was no longer the Europe of Chatham and Frederick. The Queen of England had become the Sovereign of the most powerful of Oriental States. The teeming populations of the other side of the globe were certain to exercise their influence in due time over the distribution of power. The United States of America already threw their lengthening shades over the Atlantic. These were vast and novel elements. He acknowledged that the policy of England in regard to Europe should be a policy of reserve, but proud reserve; and he added his confident conviction that there never was a moment when the power of England was so great and her resources so inexhaustible.

When, a few months later, speaking of the Coloniesfor they were not yet called Dominions-he maintained that self-government, when it was conceded, ought to have been conceded as part of a great policy of Imperial consolidation; when he contended that it ought to have been accompanied by an Imperial Tariff, and by a military code which should have precisely defined the means and responsibilities by which the Empire should be defended; he had provided his political opponents with the caricature that went by the name of Jingoism, and had furnished Mr Chamberlain with an Imperial policy.

Lord Morley's reflexion that Disraeli, when power fell into his hands, made no single move of solid effect for either social reform or imperial unity, took no account of Disraeli's claim that high statesmanship is not always based on administrative action. Disraeli was a political seer in the line of the Hebrew prophets; a leader endowed with the imaginative gifts of Burke and Bolingbroke, qualified by a political sagacity in which both were lacking; and it cannot be denied that, judged by its fruits, Disraeli's policy, whether for good or evil, left a deeper mark upon the history of his country than the legislative enactments of his political rival. If it is true, as Sidonia observed to Coningsby, that the spirit of the age is the very thing that a great man changes, Disraeli may lay claim to the title.

Meanwhile, as his popularity grew, he was threatened with a deep sorrow. His partner and companion for

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