Disraeli: A Study in Personality and Ideas

The power of imagination is essential to supreme statesmanship. Indeed, no really originative genius in any domain of the mind can succeed without it. In literature it reigns paramount. Of art it is the soul. Without it the historian is a mere registrar of sequence, and no interpreter of characters. In science it decides the end towards which the daring of a Verulam, a Newton, a Herschel, a Darwin, can travel. On the battle-field, in both elements, it enabled Marlborough, Nelson, and Napoleon to revolutionise tactics. In the law its influence is perhaps less evident; but even here a masterful insight into the spirit of precedent marks the creative judge. By lasting imagination, far more than by the colder weapon of shifting reason, the world is governed. “Even Mormon,” wrote Disraeli, “counts more votaries than Bentham.” For imagination is a vivid, intellectual, half-spiritual sympathy, which diverts the flood of human passion into fresh channels to fertilise the soil; just as fancy again is the play of intellectual emotion. Whereas reason, the measure of which varies from age to age, can only at best dam or curb the deluge for a time. Reason educates and criticises, but Imagination inspires and creates. The magnetic force which is felt is really the spell of personal influence and the key of public opinion. It solves problems by visualising them, and kindles enthusiasm from its own fascinating fires. And more: Imagination is in the truest sense prophetic. Could one only grasp with a perfect view the myriad provinces of suffering, enterprise, and aspiration with which the Leader is called upon to grapple, not only would the expedients to meet them suggest themselves as by a divine flash, but their inevitable relations and meanings would start into vision. For what the herd call the Present, is only the literal fact, the shell, of environment. Its spirit is the Future; and the highest imagination in seeing it foresees. Imagination, once more, is the mainspring of spontaneity. Its vigour enables the will to beget circumstance, instead of being the creature of surroundings; “for Imagination ever precedeth voluntary motion,” says Bacon. It empowers the will of one to sway and mould the wills of many. And it is the very source of that capacity for idealism which alone distinguishes man from the brute. Viewing in 1870 the general purport of his message, Disraeli wrote with truth that it “... ran counter to the views which had long been prevalent in England, and which may be popularly, though not altogether accurately, described as utilitarian;” that it “recognised imagination in the government of nations as a quality not less important than reason;” that it “trusted to a popular sentiment which rested on an heroic tradition, and was sustained by the high spirit of a free aristocracy;” that its “economical principles were not unsound,” but that it “looked upon the health and knowledge of the multitude as not the least precious part of the wealth of nations;” that “in asserting the doctrine of race,” it “was entirely opposed to the equality of man, and similar abstract dogmas, which have destroyed ancient society without creating a satisfactory substitute;” that “resting on popular sympathies and popular privileges,” it “held that no society could be durable unless it was built upon the principles of loyalty and religious reverence.”

How comes it, then, that, in the art of governing a free people, this imaginative fellowship with unseen ideas, this power which men call Genius, “to make the passing shadow serve thy will,” is so constantly suspected and mistrusted; that _un_common sense, until it triumphs, is a stone of stumbling to the common sense of the average man? That Cromwell was called a self-seeking maniac for his vision of Theocracy; William of Orange, a cold-blooded monster for his quest after union and empire; Bolingbroke, a charlatan for his fight against class-preponderance, and on behalf of united nationality; Chatham, an actor for his dramatic disdain of shams; Canning, by turns a charlatan and buffoon, for preferring the traditions of a popular crown to the innovations of a crowned democracy, and at the same time seeking to break the charmed circle of a patrician syndicate; that Burke was hounded out by jealous oligarchs for refusing to confound the “nation” with the “people,” and cosmopolitan opinions with national principles? The main answer is simple. What is above the moment is feared by it, and malice is the armour of fear: “It is the abject property of most that being parcel of the common mass, and destitute of means to raise themselves, they sink and settle lower than they need. They know not what it is to feel within a comprehensive faculty that grasps great purposes with ease, that turns and wields almost without an effort plans too vast for their conception, which they cannot move;” and there are always the jealous who--

“... If they find Some stain or blemish in a name of note, Not grieving that their greatest are so small, Inflate themselves with some insane delight, And judge all Nature from her feet of clay.”

There are the puzzled whom novelty bewilders, and there are the cautious who suspect it. And there is the wholesome instinct of the plain majority to pin itself to immediate “measures” without recognising that a “principle” may change expedients for bringing its idea into effect. Again, there are many--especially in England--who, in their genuine scorn of pinchbeck, mistake the great for the grandiose, and certain that nothing which glitters can be gold, invest imaginative brilliance with the tinsel spangles of Harlequin. There are, too, the second-rate and the second-hand, whose life is one long quotation, and who doubt every coin unissued from the nearest mint; and there is, moreover, a sort of stolid crassness readily dignified into sterling solidity. All this is natural. Institutions and traditions themselves have been aliens until naturalised in and by the community. Imagination gave them birth, national needs accept them; and the contemporary sneer is often succeeded by the posthumous statue.

Perhaps the most curious feature of the prosaic and imperceptive man is his ready confusion of the dramatic with the theatrical, of attitude with posture, of pointed effects for a big purpose with affectations for a small. Flirtation might just as well be confounded with love, or foppery with breeding. And yet these same unimaginative censors have often contradicted their protests by their actions, and squandered great opportunities by futile strokes of the theatre.

So early as 1837, Sheil, who from the first admired the young Disraeli (then Bulwer’s intimate and the meteor of three seasons), whom Disraeli praised in one of his earliest election speeches, and who was surely no mean judge of intellectual eloquence, warned him after his début that “the House will not allow a man to be a wit and an orator, unless they have the credit of finding it out.... You have shown the House that you have a fine organ, that you have an unlimited command of language, that you have courage, temper, and readiness. Now get rid of your genius for a session; speak often, for you must not show yourself cowed, but speak shortly. Be very quiet, try to be dull, only argue and reason imperfectly, for if you reason with precision, they will think you are trying to be witty. Astonish them by speaking on subjects of detail. Quote figures, dates, calculations, and in a short time the House will sigh for the wit and eloquence which they all know are in you; they will encourage you to pour them forth, and then you will have the ear of the House, and be a favourite.” Seventeen years afterwards, when the dashing littérateur had become Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, Mr. Walpole thus defended him against his enemies on the Budget. “... Whence is it that these extraordinary attacks are made against my right honourable friend? What is the reason, what is the cause, that he is to be assailed at every point, when he has made two financial statements in one year, which have both met with the approbation of this House, and I believe also with the approbation of the country? Is it because he has laboured hard and long, contending with genius against rank and power and the ablest statesmen, until he has attained the highest eminence which an honourable ambition may ever aspire to--the leadership and guidance of the Commons of England? Is it because he has verified in himself the dignified description of a great philosophical poet of antiquity, portraying equally his past career and his present position--

‘Certare ingenio; contendere nobilitate; Noctes atque dies niti præstante labore Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri’?”

Yes! This is the sort of barrier piled in the path of the brilliant by the “practical” man--“the man who practises the blunders of his predecessors,” the “prophet of the past.” Still greater, because deeper laid, are the obstacles which confront him when he has mastered the drudgery of office and the strategy of debate; when, from the vantage-ground of political pre-eminence and public approval, he dares to look over the heads of his compeers and prepare strong foundations for the future of his country. Then that becomes true which Bolingbroke has so splendidly expressed: “The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our government, and the pilot and the minister are in similar circumstances. It seldom happens that either of them can steer a direct course, and they both arrive at their port by means which frequently seem to carry them from it. But as the work advances, the conduct of him who leads it on with real abilities clears up, the appearing inconsistencies are reconciled, and when it is once consummated, the whole shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so natural, that every dabbler in politics will be apt to think that he could have done the same.”

It is this that Disraeli effected by reverting to fundamental elements and substituting the generous, inclusive, and “national” Toryism of Bolingbroke, Wyndham, and Pitt, for the perverted Toryism of Eldon; the “party without principles,” the “Tory men and Whig measures,” the “organised hypocrisy” that followed on the “Tamworth Manifesto;” the Conservatism that “preserved” institutions as men “preserve” game, only to kill them; and the outworn Whiggism that excluded all but a few governing families from power; and, after its great achievement of religious liberty, exploited the extension of civil privileges as the mere muniment of its own title. He ended the confederacies and revived the creed.[1] He repudiated the system under which “the Crown had become a cipher, the Church a sect, the nobility drones, and the people drudges.” “... But we forget,” he urges in Sybil, “Sir Robert Peel is not the leader of the Tory party--the party that resisted the ruinous mystification that metamorphosed direct taxation by the Crown into indirect taxation by the Commons; that denounced the system which mortgaged industry to protect property;[2] the party that ruled Ireland by a scheme which reconciled both Churches, and by a series of parliaments which counted among them lords and commons of both religions; that has maintained at all times the territorial constitution of England as the only basis and security for local government, and which nevertheless once laid on the table of the House of Commons a commercial tariff negotiated at Utrecht, which is the most rational that was ever devised by statesmen; a party that has prevented the Church from being the salaried agent of the State, and has supported the parochial polity of the country which secures to every labourer a home. In a parliamentary sense that great party has ceased to exist; but I will believe that it still lives in the thought and sentiment ... of the English nation. It has its origin in great principles and noble instincts; it sympathises with the lowly, it looks up to the Most High; it can count its heroes and its martyrs.... Even now, ... in an age of political materialism, of confused purposes and perplexed intelligence, that aspires only to wealth because it has faith in no other accomplishment;[3] as men rifle cargoes on the verge of shipwreck, Toryism will yet rise from the tomb ... to bring back strength to the Crown, liberty to the subject, and to announce that power has only one duty--to secure the social welfare of the people.”