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. I

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

overshadowed his colleagues and the country, and he had centred in himself the whole force and representation of the empire. To sustain, with increasing credit, every successive ordeal which awaits a man who plays a foremost part on the greatest stage of events is a marvellous achievement. There was no personal reverse, no personal failure. There seemed to be no moment at which he could be pronounced unequal to the occasion, at the end of his resources, or less than master over himself and his position. In the greatest chapter of his life, which is filled with his guidance of English fortunes during the strife and passion aroused by the great Eastern Question, it was never disputed but that it was his firm and tenacious mind which regulated our policy; and that by the force of will and genius, in spite of all the eloquence and energy of no unworthy rival, his influence, at a moment when firm guidance was the sole preventive to drifting into war, predominated at home, and was more than respected abroad. Whether his policy is approved or condemned, all must admit that he himself betrayed neither weakness nor indecision, but held on his way with tenacity and resolution. Those are the qualities which render war unnecessary, and lead forward to peace with honor.' History will do justice to the memorable quali ties which the great Tory Premier exhibited, and to the ascendancy which they gave him over England and the Continent. The generation which has witnessed with enthusiasm and delight the close, animated, and brilliant rivalry between a Disraeli and a Gladstone must feel that the heroic age of English politics did not pass away with Pitt and Fox. It falls, however, to the lot of the present generation of statesmen to work upon broader lines, and with a wider legislative range than their predecessors of the Georgian era. Of Lord Beaconsfield, it may be said that he reconstructed the Tory party and placed it in accord with the sympathies, the intelligence, and the genius of the nation; that he practically settled the principle of our parliamentary representation; that he reconstituted the South-eastern territories of Europe, and gave to the Continent its charter of

peace. He led the Tory party during a whole generation of men; he trained and attached to himself a skilled body of statesmen; he twice held the foremost rank with eloquence and majesty. The world, however, would never have recognized with the completeness which it ultimately did his transcendent qualities, if the six years of office with a majority had not at last opened to him the chance of a grand administrative success. These last years gave the crown to his career. From the first moment of his accession down to his sudden and unexpected fall before the blind vote of a fickle and easily influenced democracy, his supremacy was never questioned; and toward the close of his Premiership, when the elections of Liverpool and Southwark raised the hopes of his party, it looked as if he were on the point of being invested with an amount of authority greater than has ever before been conferred upon an English statesman, and greater perhaps than it is prudent for the English people ever to confer upon a single man.

Such a career must, as long as English history endures, be one of undying interest. In a short obituary notice like this, which is merely intended to express on the moment the feelings of a great political party for its departed chief, whose whole life and soul and energy were devoted to its service, we can only notice the more salient qualities of Lord Beaconsfield's public life.

It is a striking tribute to his unique force of character that friends and foes have alike recognized that Lord Beaconsfield's personality has been, as it were, more conspicously impressed upon the politics of his age than that of any contemporary statesman. They refer to the transformation in the temper and spirit of English Conservatism which has been effected since the days of Peel. They refer also to the three guiding principles of his conduct-the earnest desire to improve the condition of the masses, and to attach them to Conservative policy; the insistance with which he enforced the idea that the British Empire must not merely be enjoyed but watchfully maintained; his view that an ancient monarchy ought not to drop too completely out of the thoughts of the people, and that it was

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 fig ure 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