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GEORGE LICHTHEIM
For it is as a master of political
trompe l' oeil
that Disraeli has gone
down in the annals of statesmanship. All his triumphs were illusory, and
so were the methods whereby he secured them. He split the Tories in the
name of principle, and then kept them in the wilderness for a generation,
but did not lead them to the promised land. For all his impassioned faith
in the permanence of the "aristocratic settlement," he did not in the end
save the cause of the landowning nobility. He did not even secure their
economic interests: farm prices collapsed during his administration, thus
in the end bringing about the ruin of agriculture he had predicted for
thirty years. He did not reconcile the alienated working class to the Estab–
lishment-that was done independently by the rise of nationalism. The
"two nations" of
Sybil
(the novel that won the hearts of Young England)
remained apart. The social reforms enacted while he was in office were
useful but marginal, and in the end their chief beneficiaries were the
trade unions. He carried on a rearguard action against democracy, and
then took credit for surrendering to it. The most dazzling of his tactical
triumphs, the Reform Bill of 1867 which gave the franchise to the urban
working class, was a personal
tour de force
at the expense of conservatism,
and the new electors thanked him by voting for Gladstone. Nor did he
accomplish anything permanent abroad. The elevation of the Queen to
the dignity of Empress of India flattered the national pride, but did not
stem the rise of Indian nationalism. The showdown with Russia in 1878
and its sequel, the Berlin Congress in the same year, was another empty
stage triumph, and its only practical result, the temporary prolongation
of Turkish rule in the Balkans, was thoroughly undesirable. Disraeli's
im–
perialism, like all the rest of his career in office, was never more than
a brilliantly conducted rearguard action.
Why then did the Tories follow him wherever he led? Certainly not
because they trusted him. Salisbury, the ablest of them and eventually his
stoutest supporter, as late as 1868 (when Disraeli was over sixty and
had just become Prime Minister) thought him "an adventurer and ... in
an age of singularly reckless statesmen . . . beyond question the one who is
least restrained by fear or scruple." The truth is that they had no choice.
Disraeli possessed the genius they lacked, and his willingness to spend
himself in the service of what he and they knew to be a lost cause made
it inevitable that he should lead them. They needed a faith and Disraeli
gave them one-imperialism, the vision of England as the center of a
worldwide empire held together by loyalty to the Crown. Illusory or not,
it
refloated the aristocracy and revived its morale for a couple of genera–
tions. It even made Disraeli popular, so that in the end he became a
national hero. His opponents, Gladstone above all, denounced him as an
immoralist and the enemy of responsible statesmanship. These were Vic-
