“... It will announce to us that in our colonial empire the most important results may speedily be anticipated from the discreet selection of Lord Auckland as a successor to our Clives and our Hastings; that the progressive improvement of the French in the manufacture of beetroot may compensate for the approaching destruction of our West Indian plantations;113 and that, although Canada is not yet independent, the final triumph of liberal principles, under the immediate patronage of the Government, may eventually console us for the loss of the glory of Chatham and the conquests of Wolfe.”

Once in the House of Commons, he never ceased to urge the claims of sentiment and the bonds of interest, while he enforced the necessity for cementing them by federation and by tariffs. In 1848, when Lord Palmerston, with his “perfumed cane,” was dictating a constitution to Narvaez, Disraeli, who on principle deprecated interference with foreign powers unless British interests were endangered, here supported him, just because he considered it a case with contingencies affecting our colonial welfare and our own prestige. It was in 1848, too, that, descanting on the narrowing aspects of the Manchester School, and their “unblushing” advocacy of the “interests of capital,” he indicted their “colonial reform with ruining the colonies.” It was in the same year that he taxed the self-righteous Peelites with “turning up their noses at East India cotton as at everything else Colonial and Imperial.”114

Under Governments, of which Disraeli was the leading spirit, a constitution was framed for New Zealand in 1852, and in the summer of 1858 the colony of British Columbia was established. It was not more than a few months afterwards that disturbances arose; and the Times, in its review of the year 1859, found in these elements only the “incubus” of ubiquitous colonies and commerce. To this standing snarl about “the millstone of the colonies and India” Disraeli adverted thirteen years afterwards, when he said: “... It has been shown with precise, with mathematical demonstration, that there never was a jewel in the Crown of England that was so truly costly.... How often has it been suggested that we should emancipate ourselves from this incubus!” It was Disraeli’s Government that in the ’sixties was to confederate Canada, and in the ’seventies to devise a scheme for confederating South Africa. In his earliest pamphlets Disraeli had announced that the genius of the age was one of a transition from the “feodal” to the “federal.” In his whole outlook throughout he sought to reconcile the higher spirit of the one with the material interests of the other. And yet, astounding to relate, it was stated in a speech some seven years or so ago, that Disraeli himself had endorsed such melancholy and shortsighted pettiness. The sole foundation that I have been able to find is a stray sentence in a light letter to Lord Malmesbury; just as in 1863 he made merry in Parliament over those who regarded the “colonial empire” as an “annual burden.”

This sentence, jesting of the “millstone,” but sighing over the chance of severance, was penned in 1853—the very year after the New Zealand Constitution. It was a time of despondency, following on fourteen years of colonial crisis. During it both Canada and the Cape had rebelled. The former’s Constitution had been suspended. The repeal of the Sugar Duties had estranged mutinous Jamaica. Peel had been constrained to exclaim that in “Every one of our colonies we have another Ireland,” and Peel was an imperialist. In a raw state, and in the crudity of earlier hardships, the colonies always clash more readily with home government than when the mellowing progress of experience enables them to take a less partial view, and to accept help in working out their own salvation. Moreover, the choice still lay between pure democracy and democracy monarchical and national. The democratic idea during this period was working in absolute detachment from the ancient institutions which should have been easily transplanted. In the colonies these were all in danger. It was difficult here to find a rallying centre for them there, and that difficulty was heightened by the two new schools of Radical thought—the older, that of the philosophical Molesworth and the utilitarian Hume, who tested policy by the criterion of immediate success; the newer, that of the dry “Physical Equalitarians” of Manchester, which regarded Great Britain as a huge co-operative store. Disraeli from first to last urged the especial need in England for strong as well as good government. The faculties for government were being lessened and weakened. It was not one side only that despaired; Lord John Russell himself had no faith in the bare democracy of the colonial feeling. And yet we have seen what Disraeli wrote of Lord John in The Press at this very period. The home example then was unpropitious for the colonies. Monarchy was yet far from popular. What Disraeli feared in England—what may still be dreaded in our midst—was the possible reaction—in the face of limited employment of labour and growing tyranny of capital—from detached democracy to moneyed despotism. “Nor is there”—wrote Disraeli, with premature penetration, in The Press of March 21, 1853—“a country in the world in which the reaction from democracy to despotism would be so sudden and so complete as in England, because in no other country is there the same timidity of capital; and just in proportion as democratic progress by levelling the influences of birth elevates the influences of money, does it create a power that would at any time annihilate liberty—if liberty were brought into opposition with the three-per-cents.” The effects of this fermenting leaven both in England and among her colonies had to be weighed; and Disraeli many years afterwards avowed in a speech that for a moment he too had wavered. That moment was the one of this passing phrase. But it stood for a phase as momentary. Disraeli, like Strepsiades in the Attic burlesque, had only “mislaid his cloak, not lost it.”115 Ten years later he could advocate our colonial empire with effect and authority. The colonies had become—as the Crown had become—a popular institution, and a requisite for the fresh air, fresh vents, and fresh health of an expanding population cramped by now overcrowded towns. They might still prove a recruiting ground for labour. Peel’s adoption of the “physical happiness” principle, which postulates unlimited employment of industry, had not settled that problem by his “liberation of commerce.” And, as Disraeli pointed out in 1873, if it were only to be settled by natural forces, the “unlimited employment” of labour made for the erasement of the national idea. To the theoretic Radical, however, the colonies, like all our institutions, were still obstacles. “... To him the colonial empire is only an annual burden. To him corporation is an equivalent term for monopoly, and endowment for privilege....”

Together with Disraeli’s name, in the mention of early colonial aspirations, that of the then Sir E. Bulwer Lytton should assuredly be commemorated. He, too, treated colonial concerns, during his brief period of secretaryship, with firmness, insight, and adroitness. Nor should it be forgotten that between the two was a link of romantic imagination as well as of long-standing friendship. Years before, they had both contributed to the New Monthly Magazine. Both were men of striking originality, untempered by a public school education; and it is amusing to note that the fantastic strain, enabling both to view the prospect spaciously, and censured as “un-English”116 in Disraeli—often when he was really quoting from our classics117—was only criticised as “extravagant” in Lytton, or, at a later period, as “ornate” in Lord Leighton. Both were students and interpreters of Bolingbroke. They had each the faculty of regarding history as a whole, and from a high vantage-ground, instead of perverting their vision of progress by the paltry rancours of the moment. Such an instinct is invaluable in attaching new settlements to the nest of their nurture.

In 1863, summarising the aspirations of Conservatism, he spoke of “our colonial empire, which is the national estate, that assures to every subject, ... as it were, a freehold, and which gives to the energies and abilities of Englishmen an inexhaustible theatre.” He was swift to discern the bearing of crucial alterations in America on the colonies. In 1864, while the civil conflict was raging in the United States, he urged, regarding them: “... What is the position of the colonies and dependencies of her Majesty in that country? Four years ago, when the struggle broke out, there was very little in common between them. The tie that bound them to this country was almost one of formality; but what has been the consequence of this great change in North America? You have now a powerful federation with the element of nationality strongly evinced in it. They count their population by millions, and they are conscious that they have a district more fertile and an extent of territory equal to the unappropriated reserves of the United States. These are the elements and prognostics of new influences that have changed the character of that country. Nor is it without reason that they do not feel less of the ambition which characterises new communities than the United States, and that they may become, we will say, the ‘Russia of the New World.’... If from considerations of expense we were to quit the possessions that we now occupy in North America, it would be ultimately, as regards our resources and wealth, as fatal a step as could possibly be taken. Our prosperity would not long remain a consolation, and we might then prepare for the invasion of our country and the subjection of the people.” And he next insisted on the need of Canada’s adequate defence, saying that while we would not force our connection on any dependency, yet, finding our colonies now asserting the principle of their nationality, “... and ... foreseeing a glorious future, ... still depending on the faithful and affectionate assistance of England, it would be the most short-sighted and suicidal policy to shrink from the duty that Providence has called upon us to fulfil.” In 1866, again, he advocated colonial interests in Parliament, and, by a fine phrase, warned us to “... recollect that England is the metropolis of a colonial empire; that she is at the head of a vast number of colonies, the majority of which are yearly increasing in wealth; and that every year these colonies send back to these shores their capital and their intelligence in the persons of distinguished men, who are naturally anxious that these interests should be represented in the House of Commons.”

But it was in 1872 that Disraeli first propounded a colonial policy which was the sum of many previous pronouncements, and is even now being pondered, and not by one party alone. He recognised that a united empire implies a united nation; that, as he always maintained, Parliament represents national opinion, and that colonial opinion and sentiment at last formed part of it.

“Gentlemen,” urged Disraeli, “there is another and second great object of the Tory party. If the first is to maintain the institutions of the country, the second is, in my opinion, to uphold the empire of England. If you look to the history of this country since the advent of Liberalism—forty years ago—you will find that there has been no effort, so continuous, so subtle, supported by so much energy, and carried on with so much ability and acumen, as the attempts of Liberalism to effect the disintegration of the empire of England. Statesmen of the highest character, writers of the most distinguished ability, the most organised and efficient means have been employed in this endeavour. It has been proved to all of us that we have lost money by our colonies.” Alluding next to the “incubus” in the passage I have already cited, he thus frankly continues: ... “Well, that result was nearly accomplished when these subtle views were adopted by the country, under the plausible plea of granting self-government to the colonies. I confess that I myself thought that the tie was broken. Not that I, for one, object to self-government. I cannot conceive how our distant colonies can have their affairs administered except by self-government. But self-government, in my opinion, ought to have been conceded, as part of a great policy of imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accompanied by an imperial tariff, by securities for the people of England for the enjoyment of the unappropriated lands which belonged to the sovereign as their trustee, and by a military code which should have precisely defined the means and the responsibilities by which the colonies should be defended,118 and by which, if necessary, the country should call for aid from the colonies themselves. It ought further to have been accompanied by the institution of some representative council in the metropolis, which would have brought the colonies into constant and continuous relations with the home Government. All this, however, was omitted because those who advised that policy—and I believe their convictions were sincere—looked upon the colonies of England, looked even upon our connection with India, as a burden upon this country, viewing everything in a financial aspect, and totally passing by those moral and political considerations which make nations great, and by the influence of which alone men are distinguished from animals.”

Here we have a foreseeing and a far-seeing policy. Not a point of this forecast but has engaged, or will soon engage, national attention. With what courage and sagacity did Disraeli hand on the torch of Bolingbroke, who, first of English statesmen, had emphasised the significance of Gibraltar, who foretold England’s mission as “a Mediterranean power,”119 and pictured her then scanty colonies as so many “home farms”! None can now doubt the sagacity; and if any doubt the courage, they have only to peruse the warnings of that commercial Cassandra, Mr. Bright, who, during the manufactured reaction of 1879, unconsciously justified Disraeli’s predictions of seven years before. After cataloguing his “annexations” like an auctioneer, he thus proceeded to stir passion and impute motives—

“... All this adds to your burdens. Just listen to this: they add to the burdens, not of the empire, but of the 33,000,000 of people who inhabit Great Britain and Ireland. We take the burden and pay the charge. This policy may lend a seeming glory to the Crown, and it may give scope for patronage and promotion, and pay a pension to a limited and favoured class. But to you, the people, it brings expenditure of blood and treasure, increased debts and taxes, and adds risk of war in every part of the globe.”

Is sense more conspicuous than charity in this onslaught? Has it not been proved penny wise, pound foolish? Could a better instance be adduced of a contrast between England as an emporium and Great Britain as a united empire?120 In many respects I honour Mr. Bright. He at least had the courage of his honest convictions. He was against war altogether; but in being so he opposed the instincts of rising nationalities and tried to lull Great Britain into a fool’s paradise of international exhibitions. It is now asserted that Russia could not advance through Persia to India without a bristling series of bayonets. This is not to be wished, but is it to be feared? Of “Peace at any price,” Disraeli said with truth—and truth in the interests of general peace—that it was a “dangerous doctrine, which had done more mischief and caused more wars than the most ruthless conquerors.” What happened? Mr. Bright at a bound converted Mr. Gladstone. It was a mutual necessity. Neither of them without the other could have swayed the commercial classes and “the lower middles.” Mr. Gladstone was Don Quixote; Mr. Bright, Sancho Panza. Mr. Gladstone appealed to the nation; Mr. Bright, with sincere power and definite ideals, to a class. Mr. Gladstone appealed to the customs and institutions which he heroically assailed; Mr. Bright attacked more directly and without even the show of sympathy. Here Mr. Gladstone was Girondin; Mr. Bright, Jacobin. Mr. Gladstone’s conviction of being “the legate of the skies,” his electric temperament, devout genius, practical fervour and “connection,” both idealised and popularised the doggedness and the narrowness of Mr. Bright’s democratic doctrine. But Mr. Bright was consistent. He was against any fight for united nationality. He would never have embarked on war at all, and so could never have withdrawn from struggle at the wrong moment. He never deluded himself or others. It might be said that the author of the essay on “Church and State” led the “Nonconformist conscience” to the altar, and that the eloquent denouncer both of Church and State gave the bride away. But the chivalrous knight-errant could not quite forego the Dulcinea of his youth. It will be remembered that Mr. Gladstone, still by inadvertence, used occasionally to stumble upon the word “empire” in his speeches. Peel himself had called it “wonderful”! Lord John Russell had employed it in 1855. It was a word born with Queen Elizabeth, and familiar throughout the reign of Queen Anne. Chatham’s clarion rang with it. The poet Cowper, whom none can accuse of egotism or of bombast, repeats it with a glow of pride. But Mr. Bright, unless I mistake, never condescended to breathe the name or condone the thing. Mr. Gladstone regained power, and ran riot—the riot of the best intentions in the worst sense of the phrase. The policy of “scuttle” ensued—from what motives I stop not here to inquire. We abandoned Kandahar, “annexed” through a need caused by past vacillations and repulses of the Ameer; but, together with conditions for rendering him independent of Russia’s natural intrigues. We abandoned it just when the disasters of the Soudan again invited Russian encroachment. We abandoned the Transvaal at the first blush of defeat. “Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform” culminated in war, extravagance, and confusion. The trumpeters of impolitic economy, proposing expenditure and yet dangling the repeal of some tax to gratify “the interests or prejudices of the party of retrenchment,” were, in Disraeli’s phrase of 1861, “penurious prodigals.” Upright “prigs and pedants,” intruding private opinions on public affairs, honest hypocrites who deceived themselves and hoped to persuade the sceptics of the world, preachers of theories to the winds, all played with crucial issues and trifled solemnly with a cynical Continent. The school-master was abroad. We took Egypt against our will, and promised not to retain it. We cried, “Hands off, Austria!” and apologised for doing so. We prepared for necessitating the most exceptional war of modern times. It was the policy of panic and disunion, the policy of alternate weakness and bluster, the policy that by turns coaxed and coerced Ireland, allured and abandoned Gordon; it was a policy of private magnanimity at the public expense, and not the policy of wise consolidation and calculated outlets. It was not the policy of diplomacies at once instructed, firm, and gentle. Nor was it one of defined spheres, regulated boundaries, and fortified “gates of empire.” Yet it led us to “expenditure of blood and treasure.” And if we have since—and not, as I believe, in the spirit or with the precautions of Disraeli—been forced to retrace our steps, it is due to these retail maxims of Mr. Bright, and not to the wholesale creed of Lord Beaconsfield.

But the temper of his “Imperialism,” whatever may have been momentarily suspected or sneered at, was never aggressive, and always deliberate. It was for defence, not defiance; it was no grandiose illusion, no gaudy show of spurious glory; no froth or fuss of sound and fury signifying nothing.

It ran utterly counter, as he declared in 1862, to “that turbulent diplomacy which distracts the mind of a people from internal improvement.” Just as internally his statesmanship guarded against the predominance of any particular class, so externally the only ground for British intervention was for him the undue predominance of a particular power against English or the general interests. Throughout he sought what Lord Castlereagh had also attempted, the solidarity of Europe. No doubt, like all great men of action, he made mistakes and committed errors. He owned as much himself. But I believe that history will justify the height from which he surveyed the scene, his reach and sweep of vision, the depth, too, of an insight piercing far below the surface. In one respect at least he may be said to have resembled Napoleon—“his vast and fantastic conception of policy.” I do not deny that he wished to strike the imagination; I do not deny that occasionally the direct response may have missed fire; but I submit that on the whole his policy was right, that its final effects rarely disappointed intention, and that it has left pregnant and abiding results. His aim was what the late Lord Salisbury afterwards declared as his own, to “resume the thread of our ancient empire;” and, as Macaulay has remarked of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, who was also twitted with inconsistency: “... Through a long public life, and through frequent and violent changes of public feeling, he almost invariably took that view of the great questions of his time which history has finally adopted.” At home on leading issues he had strengthened the power of Government by representing worthy opinion, and by renewing the affection of the people for their institutions in the struggle to maintain united English nationality against disruptive forces. It was reserved for him to reawaken the slumbering sense of what had once been an arousing reality—the duties of an august empire over many associated races and religions, the due greatness of Great Britain, the high destinies and ennobling burdens of an ancient nation appointed to rule the seas.

The keynote was sounded in that very speech of 1862, when he repeated what he had often before objected to the robust Lord Palmerston’s frequently flustering methods, but added that “... we should be vigilant to guard and prompt to vindicate the honour of the country.” On an earlier occasion, he laid stress on the diplomatic duty of “... if necessary, saying rough things kindly, and not kind things roughly;” while from first to last, however, as head of opposition, he disapproved a foreign policy which landed us in superfluous engagements, he always supported the Government when the crisis became really national. In 1864, criticising the Palmerstonian management of the Danish imbroglio, he remarked: “... I am not for war. I can contemplate with difficulty the combination of circumstances which can justify war in the present age unless the honour of the country is likely to suffer.”

Two more of his ruling principles were, first, that the ripe moment is half the battle in national attitude towards distant complications; and second, the importance, under our system, of distinguishing between what a minister, backed by a large parliamentary majority, decides in home and in foreign affairs. His prescient criticisms on both the source and the course of the Crimean War illustrate the one; his deliverance, in a speech of May, 1855—a speech prescribing a most statesmanlike policy towards both Russia and Turkey, part only of which121 he was able more than twenty years later to execute, the other: “... A minister may, by the aid of a parliamentary majority, support unjust laws, and ... a political system which a quarter of a century afterwards may, by the aid of another parliamentary majority, be condemned. The passions, the prejudices, and the party spirit that flourish in a free country may support and uphold him.... But when you come to foreign politics things are very different. Every step that you take is an irretrievable one.... You cannot rescind your policy.... If you make a mistake in foreign affairs; if you enter into unwise treaties; ... if the scope and tendency of your foreign system are founded on a want of information or false information, ... there is no majority in the House of Commons which can long uphold a Government under such circumstances. It will not make a Government strong, but it will make this House weak....”

Throughout, his policy was that of confederation, not annexation; of “scientific frontiers” safeguarding ascertained “spheres of influence;” of binding, not loosing; of a strong front but a soft mien; of persuasion, if possible, rather than compulsion—as he always recommended in framing measures to protect labour and improve society; of a straight line steadfastly pursued, instead of wobble, worry, and flurry; first beating the air, and then—a retreat; at once headstrong and weak-kneed. Although his “Imperialism” was by no means that which has occasionally since usurped the name, assuredly, in upholding the burden of Great Britain’s destiny, he would never have recoiled from “the too vast orb of her fate.” Disraeli’s imperialism was not the bastard and braggart sort that he once styled “rowdy rhetoric;” nor the official sort to which he sarcastically alluded when Lord Palmerston, in 1855, took credit for accepting Lord John Russell’s resignation, and was “ready to stand or fall by him:” “The noble Lord is neither standing nor falling, but, on the contrary, he has remained sitting on the Treasury bench.” Associated with it, lay a deep sense of obligation in the choice of high character, ability, and spirit to carry it out; the sense too that a momentary mistake should never sacrifice excellent proconsuls to the “hare-brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity;” the resolve also never to shirk responsibility by making scapegoats. And, beyond all, a feeling that in dealing even with semi-barbarous nations, it was neither magnanimous, wise, nor dignified to crush them utterly, and that their feelings, prejudices, and customs ought to be respected.

Perhaps no better example could be given than his attitude regarding the events of 1879 in South Africa. The Zulus had threatened and harassed an impoverished and resourceless Transvaal. The Transvaal had requested and obtained “annexation” from Great Britain. But the Zulu chief, irritated by the suppression of the “suzerainty” arrogated by him over the Boer lands, began to beset the Natal borders. The Governor of Natal was for appeasing them. Sir Bartle Frere, however, that commanding High Commissioner of South Africa, took an opposite view, and favoured a course unmistakable for weakness. In his conferences with Cetchwayo he made requisitions, on his own initiative, exceeding his instructions from home. The result was war, with the disaster of Isandhlwana, the rally of Rorke’s Drift, and eventual success. During March the matter was brought before the House of Lords in a form arranged to censure the Government policy, but so worded as to restrict the debate to the advisability of Sir Bartle Frere’s recall on the ground of his unauthorised ultimatum.

Disraeli’s speech is worthy of close attention, if only because it forecasts the ultimate federation of South Africa. Disraeli defended Sir Bartle on the score that to succeed in impugning error, if error it was, of a distinguished public servant chosen by the Crown, was to impugn its prerogative. “Great services are not cancelled by one act or one single error, however it may be regretted at the moment. If he had been recalled ... in deference to the panic, the thoughtless panic of the hour, in deference to those who have no responsibility in the matter, and who have not weighed well and deeply investigated all the circumstances and all the arguments ... which ... must be appealed to to influence our opinions in such questions—no doubt a certain degree of odium might have been diverted from the heads of her Majesty’s ministers, and the world would have been delighted, as it always is, to find a victim.... We had only one course to pursue, ... to take care that at this most critical period ... affairs ... in South Africa should be directed by one, not only qualified to direct them, but who was superior to any other individual whom we could have selected for the purpose.”

It would be a bad precedent, he resumed, for the safety of the empire if an exceptional indiscretion were to efface a long record of signal ability; and he drew to the recollection of the House122 the case of Sir James Hudson at Turin, whose conduct had been similarly attacked, and whom he, as the leader of the Opposition, had refused to make a party question, and had himself then defended on the same public considerations. But adverting to policy, he used these weighty words—

“... Sir Bartle Frere was selected by the noble Lord (Carnarvon) ... chiefly to secure one great end—namely, to carry out that policy of CONFEDERATION in South Africa which the noble Lord had carried out on a previous occasion with regard to the North American colonies.

“If there is any policy which, in my mind, is opposed to the policy of annexation, it is that of confederation. By pursuing the policy of confederation, we bind states together, we consolidate their resources, and we enable them to establish a strong frontier; that is the best security against annexation. I myself regard a policy of annexation with great distrust. I believe that the reasons of state which induced us to annex the Transvaal were not, on the whole, perfectly sound. But what were these circumstances?... The Transvaal was a territory which was no longer defended by its occupiers.... The annexation of that province was ... a geographical necessity.

“But the ‘annexation’ of the Transvaal was one of the reasons why those who were connected with that province might have calculated upon the permanent existence of Zululand as an independent state. I know it is said that, when we are at war, as we unfortunately now are, with the Zulus, or any other savage nation, even though we inflicted upon them some great disaster, and might effect an arrangement with them of a peaceable character, before long the same power would again attack us, unless we annexed the territory. I have never considered that a legitimate argument in favour of annexation of a barbarous country.... Similar results might occur in Europe if we went to war with one of our neighbours.... But is that an argument why we should not hold our hand until we have completely crushed our adversary, and is that any reason why we should pursue a policy of extermination with regard to a barbarous nation with whom we happen to be at war? That is a policy which I hope will never be sanctioned by this House.

“It is, of course, possible that we may again be involved in war with the Zulus; but it is an equal chance that in the development of circumstances in that part of the world, the Zulu people may have to invoke the aid and the alliance of England against some other people, and that the policy dictated by feelings and influence which have regulated our conduct with regard to European states, may be successfully pursued with regard to less civilised nations in a different part of the world. This is the policy of her Majesty’s Government, and therefore they cannot be in favour of a policy of annexation, because it is directly opposed to it....”

The same considerations, those of settled and settling limits—considerations, let me repeat, directly opposed to a vague and wavering policy fraught with encroachments, alarm, and haphazard embroilment—were to actuate his policy towards Afghanistan during 1879, into the vexed details of which I shall not now enter, though they might be reviewed with instruction; the policy, too, that recognised that English vacillation would at once be magnified into weakness throughout the bazaars of the Orient.123

The “insane annexation” of that fortress-citadel, Kandahar, it has often been objected, was the most vulnerable of Disraeli’s schemes. There are many entitled to respect who still hold that it was rightly and profitably rescinded. Moreover, the tragic sequel of the heroic Cavagnari’s death prejudiced the public. But the chain of events which required, the conciliatory conditions which accompanied it, and the true causes, or pretexts, for its annulment with virulence, should be carefully remembered. A former Viceroy’s mistake in rebuffing the friendly overtures of the Afghans, the Muscovite move forward in Central Asia, while war was in the air, the consequent intrigues at Cabul, perturbed by dynastic broils—these were some of the warrants for its necessity. Fresh Russian manœuvres and advances, owing to a fatally feeble policy in the Soudan, were parts of the lever for its relinquishment. The highest military authorities sanctioned it at the time, though other high military authorities disapproved a few years later. But when it is borne in mind that Disraeli’s previous occupation of Quetta, the key both to Kandahar and the Pishin valley, is now a large cantonment, that a railway is ready to be laid to within no great distance of Kandahar itself on any fresh emergency, it may well be pondered whether Disraeli was mistaken, and whether time has not confounded the triflers who caricatured him as a music-hall singer, with the refrain—

It was no mere question of a “buffer” state. It formed a weighty part of his great and pacific project for safeguarding the “gates” of our Indian Empire. Of the three main approaches then open to Russia—entitled in her own interests to use them, as he always admitted—the south-eastern limits of Afghanistan command the long high-road which leads to the distant north-western borders and the “gate” of Herat. Moreover, they dominate one of the important trade routes to Northern India. The remote side of the Indus can thus be used as a protection against the remoter side of the Oxus. At the same time, Disraeli subsidised the Afghans, and when their Ameer, under Russian influence, insulted our envoy, treated them at first “like spoiled children.” His aim was—as always in his whole policy—a compact independence. “Both in the East and West,” he observed, “our object is to have prosperous, happy, and contented neighbours. But these are things which cannot be done in a day. You cannot settle them as you would pay a morning visit.” He was building the foundations for a lasting peace. At any rate, the rectified frontier, which as he pointed out could be held by five thousand men, while a “haphazard” frontier demanded twenty times that number, is unimpugned. Nor should those who speak of a smoothed Ameer and an unruffled Cabul, after Kandahar was evacuated, forget that, since Merv has become Russian, the old dynastic intrigues and tribe feuds may, one day, readily recur at Cabul, fresh opportunities encourage Russia, and a reoccupation of this cancelled coign of vantage become imperative. “The science of politics,” as Macaulay well says, “is an experimental science.” Disraeli excelled most statesmen in his intuitive grasp of Indian affairs. Peel himself, shortly before his death, prophesied that Disraeli, “when his hour struck,” would be “Governor-General of India.”

The same principles, as will appear, prompted the masterly and masterful Treaty of Berlin. The same, caused him to exclaim of Russia, whose designs he had thwarted in India and foiled at Constantinople, in memorable language, that in Asia there was “room enough” for her and for us; yet that, though in the face of possible conflict, she was entitled to equip her expedition of courtesy to “cool the hoofs of its horses in the waters of the Oxus,” she must be induced to withdraw it by our own counter-preventions. But what I wish here particularly to illustrate is, the psychological point of respect for and reckoning with the habits, wants, and traditions of other or alien civilisations. It rested on an idea familiar to his youth, and which he thus expressed in a soliloquy of Alroy: “Universal empire must not be founded on sectarian principles and exclusive rights.... Something must be done to bind the conquered to our conquering fortunes.”

It was signally evinced in his treatment—his exceptional treatment when Opposition leader—of the Indian Mutiny. At that time Disraeli alone seemed to grasp the significance of the outbreak in its initial stage, which was viewed as a mere military rebellion, and regarded as lightly, and with as little reason, as the beginnings of the Boer War.

“It is remarkable,” he urged, before the crisis became recognised, “how insignificant incidents at the first blush have appeared which have proved to be pregnant with momentous consequences. A street riot in Boston and at Paris, turned out to be the two great revolutions of modern times. Who would have supposed when we first heard of the rude visit of a Russian sailor from a port in the Black Sea to Constantinople, that we were on the eve of a critical war and the solution of the most difficult of modern problems?” It was, he contended, a national revolt, not a military mutiny. In our policy of the immediate past we had forcibly destroyed native authority for the sole object of increasing revenue. “In spite of the law of adoption, which was the very corner-stone of Hindoo society, when a native prince died without natural heirs, though a son had been adopted as a successor, the Government of India annexed his dominions. Sattara, Berar, Jeitpore, Sumbulpore, Jhansi, were monuments of ‘nefarious’ acquisition. And Oude, of ‘a wholesale system of spoliation,’ for it had been annexed even without the pretext of a lawful failure of heirs.”

We had also disturbed the settlement of property by “a new system of government.” He analysed the popular law of adoption as the basis of Hindoo property, and as contrasted with its misuse in the hands of princes as a source of succession. He gave many instances, distinguishing each. “What man was safe, what feudatory, what freeholder who had not a child of his own loins, was safe throughout India?... The Government determined to exact all it could, not only from princes, but from the people.” The exemptions from the land tax—“the whole taxation of the State”—had, under pretences, been continually taken away. The resumption of estates in Bengal alone had yielded the Government half a million of revenue; in Bombay alone £370,000 a year. Moreover, hereditary pensions had been commuted into personal annuities. These disturbances had naturally fomented these discontents.

We had, moreover, tampered with the Hindoo religion. “... I think a very great error exists as to the assumed prejudice of Hindoos with regard to what is called missionary enterprise. The fact is that ... the Indian population generally, with the exception of the Mussulmans, are educated in a manner which peculiarly disposes them to theological inquiries.... They are a most ancient race; they have a mass of tradition on these subjects; a complete Indian education is to a great degree religious; their laws, their tenure of land depend upon religion; and there is no race in the world better armed at all points for theological discussion.... Add to this, that they can always fall back upon an educated priesthood prepared to supply them with arguments and illustrations.... But what the Hindoo does regard with suspicion is the union of missionary enterprise with the political power of the Government. With that power he associates only one idea, violence.... It appears to me that the legislative council of India has, under the new principle, been constantly nibbling at the religious system of the natives.” It had tried to adapt Western systems to Oriental habits. In its theoretical system of national education the “sacred Scriptures had suddenly appeared in the schools; and you cannot persuade the Hindoos that those holy books have appeared there without the concurrence and the secret sanction of the Government.” Systematic female education, again, had been commanded—a most unwise step, considering “the peculiar ideas entertained by Hindoos with regard to women.” But two acts had even more contributed to the ferment of native feeling. The first, that no man who changed his religion should be deprived of his inheritance. That struck at the main purpose of property in India, which consists in being a sacred trust for religious objects. The second, that a Hindoo widow might marry again, “which is looked upon by all as an outrage on their faith,” uncalled for, and fraught with alarm.

But the main blunder had been the annexation of Oude without excuse, and executed in such a manner that for the first time the Mahometan princes felt that they had an identity of interest with the Indian rajahs. “... You see how the plot thickens.... Men of different races and different religions ... traditionary feuds and long and enduring prejudices with all the elements to produce segregation, become united—Hindoos, Mahrattas, Mahommedans—secretly feeling a common interest and a common cause.” Princes and proprietors are against you. “Estates as well as musnuds are in danger. You have an active society spread all over India, alarming the ryot, the peasant, respecting his religious faith. Never mind on this head what were your intentions; the question is, what were their thoughts—what their inferences?” And a further aggravation had resulted. The Oude sepoy, who was a yeoman, had recruited the Bengal army. “Robbed of his country and deprived of his privileges, he schemed and plotted, and sent mysterious symbols from village to village, which prepared the native mind,” agitated by princes deposed, religion insulted, soldiery discontented, for an occasion and pretext “to overthrow the British yoke.” “The Mutiny was no more a sudden impulse, than the income tax was a sudden impulse. It was the result of careful combinations, vigilant and well-organised, on the watch for opportunity.... I will not go into the question of the new cartridges.... I do not suppose any one ... will believe that because the cartridges were believed to be, or were pretended to be believed to be, greased with pig’s or cow’s fat, that was the cause of this insurrection. The decline and fall of empires are not affairs of greased cartridges. Such results are occasioned by adequate causes and by an accumulation of adequate causes.”

And now what remedies would meet such emergencies? Force, it was agreed, must now be employed. The force proposed was inadequate. “There should be an advance from Calcutta through Bengal, and an expedition up the Indus. The Militia should be called out. An Empire, not a Cabinet, was in danger.”

“... But to my mind that is not all that we ought to look to. Even if we do vindicate our authority with complete success—revenge the insults that we have received, rebuild the power that has been destroyed ... although we will assert with the highest hand our authority, although we will not rest until our unquestioned supremacy and predominance are acknowledged, ... it is not merely as avengers that we appear. I think that the great body of the population of that country ought to know that there is for them a future of hope. I think we ought to temper justice with mercy—justice the most severe with mercy the most indulgent.... Neither internal nor external peace can in India,” he urged, “be secured by British troops alone. There must be no more annexation, no more conquest.... It is totally impossible that you can ever govern 150,000,000 of men in India by merely European agency. You must meet that difficulty boldly and completely.... You ought at once ... to tell the people of India that the relation between them and their real ruler and sovereign, Queen Victoria, shall be drawn nearer. You must act upon the opinion of India on that subject immediately; and you can only act upon the opinion of Eastern nations through their imagination. You ought to have a Royal Commission sent by the Queen from this country to India immediately, to inquire into the grievances of the various classes of that population. You ought to issue a royal proclamation to the people of India, declaring that the Queen of England is not a sovereign who will countenance the violation of treaties ... that she ... will respect their laws, their usages, their customs, and, above all, their religion. Do this, and do this not in a corner, but in a mode and manner which will attract universal attention, and excite the general hope of Hindostan in the Queen’s name and with the Queen’s authority. If that be done, simultaneously with the arrival of your forces, you may depend upon it that your military advance will be facilitated, and, I believe, your ultimate success insured.”

I have abstracted this significant speech, which took three hours to deliver, because it shows how his mind grasped such situations, and how his imagination played all around them. In the same way, in 1856, he deprecated the violent interference of Sir J. Bowring (a former secretary of the Peace Society) with the Chinese, and insisted that they were “the nation of etiquette,” and were not to be coerced by “a brutal freedom of manners.” “If you are not,” he then prophetically protested, “cautious and careful of your conduct now in dealing with China, you will find that you are likely not to extend commerce, but to excite the jealousy of powerful states, and to involve yourselves in hostilities with nations not inferior to yourselves....”

Such were the ideas that prompted the stroke of the Suez Canal shares, and his dramatic summoning of the Indian troops to Malta when Russia was before the citadel of the Levant, and India had to be impressed; that prompted, too, his proclamation of the Queen as Empress of India; and his choice of the late Lord Lytton as a poet suited for Indian Viceroyalty; these ideas, that made him announce, shortly before he died, that “London” was “the key of India.”

In this context I must dwell too for a moment on what I have already hinted concerning the temper of his diplomacy. Already, in 1860, he had recognised the full changes imposed by the spirit of the age. “... In the old days,” he observed, “diplomacy was conducted in a secret fashion, whilst now we had ‘a candid foreign policy.’ What in former times ... would have been a soliloquy in Downing Street, now becomes a speech in the House of Commons.” But that was no pretext, he also always asserted, as I shall again have to notice, for roughness and offence, for a high voice and a low hand; still less for playing censor, lecturer, or hector at once. Above all, he abominated the diplomacy which encourages by words and disappoints by deeds—the diplomacy that in 1864 promised defence to Denmark and then denied her even encouragement. Speaking then, Disraeli said: “... We will not threaten, and then refuse to act; we will not lure on our allies with expectations we do not mean to fulfil. And, sir, if ever it be the lot of myself or any public men with whom I have the honour to act, to carry on important negotiations on behalf of this country ... I trust that we at least shall not carry them on in such a manner that it will be our duty to come to Parliament to announce to the country that we have no allies, and then declare that England can never act alone.” In diplomacy, moreover, he laid great stress—as is witnessed by a striking passage in Endymion—on the need for a minister’s personal acquaintance with the chief actors on the foreign stage, and with the temper of the people whose fortunes are in their hands.124