The Right Hon. Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, K. G., and his times
Ewald, Alex. Charles (Alexander Charles), 1842-1891
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CHAPTER I. “DISRAELI THE YOUNGER.” On the bead-roll of English statesmen the name of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beacons- field, will only cease to occupy the foremost position when English politics have no further existence. Born to none of those advantages which his predecessors in office enjoyed, he owed the brilliant name he made for himself, and the lofty post he gained with its splendid tenure of power, alone to those rich intellectual gifts which render their possessor independent of the glamour of birth or the favours of fortune. At the outset of his career every obstacle that impediment could devise barred the path of his advancement to the position he subsequently attained, of leader of the Eng¬ lish landed interest, and as a potent author¬ ity in the councils of Europe. He bore a foreign name; in his veins flowed the blood of a then despised and outcast race ; though not poor, his means were too slender to offer any compensation for the disadvan¬ tages under which he laboured; he had passed through none of that social prepara¬ tory training — boyhood at a public school, manhood at a university — which generally qualifies the English gentleman ambitious of VOL. i. parliamentary honours; yet ignored, friend¬ less, and the constant butt of all the ridicule and sarcasm that the most venomous malice could inspire, he rose to heights such as Burke had never dreamed of, and swayed a power such as neither Walpole nor the second Pitt had ever exercised. Conscious of the immense talents working within him, quick-sighted as well as far-sighted, a keen judge of character and of the weakness of an enemy’s position, with the mordant wit of a Parisian, with all the resources of a complete master of language, and with that exquisite tact which instinctively knows how to make the most of a victory and the least of a defeat, he waited with the patience which is in itself one of the most charac¬ teristic signs of great genius, for the moment when his opportunity should come, and the tide, taken at the flood, should bear him on to fortune. In the feverish, harassing struggle of party politics he was always so cool and collected that those who knew not the man said he was indifferent to the conflict around him ; whilst the real truth was that his well-balanced judg¬ ment was superior to those passions of 1 2 THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD the hour which always affect and irritate the shallow and superficial, but leave calm and unruffled the depths of the really great mind. He ran a waiting race; never exhausting himself by futile efforts which might distress and retard him, but keeping his powers well within their grasp, steadily, almost imperceptibly, he drew away from his competitors, until at the supreme moment when called upon by genius, he put forth all his strength and reached the goal a winner, so decided and complete as to leave his victory an event without parallel in the annals of parliamen¬ tary triumphs. Criticising Lord Beacons- field’s career from its beginning to its close, we may say that never did ambition seem more hopeless, never was its realization more complete. In any other profession save that of politics, the success attained by the late Lord Beaconsfield would not have been so singularly remarkable. Men from the most humble surroundings have risen to the serene heights of the bench, have worn the lawn sleeves of the episcopate, have wielded the baton of the field-marshal, have been created peers for famous achieve¬ ments. The great prizes of the bar, the church, the queen’s services are open to all; and though certain social advantages have, in the different professions, their full value, yet such advantages at the best but give the candidate a good start, and by no means promise him a success positive and assured. Talent, industry, and sound knowledge seldom fail to meet with their deserts in a professional career, whilst factitious combinations only occa¬ sionally prosper. With parliamentary life it is very different. To become the head of a great party, to command an obedient and united following, to dominate over the jeal¬ ousies and spontaneous antipathies of the House of Commons, to be supreme in the council chamber, and to enjoy the confidence both of your sovereign and your country, something more than great abilities have generally been necessary. A lofty name, a splendid rent-roll, the gifts which captivate what is termed society, have usually been the privileges which surrounded him who held the seals as prime minister. If we look down the list of our English premiers — from Sir Robert Walpole, who was the first to found the office, to its present holder — we shall find that the position and power en¬ joyed by Lord Beaconsfield are unique. There have been men whom party jealousies have placed at the head of cabinets, and who — mere puppets — were content to act as rival candidates chose to pull the strings; there have been men who have undertaken to form a ministry, simply and solely on ac¬ count of their illustrious lineage and vast possessions ; there have been men raised to supreme power, not because they pos¬ sessed the confidence of either house of parliament, or because they were beloved by the country, but only because they were the cherished favourites of the sovereign; and again, there have been men who, from com¬ paratively lowly origin, have attained to the position of chief of the cabinet. Yet in none of these instances is there a parallel to the case of Lord Beaconsfield. Walpole main¬ tained his power by judicious distribution of the guineas of the treasury; Newcastle was a simpleton whose dukedom, wealth, and votes in the lower house compensated for his incapacity, and kept him in office ; Bute was the pet of the court, and the hated of the people ; Addington, Portland, and Per¬ ceval were political mediocrities who owed their elevation to the jealousies of the hour. Canning, sneered at as an adventurer, found when he had been appointed to form an administration, that a proud aristocracy de¬ clined to obey him. In the political history of Lord Beaconsfield we find, it is true, some of the elements which assisted or hampered his predecessors, but nothing in them suffi¬ ciently marked and cohesive as to form a parallel to his exceptional career. In the tactics of parliamentary strategy he was as consummate a master as either Sir Robert Walpole or Sir Robert Peel. Though not unpopular with the people, he cannot be AND HIS TIMES. 3 said to have been, in the fullest acceptation of the word, popular; yet Bute never enjoyed a more cordial and decided support from the court. At no time, however necessary his name might have become to his party, would he have consented — as Portland and Perceval had consented — to have been the chief of a cabinet in which he was not per¬ mitted to be dominant and absolute. “When Lord Beaconsfield speaks,” said Prince Bis¬ marck, referring to the distinguished envoy to the Berlin congress, “he does not speak as one of the members of an English cabinet, but as the cabinet: he is England.” Like Addington and Canning, the birth of Lord Beaconsfield was not in the minds of the vulgar beyond reproach ; yet unlike in their case, the haughtiest aristocracy and the pink of the most prejudiced gentry in Europe gladly enrolled themselves under his banner, and carried out his be¬ hests. What, then, we may ask, were the gifts and fascinations with which this ex¬ traordinary man was endowed, that he should have succeeded where so brilliant a man as Canning had failed; that he should have en¬ joyed a reputation on the continent such as Lord Palmerston in his most spirited mo¬ ments never held ; that, sprung from a stock the be-fouled and persecuted of centuries, he should have been the chief favourite in the most exclusive coteries of society, and that he exercised a command over his fol¬ lowing which was never disputed except to be instantly repented of ? In the following biography we hope to answer these queries. Benjamin Disraeli was born, it is said, * The precise year of his birth is uncertain, some giving it as 1805, and others as 1806; but the general impression appears to be that he was born in 1804. In the inscription upon his coffin the date of his birth was omitted, owing to the inability of the executors to discover any authentic record on the point. On the page of the register in the Registry December 24, 1804,* and, as is well known from the publicity he gave to the fact, and the pride he took in his descent, was sprung from Jewish parents. In the interesting introduction to the works of his father he gives us a sketch of his family history, which will well repay perusal. “My grand¬ father,” he writes, “ who became an English denizen in 1748, was an Italian descendant from one of those Hebrew families whom the Inquisition forced to emigrate from the Spanish peninsula at the end of the fif¬ teenth century, and who found a refuge in the more tolerant territories of the Venetian republic. His ancestors had dropped their Gothic surname on their settlement in the Terra Eirma; and grateful to the God of Jacob who had sustained them through unprecedented trials, and guarded them through unheard-of perils, they assumed the name of * Disraeli/ a name never borne before or since by any other family, in order that their race might be for ever recognized. Undisturbed and unmolested, they flourished as merchants for more than two centuries under the protection of the lion of St. Mark, which was but just, as the patron saint of the republic was himself a child of Israel. Father’s Name. Mother’s Name. Surname. Day in Week of Child's Birth. Jewish Date. Christian Era. Circum¬ cised by Attested by Benjamin. Isaac. Maria. D ’Israeli. Friday. 19 Tehet, 5565. 21 December, 1804. D. A. Lindo, 26 Tehet, 5565. D. J. De Castro. 4 THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD failure of Prince Charles Edward, and where public opinion appeared definitively adverse to persecution on matters of creed and conscience. “ The Jewish families who were then settled in England were few, though, from their wealth and other circumstances, they were far from unimportant. They were all of them Sephardim, that is to say, children of Israel, who had never quitted the shores of the Midland Ocean until Torquemada had driven them from their pleasant resi¬ dences and rich estates in Arragon, and Andalusia, and Portugal, to seek greater blessings, even than a clear atmosphere and a glowing sun, amid the marshes of Holland and the fogs of Britain. Most of these families, who held themselves aloof from the Hebrews of northern Europe, then only occasionally stealing into England, as from an inferior caste, and whose synagogue was reserved only for Sephardim,* are now ex¬ tinct; while the branch of the great family, which, notwithstanding their own sufferings from prejudice, they had the hardihood to look down upon, have achieved an amount of wealth and consideration which the Seph¬ ardim, even with the patronage of Mr. Pelham, never could have contemplated. Nevertheless, at the time when my grand¬ father settled in England, and when Mr. Pelham, who was very favourable to the Jews, was Prime Minister, there might be found, among other Jewish families flour¬ ishing in this country, the Villa Reals, who brought wealth to these shores almost as great as their name, though that is the second in Portugal, and who have twice allied themselves with the English aris¬ tocracy, the Medinas — the Laras, who were our kinsmen — and the Mendez da Costas, who, I believe, still exist. * The Jews are divided into two religious communities — the Ashkenasim or orthodox Jews, and the Sephardim , or Spanish or Portuguese Jews. Both these communities are distinct over the whole world. In the essentials of Judaism they both agree, but in their ritual they slightly differ. In England, since 1841, a third community has been estab¬ lished, called the Reformed Jews, who deny the authority of the Talmud, and acknowledge only one law — the sacred volume of the Scriptures. “Whether it were that my grandfather, on his arrival, was not encouraged by those to whom he had a right to look up, — which is often our hard case in the outset of life, — or whether he was alarmed at the unex¬ pected consequences of Mr. Pelham’s favour¬ able disposition to his countrymen in the disgraceful repeal of the Jew Bill, which occurred a very few years after his arrival in this country, I know not ; but certainly he appears never to have cordially or inti¬ mately mixed with his community. This tendency to alienation was, no doubt, sub¬ sequently encouraged by his marriage, which took place in 1765. My grandmother, the beautiful daughter of a family who had suffered much from persecution, had im¬ bibed that dislike for her race which the vain are too apt to adopt when they find that they are born to public contempt. The indignant feeling that should be reserved for the persecutor, in the mortification of their disturbed sensibility, is too often visited on the victim; and the cause of annoyance is recognized not in the ignorant malevolence of the powerful, but in the conscientious conviction of the innocent sufferer. Seventeen years, however, elapsed before my grandfather entered into this union, and during that interval he had not been idle. He was only eighteen when he commenced his career, and when a great responsibility devolved upon him. He was not unequal to it. He was a man of ardent character ; sanguine, courageous, specula¬ tive, and fortunate ; with a temper which no disappointment could disturb, and a brain, amid reverses, full of resource. He made his fortune in the midway of life, and settled near Enfield, where he formed an Italian garden, entertained his friends, played whist with Sir Horace Mann, who was his great acquaintance, and who had known his brother at Venice as a banker, eat macaroni which was dressed by the Venetian consul, sang canzonettas, and not¬ withstanding a wife who never pardoned him for his name, and a son who disap¬ pointed all his plans, and who to the last AND HIS TIMES. 5 hour of his life was an enigma to him, lived till lie was nearly ninety, and then died in 1817, in the full enjoyment of prolonged existence.” This son “ who disappointed all his plans” was Isaac Disraeli, the author of “ Curiosities of Literature ” and other works enjoying a considerable reputation in their day, but which they have since been unable to sustain. He appears, from the account furnished us by his son, to have been a somewhat moody recluse, with all the ab¬ sent and unpractical habits of the typical man of letters. “ He was,” writes Mr. Disraeli,. “ a complete literary character, a man who really passed his life in his library. Even marriage produced no change in these habits ; he rose to enter the chamber where he lived alone with his books, and at night his lamp was ever lit within the same walls. Nothing, indeed, was more remarkable than the isolation of this prolonged existence; and it could only be accounted for by the united influence of three causes : his birth, which brought him no relations or family acquaintance, the bent of his disposition, and the circumstance of his inheriting an independent fortune, which rendered un¬ necessary those exertions that would have broken up his self-reliance. He disliked business, and he never required relaxation ; he was absorbed in his pursuits. In Lon¬ don his only amusement was to ramble among bookseller's ; if he entered a club, it was only to go into the library. In the country, he scarcely ever left his room but to saunter in abstraction upon a terrace, muse over a chapter, or coin a sentence. He had not a single passion or prejudice : all his convictions were the result of his own studies, and were often opposed to the impressions which he had early imbibed. He not only never entered into the politics of the day, but he could never understand them. He never was connected with any particular body or set of men, comrades of school or college, or confederates in that public life which, in England, is, perhaps, the only foundation of real friendship. In the consideration of a question, his mind was quite undisturbed by traditionary pre¬ conceptions ; and it was this exemption from passion and prejudice which, although his intelligence was naturally somewhat too ingenious and fanciful for the conduct of close argument, enabled him, in investiga¬ tion, often to show many of the highest attributes of the judicial mind, and par¬ ticularly to sum up evidence with singular happiness and ability.” Early in the year 1802 Isaac Disraeli married a Miss Basevi, the sister of George Basevi, the celebrated Jewish architect who designed, amongst other erections, the Eitz- william Museum at Cambridge, and the Conservative Club in St. James’ Street. Many distinguished men have been in¬ debted in no small measure for the fame they obtained in after life to the judicious and sympathetic supervision of a mother of a superior mental calibre ; but Mrs. Disraeli, it would appear, was an ordinary, com¬ mon-place woman, whose character does not call for any particular comment. Her son, who talks much of the “philosophic sweetness ” of the disposition of his father, of his “ singular volubility,” his amiability, his personal appearance, and the charms of his conversation, scarcely alludes to the name of his mother, which, we think, would not have been the case (since it was characteris¬ tic of the man not to be reticent concerning his affection to those to whom he was attached) had she exercised any great in¬ fluence upon his career. Of this marriage four children were the result. Sarah, the only daughter, was born December 6, 1802; Benjamin, the late earl of Beaconsfield, as we have said, December 21, 1804; Balph, in 1809 ; and James, in 1813. Modern Judaism, lacking its sacred Temple, and consequently deprived of the very vitality of its religion — the sacrificial system — is fast losing its distinctive characteristics ; it is gradually developing into a deism, differing only from pure deism inasmuch as it is warped and coloured by the prejudices of race. The modern Jew, cultivated and un- 6 THE EAKL OF BE ACONSFIELD restricted, chooses the profession he thinks most suited to his abilities, rises rapidly in it, and mixes freely, if it will permit him, with the society of the country of his adoption. The precepts of the Talmud and the lore of the rabbis sit lightly upon him, and save when, owing to the result of hereditary influences, he ob¬ serves in all its strictness the solemn day of atonement, he seldom enters his synagogue. He lives very much as those who are of a different faith around him; the particular precepts, which enjoin him to eschew certain articles of food, and the dishes prepared by those not of his own race, are far more honoured in the breach than in the observ¬ ance ; if his affections are engaged, and such union is calculated to advance his social interests, he marries a dame who worships the hated Christ of his ancestors ; he changes his name if the patronymic be gratingly Hebraic; and if nature had not stamped them indelibly upon the physiog¬ nomy of his race, he would have no objec¬ tion to change his features. Were it not for the peculiar cast of countenance which proclaims his nationality, one would not, from the circumstances of his life, the ten¬ dencies of his opinions, or the maintenance of his establishment, look upon him as being in any way different from his neighbours. Modern Judaism is now but a mechanical creed, and, since its animating spirit is extinct, it cannot be expected to possess much influence upon its followers. It has lost much, and is daily losing more, of its hold upon its people. To its ethnological character, and not to its religious, Judaism owes its continued existence. Isaac Disraeli, a man of culture and re¬ search, was a Jew only in name. The legends of the Talmud, the absurd cere¬ monies commanded by the synagogue on certain special occasions, and the restric¬ tions as to diet, ablutions, and service imposed upon a nation no longer secluded and excluded, were eminently distasteful to his intelligence and to the philosophical liberality of his sentiments. He gradually alienated himself from those of his own faith. “ It is evident,” he wrote, as an ex¬ cuse for severing himself from the religious services of his people, “to all men but Hebrews, who still cling to the ignorant pride of a semi-civilized race, that a con¬ siderable portion of the Mosaic code could not be designed for perpetuity, but was ac¬ commodated to immediate purposes. Many laws, therefore, have fallen extinct with their objects. The motives which induced Moses to forbid the eating of pork, of shell¬ fish, and other aliments, no longer prevail in another climate, and among a race who are not idolaters. Ordinances relating to the seven Canaanitish nations could only be absolute while those hordes existed. Customs of the East, prescribed as religious rites — frequent ablutions, and living in bowery tabernacles in the chill of autumn — would not have been commanded in the cold or even in the temperate zones. The laws are not perpetual which relate to certain contagious maladies which have disappeared, while other prevalent diseases have arisen, for which Moses could provide no laws. Would the Hebrew at this day inflict punishments peculiar to the East be¬ cause they are decreed by the Mosaic code ? The whole constitution of Israel has passed away; the sacrifice and the sacrificer have vanished; the altar sunk with the throne. A conquered people ridiculously exist, as if they were in a state independent, amidst the miseries and degradations of twenty cen¬ turies.” Maintaining these views, it was in¬ evitable that disputes should arise between Isaac Disraeli and the leading members of his faith. As a man of distinction among his set, he was elected to fill the post of warden of the Bevis Marks synagogue ; he declined the honour in, it must be admitted, a singu¬ larly offensive and irritating letter ; he was fined, and he refused to pay the fine; then to complete the separation he wrote that he was “under the painful necessity” of taking his name off the list of contributing members to the synagogue. Meanwhile, he had so far conformed to the discipline of his church as AND HIS TIMES. 7 to allow his children to undergo that pecu¬ liar operation, which is, not to jar upon ears polite, called the “ initiatory Abra- hamic rite.”* From recent investigations made by the curious, we learn that Benjamin Disraeli was circumcised by one Daniel Abar- banel Lindo, a connection of the family, and a Portuguese merchant of high standing. Shortly after resigning his member¬ ship as one of the congregation of Bevis Marks synagogue, Isaac Disraeli, at the in¬ stigation, it is alleged, of Samuel Bogers, the poet, gave his consent to his son Benjamin being admitted into the Christian church. The following entry can be seen on the bap¬ tismal register of St. Andrew’s, Holborn: — “ Entry of Baptism, S? Andrew’s, Holborn. July 31, 1817 — Benjamin, sd to be about twelve years old, son of Isaac and Maria D’lsraeli (former described as gentleman), residing at King’s Rd — Officiating clergyman, Rev. J. Thimbleby.” The author of the “Curiosities of Litera¬ ture” was at that time living in King’s Road, Bedford Row, in order to be near the library of the British Museum, which he then con¬ stantly frequented for the better prosecution of the literary pursuits in which he was en¬ gaged. On the death of his father, Isaac Disraeli succeeded to a comfortable fortune, and, being now in good circumstances, re¬ moved to a house in the then not unfashion¬ able quarter of Bloomsbury Square. Here he remained during the years 1817-25, when he became the proprietor of a small country seat in Buckinghamshire, “the county of statesmen ”*(• — the Bradenham House so familiar to all who have read the early pam- * The second of the 613 Precepts which all Jewish children, between six and seven years of age, have to commit to memory, as a thorough knowledge of these is considered to be a key to the Oral Law, commands all Hebrews “ To cir¬ cumcise male children on the eighth day after their birth; for it is written, ‘ This is my covenant which ye shall keep be¬ tween me and you, and thy seed after thee ; every man child among you shall be circumcised.”’ — Genesis xvii. 10. f “ The county of Buckinghamshire has supplied this house with a series of statesmen than whom no body of men have more contributed to create the empire, sustain the renown, and cherish the high spirit of the English people. You may smile, remembering only the uninfluential person who now addresses you ; but I was thinking of those days when the county of Buckingham gave to the House of Commons Mr. Hampden and the Grenvilles, the elder Pitt and Mr. Burke.” — Speech of Mr. Disraeli on National Representation , June 20, 1848. phlets and election addresses ot “Disraeli the younger.” He died January 19, 1848, after attaining to the ripe old age of eighty -two. On a little hill near Hughenden Manor a column has been erected to his memory, which bears this inscription: — “ In memory of Isaac Disraeli, of Bradenham House, in this county, Esquire, and Honorary D.C.L. of the University of Oxford, who, by his happy genius, diffused amongst the multitude that elevating taste for literature which, before his time, was the privilege only of the learned. This monument was erected by Mary Anne, the wife of his eldest son, the Right Honourable B. Dis¬ raeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1852, 1858-9, Lord of this Manor, and now for the sixth time Knight of this Shire.” We have entered into some detail with regard to the parentage of the illustrious statesman who is the subject of this political biography, because we have always consid¬ ered that to the peculiar circumstances of his birth much of the strength and a little of those weaknesses conspicuous in his character and career can be traced. The mental constitution of Benjamin Disraeli was in all its characteristics essentially Hebraic, and only on those few occasions when his acts and aspirations had been tempered and repressed by the influences of a polished Western civilization, did it partake of the English nature. He had that intense individuality peculiar to the Hebrews, which made every question he took up especially his own, and of setting it — witness his teaching as to the Venetian constitution and parliamentary reform — in an entirely new light. He held that the progress of human affairs was almost exclusively influenced by the characters of individual men, and little by the operation of those general laws in which the author of the “History of Civilization” was so firm a believer. “ Everywhere,” he writes in “ Coningsby,” “ you see the influence of the individual. God made man in His own image; but the public is made by newspapers, members of parliament, excise officers, poor law guardians. Would Philip have succeeded if Epaminondas had not 8 THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD been slain? And if Philip had not suc¬ ceeded? Would Prussia have existed had Frederick not been born? And if Frederick had not been born? What would have been the fate of the Stuarts if Prince Henry had not died, and Charles I., as was intended, had been Archbishop of Canterbury?5’ In this teaching we plainly see the influence of his Hebrew origin. At no time had the various forms of unbelief, now so fashionable in intellectual quarters, any attractions for him: he was always, as he frankly admitted, “ on the side of the angels.” He never doubted the reality of the Jewish theocracy; he was a firm be¬ liever in the divinity of the dispensation which succeeded it. The most bigoted Jew could not have been more impressed with the conviction that “ the world had from time to time been under the immediate and direct government of the Supreme Being, holding personal communication with His earthly representatives, and investing them with power to control the march of events and to mould the destinies of mankind.” Like the prophets of old he believed he was under the especial protection of the Most High, and that it was his mission to regene¬ rate the condition of his country. With the intense egotism and self-reliance of the Hebrew, he believed in himself and in the superiority of the race from which he was sprung. Unlike many men of his own nationality, who, when they have attained to fame, carefully shun all allusions to their origin, Benjamin Disraeli gave every pro¬ minence to the fact. It was his belief in his race that made him believe in himself ; it was because he could lay claims to a descent which made the pedigree of the proudest Norman baron but a creation of yesterday, that rendered him superior to all feelings of social inferiority, and caused him to regard his position as the political leader of the English gentry as one which he was fully entitled to hold. He who led an exclusive order must himself belong to an exclusive order. A man who was of the same family to which it had pleased the Son of God, in His infinite condescension, to attach Him¬ self, had no reason to be ashamed of his birth, or to yield precedence to the haugh¬ tiest English peer.* The Jews only,- according to Benjamin Disraeli, can mark out a lineage which, in its original history, is without a parallel. Speaking through the fictitious Sidonia (supposed to be a portrait of himself, and the expounder of his own views) in his novel of “ Coningsby,” he thus eloquently discourses upon his fa¬ vourite topic: — “Sidonia was well aware that in the five great varieties into which physi¬ ology has divided the human species — to wit, the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Malayan, the American, the Ethiopian — the Arabian tribes rank in the first and superior class, together, among others, with the Saxon and the Greek. This fact alone is a source of great pride and satisfaction to the animal Man. But Sidonia and his brethren could claim a distinction which the Saxon and the Greek, and the rest of the Caucasian nations, have forfeited. The Hebrew is an unmixed race. Doubtless, among the tribes who inhabit the bosom of the Desert, pro¬ genitors alike of the Mosaic and the Mohammedan Arabs, blood may be. found as pure as that of the descendants of the Scheik Abraham. But the Mosaic Arabs are the most ancient, if not the only, un¬ mixed blood that dwells in cities. “An * It was surely from no feeling of false shame as to his name and origin that prompted him to insert the following clause in his will. 9 unmixed race of a first-rate organization are the aristocracy of Nature. Such excellence is a positive fact; not an imagination, a cere¬ mony, coined by poets, blazoned by cozen¬ ing heralds, but perceptible in its physical advantages, and in the vigour of its unsullied idiosyncrasy. In his comprehensive travels, Sidoniahad visited and examined the Hebrew communities of the world. He had found, in general, the lower orders debased, the superior immersed in sordid pursuits; but he perceived that the intellectual develop¬ ment was not impaired. This gave him hope. He was persuaded that organization would outlive persecution. When he re¬ flected on what they had endured, it was only marvellous that the race had not disappeared. They had defied exile, mas¬ sacre, spoliation, the degrading influence of the constant pursuit of gain ; they had defied Time. For nearly 3000 years, ac¬ cording to Archbishop Usher, they have been dispersed over the globe. To the unpolluted current of their Caucasian structure, and to the segregating genius of their great Lawgiver, Sidonia ascribed the fact that they had not been long ago ab¬ sorbed among those mixed races, who pre¬ sume to persecute them, but who periodically wear away and disappear, while their victims still flourish in all the primeval vigour of the pure Asian breed.” We can remember the wit and humour with which this theory of the “ Asian mys¬ tery” was received. Yet the laugh has not been exactly on our side. The apostle has proved the truth of his own teaching in his own person by a success which has never before fallen to the lot of a statesman in this country, whilst his theory is on all sides being most fully exemplified. Everywhere the Jew faces his fellow man, and he not only works his way to the front, but often stands a full head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd. Admitted, as it were, but yesterday to the bar, he is in the first rank as counsel: second to none in eloquence, in the lore of jurisprudence, and in the skill of the consummate advocate. The realms of VOL. i. finance have always been his especial do¬ minion ; but never has he occupied so power¬ ful a position as at the present day. He holds empires in pawn, and, by a wish to realize his possessions, could reduce half a continent to bankruptcy. His civil disabilities re¬ moved, he becomes a legislator distinguished by his ready gift of debate, or a magistrate conspicuous for his tact and common sense. Music and song and the drama have been so eminently the monopoly of the Hebrew race, that no one is surprised at a great composer or a great actress or a prima donna of European celebrity being of J ewish descent. In art, in science, in literature, the despised Hebrew is again among the most gifted in his profession. Whatever department is open to him, his success in it is so remark¬ able as to make him one of the conspicuous. When the field of his intellect was limited to medicine and finance, he rose till he could rise no higher; and now that the world closes none of its avenues at his approach, the talents which made him attain distinction, when under persecution, render the career he selects in this age of his toleration seldom a failure. Nor is the Hebrew race deficient in other qualities which are prominently brought out in the career of the late Earl of Beaconsfield. From the earliest times the diplomacy of statesmanship has been the favourite exer¬ cise of the cultivated Jew. Facts fully sup¬ port this assertion. The counsellor to the Saracen king of Granada was Samuel Levi, a Jewish rabbi. The prime minister of Alphonso VIII. was one named Joseph, a Jew. The ambassador from Charlemagne to Haroun Alraschid was Isaac, a Jew. The chief minister of Louis le D^bonnaire was Zedekiah, a Jew. Don Isaac Abarbanel and Manasseh Ben Israel, world-wide politicians in their day, were also Jews. Again, glanc¬ ing at the statesmen of modern times — at Mendizabel and Castelar in Spain; at Cre- mieux, Simon, Fould, and Gambetta in France; at Assur in Holland; at Daniel Manin and Artom in Italy; at Jacoby and others in Germany — we find them all men 2 10 THE EARL OF BEACON SFIELD of Hebrew lineage. It is not, therefore, sur¬ prising that, with these examples confront¬ ing him, the study of politics should have exercised a powerful fascination over the mind of Benjamin Disraeli. He had all the gifts — many of them in a marked degree, the characteristic of the Hebrew mind — calculated to lead a man on to success in parliamentary life. He was original, and stamped his originality upon all that he did, and in the end his views, no matter the opposition they had at first encountered, were generally accepted. When he entered parliament, he attached himself to neither party; he never had any sympathy with Whiggism ; he did not represent Tory traditions as they were then understood ; he was never a Radical nor a Peelite. He was throughout his career essentially him¬ self ; he made his own party, he made his own position, and he restored and reani¬ mated an extinct creed. He saw instinc¬ tively the course the Tory party should adopt if it ever wished to regain its old ascendancy in the country; and he watched and waited; then taught and brought into unity a scattered following, until the end he set before him had been attained, and the doctrines he advanced had been fully re¬ ceived. Like his favourite hero, Boling- broke, he settled the confused and discordant materials of English faction, and reduced them into a clear and systematic order. “ There are few positions less inspiriting than that of the leader of a discomfited party/’ writes Mr. Disraeli, after praising the dignified conduct of Lord John Russell at a time when the Whigs were in a forlorn minority. “ The labours and anxieties of a minister or of his rival on the contested threshold of office may be alleviated by the exercise or sustained by the anticipation of power ; both are surrounded by eager, anxious, excited, perhaps enthusiastic ad¬ herents. There is sympathy, appreciation, prompt counsel, profuse assistance. But he who in the parliamentary field watches over the fortunes of routed troops, must be prepared to sit often alone. Few care to share the labour which is doomed to be fruitless, and none are eager to diminish the responsibility of him whose course, however adroit, must necessarily be in¬ effectual. Nor can a man of sensibility in such a post easily obviate these discourage¬ ments. It is ungracious to appeal to the grey-headed to toil for a harvest which they may probably never reap, and scarcely less painful to call upon glittering youth to sac¬ rifice its rosy hours for a result as remote as the experience in which it does not believe. Adversity is necessarily not a sanguine season, and in this respect a poli¬ tical party is no exception to all other human combinations. In doors and out of doors a disheartened opposition will be querulous and captious. 11 out effect, his discipline, his dexterity, his strategy, and the power which dominates over all prejudices, and not only makes itself felt but makes itself indispensable ! Against the apparently insurmountable obstacles which Mr. Disraeli during the earlier years of his parliamentary career had to encounter, the English genius — cold yet impatient, brave yet sensitive, fearing ridicule, with no eye for the unravelling of complications, lacking the instincts of generalship, easily wounded, easily de¬ pressed — would have retired a hundred times in despair, and have abandoned the conflict. It wanted the man full of self- reliance, blunted to external reproaches by the consciousness of intellectual superiority, accustomed to difficulties and opposition as the scion of a persecuted house, with the here¬ ditary tact and disciplined self-control born of oppression long patiently endured; it wanted the diplomatic instincts, the clear, hard judgment never intoxicated by victory, never confused by defeat; it wanted, in fine, the man of infinite resources, and these were found in ample measure in Ben¬ jamin Disraeli, the Hebrew. It is but a poor set off against these brilliant Oriental gifts, to twit their possessor for those little weak¬ nesses which were as much the consequence of his Jewish descent as were the vitality of his intellect and the tenacity of his purpose — his avowed love for pomp and splendour, his thirsting after the marvel¬ lous, his Chatham-like taste for theatrical effect, his somewhat ignoble appreciation of the refinements of civilization, his “Hounds- ditch dreams ” of lofty rank, costly finery, blazing jewels, and the gorgeous generally. Whatever were his faults, he stands out against the canvas of history as one of the most brilliant individualities that has ever impassioned political warfare, and led and controlled the government of a country. Of the earlier years of Benjamin Disraeli little is known, and since even the slight information we possess does not bear upon his political conduct, we shall content our¬ selves with but briefly alluding to the events that occurred during the interval between his birth and his first appearance in the House of Commons. It may gratify the malevolence of the divine disappointed in not obtaining the preferment he expected, of the suppliant gentleman of the press whose “claims on the party” have been ignored, of the mercenaries of the “vaga¬ bond population ” of the Lower House et hoc genus omne , to vent their spite upon the eminent statesman who has lately passed from us, by distorting facts and manipulat¬ ing statements so as to render the object of their hate — a hate the keener since it failed to wound — ridiculous and contemptible ; but good taste, if no warmer feeling, bids us remember the kindly remark of Archbishop Tillotson, “ If we can say no good of a man let us be silent, unless it becomes absolutely necessary for us to speak the evil.” In deal¬ ing with the political conduct of a public man we have no concern here with private matters. We know that Mr. Disraeli was not sent to a public school, and that he was not entered at either of our universities ; he is, however, not the only English states¬ man who has been bereft of these early advantages. In the hot days of youth he no doubt led the ordinary life of the gallant, whose passions are stronger than his prin¬ ciples ; let malice make the most of it ; also let him who is without sin cast the first stone. He contracted a few debts, and the fact has been diligently raked up, and spitefully commented upon. Is he the only youthful politician wrho has been dunned ? Were Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Mirabeau, always solvent ? Still, about this early period of his history much exaggeration has been in¬ dulged in. Had he not, to his honour be it said, brought his birth so prominently forward on every occasion ; had he attached himself to the Radical party ; had he prided himself upon being sprung from the people ; had he become the chief even of a Radical cabinet — if he had done these things, it is probable that his Hebrew descent would scarcely have drawn forth a sneer, though his career, eminently distinguished of course as it would have been, would yet have been deprived of those features which ren¬ dered it so unique and so brilliant. Thiers the son of the locksmith, Gambetta the son of the clothier, Abraham Lincoln the labouring man, have all sprung from a lower social level than Mr. Disraeli, yet malice has been fairly silent as to their humble origin; for it is a graceful compli¬ ment to the order of things that under a republican form of government a son of the people should aspire after, and should attain to, its highest post. It ' is not a matter for supreme surprise that Mr. Disraeli should have become a prominent member of parliament, or should have developed into a prime minister; but it is a marvellous tribute to his genius that he, of foreign blood and once an acreless man, should have been the accepted and the absolute leader of the English gentry and the English aristocracy. The Napoleons, charmed they never so wisely, were power¬ less to gain over the Faubourg St. Germain. Much, too, has been said bv the enemies of Mr. Disraeli of the social slights and pecuniary distresses which were his lot at the outset of his career. Here, again, malice has usurped the place of truth. Mr. Isaac Disraeli was a well-known man of letters, in the enjoyment of excellent private means, moving in the best society, and acquainted with most of the celebrities of his day. His son, at a time when many young men were busy working for their degrees at the uni¬ versities, was one of the most conspicuous dandies of the day, and the pet of several dames of the highest fashion. His name was constantly to be met with in the as¬ semblies of the great ; and the “ intelligent foreigner ” who visited our shores regarded him as so much of a personage as to describe with no little elaboration both his appear¬ ance and conversation. Had Mr. Disraeli come upon the London world some thirty years before he did, he was just the man for the second Pitt to have taken by the hand and to have ushered him, through the con¬ venient system of a nomination borough, into the House of Commons. So much for his having been a “pariah,” a “pauper,” a “ needy adventurer,” a miserable snob, who “drew pictures, from his imagination and not from his experience,” of a society into which he had never entered! Nor was he ever “ a copying clerk ” in a lawyer’s office. 