As leader
la the
House of
Commons.

from first to last) on the enormous importance to the country, to | advantages. But it was an extremely bad time for Benjamin the character of its people no less than to its material welfare, Disraeli. of agricultural contentment and prosperity; and he also obtained a more general recognition of the fact that " the land" had borne fiscal burdens under the old régime which were unfair and unendurable under the new. So far he did well; and when in 1852 he took office as chancellor of the exchequer in Lord Derby's first administration, the prospect was a smiling one for a man who, striving against difficulties and prejudices almost too formidable for imagination in these days, had attained to a place where he could fancy them all giving way. That, however, they were not. New difficulties were to arise and old prejudices to revive in full force. His first budget was a quaint failure, and was thrown out by a coalition of Liberals and Peelites which he believed was formed against Mr Disraeli more than against the chancellor of the exchequer. It was on this occasion that he exclaimed," England does not love coalitions." After a reign of ten months he was again in Opposition, and remained so for seven years. Of the Crimean War he had a better judgment than those whose weakness led them into it, and he could tell them the whole truth of the affair in twenty words: "You are going to war with an opponent who does not want to fight, and whom you are unwilling to encounter." Neither were they prepared; and the scandals and political disturbances that ensued revealed him as a party leader who could act on such occasions with a dignity, moderation and sagacity that served his country well, maintained the honour of party government and cost his friends nothing. The mismanagement of the war broke down the Aberdeen government in 1855, and then Disraeli had the mortification of seeing a fortunate chance of return to office lost by the timidity and distrust of his chief, Lord Derby-the distrust too clearly including the under-valuation of Disraeli himself. Lord Derby wanted Lord Palmerston's help, Mr Gladstone's, Mr Sidney Herbert's. This arrangement could not be made; Lord Derby therefore gave up the attempt to form a ministry and Lord Palmerston came in. The next chance was taken in less favouring times. The government in which Disraeli was again financial minister lasted for less than eighteen months (1858-1859), and then ensued another seven years in the cold and yet colder shade of Opposition. Both of these seven-year outings were bad, but the second by far the worse. Parliamentary reform had become a burning question and an embarrassing one for the Tory party. An enormous increase of business, consequent upon the use of steam machinery and free-trade openings to commerce, filled the land with prosperity, and discredited all statesmanship but that which steered by the star over Manchester. Mr Gladstone's budgets, made possible by this prosperity, were so many triumphs for Liberalism. Foreign questions arose which strongly excited English feeling-the arrangements of peace with Russia, Italian struggles for freedom, an American quarrel, the "Arrow" affair and the Chinese war, the affair of the French colonels and the Conspiracy Bill; and as they arose Palmerston gathered into his own sails (except on the last occasion) every wind of popular favour. Amid all this the Tory fortunes sank rapidly, becoming nearly hopeless when Lord Palmerston, without appreciable loss of confidence on his own side, persuaded many Tories in and out of parliament that Conservatism would suffer little while he was in power. Yet there was great despondency, of course, in the Conservative ranks; with despondency discontent; with discontent rancour. The prejudice against Disraeli as Jew, the revolt at his theatricalisms, the distrust of him as mystery man," which up to this time had never died out even among men who were his nearest colleagues, were now more openly indulged. Out of doors he had a "bad press," in parliament he had some steady, enthusiastic friends, but more that were cold. Sometimes he was seen on the front Opposition bench for hours quite alone. Little conspiracies were got up to displace him, and might have succeeded but for an unconquerable dread of the weapon that destroyed Peel. In this state of things he patiently held his ground, working for his party more carefully than it knew, and never seizing upon false or discrediting

46

Though Lord Palmerston stumbled over his Foreign Conspiracy Bill in 1858, his popularity was little damaged, and it was in no hopeful spirit that the Tories took office again in that year. They were perilously weak in the House of Commons, and affairs abroad, in which they had small practice and no prestige, were alarming. Yet the new administration did very well till, after resettling the government of India, and recovering from a blunder committed by their Indian secretary, Lord Ellenborough, they must needs launch a Reform Bill to put that dangerous question out of controversial politics. The well-intended but fantastic measure brought in for the purpose was rejected. The country was appealed to, with good but insufficient results; and at the first meeting of the new parliament the Tories were turned out on a no-confidence vote moved by Lord Hartington. Foreign affairs supplied the motive: failure to preserve the peace of Europe at the time of the Italian war of independence. It is said that the foreign office had then in print a series of despatches which would have answered its accusers had they been presented when the debate began, as for some unexplained reason they were not. Lord Palmerston now returned to Downing Street, and while he lived Disraeli and his colleagues had to satisfy themselves with what was meant for useful criticism, though with small hope that it was so for their own service. A Polish insurrection, the Schleswig-Holstein question, a commercial treaty with France, the Civil War in America, gave Disraeli occasions for speech that was always forcible and often wiser than all could see at the time. He never doubted that England should be strictly neutral in the American quarrel when there was a strong feeling in favour of the South. All the while he would have gladly welcomed any just means of taking an animated course, for these were dull, dark days for the Conservatives as a parliamentary party. Yet, unperceived, Conservatism was advancing. It was much more than a joke that Palmerston sheltered Conservative principles under the Liberal flag. The warmth of his popularity, to which Radical applause contributed nothing in his later days, created an atmosphere entirely favourable to the quiet growth of Conservatism. He died in 1865. Earl Russell succeeded him as prime minister, Mr Gladstone as leader of the House of Commons. The party most pleased with the change was the Radical; the party best served was Disraeli's. Another Reform Bill, memorable for driving certain good Liberals into a Cave of Adullam, broke up the new government in a few months; Disraeli contributing to the result by the delivery of opinions not new to him and of lasting worth, though presently to be subordinated to arguments of an inferior order and much less characteristic. "At this rate," he said in 1866," you will have a parliament that will entirely lose its command over the executive, and it will meet with less consideration and possess less influence." Look for declining statesmanship, inferior aptitude, genius dying off. Instead of these you will have a horde of selfish and obscure mediocrities, incapable of anything but mischief, and that mischief devised and regulated by the raging demagogue of the hour." The Reform legislation which promised these results in 1866 was thrown out. Lord Derby's third administration was then formed in the summer of the same year, and for the third time there was a Tory government on sufferance. Its followers were still a minority in the House of Commons; an angry Reform agitation was going on; an ingenious resolution founded on the demand for an enlarged franchise serviceable to Liberals might extinguish the new government almost immediately; and it is pretty evident that the Tory leaders took office meaning to seek a cure for this desperate weakness by wholesale extension of the suffrage. Their excuses and calculations are well known, but when all is said, Lord Derby's statement of its character," a leap in the dark," and of its intention, dishing the Whigs," cannot be bettered. Whether Lord Derby or Mr Disraeli originated this resolve has been much discussed, and it remains an unsettled question. It is known that Disraeli's private secretary, Mr Ralph Earle, quarrelled with him violently at about this time; and Sir William Fraser relates that, meeting

Reform Bill of 1867.

Eastern question.

But

as malign and a failure, that it was never carried out. Good or bad, ill or well calculated, effective existence was denied to it; and a man cannot be said to have failed in what he was never permitted to attempt. The nondescript course of action which began at the Constantinople conference and ended at Berlin was not of his direction until its few last days. It only marked at various stages the thwarting and suppression of his policy by colleagues who were haunted night and day by memories of the Crimean War, and not least, probably, by the fate of the statesmen who suffered for its blunders and their own. Disraeli also looked back to those blunders, and he was by no means insensible to the fate of fallen ministers. But just as he maintained at the time of the conflict, and after, that there would have been no Crimean War had not the British government convinced the tsar that it was in the hands of the peace party, so now he believed that a bold policy would prevent or limit war, and at the worst put off grave consequences which otherwise would make a rapid advance.

"

As if aware of much of this, the country was well content with Disraeli's successes at Berlin, though sore on some points, he himself sharing the soreness. Yet there were great days for him after his return. At the Berlin conference he had established a formidable reputation; the popularity he enjoyed at home was affectionately enthusiastic; no minister had ever stood in more cordial relations with his sovereign; and his honours in every kind were his own achievement against unending disadvantage. But he was soon to suffer irretrievable defeat. A confused and unsatisfactory war in Afghanistan, troubles yet more unsatisfactory in South Africa, conspired with two or three years of commercial distress to invigorate "the swing of the pendulum' when he dissolved parliament in 1880. Dissolution the year before would have been wiser, but a certain pride forbade. The elections went heavily against him. He took the blow with composure, and sank easily into a comparative retirement. Yet he still watched affairs as a great party leader should, and from time to time figured vigorously in debate. Meanwhile he had another novel to sit down to-the poor though highly characteristic Endymion; which, to his great surprise and equal pleasure, was replaced on his table by a cheque for ten thousand pounds. Yet even this satisfaction had its tang of disappointment; for though Endymion was not wholly written in his last days, it was in no respect the success that Lothair was. This also he could bear. His description of his grandfather recurs to us: “A man of ardent character, sanguine, courageous and fortunate, with a temper which no disappointment could disturb."

the instincts of many Englishmen, and, for the time, revived | remembered, when his Eastern policy in 1876-1878 is denounced the prejudices against its author. More important was the revival of disturbances in European Turkey, which, in their outcome, were to fill the last chapter of Disraeli's career. for this interruption it is likely that he would have given much of his attention to Ireland, not because it was an attractive employment for his few remaining years, but because he saw with alarm the gathering troubles in that country. And his mind was strongly drawn in another direction. In a remarkable speech delivered in 1872, he spoke with great warmth of the slighting of the colonies, saying that "no minister in this country will do his duty who neglects any opportunity of reconstructing as much as possible our colonial empire, and of responding to those distant sympathies which may become the source of incalculable strength and happiness to this island." However, nothing was done in fulfilment of this duty in the first two years from 1874, and early in the third the famous Andrassy note, the Berlin memorandum, the Bashi-Bazouk atrocities, and the accumulative excitement thereby created in England, reopened the Eastern question with a vengeance. The policy which Disraeli's government now took up may be truly called the national policy. Springing from the natural suggestions of self-defence against the march of a dangerous rivalry, it had the sanction of all British statesmanship for generations, backed by the consenting instinct of the people. It was quite unsentimental, being pro-Turkish or anti-Russian only as it became so in being pro-British. The statesmen by whom it was established and continued saw in Russia a power which, unless firmly kept within bounds, would dominate Europe; more particularly that it would undermine and supersede British authority in the East. And without nicely considering the desire of Russia to expand to the Mediterranean, the Pacific or in any other direction, they thought it one of their first duties to maintain their own Eastern empire; or, to put it another way, to contrive that Great Britain should be subject to Russian ascendancy (if ever), at the remotest period allowed by destiny. Such were the ideas on which England's Russian policy was founded. In 1876 this policy revived as a matter of course in the cabinet, and as spontaneously, though not upon a first provocation, became popular almost to fury. And furiously popular it remained. But a strong opposing current of feeling. equally passionate, set in against the Turks; war began and lasted long; and as the agitation at home and the conflict abroad went on, certain of Disraeli's colleagues, who were staunch enough at the beginning, gradually weakened. It is certainly true that Disraeli was prepared, in all senses of the word, to take strong measures against such an end to the war as the San Stefano treaty threatened. Rather than suffer that, he would have fought the Russians in alliance with the Turks, and had gone much farther in maturing a scheme of attack and defence than was known at the time or is commonly known now. That there was a master motive for this resolution may be taken for granted; and it is to be found in a belief that not to throw back the Russian advance then was to lose England's last chance of postponing to a far future the predominance of a great rival power in the East. How much or how little judgment shows in that calculation, when viewed in the light of later days, we do not discuss. What countenance it had from his colleagues dropped away. At the end their voices were strong enough to insist upon the diplomatic action which at no point falls back on the sword; Lord Derby (foreign minister) being among the first to make a stand on that resolution, though he was not the first seceder from the government. Such diplomacy in such conditions is paralytic. It cannot speak thrice, with whatever affectation of boldness, without discovering its true character to trained ears; which should be remembered when Disraeli's successes at Berlin are measured. It should be remembered that what with the known timidity of his colleagues, and what with the strength and violence of the Russian party in England, his achievement at Berlin was like the reclamation of butter from a dog's mouth; as Prince Bismarck understood in acknowledging Disraeli's gifts of statesmanship. It should also be

As earl of Beaconsfield (failing health had compelled him to take refuge in the House of Lords in 1876) Benjamin Disraeli died in his house in Curzon Street on the 19th of April 1881. The likelihood of his death was publicly known for some days before the event, and then the greatness of his popularity and its warmth were declared for the first time. No such demonstration of grief was expected even by those who grieved the most. He lies in Hughenden churchyard, in a rail-enclosed grave, with liberty for the turf to grow between him and the sky. Within the church is a marble tablet, placed there by his queen, with a generous inscription to his memory. The anniversary of his death has since been honoured in an unprecedented manner, the 19th of April being celebrated as "Primrose Day "-the primrose, for reasons impossible accurately to define, being popularly supposed to have been Disraeli's favourite flower. Even among his friends in youth (Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, for example), and Death and not improbably among the city men who wagered their influence. money in irrecoverable loans to him on the chance of his success, there may have been some who compassed the thought of Benjamin Disraeli as prime minister and peer; but at no time could any fancy have imagined him remembered so enduringly as Lord Beaconsfield has been. It is possible that Sarah Disraeli (the Myra of Endymion), or that "the most severe of critics but a perfect wife," may have had such dreams-hardly that they could have occurred to any mind but a devoted woman's. Disraeli's life was a succession of surprises, but none

Character.

was so great as that he should be remembered after death more to its inner places there seem to have been few or none. Men widely, lastingly, respectfully, affectionately, than any other who were long associated with him in affairs, and had much of statesman in the long reign of Queen Victoria. While he lived he his stinted companionship, have confessed that with every wish did not seem at all cut out for that distinction even as an Im- to understand his character they never succeeded. Sometimes perialist. Significant as was the common grief when he died, no they fancied they had got within the topping walls of the maze, such consequence could be inferred from it, and certainly not and might hope to gain the point whence survey could be made from the elections of 1880. It stands, however, this high distinc- of the whole; but as often they found themselves, in a moment, tion, and with it the thought that it would have been denied to where they stood at last and at first-outside. His speeches him altogether had the "adventurer" and "mystery man" of carry us but a little way beyond the mental range; his novels the 'sixties died at the age of threescore years and ten. We have rather baffle than instruct. It is commonly believed that said that never till 1872 did he look upon the full cup of popu- Disraeli looked in the glass while describing Sidonia in Coningsby. larity. It might have been said that even at that time intrigue We group the following sentences from this description for a to get rid of him had yet to cease in his own party; and but a few purpose that will be presently seen:-(1) “He was admired by years before, a man growing old, he was still in the lowest deeps women, idolized by artists, received in all circles with of his disappointments and humiliations. How, then, could it be great distinction, and appreciated for his intellect by imagined that with six years of power from his seventieth year, the very few to whom he at all opened himself." (2) ** For, the Jew adventurer," mysterious and theatrical to the last, though affable and generous, it was impossible to penetrate should fill a greater space in the mind of England twenty years him: though unreserved in his manners his frankness was after death than Peel or Palmerston after five? Of course it can limited to the surface. He observed everything, thought ever, be explained; and when explained, we see that Disraeli's good but avoided serious discussion. If you pressed him for an opinion fortune in this respect is not due entirely to his own merits. His he took refuge in raillery, and threw out some paradox with last years of power might have been followed by as long a period which it was not easy to cope. The secret history of the world of more acceptable government than his own, to the effacement was Sidonia's pastime. His great pleasure was to contrast the of his own from memory; but that did not happen. What did hidden motive with the public pretext of transactions." (3) follow was a time of universal turbulence and suspicion, in which "He might have discovered a spring of happiness in susceptithe pride of the nation was wounded again and again. To say bilities of the heart; but this was a sealed fountain for Sidonia Majuba " and " Gordon " recalls its deepest hurts, but not all In his organization there was a peculiar, perhaps a great deficiof them; and it may be that a pained and angry people, looking ency; he was a man without affection. It would be hard to say back, saw in the man whom they lately displaced more than they that he had no heart, for he was susceptible of deep emotions; had ever seen before. From that time, at any rate, Disraeli has but not for individuals. Woman was to him a toy, man a been acknowledged as the regenerator and representative of the machine." These sentences are separately grouped here for the Imperial idea in England. He has also been accused on the same sake of suggesting that they will more truly illustrate Disraeli's grounds; and if the giver of good wine may be blamed for the character if taken as follows:-The first as representing his most guest who gets drunk on it, there is justice in the accusation. It cherished social ambitions-in whatever degree achieved. The is but a statement of fact, however, that Disraeli retains his hold second group as faithfully and closely descriptive of himself; upon the popular mind on this account mainly. The rekindling descriptive too of a character purposely cloaked. The third as of the Imperial idea is understood as a timely act of revolt and much less simple; in part a mixture of truth with Byronic redemption: of revolt against continuous humiliations deeply affectation, and for the rest (and more significantly), as intimatfelt, redemption from the fate of nations obviously weak and ing the resolute exercise of extraordinary powers of control over suspected of timidity. It has been called rescue-work-deliver- the promptings and passions by which so many capable ambiticas ance from the dangers of invited aggression and a philosophical have come to grief. So read, Sidonia and Benjamin Disraeli are neglect of the means of defence. And its first achievement for brought into close resemblance by Disraeli himself; for what in the country (this is again a mere statement of fact) was the this description is untrue to the suspected fundamentals of his restoration of a much-damaged self-respect and the creation of a character is true to his known foibles. But for a general intergreat defensive fleet not a day too soon for safety. So much for pretation of Lord Beaconsfield and his career none serves so well "the great heart of the people." Meanwhile political students as that which Froude insists on most. He was thoroughly and find to their satisfaction that he never courted popularity, and unchangeably a Jew. At but one remove by birth from never practised the art of working for "quick returns" of southern Europe and the East, he was an Englishman in nothing sympathy or applause. As "adventurer," he should have done but his devotion to England and his solicitude for her honcur so; yet he neglected the cultivation of that paying art for the and prosperity. It was not wholly by volition and design that wisdom that looks to the long future, and bears its fruit, per- his mind was strange to others and worked in absolute detachchance, when no one cares to remember who sowed the seed. So ment. He had "none of the hereditary prepossessions of the it is that to read some of his books and many of his speeches is to native Englishman." No such prepossessions disturbed his draw more respect and admiration from their pages than could vision when it was bent upon the rising problems of the time, or have been found there originally. The student of his life under-rested on the machinery of government and the kind of men who stands that Disraeli's claim to remembrance rests not only on the worked it and their ways of working. The advantages of breadth of his views, his deep insight, his long foresight, but even Sidonia's intellect and temperament were largely his, in affairs. more on the courage which allowed him to declare opinions but not without their drawbacks. His pride in his knowledge supplied from those qualities when there was no visible likelihood of the English character was the pride of a student; and we may of their justification by experience, and therefore when their doubt if it ever occurred to him that there would have been less natural fate was to be slighted. His judgments had to wait the pride but more knowledge had he been an Englishman. It is event before they were absolved from ridicule or delivered from certain that in shrouding his own character he checked the neglect. The event arrives; he is in his grave; but his reputa- communication of others to himself, and so could continue to tion loses nothing by that. It gains by regret that death was the end of his career the costly mistake of being theatrical in beforehand with him. England. There was a great deal too (though little to his blame in Lord Malmesbury's observation that he was not only disliked in the House of Commons for his mysterious manner, but prejudiced by a pronounced foreign air and aspect. Lord Malmesbury does not put it quite as strongly as that, but he might have done so with truth. No Englishman could approach Disraeli without some immediate consciousness that he was in the presence of a foreigner.

"Adventurer," as applied to Disraeli, was a mere term of abuse. "Mystery-man" had much of the same intention, but in a blameless though not in a happy sense it was true of him to the end of his days. Even to his friends, and to many near him, he remained mysterious to the last. It is impossible to doubt that some two or three, four or five perchance, were at home in his mind, being freely admitted there; but of partial admissions

|

BEAD, a small globule or ball used in necklaces, and made of different materials, as metal, coral, diamond, amber, ivory, stone, pottery, glass, rock-crystal and seeds. The word is derived from the Middle Eng. bede, from the common Teutonic word for "to pray," cf. German beten and English bedesman, the meaning being transferred from "prayer" to the spherical bodies strung on a rosary and used in counting prayers. Beads have been made from remote antiquity, and are found in early Egyptian tombs; variegated glass beads, found in the ground in certain parts of BEAKER (Scottish bicker, Lat. bicarium, Ger. Becher, a Africa, as Ashantiland, and highly prized by the natives as aggry-drinking-bowl), a large wide-mouthed drinking-cup or laboratory beads, are supposed to be of Egyptian or Phoenician origin. Beads of the more expensive materials are strung in necklaces and worn as articles of personal adornment, while the cheaper kinds are employed for the decoration of women's dress. Glass beads have long been used for purposes of barter with savage tribes, and are made in enormous numbers and varieties, especially in Venice, where the manufacture has existed from at least the 14th century. Glass, either transparent, or of opaque