Prime Ministers and Some Others | Page 9

passion which the other felt, he would shout and wave his
arms, recoil from the Table and return to it, and act his part with a
vigour which, on one memorable occasion, was attributed to
champagne; but this was merely play-acting, and was completely laid
aside as he advanced in years.
What I have written so far is, no doubt, an anachronism, for I have been
describing what I saw and heard in the Session of 1867, and Disraeli
did not become Prime Minister till February, 1868; but six months
made no perceptible change in his appearance, speech, or manner.
What he had been when he was fighting his Reform Bill through the
House, that he was when, as Prime Minister, he governed the country at
the head of a Parliamentary minority. His triumph was the triumph of
audacity. In 1834 he had said to Lord Melbourne, who enquired his
object in life, "I want to be Prime Minister"--and now that object was
attained. At Brooks's they said, "The last Government was the Derby;
this is the Hoax." Gladstone's discomfiture was thus described by
Frederick Greenwood:
"The scorner who shot out the lip and shook the head at him across the
Table of the House of Commons last Session has now more than heart
could wish; his eyes--speaking in an Oriental manner--stand out with
fatness, he speaketh loftily; and pride compasseth him about as with a
chain. It is all very well to say that the candle of the wicked is put out
in the long run; that they are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff
that the storm carries away. So we were told in other times of
tribulation. This was the sort of consolation that used to be offered in
the jaunty days of Lord Palmerston. People used then to soothe the
earnest Liberal by the same kind of argument. 'Only wait,' it was said,
'until he has retired, and all will be well with us.' But no sooner has the
storm carried away the wicked Whig chaff than the heavens are
forthwith darkened by new clouds of Tory chaff."
Lord Shaftesbury, as became his character, took a sterner view.
"Disraeli Prime Minister! He is a Hebrew; this is a good thing. He is a
man sprung from an inferior station; another good thing in these days,
as showing the liberality of our institutions. But he is a leper, without

principle, without feeling, without regard to anything, human or Divine,
beyond his own personal ambition."
The situation in which the new Prime Minister found himself was, from
the constitutional point of view, highly anomalous. The settlement of
the question of Reform, which he had effected in the previous year, had
healed the schism in the Liberal party, and the Liberals could now
defeat the Government whenever they chose to mass their forces.
Disraeli was officially the Leader of a House in which his opponents
had a large majority. In March, 1868, Gladstone began his attack on the
Irish Church, and pursued it with all his vigour, and with the support of
a united party. He moved a series of Resolutions favouring Irish
Disestablishment, and the first was carried by a majority of sixty-five
against the Government.
This defeat involved explanation. Disraeli, in a speech which Bright
called "a mixture of pompousness and servility," described his
audiences of the Queen, and so handled the Royal name as to convey
the impression that Her Majesty was on his side. Divested of verbiage
and mystification, his statement amounted to this--that, in spite of
adverse votes, he intended to hold on till the autumn, and then to appeal
to the new electorate created by the Reform Act of the previous year.
As the one question to be submitted to the electors was that of the Irish
Church, the campaign naturally assumed a theological character. On the
20th of August Lord Shaftesbury wrote: "Dizzy is seeking everywhere
for support. He is all things to all men, and nothing to anyone. He
cannot make up his mind to be Evangelical, Neologian, or Ritualistic;
he is waiting for the highest bidder."
Parliament was dissolved in November, and the General Election
resulted in a majority of one hundred for Gladstone and Irish
Disestablishment. By a commendable innovation on previous practice,
Disraeli resigned the Premiership without waiting for a hostile vote of
the new Parliament. He declined the Earldom to which, as an ex-Prime
Minister, he was by usage entitled; but he asked the Queen to make his
devoted wife Viscountess Beaconsfield. As a youth, after hearing the
great speakers of the House which he had not yet entered, he had said,

"Between ourselves, I could floor them all"--but now Gladstone had
"floored" him, and it took him five years to recover his breath.

V
WILLIAM