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Then perhaps, eventually, under some powerful leader a Gladstone or a Bright the democratic forces in the country might have rallied together, and a struggle might have followed in which the Monarchy would have been shaken to its foundations. Or, on the other hand, Disraeli's hypothetical prophecy might have come true. "With Prince Albert," he said, "we have buried our... sovereign.
But there was no want of decided convictions. The death of Palmerston marked the end of the old era, and was soon succeeded by the discussions over parliamentary reform which led to Disraeli's measure of 1867. Fitzjames considered himself to be a Liberal, but the Liberals of those days were divided into various sections, not fully conscious of the differences which divided them.
"Beware of tobacco, my boy," said an old colonel to him one day; "women do not like it; it has ruined more charming liaisons than anything else I know!" "Then you must consider smoking a highly moral accomplishment," was the reply. The colonel had wrongly guessed the object of Disraeli's ambition.
Sir Robert Peel was himself one of the most frequent speakers in the obstructive debates, and among his rivals were Sir Charles Wetherell and Mr. John Wilson Croker, a man who has been consigned to a sort of immortality by a famous essay of Macaulay's and by Disraeli's satirical picture of him as Mr. Rigby in "Coningsby."
Perhaps this very preference in them creates a prejudice against the man who does not share it, and so makes them sceptical of his power. Anyhow, if Disraeli had been unable to express himself through the medium of political life, Disraeli's novels would long ago have had the due which the expert is just beginning to give them.
As a romance, Sybil is certainly inferior to Coningsby. As a political manifesto, it has had an almost greater success, and the movement that it launched is far from exhausted even yet. One of Disraeli's comrades in the new programme of 1844-5 was a member of the last Conservative cabinet.
He was speaking of Disraeli's discovery, that the great colonial Governorships should go to those who had been 'born in the purple' or had married into it. It was, in a way, a matter personal to him, because the plan came into operation about the date his Pro-Consulship ceased. He felt that possibly it influenced the manner of his going, and, if so, that a wrong was done him as an individual.
Disraeli, for whom my father had an immense admiration, although he had not yet occupied the post of Prime Minister. Mr. Disraeli's curiously impassive face, with its entire absence of colouring, rather frightened me. It looked like a mask. He had, too, a most singular voice, with a very impressive style of utterance.
Disraeli's talents, as displayed in this speech; and equally impossible is it to find in that speech anything that an intelligent observer of Indian affairs can regard as settling the question, Why did the Sepoys of the Bengal army mutiny in 1857? Everything that he brought forward as a cause of the mutiny was distinctly proved not to be worthy of the name of a cause.
It is easy to name faults both in romance and realism of his making: but the important thing to acknowledge is that he still appeals, can be read with a certain pleasure. His most mature work, moreover, bears testimony to the coming creed of fiction, as Disraeli's never does. There are moments with Bulwer when he almost seems a fellow of Meredith's.
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