LORD BEACONSFIELD. 'HE must be a mighty impartial person,' said that indefatigable gossip and scandal - monger, Mr. Charles Greville, when writing some forty years ago of the man who is now Prime Minister of England. Mighty impartial' was indeed a mild term in which to describe a politician who, on looking for a seat in Parliament, was uncertain as to whether he would accept the patronage of Lord Durham or of the Marquis of Chandos. But perhaps no better word than 'impartiality' could be found to describe that peculiar quality of the Disraelian mind and character, which in the case of any other man would probably be called want of principle. Lord Beaconsfield is not unprincipled; he is not even inconsistent. Throughout his public career he has been true to himself, and to certain fantastic political theories with which he set forth fully equipped for the voyage of life, nearly half-a-century ago. It so happens, however, that neither he nor his theories or principles, if, your will-have anything in common with the political institutions and creeds of the United Kingdom. He himself is as much an 'outsider' in our social and public affairs, as the ingenious gentleman, who in Lord Lytton's 'Coming Race' is the first of mankind to become acquainted with the Vrilya, must have been in the subterranean sphere to which he was conducted in the romance. As for his theories, which you find in his novels, in his poems, and occasionally even in his speeches, they have as little to do with the every-day life of the English people, as the mysteries taught by Joanna Southcote have to do with the Thirty-nine Articles. A stranger and a sojourner in this land of his birth and his adoption, this Egypt of which he has taken possession in the name of his brethren of Judæa, he does not deserve to be called unprincipled, merely because he hesitates constantly between the opposing creeds of the two political parties. He is simply impartial. Why should we waste so much fine moral indignation over Lord Beaconsfield's supposed delinquencies, seeing that they are as much hereditary qualities, for which he cannot be held personally responsible, as are the flat-noses' of those Franks whom he holds up to ridicule in his romances? We might as well be angry with a Mohawk Indian, because he cannot appreciate Kant's philosophical writings; or with a Turk, because he does not understand the freedom accorded to English wives and daughters. What Lord Beaconsfield is, he must have been, whatever might have been his political education or his ostensible political faith. The instincts of his race are strong upon him; and though baptised into the Christian Church, he will be known in the page of history as the greatest of those Jew statesmen who have from time to time hired themselves out in the service of their Egyptian task-masters. Lord Far be it from me to make this statement in any spirit of vulgar intolerance. Beaconsfield belongs to a noble race, which has shown itself to be abundantly gifted with some of the finest characteristics, both mental and moral, which can belong to civilised mankind. One of his own best characteristics is the honest pride he has always shown in his birth and ancestry. It is not, therefore, as a reproach that I speak of him as essentially a Jew; but it is because this fact must be borne in mind by those who wish to arrive at a right understanding of his character and career. He has the faults of his quality' in a very pronounced degree, and we can only find the true explanation of many of his most remarkable actions, by bearing this circumstance in mind. an Coming into the middle of English public life as a stranger and an outsider, and, to use the word in its least offensive form, as adventurer to boot, he viewed our national peculiarities and prejudices, our forms of party faith and political traditions, with an eye of perfect impartiality. The impartiality, as we know by his own ad |