WHAT DOES THE TERM "POLITICAL ADVENT U RER "" REALLY
MEAN?
(BY LORD GEORGE HAmmTON.) "That Disraeli was a political adventurer is abundantly clear. So was Napoleon, between whose mentality and that of Disraeli a somewhat close analogy exists. Both subordinated their public conduct to the furtherance of their personal aims. It is quite permissible to argue that, as a political adventurer, Disraeli did an incalculable amount of harm in so far as he tainted the sincerity of public life both in his own person and, posthumously, by becoming the progenitor of a school of adventurers who adopted his methods. But it is quite possible to be a self-seeking adven- turer without being s. charlatan."—Lord Cromer on Disitexit, Spectator, December 7th, 1912.
THE above extract suggests the query, " What con- stitutes a ' political adventurer' P " In this case the so-called " adventurer " is admitted to be no charlatan ; on the contrary, the same writer asserts that " the generation of 1972 . . . have been suffering from a failure to recognize betimes the truth of this foreseeing statesman's admonition." As these foreseeing admonitions were delivered in the early stages of Disraeli's career, he must have combined at one and the same moment the roles of a foreseeing statesman and a political adventurer. There is no word more generally used or more misapplied to persons of originality, insight, and prescience in politics than that of " adventurer." In the view of many most respectable party men, everyone in politics who is able, original, and poor is an adventurer, unless he happens to belong to a family of social repute. In a sense this is true ; for an adventurer is one who by going outside recognized and beaten tracks, adventures risk, rebuff, defeat, and extinction. The elder Pitt, Burke, Canning, Disraeli are all in this sense types of great and patriotic adventurers.
In the earlier stages of a parliamentary career, the man of means or with social and political influence has, if he possesses ability, little difficulty in making himself prominent by utilizing these adventitious aids. But a man wholly devoid of any such extraneous help has to create his opportunity, and he not infrequently tries to strike out a path for himself by tilting at some time-honoured con- ventionalisms or some high-placed official. Such is the curious prejudice in certain political circles against lack of means or station that the heir to a great peerage or a well-established politician can formulate propositions without offence which would be anathema if the speaker were in straitened circumstances or a social nobody. Disraeli had to overcome these difficulties, enhanced by the fact that he was a Jew, and, by taste and instinct, a very overdressed Jew. In the earlier stages of his parliamentary life, transactions and utterances occur which, I admit, are not consonant with the highest traditions of political life. This is a criticism applicable to the early career of almost every self-made statesman. Lord Rosebery published a volume of the early life of the first Lord Chatham almost simultaneously with the publication of the first volume of Disraeli's Biography. If the test of good taste, moderation of language, and accuracy of statement be applied to the early careers of these two men, Lord Beaconsfield is a saint compared with the earlier " adventurer " ; but Lord Chatham is pardoned, as the system and men he assailed are now known to have been corrupt. The proof of whether a man is a political adventurer, and deserves, at the end of his career, to be stigmatized as such, depends not on what he may do when under constraint to make himself known, but on what he does when he becomes a power and is in office. In the first stage, he must further his personal aims. In the second, his real character, object, and ambitions are shown. If Lord Beaconsfield. be so judged, I doubt if any states- man in English history can show, during the thirty years be was a leader of the Conservative Party, a more consistent and less variable policy than he did during those years. His tactics and procedure may have varied during that period, for he had difficulty at times in persuading his old-fashioned colleagues to adopt his prescient views, but never did he subordinate his public conduct to the furtherance of his personal aim. His ideas, both social and political, were high, patriotic, and imperial, and he showed inflexible patience and determination in their furtherance and realization. As a reward, his memory and reputation are now more cherished by the English race both at home and abroad than those of any statesman of the last century. The overthrow of his Government in 1880 and the reversal of his policy was followed by a series of troubles and disasters in different parts of the British Empire which have not yet subsided. During the last years of his life he retained, to a higher extent than any Minister of my time, the affection and allegiance of his colleagues, and among such colleagues are the names of Salisbury, Cairns, Stafford Northcote, Cranbrook, W. H. Smith, and Michael Hicks-Beach.
To a certain class of politicians and to the adherents of the Manchester School, Disraeli in 1846 committed an unpardonable sin. He drove the great exponent of their ideas out of office, and he made the Repeal of the Corn Laws the mainspring of his assaults. No language can be too strong to apply to the perpetrator of this double iniquity. Much history and many political memoirs have been written in connexion with the debates of this memorable year, but such writings, almost without excep- tion, have been associated with the lives either of these colleagues or those opponents of Sir Robert Peel who were favourable to the changes made. An atmosphere of prejudice and repulsion has been historically created against the assailant of Sir Robert Peel, and of partiality and glorification for the Ministers so assailed. Original, biting, and offensive as Disraeli's invective may have been, its real sting and power lay in its truth. Twice had Sir Robert Peel led his party into positions where they were compelled unconditionally to surrender the principles they were specially banded together to defend, and in each case the Minister relied for the over- throw of the principles of his supporters upon the votes of his opponents. Disraeli only gave expression to the general feeling that the party system would become " organized hypocrisy " if such consummate tergiversation were to remain unnoticed and unpunished. Peel and his colleagues were driven from office because they no longer expressed or represented the views of those who put them into power. At the time of his defeat Peel was a parlia- mentarian of monumental dignity and reputation. Disraeli was only a free-lance engaged in the work of winning his spurs. But the different positions the two men then occupied in the political world ought not to blind us to the fact that in the essence of the controversy, from an ethical and moral standpoint, Peel was wrong and Disraeli was right. Disraeli's denial that he had ever asked for office from Peel does raise suspicions as to his truthful- ness. The denial was not unqualified ; it was accompanied by the admission that there had been communications between himself and Peel, and that the transaction was not originated by Disraeli. This statement is substantiated by Peel's letter in reply, " I must in the first place observe that no member of the Cabinet which I have formed ever received from me the slightest authority to make to you the communication to which you refer."
What probably occurred was that Disraeli, in his anxiety not to be left out of the Government, consulted Lord Lyndhurst, and that Lord Lyndhurst told Disraeli what was certainly true, that Peel had a high opinion of his merits and had expressed himself to that effect. Therefore he advised Disraeli to write direct to Peel. Upon this sugges- tion Disraeli acted, and as his appeal for office was made on the suggestion from another and did not originate from himself, he denied that he had ever himself applied for office. The distinction is too subtle to justify the denial made, and Disraeli's reputation must suffer accordingly. Like many men gifted with great originality and imagina- tion, his memory was not very reliable. He made no copies of most of his correspondence, and, recollecting that he had been instigated by another to write to Peel, his memory may have been so overclouded in the heat of debate by that recollection that he forgot what he actually did write and so overstepped the borders between truth and false- hood. The incident is a blot on his reputation. It not infrequently happens that denials made in angry verbal controversy are, when subsequently examined, found to depart from fact. In my Parliamentary experience I have so many recollections of such mistakes that I should hesitate to brand anyone once found guilty of such a lapse as an individual who had " tainted the sincerity of public life in his own person." GEORGE HAMILTON.
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