t 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 adventurer without being a charlatan. A careful
consideration of Disraeli's opinions and actions leads me to the
conclusion that only on a very superficial view of his career can the
latter epithet be applied to him. It must, I think, be admitted that his
ideas, even although we may disagree with them, were not those of a
charlatan, but of a statesman. They cannot be brushed aside as trivial.
They deserve serious consideration. Moreover, he had a very remarkable
power of penetrating to the core of any question which he treated,
coupled with an aptitude for wide generalisation which is rare amongst
Englishmen, and which he probably derived from his foreign ancestors. An
instance in point is his epigrammatic statement that "In England, where
society was strong, they tolerated a weak Government, but in Ireland,
where society was weak, the policy should be to have the Government
strong." Mr. Monypenny is quite justified in saying: "The significance
of the Irish question cannot be exhausted in a formula, but in that
single sentence there is more of wisdom and enlightenment than in many
thousands of the dreary pages of Irish debate that are buried in the
volumes of Hansard."

More than this. In one very important respect he was half a century in
advance of his contemporaries. With true political instinct he fell upon
what was unquestionably the weakest point in the armour of the so-called
Manchester School of politicians. He saw that whilst material
civilisation in England was advancing with rapid strides, there was "no
proportionate advance in our moral civilisation." "In the hurry-skurry
of money-making, men-making, and machine-making," the moral side of
national life was being unduly neglected. He was able with justifiable
pride to say: "Long before what is called the 'condition of the people
question' was discussed in the House of Commons, I had employed my pen
on th