Nothing is more striking in modern parliamentary life than the growing neglect of the past. Great issues are mooted by men ignorant of, or ignoring, their historical origin. Young members discuss weighty problems with no study save that of omniscience. The ancestry of events is disregarded. Development is relegated to musty students and mouldy volumes. The fact that statesmanship is able to look forward because it has already looked back, is flouted or forgotten. Public interest is gradually being withdrawn from debate, just because it is getting out of touch with the organic changes of national life. The genius which transfigures facts with imagination has been replaced by the opportunism which invests emptiness with solemnity; and this, in a country where national growth depends on continuous tradition. The utterances of Disraeli from the early ’twenties to the latest ’seventies display a wonderful harmony of coherence in progress. They form one long suite of variations on the central _motif_ of persistent and consistent ideas. To understand them aright one must view them successively, both in his books and his speeches, which illustrate each other; nor in so doing should the contexts of personal development, events private as well as public, be lost from sight. This I have endeavoured to accomplish in the following chapters. I have classified their themes in groups broad enough to admit of kindred topics. After a fresh portrait of Disraeli’s personality, I treat first of his constitutional ideas, because these are at the root of his political standpoint; they underlie, too, his conception of the State. Then follows his attitude towards Labour and the causes it involved. Next come his distinctive views on Church and Christianity; his views, equally distinctive, on Monarchy occupy a separate chapter. Colonies, Empire, and Foreign Policy are then grouped together; and it may excite surprise to mark the earliness and the correctness of his prophecies. Under this head I also consider his thoughts on India. America and Ireland succeed; and here again his justified originality is most remarkable. Perhaps the light chapters on _Society_, _Literature_, _Wit_, _Humour_, and _Romance_, with the closing study of _Career_, may be considered not the least suggestive. I have not drawn on Mr. Meynell’s delightful “Disraeliana” (the pleasure of reading which I purposely postponed), because I wished this portraiture of the man and his mind to be wholly original. CHAPTER I DISRAELI’S PERSONALITY