Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1886-05-01
Lord Beaconsfield as an Adventurer.

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Lord Beaconsfeld was an adventure1
in politics in very nearly the same sense
as Mr. Gladstone is an adventurer, and
as Canning was. He was not nearly so
much of an adventurer as Burke, and he
was not very much more of one than
than Mr.. Pitt. That is to say, Mr..
Disrael was not Graded and rocked and
handled into legislatorhood; he had no
political sponsors in English politics,
and he did not belong to any of the
great houses which have governed Great
Britain, on the whole for Great Britain's
good, during the last few hundred years.
On the other hand, he was SO little of an
adventurer that he entirely lacked, and
never attempted to gain, the adventurous
aids to political success which all the
four distinguished persons above men
toned possessed. He did not come into
public life as nominee of a great man
like Mr.. Gladstone and Canning, or as a
useful "devir' like Burke, or as free
lance, subsidized by party hatred to a
great minister. like Pitt. There is no
duke of Newcastle, there is no marquis
of Rockingham, there is no duchess of
Marlborough in Lord Beaconsfeld's
career. He fought the fight with bare
ly sufficient independence of property,
and with great deal more than sufici-
ent independence of character. It is a
subject of some amusement to the critics
of his detractors that these detractors, at
the very moment that they decry Mr..
Disraei as an adventurer, quote with
pride and Joy the heart burnings of
great tory magnates over his friendship
with their sons, and filings of tory mem
bers of parliament at the gradual pro-
gress of this astonishing autarkes. What
I wish to point out is that in English we
don't call that kind of success the success
of an adventurer; We call it the success of
genius.
Let us, to conclude, sum up the simple
facts of what this adventurer did. With
out great fortune, without patronage,
without popular agitation, without the
popular subscription of Golden and o.
Cornell, did not disdain, he raised him
self from very ordinary, though not
mean. station to the primeministership
of England, and to something which has
been mistaken by men not altogether
fools for the arbitrationship of Europe. I
do not mention his earldom, because that
has been attained by quite otherguess
sorts of persons, and because it has been
suspected that at least one part of Mr..
Disraei's reasons for accepting it was
good-humored delight in feeling that the
fact of his acceptance by other people,
who would really have liked it much
more, political impossibiIity. AS to
what he did for England we get once
again into contested matter. Let it on
ly be said what the men before referred
to, some of whom have not been deemed
fools, thought he did for England They
thought and it would appear have not
ceased to think after seven twelvemonths
and day-that he raised the country
once more to its proper position among
European nations, after generation of
backsliding; that he put it in state to
maintain, If he chose, that position; that
he ranked as kind Of a pacific Yelling
ton, as bloodless Marlborough, as re-
storer of English honor after long
eclipse. Very likely they were wrong;
on that point it would be improper to Of
fer the least opinion here. But who else
that can be mentioned has ever spread
such an opinion Of himself and his
not among the thirty millions,
mostly FOOLS" but among the thousands