Modern English StatesmenThis historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD ( 1804-1881) IT was perhaps inevitable that, sooner or later, England should be ruled by an alien, who was not even a European, but an Oriental of the race of the Jews. It was by no means inevitable--but merely our happy fate--that this foreign conqueror should also be a poet and a dreamer, a historian and a gentleman. As Sidney Smith said, "We owe much to the Jews"; and among our many debts is that they have given us one of the few charming modern statesmen. Disraeli is interesting quite beyond the scope of the scientific historical student; he is not such as the Pitts and the Foxes, and their kindred, whom we must endure (if we are sociologically minded) because they have intruded so obtrusively into English history. The Earl of Beaconsfield would have been charming if he had never appeared on a page of our national records; when he does appear thereon, he is as a fine jewel on the dust-heap of our political life. It is almost an established rule of history that a race is rarely governed by one of its own blood. Certainly in this country the alien has been the rule and not the exception, if we consider the list of our monarchs. William the Conqueror and his sons were Norman dukes; the Plantagenets were French nobles; the Tudors were 210 Welsh, if Tudor Vychan ap Gronw as an ancestor be admitted as evidence of race. The Stuarts were Normans who had become Scots; and when their national taste for continual theological discussion at last led to their final expulsion, they were succeeded by a Dutchman, who in turn gave way to the German dynasty from Hanover. It is clear that kings, like the prophets, are without honour in their own country. But a people rarely has much choice in the selecting of its monarch... |