Lord Lytton says, poverty and low birth are the twin gaolers of the human heart; but assuredly in this country, they do not bar the road to fame and fortune. In English society there is no such thing as caste. The field in the race of honourable ambition is open to all; and stout hearts and fertile brains have little to fear, in the long run, from any difficulty which may chance to delay them at the outset.
In England, there are class distinctions, but there are no class barriers. The aristocracy, which is the most flourishing in Europe, is constantly recruited from the ranks of the people. He who has parts, pluck, and perseverance, will get riches, and, if he covets it, the bubble reputation. There is, indeed, one exclusive profession. Unless a man has a father according to Debrett, or unless he is an inheritor of wealth, he has no chance of promotion in the army. But every other calling is open to all comers. We have merchant princes who were once errand-boys; self-taught children, of the direst poverty, have won high renown in literature, art, and science; sons of tradesmen have been enthroned as I primates of the Anglican Church. Legal biography abounds with instances of men who, from the humblest beginnings, have risen to eminence. Unaided ability succeeds even in politics and statesmanship. In the House of Commons, there are many men who have attained a high social position by their own unassisted industry. There are at this time two exceptionally conspicuous examples of—to adopt a popular phrase—self-made statesmen.
There is Mr. Disraeli. Born, as he tells us, in a library; the son of a Jew—and not a rich Jew; never entering, as Canning did, a public school, the nursery of English statesmen; destined for the law, and for a while engaged in an attorney’s office; emerging from obscurity, as a novelist; and, when nigh thirty years old, entering Parliament. That he should become a party leader is remarkable; but that he should become the chief of the blue blood party, is still more remarkable. By sheer force of will and might of mind, Mr. Disraeli, despite peculiarly adverse circumstances, became Prime Minister of the British Empire; and during his brief tenure of office made a Lord Chancellor, an Archbishop of Canterbury, an Irish duke, an English countess, and a Governor General of India. He who was destined to be an attorney, appointed the Ruler over 150,000,000 of Asiatics. In his case, the wildest dreams of the most audacious ambition have been realized.
The career of Mr. Bright is not less surprising ; and, as we shall presently remark, not less triumphant. Like Mr. Disraeli, he was not educated or trained for the high service of the State. Unlike Mr. Disraeli, he has not entirely devoted himself to politics, but until lately was engaged in business. Some one suggested to a member of his firm that he was of course only a sleeping partner. “ Sleeping ! Why, he knows everything that goes on, and is an ever-vigilant administrator.” Mr. Disraeli, though not a public school or university man, received a thoroughly classical and comprehensive education; and if he is not so good a Grecian as Mr. Gladstone, he is not inferior to Mr. Lowe as a Latinist. Mr. Bright had a commercial, middle-class i education, and that is all; and yet there is no scholar who has a more copious, more forcible, and more elegant diction. He is often cited as an example of the uselessness of studying the dead languages. It is not Mr. Bright’s opinion, who admires scholarship as much as he abhors pedantry. Some persons suppose that he would have been less idiomatic if he had been a classic. The late Lord Derby was a ripe scholar, yet his translation of Homer is one of the most idiomatic works in the English language. If Mr. Disraeli had the disadvantage of descending from an alien race—and thirty years ago it was unquestionably so—Mr. Bright was associated by birth with a sect whose doctrines are thoroughly at variance with the rules of our social system.
How did Mr. Bright, carpet manufacturer and cotton spinner, become an eminent public man and a member of the Cabinet? No doubt he has a high character, and is endued with political foresight; but it is not to these qualities he is indebted for his success. His influence and fame are due to his eloquence.