This year, I have been slowly working my way through The Portable Conservative Reader, edited by Russell Kirk (a man of many talents). One of the selections it contains is an excerpt from A Vindication of the English Constitution (1835) by Benjamin Disraeli, later prime minister of the United Kingdom. The main argument of the selection is against the then-popular “political sect,” as Disraeli calls it, of utilitarianism, whose enthusiasts “omit no means of disseminating their creed.”
Disraeli, however, finds that creed wanting. Having “hitherto searched in vain in the writings of the Utilitarian sect for any definition of their fundamental phrase with which it is possible to grapple,” he accepts “the principle which produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number” as the preferred definition and “self-interest” as man’s primary motivation in the utilitarian framework. He proceeds to raise many issues with this definition, such as “who is to decide upon the greatest happiness of the greatest number?” Indeed, could not a situation in which a majority torments a minority produce this outcome? (Readers of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” by Ursula K. Le Guin, may know this objection already.) And “self-interest” as such means little. “To say that when a man acts he acts from self-interest is only to announce that when a man does act he acts.”
His refutation is sound. But his alternative is even more interesting. Rather than be guided by such empty considerations as utilitarianism, Disraeli recommends taking the whole nation’s life, character, and history into account:
Nations have characters as well as individuals, and national character is precisely the quality which the new sect of statesmen overlook. The ruling passion, which is the result of organisation, regulates the career of an individual, subject to those superior accidents of fortune whose secondary influence is scarcely inferior to the impulse of his nature. The blended influences of nature and fortune form his character; ’tis the same with nations. There were important events in the career of an individual which force the man to ponder over the past, and, in these studies of experience and struggles for self-knowledge, to ascertain certain principles of conduct which he recognises as the cause of past success, and anticipates as the guarantee of future prosperity: and there are great crises in the fortunes of an ancient people which impel them to examine the nature of the institutions which have gradually sprung up among them. In this great national review, duly and wisely separating the essential character of their history from that which is purely adventitious, they discover certain principles of ancestral conduct, which they acknowledge as the causes that these institutions have flourished and descended to them; and in their future career, and all changes, reforms, and alterations, that they may deem expedient, they resolve that these principles shall be their guides and their instructors. By these examinations they become more deeply intimate with their national character; and on this increased knowledge, and on this alone, they hold it wise to act. [Emphasis added]
You read that right: Disraeli recommends that statesmen engage in “national review” to guide their conduct. This is the first time I have ever encountered the phrase outside of the context of this publication. The coincidence of language and principle is enough to make me wonder if our founders, originally intending to call us “National Weekly,” were aware of this passage from Disraeli. Without evidence of intentionality, I am happy to ascribe this to a happy accident, even as I recommend Disraeli’s national review to others.