In 1872 Benjamin Disraeli gave a speech at the Crystal Palace. It was a call for England to decide upon its place in the world.
England will have to decide between national and cosmopolitan principles. The issue is not a mean one. It is whether you will be content to be a comfortable England . . . or whether you will be a great country--an imperial country--[and] command the respect of the world. [Quoted by Robert Tombs, in The English and Their History (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2015), p.419.]There are many complaints these days, particularly amongst faithful Christians, against what has come to be called American Manifest Destiny. This pagan doctrine is actually a recrudescence of the spirit of the pagan Roman Empire. The doctrine of American Manifest Destiny has got murky though, because it also represents a deliberate attempt to "plagiarize" the manifest destiny and glory of the Kingdom of God upon earth. The tap root of American Manifest Destiny is the belief that the United States has a god-given role and duty to save the world from itself.
If we consider Disraeli's speech in 1872, we can see that this doctrine of over weening arrogance had modern precursors.
Disraeli's choice for England was whether she would be a faithful, humble nation, focused upon its God-given national responsibilities, or whether it would become an Imperial Empire. Clearly, England made the wrong choice. It came to glory in being an empire upon which the sun never set.
Daniel Webster famously expressed a similar idea in 1834: "A power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drumbeat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." In 1839, Sir Henry Ward said in the House of Commons, "Look at the British Colonial empire — the most magnificent empire that the world ever saw. The old Spanish boast that the sun never set in their dominions, has been more truly realised amongst ourselves." By 1861, Lord Salisbury complained that the £1.5 million spent on colonial defence by Britain merely enabled the nation "to furnish an agreeable variety of stations to our soldiers, and to indulge in the sentiment that the sun never sets on our Empire". [Wikipedia]The United States fast followed. But did Disraeli adequately capture the alternative to imperialism in the choice he set before the English people? In fact, in his speech he hinted at the alternative, albeit only to damn it with faint praise: he called it a "national, comfortable England". But the calling of a truly great nation is to focus upon its duties and responsibilities under God toward those over whom it governs. What this means is that first and foremost, the focus of a great nation is parochial. Its duties and obligations are to its own people.
Its calling is of God and from God. Its focus is to be upon human souls: to protect individuals and families, their property and possessions, administering true justice in all its responsibilities and duties. This does not represent nationalism. Far from it. On the contrary, this view of England's future would have the government a servant and a shepherd of its own people. Its glory would reside in doing these (few) things faithfully and well. Its calling is not to become an imperial power over other peoples, nations, states, or territories, or the world.
Disraeli was completely wrong. An imperial state does not "command the respect of the world", but disgust and hatred. It is an inevitable product of imperialism. The United States has been a fast-follower of England's foolishness. Sadly, its government still yearns, and fails, to "command the respect of the world" through its imperial ambitions. These are pagan notions. They are not Christian.
Galadriel had it right when she was offered "the One Ring to rule them all":
For many long years I had pondered what I might do, should the Great Ring come into my hands . . . . And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Seas and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair! [J R R Tolkien, The Lord of The Rings]Disraeli and his colleagues would have wanted England to be the world's Morning and Night, as beautiful as the Seas and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain. Instead, the British Empire became a vaunting, brutal nightmare causing despair in many places. The imperialism of the United States is also well known. These are all pagan fruits out of a pagan garden. They command respect. They compel respect. But anger, bitterness, and despair follows.
Far better to have remained "a comfortable England" and to have served it faithfully and well.
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