Benjamin Disraeli
born December 21, 1804, London,
England
died April 19, 1881, London
British statesman and novelist who was twice
prime minister (1868, 1874–80) and who
provided the Conservative Party with a
twofold policy of Tory democracy and
imperialism.
Early life.
Disraeli was of Italian-Jewish descent,
the eldest son and second child of Isaac
D’Israeli and Maria Basevi. The most
important event in Disraeli’s boyhood was
his father’s quarrel in 1813 with the
synagogue of Bevis Marks, which led to the
decision in 1817 to have his children
baptized as Christians. Until 1858 Jews by
religion were excluded from Parliament;
except for the father’s decision Disraeli’s
political career could never have taken the
form it did.
Disraeli was educated at small private
schools. At the age of 17 he was articled to
a firm of solicitors, but he longed to
become notable in a more sensational manner.
His first efforts were disastrous. In 1824
he speculated recklessly in South American
mining shares, and, when he lost all a year
later, he was left so badly in debt that he
did not recover until well past middle age.
Earlier he had persuaded the publisher John
Murray, his father’s friend, to launch a
daily newspaper, the Representative. It was
a complete failure. Disraeli, unable to pay
his promised share of the capital, quarreled
with Murray and others. Moreover, in his
novel Vivian Grey (1826–27), published
anonymously, he lampooned Murray while
telling the story of the failure. Disraeli
was unmasked as the author, and he was
widely criticized.
Disraeli suffered what would later be
called a nervous breakdown and did little
during the next four years. He wrote another
extravagant novel, The Young Duke (1831),
and in 1830 began 16 months of travel in the
Mediterranean countries and the Middle East.
These travels not only furnished him with
material for Oriental descriptions he used
in later novels but also influenced his
attitude in foreign relations with India,
Egypt, and Turkey in the 1870s.
Back in England, he was active in London
social and literary life, where his
dandified dress, conceit and affectation,
and exotic good looks made him a striking if
not always popular figure. He was invited to
fashionable parties and met most of the
celebrities of the day. His novel Contarini
Fleming (1832) has considerable
autobiographical interest, like many of his
novels, as well as echoes of his political
thought.
Political beginnings.
By 1831 Disraeli had decided to enter
politics and sought a seat in
Buckinghamshire, near Wycombe, where his
family had settled. As an independent
radical, he stood for and lost High Wycombe
twice in 1832 and once in 1835. Realizing
that he must attach himself to one of the
political parties, he made a somewhat
eccentric interpretation of Toryism, which
some features of his radicalism fitted. In
1835 he unsuccessfully stood for Taunton as
the official Conservative candidate. His
extravagant behaviour, great debts, and open
liaison with Henrietta, wife of Sir Francis
Sykes (the prototype of the heroine in his
novel Henrietta Temple [1837]), all gave him
a dubious reputation. In 1837, however, he
successfully stood for Maidstone in Kent as
the Conservative candidate. His maiden
speech in the House of Commons was a
failure. Elaborate metaphors, affected
mannerisms, and foppish dress led to his
being shouted down. But he was not silenced.
He concluded, defiantly and prophetically,
“I will sit down now, but the time will come
when you will hear me.”
Before long, Disraeli became a speaker
who commanded attention. He established his
social position by marrying in 1839 Mrs.
Wyndham Lewis, a widow with a life interest
in a London house and £4,000 a year. She was
deeply devoted to Disraeli, and when he
teased her in company that he had married
for her worldly goods, she would say: “Dizzy
married me for my money but if he had the
chance again he would marry me for love.”
Her husband agreed.
Breach with Peel.
The Conservative leader, Sir Robert
Peel, encouraged Disraeli, but when in 1841
the Conservatives won the election and Peel
became prime minister, Disraeli was not
given office in the Cabinet. He was
mortified at the rebuff, and his attitude
toward Peel and his brand of Conservatism
became increasingly critical. A group of
young Tories, nicknamed Young England, and
led by George Smythe (later Lord Stangford),
looked to Disraeli for inspiration, and he
obliged them, notably in his novel
Coningsby; or The New Generation (1844), in
which the hero is patterned on Smythe, and
the cool, pragmatic, humdrum, middle-class
Conservatism that Peel represented is
contrasted to Young England’s romantic,
aristocratic, nostalgic, and escapist
attitude.
In 1845, when the combination of the
Irish famine and the arguments of Richard
Cobden convinced Peel to repeal the
protective duties on foreign imported grain
known as the Corn Laws, Disraeli found his
issue. Young England could rally against
Peel not only their own members but the
great mass of the country squires who formed
the backbone of the Conservative Party. As
lieutenant to Lord George Bentinck, the
nominal leader of the rebels, Disraeli
consolidated the opposition to Peel in a
series of brilliant speeches. His invective
greatly embittered the battle and created
lasting resentment among Peel’s followers.
While Disraeli and his fellow protectionists
could not stop the repeal of the Corn Laws
because the Whigs also backed the bill, the
rebels put Peel in the minority on another
issue and forced him to resign in 1846.
Conservative leader.
The loyalty of most of the Conservative
former ministers to Peel and the death of
Bentinck made Disraeli indisputably the
leader of the opposition in the Commons.
Disraeli spent the next few years trying to
extricate his party from what he had come to
recognize as the “hopeless cause” of
protection. While Disraeli’s policy was
sensible, it raised mistrust among his
followers, as did his pride in and
insistence upon his Jewish ancestry. The
party could not, however, do without his
talents. His election to Parliament as
member for Buckinghamshire in 1847 and his
purchase of Hughenden Manor, near High
Wycombe, in 1848 fortified his social and
political power. His finances, however,
remained shaky.
When the Whig government fell in 1852 and
the Earl of Derby, leader of the
Conservative Party, formed a short-lived
minority government, Disraeli was chancellor
of the Exchequer despite his protest that he
knew nothing of finance. His budget in fact
brought the government down in 1852, though
Disraeli could hardly be blamed. The
free-trade majority in the House was
determined to defeat measures that relieved
agriculture, even though the method chosen
did not involve protection; yet Disraeli had
to bring forward some such proposals to
placate his followers. Again, until 1858,
the Tories were in opposition. Then Derby
again formed a minority government with
Disraeli as chancellor of the Exchequer.
Disraeli for some time had felt there was no
reason to allow parliamentary reform to be a
Whig monopoly, and so he introduced a
moderate reform bill in 1859. The bill,
however, seemed too obviously designed to
help his party, and so it was defeated; the
Tories again were out of office and remained
so for six years.
In 1865 when the Whig-Liberal leader Lord
Russell brought forward a moderate reform
bill, a combination of Tory opposition and a
revolt against Russell toppled his
government. Derby formed his third minority
government with Disraeli as chancellor of
the Exchequer. Although the initiative for a
new Conservative reform bill came from Queen
Victoria and Lord Derby, Disraeli introduced
it in the House and conducted the fight for
it with unsurpassed enthusiasm and mastery
of parliamentary tactics. He believed the
bill should be a sweeping one with certain
safeguards, and he was determined that it
should be carried by a Conservative
government. The Liberals, however, had a
majority, and he had to accept their
amendments, which removed nearly all the
safeguards. The bill that passed doubled the
existing electorate and was more democratic
than most Conservatives had foreseen. Derby
called it “a leap in the dark”; but Disraeli
could fairly claim that the bill had gone
far toward “realizing the dream of my life
and re-establishing Toryism as a national
foundation.”
The “top of the greasy pole.” In 1868
when Derby retired from politics, Disraeli
became prime minister. “Yes,” he said in
reply to a friend’s congratulations, “I have
climbed to the top of a greasy pole.” The
government was only a caretaker one, for the
general election awaited only the completion
of a new electoral register, and later in
1868 the Liberals won. Disraeli set a
precedent by resigning before Parliament
met.
In the following 12-year period, politics
changed from the chaotic collection of
ill-defined, shifting groups that had been
common from the beginning of Disraeli’s
career. Now the old politics defined by
personalities shifted to an emergence of two
parties with coherent policies. The party
leaders, Disraeli and William E. Gladstone,
were implacable enemies, and they polarized
the parties.
At first Disraeli played a comparatively
peaceful role. He tried to create a new
image for the Conservative Party that he
hoped would persuade the new electorate. His
seeming apathy disturbed his followers, and
his novel Lothair (3 vol., 1870), a
political comedy, seemed to some of them
undignified.
From 1872, however, Disraeli ran the
party with a firm hand. He sharply
differentiated Conservative from Liberal
policy on several issues: he defended the
monarchy, the House of Lords, and the church
against what he took to be the threat of
radical Liberal policy; he put forth a
policy to consolidate the empire, with
special emphasis on India; he dwelt on
social reform; he enunciated a strong
foreign policy, especially against Russia.
In 1872 Disraeli’s wife died of cancer
after many months of illness. Her death
brought material losses: her house in London
and her fortune passed to cousins. At age 68
his health was not good, but he turned
implacably to political battle. He began a
romantic friendship with two sisters, Lady
Bradford and Lady Chesterfield, with whom he
corresponded on politics and his personal
feelings until his death.
His political fortunes turned when
Gladstone’s ministry was defeated in 1873.
When Gladstone resigned, Disraeli refused to
take office, pleading there was too much
uncompleted business to dissolve Parliament,
and that a minority government could only
damage his party’s prospects. Gladstone
reluctantly returned to office, but within a
year he dissolved the Parliament himself.
Disraeli had been at work on party
organization and electoral machinery, and
the Conservatives won a resounding victory
in 1874.
Second administration.
Disraeli gained power too late. He aged
rapidly during his second ministry. But he
formed a strong Cabinet and profited from
the friendship of the Queen, a political
conservative who disliked Gladstone.
Disraeli treated her as a human being,
whereas Gladstone treated her as a political
institution.
In regard to social reform, Disraeli was
able at last to show that Tory democracy was
more than a slogan. The Artizans’ and
Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act made
effective slum clearance possible. The
Public Health Act of 1875 codified the
complicated law on that subject. Equally
important were an enlightened series of
factory acts (1874, 1878) preventing the
exploitation of labour and two trades union
acts that clarified the legal position of
those bodies.
Disraeli’s imperial and foreign policies
were even more in the public eye. His first
great success was the acquisition of Suez
Canal shares. The extravagant and
spendthrift khedive Ismāʾīl Pasha of Egypt
owned slightly less than half the Suez Canal
Company’s shares and was anxious to sell. An
English journalist discovered this fact and
told the Foreign Office. Disraeli overrode
its recommendation against the purchase and
bought the shares using funds provided by
the Rothschild family until Parliament could
confirm the bargain. The deal was seen as a
notable triumph for imperial prestige. Early
in 1876 Disraeli brought in a bill
conferring on Queen Victoria the title
empress of India. There was much opposition,
and Disraeli would have gladly postponed it,
but the Queen insisted. For some time his
poor health had made leading the Commons
onerous, so he accepted a peerage, taking
the title earl of Beaconsfield, and became
leader in the House of Lords.
Foreign policy largely occupied him until
1878. The Russian–Turkish conflict had lain
dormant since the Crimean War in the 1850s,
but Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire
revolted against intolerable misrule. Russia
declared war on Turkey in 1877 and reached
the gates of Constantinople early in 1878.
Britain feared for the safety of the route
to India, but Disraeli correctly judged that
a show of force would be enough to bring the
exhausted Russian forces to terms. The
highly Pan-Slavist Treaty of Stefano forced
on Turkey by Russia had to be submitted to a
European Congress at Berlin in 1878.
Beaconsfield attended and won all
concessions he wanted. He returned to London
in triumph, declaring that he had brought
back “peace with honour.”
At this climax of his career, the Queen
offered him a dukedom, which he refused, and
the Order of the Garter, which he accepted.
Thereafter his fortunes waned with disaster
in Afghanistan, forces slaughtered in South
Africa, agricultural distress, and an
industrial slump. The Conservatives were
heavily defeated in the general election of
1880. Beaconsfield kept his party leadership
and finished Endymion (3 vol., 1880), a
mellow, nostalgic political novel viewing
his early career. His health failed rapidly,
and a few days after his burial in the
family vault at Hughenden, Queen Victoria
came to lay a wreath upon the tomb of her
favourite prime minister.
Robert Norman William Blake, Baron
Blake
