"The more you are talked about the less powerful you are." -- Benjamin Disraeli
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS, (21 December 1804 — 19 April 1881) was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and literary figure. He served in government for three decades, twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Although his father had him baptised to Anglicanism at age 13, he was nonetheless the country's first and thus far only Prime Minister who was born Jewish. He played an instrumental role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party after the Corn Laws schism of 1846.
Although a major figure in the protectionist wing of the Conservative Party after 1844, Disraeli's relations with the other leading figures in the party, particularly Lord Derby, the overall leader, were often strained. Not until the 1860s would Derby and Disraeli be on easy terms, and the latter's succession of the former assured. From 1852 onwards, Disraeli's career would also be marked by his often intense rivalry with William Ewart Gladstone, who eventually rose to become leader of the Liberal Party. In this feud, Disraeli was aided by his warm friendship with Queen Victoria, who came to detest Gladstone during the latter's first premiership in the 1870s. In 1876 Disraeli was raised to the peerage as the Earl of Beaconsfield, capping nearly four decades in the House of Commons.
Before and during his political career, Disraeli was well-known as a literary and social figure, although his novels are not generally regarded as a part of the Victorian literary canon. He mainly wrote romances, of which Sybil and Vivian Grey are perhaps the best-known today. He is exceptional among British Prime Ministers for having gained equal social and political renown. He was twice successful as the Glasgow University Conservative Association's candidate for Rector of the University, holding the post for two full terms between 1871 and 1877.
"A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.""A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.""A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.""A majority is always better than the best repartee.""A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.""A precedent embalms a principle.""A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.""Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.""Adventures are to the adventurous.""Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.""An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.""As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.""As for our majority... one is enough.""Assassination has never changed the history of the world.""Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones.""Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds.""Change is inevitable. Change is constant.""Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.""Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.""Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.""Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.""Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.""Damn your principles! Stick to your party.""Despair is the conclusion of fools.""Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.""Diligence is the mother of good fortune.""Duty cannot exist without faith.""Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.""Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.""Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.""Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.""Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.""Fear makes us feel our humanity.""Finality is not the language of politics.""Frank and explicit - that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.""Genius, when young, is divine.""Great countries are those that produce great people.""Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.""He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.""How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.""I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.""I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.""I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.""I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?""I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.""I repeat... that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist.""I say that justice is truth in action.""If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society, or what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.""If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.""In a progressive country change is constant; change is inevitable.""In politics nothing is contemptible.""Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.""It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.""It is easier to be critical than correct.""It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.""Justice is truth in action.""King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.""Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.""Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.""Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.""Little things affect little minds.""London is a modern Babylon.""London is a roost for every bird.""Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.""Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.""Man is only great when he acts from passion.""Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.""Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.""Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.""My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.""Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.""Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.""Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.""Never complain and never explain.""Never take anything for granted.""Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.""Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.""No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.""No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.""Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.""Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.""Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.""One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.""Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation.""Power has only one duty - to secure the social welfare of the People.""Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.""Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.""Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.""Silence is the mother of truth.""Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.""Success is the child of audacity.""Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.""Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.""Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.""That fatal drollery called a representative government.""The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.""The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.""The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.""The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.""The fool wonders, the wise man asks.""The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans.""The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.""The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.""The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.""The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.""The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.""The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.""The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.""The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal positions, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments.""The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.""The secret of success is constancy to purpose.""The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.""The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes, but in peace are only fit for fools.""The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.""The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.""The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.""The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.""The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.""The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.""There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.""There can be economy only where there is efficiency.""There is moderation even in excess.""There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.""There is no education like adversity.""There is no gambling like politics.""There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.""There is no index of character so sure as the voice.""There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.""Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.""Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.""Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.""To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.""To supervise people, you must either surpass them in their accomplishments or despise them.""To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.""Travel teaches toleration.""Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.""Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.""War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.""We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.""We cannot learn men from books.""We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions; and the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.""We moralize among ruins.""We should never lose an occasion. Opportunity is more powerful even than conquerors and prophets.""What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.""What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.""When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.""When little is done, little is said; silence is the mother of truth.""Where knowledge ends, religion begins.""William Gladstone has not a single redeeming defect.""Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.""Without tact you can learn nothing.""Worry - a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.""You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.""You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.""Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.""Youth is the trustee of prosperity."
Disraeli's biographers believe he was descended from Italian Sephardic Jews. He claimed Spanish ancestry, possibly referring to the ultimate origin of his family heritage in Spain prior to the expulsion of Jews in 1492, after which many Jews emigrated, in two waves: the bulk to the Ottoman Empire, but many more, first to northern Italy, then to the Netherlands, and finally England.
He was the second child and eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli, a literary critic and historian, and Maria Basevi. Benjamin changed the spelling in the 1820s by dropping the apostrophe. His siblings included Sarah (1802—1859), Naphtali (1807), Ralph (1809—1898), and James (1813—1868). Benjamin at first attended a small school, the Reverend John Potticary's school at Blackheath. His father had Benjamin baptised in 1817 following a dispute with their synagogue. The elder D'Israeli was content to remain outside organized religion. From 1817, Benjamin attended a school at Higham Hill, in Walthamstow, under Eliezer Cogan. His younger brothers, in contrast, attended the superior Winchester College.
His father groomed him for a career in law, and Disraeli was articled to a solicitor in 1821. In 1824, Disraeli toured Belgium and the Rhine Valley with his father and later wrote that it was while travelling on the Rhine that he decided to abandon the law: "I determined when descending those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer." On his return to England he speculated on the stock exchange on various South American mining companies. The recognition of the new South American republics on the recommendation of George Canning had led to a considerable boom, encouraged by various promoters. In this connection, Disraeli became involved with the financier J. D. Powles, one such booster. In the course of 1825, Disraeli wrote three anonymous pamphlets for Powles, promoting the companies.
That same year Disraeli's financial activities brought him into contact with the publisher John Murray who was also involved in the South American mines. Accordingly, they attempted to bring out a newspaper, The Representative, to promote both the cause of the mines and those politicians who supported the mines, specifically George Canning. The paper was a failure, in part because the mining "bubble" burst in late 1825, which ruined Powles and Disraeli. Also, according to Disraeli's biographer, Lord Blake, the paper was "atrociously edited", and would have failed regardless. Disraeli's debts incurred from this debacle would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Before he entered parliament, Disraeli was involved with several women, most notably Henrietta, Lady Sykes (the wife of Sir Francis Sykes, 3rd Bt), who served as the model for Henrietta Temple. It was Henrietta who introduced Disraeli to Lord Lyndhurst, with whom she later became romantically involved. As Lord Blake observed: "The true relationship between the three cannot be determined with certainty ... there can be no doubt that the affair [figurative usage] damaged Disraeli and that it made its contribution, along with many other episodes, to the understandable aura of distrust which hung around his name for so many years."
In 1839 he settled his private life by marrying Mary Anne Lewis, the rich widow of Wyndham Lewis, Disraeli's erstwhile colleague at Maidstone. Mary Lewis was 12 years his senior, and their union was seen as being based on financial interests, but they came to cherish one another.
Literary career
Disraeli turned towards literature after his financial disaster, motivated in part by a desperate need for money, and brought out his first novel, Vivian Grey, in 1826. Disraeli's biographers agree that Vivian Grey was a thinly veiled re-telling of the affair of The Representative, and it proved very popular on its release, although it also caused much offence within the Tory literary world when Disraeli's authorship was discovered. The book, initially anonymous, was purportedly written by a "man of fashion" — someone who moved in high society. Disraeli, then just twenty-three, did not move in high society, and the numerous solecisms present in Vivian Grey made this painfully obvious. Reviewers were sharply critical on these grounds of both the author and the book. Furthermore, John Murray believed that Disraeli had caricatured him and abused his confidence—an accusation denied at the time, and by the official biography, although subsequent biographers (notably Blake) have sided with Murray.
After producing a Vindication of the English Constitution, and some political pamphlets, Disraeli followed up Vivian Grey with a series of novels, The Young Duke (1831), Contarini Fleming (1832), Alroy (1833), Venetia and Henrietta Temple (1837). During the same period he had also written The Revolutionary Epick and three burlesques, Ixion, The Infernal Marriage, and Popanilla. Of these only Henrietta Temple (based on his affair with Henrietta Sykes, wife of Sir Francis William Sykes, 3rd Bt) was a true success.
During the 1840s Disraeli wrote three political novels collectively known as "the Trilogy"—Sybil, Coningsby, and Tancred.
Disraeli's relationships with other male writers of his period were strained or non-existent. After the disaster of The Representative, John Gibson Lockhart became a bitter enemy and the two never reconciled. Disraeli's preference for female company prevented the development of contact with those who were otherwise not alienated by his opinions, comportment or background. One contemporary who tried to bridge the gap, William Makepeace Thackeray, established a tentative cordial relationship in the late 1840s only to see everything collapse when Disraeli took offence at a burlesque of him which Thackeray penned for Punch. Disraeli took revenge in Endymion (published in 1880), when he caricatured Thackeray as "St. Barbe".
Critic William Kuhn argued much of Disraeli's fiction can be read as "the memoirs he never wrote", revealing the inner life of a politician for whom the norms of Victorian public life appeared to represent a social straitjacket — particularly with regard to his allegedly "ambiguous sexuality."
Disraeli had been considering a political career as early as 1830, before he departed England for the Mediterranean. His first real efforts, however, did not come until 1832, during the great crisis over the Reform Bill, when he contributed to an anti-Whig pamphlet edited by John Wilson Croker and published by Murray entitled England and France: or a cure for Ministerial Gallomania. The choice of a Tory publication was regarded as odd by Disraeli's friends and relatives, who thought him more of a Radical. Indeed, Disraeli had objected to Murray about Croker inserting "high Tory" sentiment, writing that "it is quite impossible that anything adverse to the general measure of Reform can issue from my pen." Further, at the time Gallomania was published, Disraeli was in fact electioneering in High Wycombe in the Radical interest. Disraeli's politics at the time were influenced both by his rebellious streak and by his desire to make his mark. In the early 1830s the Tories and the interests they represented appeared to be a lost cause. The other great party, the Whigs, was anathema to Disraeli: "Toryism is worn out & I cannot condescend to be a Whig."
Though he initially stood for election, unsuccessfully, as a Radical, Disraeli was a Tory by the time he won a seat in the House of Commons in 1837 representing the constituency of Maidstone.
Although a Conservative, Disraeli was sympathetic to some of the demands of the Chartists and argued for an alliance between the landed aristocracy and the working class against the increasing power of the merchants and new industrialists in the middle class, helping to found the Young England group in 1842 to promote the view that the landed interests should use their power to protect the poor from exploitation by middle-class businessmen. During the twenty years between the Corn Laws and the Second Reform Bill Disraeli would seek a Tory-Radical alliance, to little avail. Prior to the 1867 Reform Bill the working class did not possess the vote and therefore had little tangible political power. Although Disraeli forged a personal friendship with John Bright, a Lancashire manufacturer and leading Radical, Disraeli was unable to convince Bright to sacrifice principle for political gain. After one such attempt, Bright noted in his diary that Disraeli "seems unable to comprehend the morality of our political course."
Protection
Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel passed over Disraeli when putting together his government in 1841 and Disraeli, hurt, gradually became a sharp critic of Peel's government, often deliberately adopting positions contrary to those of his nominal chief. The best known of these cases was the Maynooth grant in 1845 and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The end of 1845 and the first months of 1846 were dominated by a battle in parliament between the free traders and the protectionists over the repeal of the Corn Laws, with the latter rallying around Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck. An alliance of pro free-trade Conservatives (the "Peelites"), Radicals, and Whigs carried repeal, and the Conservative Party split: the Peelites moved towards the Whigs, while a "new" Conservative Party formed around the protectionists, led by Disraeli, Bentinck, and Lord Stanley (later Lord Derby).
This split had profound implications for Disraeli's political career: almost every Conservative politician with official experience followed Peel, leaving the rump bereft of leadership. As one biographer wrote, "[Disraeli] found himself almost the only figure on his side capable of putting up the oratorical display essential for a parliamentary leader." Looking on from the House of Lords, the Duke of Argyll wrote that Disraeli "was like a subaltern in a great battle where every superior officer was killed or wounded." If the remainder of the Conservative Party could muster the electoral support necessary to form a government, then Disraeli was now guaranteed high office. However, he would take office with a group of men who possessed little or no official experience, who had rarely felt moved to speak in the House of Commons before, and who, as a group, remained hostile to Disraeli on a personal level, his assault on the Corn Laws notwithstanding.
Bentinck and the leadership
In 1847 a small political crisis occurred which removed Bentinck from the leadership and highlighted Disraeli's differences with his own party. In the preceding general election, Lionel de Rothschild had been returned for the City of London. Ever since Catholic Emancipation, members of parliament were required to swear the oath "on the true faith of a Christian." Rothschild, an unconverted Jew, could not do so and therefore could not take his seat. Lord John Russell, the Whig leader who had succeeded Peel as Prime Minister and like Rothschild a member for the City of London, introduced a Jewish Disabilities Bill to amend the oath and permit Jews to enter Parliament.
Disraeli spoke in favour of the measure, arguing that Christianity was "completed Judaism," and asking of the House of Commons "Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?" While Disraeli did not argue that the Jews did the Christians a favour by killing Christ, as he had in Tancred and would in Lord George Bentinck, his speech was badly received by his own party, which along with the Anglican establishment was hostile to the bill. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and a friend of Disraeli's, spoke strongly against the measure and implied that Russell was paying off the Jews for "helping" elect him. Every member of the future protectionist cabinet then in parliament (except Disraeli) voted against the measure. One member who was not, Lord John Manners, stood against Rothschild when the latter re-submitted himself for election in 1849. Bentinck, then still Conservative leader in the Commons, joined Disraeli in speaking and voting for the bill, although his own speech was a standard one of toleration.
In the aftermath of the debate Bentinck resigned the leadership and feuded with Stanley, leader in the Lords and overall leader, who had opposed the measure and directed the party whips...in the Commons...to oppose the measure as well. Bentinck was succeeded by Lord Granby; Disraeli's own speech, thought by many of his own party to be blasphemous, ruled him out for the time being. Even as these intrigues played out, Disraeli was working with the Bentinck family to secure the necessary financing to purchase Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire. This purchase allowed him to stand for the county, which was "essential" if one was to lead the Conservative Party at the time. He and Mary Anne alternated between Hughenden and several homes in London for the remainder of their marriage. These negotiations were complicated by the sudden death of Lord George on 21 September 1848, but Disraeli obtained a loan of £25,000 (equivalent to about £ as of ) from Lord George's brothers Lord Henry Bentinck and Lord Titchfield.
Within a month Granby resigned the leadership in the commons, feeling himself inadequate to the post, and the party functioned without an actual leader in the commons for the remainder of the parliamentary session. At the start of the next session, affairs were handled by a triumvirate of Granby, Disraeli, and John Charles Herries—indicative of the tension between Disraeli and the rest of the party, who needed his talents but mistrusted the man. This confused arrangement ended with Granby's resignation in 1851; Disraeli effectively ignored the two men regardless.
The first opportunity for the protectionist Tories under Disraeli and Stanley to take office came in 1851, when Lord John Russell's government was defeated in the House of Commons over the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851. Disraeli was to have been Home Secretary, with Stanley (becoming the Earl of Derby later that year) as Prime Minister. Other possible ministers included Sir Robert Inglis, Henry Goulburn, John Charles Herries, and Lord Ellenborough. The Peelites, however, refused to serve under Stanley or with Disraeli so long as the question of free trade remained unsettled, and attempts to form a purely protectionist government failed. Derby supposedly remarked at the time, "Pshaw! These are not names which I can put before the Queen!"
Russell resumed office, but resigned again in early 1852 when a combination of the protectionists and Lord Palmerston defeated him on a Militia Bill. This time Lord Derby (as he had become) took office, and to general surprise appointed Disraeli Chancellor of the Exchequer. Disraeli had offered to stand aside as leader in the House of Commons in favour of Palmerston, but the latter declined.
The primary responsibility of a mid-Victorian chancellor was to produce a Budget for the coming fiscal year. Disraeli proposed to reduce taxes on malt and tea (indirect taxation); additional revenue would come from an increase in the house tax. More controversially, Disraeli also proposed to alter the workings of the income tax (direct taxation) by "differentiating"—i.e., different rates would be levied on different types of income. The establishment of the income tax on a permanent basis had been the subject of much inter-party discussion since the fall of Peel's ministry, but no consensus had been reached, and Disraeli was criticised for mixing up details over the different "schedules" of income. Disraeli's proposal to extend the tax to Ireland gained him further enemies, and he was also hampered by an unexpected increase in defence expenditure, which was forced on him by Derby and Sir John Pakington (Secretary of State for War and the Colonies) (leading to his celebrated remark to John Bright about the "damned defences"). This, combined with bad timing and perceived inexperience led to the failure of the Budget and consequently the fall of the government in December of that year.
Gladstone's final speech on the failed Budget marked the beginning of over twenty years of mutual parliamentary hostility, as well as the end of Gladstone's formal association with the Conservative Party. No Conservative reconciliation remained possible so long as Disraeli remained leader in the House of Commons.
Opposition
With the fall of the government, Disraeli and the Conservatives returned to the opposition benches. Derby's successor as Prime Minister was the Peelite Lord Aberdeen, whose ministry was composed of both Peelites and Whigs. Disraeli himself was succeeded as chancellor by Gladstone.
Second Derby government
Lord Palmerston's government collapsed in 1858 amid public fallout over the Orsini affair and Derby took office at the head of a purely 'Conservative' administration. He again offered a place to Gladstone, who declined. Disraeli remained leader of the House of Commons and returned to the Exchequer. As in 1852 Derby's was a minority government, dependent on the division of its opponents for survival. The principal measure of the 1858 session would be a bill to re-organise governance of India, the Indian Mutiny having exposed the inadequacy of dual control. The first attempt at legislation was drafted by the President of the Board of Control, Lord Ellenborough, who had previously served as Governor-General of India (1841—44). The bill, however, was riddled with complexities and had to be withdrawn. Soon after, Ellenborough was forced to resign over an entirely separate matter involving the current Governor-General, Lord Canning.
Faced with a vacancy, Disraeli and Derby tried yet again to bring Gladstone into the government. Disraeli wrote a personal letter to Gladstone, asking him to place the good of the party above personal animosity: "Every man performs his office, and there is a Power, greater than ourselves, that disposes of all this..." In responding to Disraeli Gladstone denied that personal feelings played any role in his decision then and previously to accept office, while acknowledging that there were differences between him and Derby "broader than you may have supposed." Gladstone also hinted at the strength of his own faith, and the role it played in his public life, when he addressed Disraeli's most personal and private appeal:
I state these points fearlessly and without reserve, for you have yourself well reminded me that there is a Power beyond us that disposes of what we are and do, and I find the limits of choice in public life to be very narrow....W. E. Gladstone to Disraeli, 1858
With Gladstone's refusal Derby and Disraeli looked elsewhere and settled on Disraeli's old friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who became Secretary of State for the Colonies; Derby's son Lord Stanley, succeeded Ellenborough at the Board of Control. Stanley, with Disraeli's assistance, proposed and guided through the house the India Act, under which the subcontinent would be governed for sixty years. The East India Company and its Governor-General were replaced by a viceroy and the Indian Council, while at Westminster the Board of Control was abolished and its functions assumed by the newly created India Office, under the Secretary of State for India.
The 1867 Reform Bill
After engineering the defeat of a Liberal Reform Bill introduced by Gladstone in 1866, Disraeli and Derby introduced their own measure in 1867. This was primarily a political strategy designed to give the Conservative party control of the reform process and the subsequent long-term benefits in the Commons, similar to those derived by the Whigs after their 1832 Reform Act. It was thought that if the Conservatives were able to secure this piece of legislation, then the newly enfranchised electorate may return their gratitude to the Tories in the form of a Conservative vote at the next general election. As a result, this would give the Conservatives a greater chance of forming a majority government. After so many years in the 'stagnant backwaters' of British politics, this seemed most appealing. The Reform Act 1867 extended the franchise by 938,427 — an increase of 88% — by giving the vote to male householders and male lodgers paying at least 10 pounds for rooms and eliminating rotten boroughs with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, and granting constituencies to fifteen unrepresented towns, and extra representation in parliament to larger towns such as Liverpool and Manchester, which had previously been under-represented in Parliament. This act was unpopular with the right wing of the Conservative Party, most notably Lord Cranborne (later the Marquess of Salisbury), who resigned from the government and spoke against the bill, accusing Disraeli of "a political betrayal which has no parallel in our Parliamentary annals." Cranborne, however, was unable to lead a rebellion similar to that which Disraeli had led against Peel twenty years earlier.
Derby's health had been declining for some time and he finally resigned as Prime Minister in late February 1868; he would live for twenty months. Disraeli's efforts over the past two years had dispelled, for the time being, any doubts about him succeeding Derby as leader of the Conservative Party and therefore Prime Minister. As Disraeli remarked, "I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole."
However, the Conservatives were still a minority in the House of Commons, and the passage of the Reform Bill required the calling of new election once the new voting register had been compiled. Disraeli's term as Prime Minister would therefore be fairly short, unless the Conservatives won the general election. He made only two major changes in the cabinet: he replaced Lord Chelmsford as Lord Chancellor with Lord Cairns, and brought in George Ward Hunt as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Disraeli and Chelmsford had never got along particularly well, and Cairns, in Disraeli's view, was a far stronger minister.
Disraeli's first premiership was dominated by the heated debate over the established Church of Ireland. Although Ireland was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, the Protestant Church remained the established church and was funded by direct taxation. An initial attempt by Disraeli to negotiate with Cardinal Manning the establishment of a Roman Catholic university in Dublin foundered in March when Gladstone moved resolutions to disestablish the Irish Church altogether. The proposal divided the Conservative Party while reuniting the Liberals under Gladstone's leadership. While Disraeli's government survived until the December general election, the initiative had passed to the Liberals, who were returned to power with a majority of 170.
Second government
After six years in opposition, Disraeli and the Conservative Party won the election of 1874, giving the party its first absolute majority in the House of Commons since the 1840s. Under the stewardship of R. A. Cross, the Home Secretary, Disraeli's government introduced various reforms, including the Artisan's and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875, the Public Health Act 1875, the Sale of Food and Drugs Act (1875), and the Education Act (1876). His government also introduced a new Factory Act meant to protect workers, the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875 to allow peaceful picketing, and the Employers and Workmen Act (1875) to enable workers to sue employers in the civil courts if they broke legal contracts. As a result of these social reforms the Liberal-Labour MP Alexander Macdonald told his constituents in 1879, "The Conservative party have done more for the working classes in five years than the Liberals have in fifty."
Imperialism
Disraeli was, according to some interpretations, a supporter of the expansion and preservation of the British Empire in the Middle East and Central Asia. In spite of the objections of his own cabinet and without Parliament's consent, he obtained a short-term loan from Lionel de Rothschild in order to purchase 44% of the shares of the Suez Canal Company. Before this action, though, he had for the most part opted to continue the Whig policy of limited expansion, preferring to maintain the then-current borders as opposed to promoting expansion.
Disraeli and Gladstone clashed over Britain's Balkan policy. Disraeli saw the situation as a matter of British imperial and strategic interests, keeping to Palmerston's policy of supporting the Ottoman Empire against Russian expansion. According to Blake, Disraeli believed in upholding Britain's greatness through a tough, "no nonsense" foreign policy that put Britain's interests above the "moral law" that advocated emancipation of small nations. Gladstone, however, saw the issue in moral terms, for Bulgarian Christians had been massacred by the Turks and Gladstone therefore believed it was immoral to support the Ottoman Empire. Blake further argued that Disraeli's imperialism "decisively orientated the Conservative party for many years to come, and the tradition which he started was probably a bigger electoral asset in winning working-class support during the last quarter of the century than anything else".
A leading proponent of the Great Game, Disraeli introduced the Royal Titles Act 1876, which created Queen Victoria Empress of India, putting her at the same level as the Russian Tsar. In his private correspondence with the Queen, he proposed "to clear Central Asia of Muscovites and drive them into the Caspian". In order to contain Russia's influence, he launched an invasion of Afghanistan and signed the Cyprus Convention with Turkey, whereby this strategically placed island was handed over to Britain.
Disraeli scored another diplomatic success at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, in preventing Bulgaria from gaining full independence, limiting the growing influence of Russia in the Balkans and breaking up the League of the Three Emperors. However, difficulties in South Africa (epitomised by the defeat of the British Army at the Battle of Isandlwana), as well as Afghanistan, weakened his government and led to his party's defeat in the 1880 election.
Title and death
Disraeli was elevated to the House of Lords in 1876 when Queen Victoria made him Earl of Beaconsfield and Viscount Hughenden.
In the general election of 1880 Disraeli's Conservatives were defeated by Gladstone's Liberals, in large part owing to the uneven course of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The Irish Home Rule vote in England contributed to his party's defeat. Disraeli became ill soon after and died in April 1881.
He is buried in a vault beneath St Michael's Church in the grounds of his home Hughenden Manor, accessed from the churchyard. Against the outside wall of the church is a memorial erected in his honour by Queen Victoria. His literary executor, and for all intents and purposes his heir, was his private secretary, Lord Rowton. The Disraeli vault also contains the body of Sarah Brydges Willyams, the wife of James Brydges Willyams of St Mawgan in Cornwall. Her wish to be buried there was granted after she left an estate sworn at under £40,000, of which Disraeli received over £30,000.
Disraeli also has a memorial in Westminster Abbey.
Although born of Jewish parents, Disraeli was baptised in the Christian faith at the age of thirteen, and remained an observant Anglican for the rest of his life. Adam Kirsch, in his biography of Disraeli, states that his Jewishness was "both the greatest obstacle to his ambition and its greatest engine." Much of the criticism of his policies was couched in anti-Semitic terms. He was depicted in some antisemitic political cartoons with a big nose and curly black hair, called "Shylock" and "abominable Jew," and portrayed in the act of ritually murdering the infant Britannia. In response to an anti-Semitic comment in the British parliament, Disraeli memorably defended his Jewishness with the statement, "Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the Right Honourable Gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the Temple of Solomon." One apocryphal story states that Disraeli reconverted to Judaism on his deathbed.