In 1825 the novel-reading public of England was thrown into not a
little excitement by the appearance of a curious but brilliant work of
imagination entitled “Vivian Grey.” This piece of literary pyrotechny
was rapidly followed by “The Young Duke,” “Henrietta Temple,”
“Contarini Fleming,” “Alroy,” and other curious compounds of fiction
and politics. The name of the author did not at first appear; but it
soon came to be known that the series was the product of a student of
law, not yet twenty-five years of age, and the son of Isaac Disraeli,
the author of the “Curiosities of Literature.” This young novelist was
described by the society journals of the day as a man who frequented
Gore House, and not only poured out upon society there torrents of
remarkable talk on literary and political affairs, but made himself
amusingly conspicuous by his decorations of gaudy waistcoats and gold
chains. It came soon to be universally known in London society that
this eccentric genius, though educated in private under his father’s
care, had been a great reader of literature and history, and had come
to have very definite notions in regard to almost every question under
the sun.
Flushed with the success of his literary experiences, young Disraeli
travelled extensively in Europe and the East, and then returned in
1831, resolved to secure a seat in Parliament. In his first efforts
he was not successful; but in 1837, the year of Queen Victoria’s
accession, the electors of Maidstone gave him a seat, and accordingly
he entered the House of Commons in the thirty-third year of his age.
His first speech was generally regarded as a singular, even a
ridiculous, failure. Those who depend for their impression on its words
as they appear in Hansard or in Lord Beaconsfield’s selected speeches,
will hardly perceive in its fanciful flights the reasons for the
outbursts of laughter and jeers with which it was greeted and finally
brought to an end. It must have been the gaudiness of the speaker’s
dress, and the violent and theatrical manner of his speech, quite as
much as the irrelevancy of what he said, that threw the House into
roars of laughter, and led them to suppress the speaker altogether.
He did not, however, take his seat without thundering out the
prophecy—which appeared at the time quite as much like a threat—that
the time would come when they would hear him. It was long before he
secured the ear of the House. Between 1840 and 1845 he was largely
occupied with literary works, and during that period he published
“Coningsby,” “Sybil,” and “Tancred,” a trio of really remarkable
political novels, designed to present a picture of the forces at work
in the nation and of the way in which they should be dealt with by
Parliament. The conversations of Sidonia in “Coningsby” give a clear
and probably correct notion of Disraeli’s political opinions. He
advanced with great emphasis the doctrine that the Tory party was the
party of the people, and that the welfare of the lower classes was only
to be secured by the prevalence of Tory principles. Holding these views
he attached himself firmly to the party led by Sir Robert Peel; and
it was not until 1846, when the leader announced his determination to
bring in a bill for the modification of the Corn Laws, that Disraeli
deserted him. The eccentric young member was an ardent Protectionist.
In the course of the ten years that had elapsed since his first sad
experience he had become a master of argumentative fence, and in the
years that followed he developed such extraordinary abilities in his
assaults upon the government that he was universally recognized as a
consummate master of parliamentary invective and the most powerful
orator of the Opposition. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was
followed by a succession of poor harvests and by great suffering.
In a series of speeches extending over the years from 1846 to 1852,
Disraeli, with a skill and an eloquence that raised him to the front
rank of British orators, attributed this suffering to the financial and
economic policy of the government. These repeated and well-directed
blows finally broke the power of the ministry, and when, in 1852, the
Liberals went out of office, the Tories came in with Lord Derby as
Prime-Minister and Mr. Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
This position was held by Disraeli through each of Derby’s three
administrations; and on the resignation of that nobleman in February
of 1868 the Chancellor of the Exchequer was raised to the post of
Prime-Minister. This, however, he was obliged to resign before the end
of the year; but in 1873, when Mr. Gladstone’s Government was defeated
on the Irish Education Bill, the position was again tendered him. The
circumstances of the situation, however, did not encourage him to
accept. The Liberal ministry had been defeated not by the Conservatives
alone, but by a combination with the Home Rulers, a group of some
sixty Irish members who were likely to vote with the Liberals on all
other questions. The offer, therefore, was declined; but when in the
following year Mr. Gladstone decided to test the relative strength
of the parties by a dissolution and an appeal to the country, the
Conservatives were returned in triumphant majority, and Mr. Disraeli,
in February, 1874, was called a second time to the head of the
government. This position he continued to hold till the election of
1880, when, under the rigorous assaults of Gladstone and his followers,
the Conservative policy was rejected by the country. Meanwhile, in
August of 1876, Disraeli had been raised to the peerage with the title
of Earl of Beaconsfield, and in July of 1878 had been invested with the
Order of the Garter. With the downfall of his ministry in 1880, Lord
Beaconsfield’s political career came to an end, though he continued to
inspire the Opposition to the policy of his opponents till the time of
his death in 1881.
Throughout Disraeli’s political career, or at least ever after
the very first years of it, he was a staunch advocate of the old
Tory principles advocated by Lord Bolingbroke and Lord Shelburne.
In “Coningsby” and cropping out here and there in his speeches we
find constant evidences of his belief that the welfare of the common
people depends upon the union of the upper and the lower classes under
the guidance of the Conservative party. He held that the triumph of
the Whigs was the triumph of the middle class in opposition to the
interests of the lower, and that the inevitable results of a triumph
of Whig principles must be the creation of irreconcilable differences
between classes that ought to be cordially united. These views were
elaborated in his “Life of Lord George Bentinck,” in his “Defence of
the English Constitution,” and to some extent in his speeches on the
Reform Bill of 1867.
Two portions of Lord Beaconsfield’s career were very violently
criticised. The first was his course in regard to the reform of 1867.
Immediately after Lord Palmerston’s death in 1865, and the accession
of Earl Russell’s ministry, it became evident that the popular demand
could only be satisfied with a reform of the franchise. A bill was
accordingly introduced with the design of further extending the
right of suffrage in the manner of the great measure of 1832. The
bill was powerfully advocated by Mr. Gladstone, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer in the House, and was opposed with equal vigor by Mr.
Disraeli. On a motion to amend, the government was defeated, and
Russell and Gladstone going out of power, Derby and Disraeli came in.
As to what would be done, the public were not long left in doubt. On
the 18th of March, 1867. Mr. Disraeli came forward with a measure of
reform far more sweeping in its nature than that which he had in the
previous administration so vigorously and successfully opposed. The
extension of suffrage was to be made on a new principle, or at least
a principle which appeared to be new, though in fact it had been
advocated in Disraeli’s early writings. In his speech introducing the
measure he called attention to the fact that no less than five times
since 1832 attempts had been made to place the right of suffrage on a
firm basis, but that all of these had failed. He declared that they
had failed because they were mere expedients, whereas the question
could only be settled by the adoption of a clearly defined principle.
Hitherto the right to vote had depended upon income; it ought to
depend, he declared, upon permanency of interest. He therefore
proposed the substitution of the principle of household suffrage in
the place of suffrage founded upon the payment of a fixed rate. The
measure was looked upon with consternation by the Liberals, and was
most strenuously opposed by Gladstone and his followers; but it was
advocated in a succession of speeches of so much power and skill by
Disraeli that no opposition could prevent its final passage. But the
author of the measure, always more or less distrusted, was henceforth
regarded as a political adventurer who had stolen into the camp of his
enemy and run off with the spoils.
The foreign policy of Disraeli was equally obnoxious to his opponents.
In one respect he was the lineal successor of Pitt, Canning, and
Palmerston. Though he differed with many of the views held by those
great foreign ministers, and did not shrink from criticising them
with great severity, he was always in favor of a vigorous assertion
of the rights and interests of Great Britain. This, in the opinion
of his opponents, descended into a meddlesome interference with the
affairs of other nations. In Afghanistan, in Abyssinia, in South
Africa, and especially in the Eastern Mediterranean, his policy was
thought to be aggressive, and provoked the most violent opposition of
the Liberal party. By the treaty of San Stefano, concluded in 1878
between Russia and Turkey at the close of the war between these powers,
Turkey was reduced almost to a cipher in the hands of Russia. In the
opinion of Lord Beaconsfield this solution imperilled the interests of
Great Britain in the Mediterranean. Russia was accordingly required
by the English Government to submit the treaty to a congress of
European powers. This at first Russia refused to do, whereupon the
Prime-Minister moved an address to the Queen asking her to call out the
Reserves. This was done, and was immediately followed by the still more
vigorous step of bringing up to Malta a division of the Indian army.
Russia at once began to lower her pretensions, and finally agreed that
the treaty should be submitted to a European Congress. In June of 1878
Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury went as English Plenipotentiaries
to the Congress at Berlin called to consider the whole question. The
result was an important modification of the Treaty of San Stefano and a
practical restoration of the independence of the Turkish empire. On the
return of the Ambassadors, bringing back, as Beaconsfield said, “peace
with honor,” they were received with an ovation which has not often
had a parallel in English history. Three years later, Mr. Gladstone,
in paying a tribute to his deceased rival, singled out his reception
in the House of Lords as the culminating point of his greatness in the
eyes of all those who regarded his policy with admiration; and applied
to the Berlin triumph the well-known words of Virgil:
Aspice et insignis spoliis Marcellus opimis
Ingreditur, victorque viros supereminet omnes.