Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilNuméros101 PrintempsBenjamin Disraeli (1804‒1881): Hi...Part 1: Political Lives and After...Disraeli and Cobden: ‘The Manches...

Benjamin Disraeli (1804‒1881): His Lives and Afterlives (Colloque de la SFEVE 25-26 février 2024)
Part 1: Political Lives and Afterlives

Disraeli and Cobden: ‘The Manchester School’ in Fact and Fiction

Disraeli et Cobden : « La Manchester School » entre fiction et réalité
Anthony Howe

Résumés

Les principaux hommes politiques conservateurs et radicaux du milieu du xixe siècle (Disraeli et Cobden) ont à première vue peu de choses en commun, si ce n’est l’année de leur naissance en 1804, l’héritage des éditions savantes majeures de leurs lettres et le fait qu’ils aient tous deux fait l’objet d’expositions au xxie siècle (Oxford, 2004, et Manchester, 2023). Seule une lettre entre les deux a survécu, ce qui témoigne de leur distance personnelle, sociale et politique, mais de leur vivant, chacun a agi comme un antitype symbolique constant pour l’autre. Les romans de Disraeli intitulés « Young England » (et ses célèbres visites à Manchester, en partie organisées par Cobden) cherchaient à régénérer l’idéal d’un gouvernement aristocratique au cœur de la Grande-Bretagne industrielle, tandis que son invention linguistique de « l’école de Manchester » trouvait sa personnification dans le fabricant radical et leader de la Anti-Corn Law League, Richard Cobden. Leur confrontation politique au sein et en dehors du Parlement résume parfaitement la rivalité entre la terre et l’industrie, la protection et le libre-échange, l’aristocratie et l’identité de la classe moyenne, la constitution territoriale et le « principe commercial », la grandeur nationale ou l’utopie cosmopolite, la domination des « gentlemen of England » ou sa subversion par la vague démocratique menée par Manchester. Cette incarnation personnelle des guerres culturelles des années 1840 est devenue un élément essentiel du discours politique, des commentaires de la presse et de l’iconographie satirique. Cette étude de deux éminents hommes politiques de l’époque victorienne, rarement ou jamais associés, donne des aperçus inattendus sur les conflits idéologiques et les pratiques politiques, ainsi que sur leur représentation artistique.

Haut de page

Texte intégral

1The mid-nineteenth century’s leading Conservative and its pre-eminent Radical have, at first glance, little in common, save for the year of their birth in 1804, the legacy of major scholarly editions of their letters, and both having been the subject of twenty-first-century exhibitions (Oxford, 2004 and Manchester, 2023) (BDL, LRC, LRC online, Langley).1 Only one short letter between the two survives, an indication of their personal, social, and political distance.2 Nevertheless their public lives constantly intercrossed and each acted as a permanent symbolic antitype for the other. Disraeli’s ‘Young England’ novels (and celebrated visits to Manchester, in part organized by Cobden) pointedly sought to regenerate the ideal of aristocratic government in the heart of industrial Britain, while his linguistic invention of the term ‘Manchester school’ found its personification in the Radical manufacturer and leader of the Anti-Corn Law League, Richard Cobden. In this essay Disraeli’s brief literary engagement with Cobden and Manchester is set against their longer political confrontation within and outside Parliament.3 Both facets of their relationship neatly encapsulated the rivalry between land and industry, protection and free trade, aristocracy and middle-class identity, the territorial constitution and the ‘commercial principle’, national greatness or cosmopolitan utopianism, rule by the ‘gentlemen of England’ or its subversion by the Manchester-led democratic tide. This personal embodiment of the culture wars of the 1840s became a staple of political discourse, press commentary, and satirical iconography.

2The sharp ideological polarity of the 1840s lost much of its intensity in the 1850s and 1860s, replaced by intermittent periods of common parliamentary action based on political expediency. Cobden typically characterized Disraeli as an opportunistic Jewish intriguer, devoid of principle, desperate for office yet dependent on the whims of his Tory aristocratic overlords, while Disraeli was a ready admirer of Cobden’s parliamentary skills (‘the most persuasive speaker I ever listened to’) (Disraeli 1975, 108). In the 1850s, they were united in their opposition to Whig legislation on major questions, above all, the government of India. Later, their common antagonism to the Whig-Liberal minister Palmerston brought them together on issues such as the ‘Arrow’ incident in China, non-intervention in Europe, and armaments expenditure. Following Cobden’s premature death in 1865, Disraeli paid tribute to the depth of his parliamentary impact and eulogized him as ‘the greatest political character the pure middle class has yet produced’ (Hansard 178, c.677, 3 Apr. 1865). In his later re-imagining of Cobden as ‘Job Thornberry’ in his last novel Endymion (1880), we find again the Radical manufacturer, risen to national greatness by hard work and rhetorical ability, seeking to replace feudalism by the ‘commercial principle’. In this characterization, Disraeli recreated, in mellowed form, the countertypes of the 1840s, on which his early political and literary success had been built, and which had so starkly divided them as political opponents.

  • 4 ‘Saxon saint’ had been George Smythe’s term, with which Disraeli concurred (Disraeli 1975, 108); ‘T (...)
  • 5 Exhibited in London in 1937. See too Leslie 349 and Plate 151. Now in private ownership in the Unit (...)

3This study of two pre-eminent Victorian politicians, rarely if ever paired together, yields valuable insights into ideological conflict and political practice as well as their literary and artistic representations. Their political trajectories were significantly different. Disraeli, brought up in comfortable material circumstances, but subsequently beset by financial difficulties, had sought economic independence through his literary career, travelling extensively and fighting a series of by-elections from 1832, before entering the House of Commons in 1837; Cobden had to make his own way in the world, from warehouse clerk to master manufacturer in the Lancashire textile industry, but also travelled widely, establishing his name by his political tracts, nursing the constituency of Stockport, and entering the Commons four years after Disraeli, in 1841; Disraeli was intent from the start on gaining office, while Cobden disdained place-seeking in favour of principle; Cobden was the permanent outsider, Disraeli the aspiring insider; Cobden, in Disraeli’s eyes, appeared at times as a ‘Saxon saint’, while Disraeli was for Cobden, a religious conundrum;4 early in his career, Disraeli had aspired to be ‘an independent Radical’ but thereafter their politics were profoundly divergent. That divergence was well illustrated by a contemporary painting, Cobden’s Election, a vicious caricature, once attributed to Constable and misdated 1837, in which Cobden, with simian features, addresses a crowd on the Corn Laws, whilst in the background Disraeli hangs from a gallows.5

4In pairing the two together, we see not a personal antagonism as that between Cobden and Palmerston, or Disraeli and Gladstone (Howe 2007; Blake 1969) but rather mutual recognition that they were ideological antitypes, representatives of mutually incompatible ideas, communities, and identities. On this basis there was a certain level of mutual respect and recognition. Disraeli in the 1842 Commons session accorded Cobden undoubted prestige as the recently elected MP for Stockport and leader of the Anti-Corn Law League. Hence, following his speech on consuls, Disraeli wrote to his wife, ‘What think you of the mighty Mister Cobden coming up to me to offer his thanks for the great public service I had done etc.’ (Hansard 61 cc. 220‒44, 280‒81, 8 Mar. 1842; 9 Mar. 1842, BDL iv. 26). A year later, at Shrewsbury, Disraeli spoke of Cobden as ‘a very eminent person’ and a threat to a system based on landed property, but ‘if we have baffled a wit like Oliver Cromwell, let us not be staggered even before Mr Cobden’ (Shropshire Chronicle, 13 May 1843 cit. Monypenny ii, 243). Cobden’s first acquaintance with Disraeli was probably as a reader of his novels (he referred to him as ‘the author of Vivian Grey’) but their first significant extra-parliamentary meeting came with Disraeli’s visit to Manchester in 1843 (LRC i, 341).

  • 6 Possibly Disraeli’s 1843 visit was partly in preparation for Coningsby.
  • 7 O’Kell’s account of Coningsby ignores its ‘Manchester’ dimension (O’Kell 198‒230).
  • 8 Cooke Taylor identifies himself in the review as an early commentator on Disraeli’s orientalism in (...)

5This meeting seems to have been chance occurrence, occasioned by Cobden’s learning of Disraeli’s presence in Manchester and his arranging through the secretary of the Athenaeum, Edward Watkin, the future global railway magnate, to invite Disraeli to its annual meeting (Dickens was the main speaker) (LRC i. 341; Dickens 576‒83). The Athenaeum was something of a pet institution for Cobden, who had been instrumental in its foundation in 1835 but it was conducted on strictly non-party lines and by 1843 among its leading lights was the Tory James Crossley, the main opponent of Cobden’s campaign for the incorporation of Manchester in 1838. (Collins 74‒96, 112‒18). Disraeli, in his speech, acknowledged ‘his hon. friend Mr Cobden’, and spoke encouragingly of the cultural ambitions of the local middle class, with the potential to rival the great merchant princes of Venice. Here he recognized Manchester, at the heart of the new global cotton industry, as the potential harbinger of a new industrial civilization. It was also at this time that Disraeli was developing the ideas expressed in Coningsby, published in May 1844.6 In Coningsby Disraeli would recognize that ‘rightly understood, Manchester is as great an human exploit as Athens’, ‘the most wonderful city of modern times’; its hero, exemplar of the Young England message of revitalized aristocratic government under an authoritarian monarchy, would, by marrying the daughter of a leading wealthy cotton master, reconcile the rising industrial bourgeoise to historic Toryism and the territorial constitution (Teukolsky 219‒24; Cesarani 96).7 It has been suggested that the hidden agenda of Coningsby was to win over Cobden to an alliance with ‘Toryism’ against the Conservative leader Peel, but if so, it palpably failed (Ridley 287, 355). Interestingly, Coningsby was extensively reviewed in the leading organ of Cobden’s Anti-Corn Law League, The League, by its editor, William Cooke Taylor. He was concerned with the contemporary significance of the work rather than its literary merits, and generously appraised the idealism underlying the Young England movement (League 25 May 1844, 570‒71; 1 June, 585‒87; 8 June, 600‒01).8

  • 9 See too Gaunt 340‒52; Whibley i. 171‒80; Faber 129‒31; Blake 1966, 181; O’Kell 236‒39. Their speech (...)
  • 10 Disraeli’s host on this visit was the merchant James Atherton, of Swinton Park, with whom Cobden ha (...)
  • 11 Millbank has been variously identified with the Manchester MP Mark Philips, with Cobden himself, wi (...)

6In the wake of Coningsby’s great popular success, Disraeli returned to the Manchester Athenaeum as the main speaker in October 1844, ‘a coup’, as he put it, to be used to advertise the mission of the ‘Young England’ movement to reinvigorate aristocratic government, from within the cultural fastness of the Manchester industrial elite (BDL iv. xxx). He was accompanied by his ‘Young England’ colleagues Smythe and Manners (both also spoke) in what Monypenny described as ‘the culminating point in the glory of Young England’ (ii. 143).9 Cobden was less enamoured by this visit, decrying the Young Englanders as ‘sad political humbugs’, and disliked ‘the idea of Manchester throwing itself too exclusively upon the patronage of the landed aristocracy’, which he regretted as a sign of the aristocracy of industry’s lack of self-respect (To Edward Watkin, 9 July 1844, LRC i. 368). Subsequently, while protesting ‘their [Young England’s] appearance at the Athenaeum meeting was none of my work’, in the midst of the Corn Law campaign (and his collapsing business fortunes), he made time to attend (and to dine with Disraeli (1 October), reflecting that ‘Upon the whole  . . . that exhibition did good to our cause—It raised Manchester morally in Europe and whatever does that helps the Free trade question  . . . Besides the Young Englanders came to us we did not go to them’. (To C. P. Villiers, 13 Nov. 1844, LRC ii. 374).10 He also acknowledged Disraeli as ‘the first man of distinguished genius, who, in a work of imagination, has assigned to a man of my order something like an honorable status in his pages’ (Watkin 135; Manchester Guardian, 4 Oct. 1844). The ‘man of my order’, the manufacturer Oswald Millbank, was primarily a symbolic representative of the new industrial order but grounded in reality, based partly on Disraeli’s own recently gleaned personal knowledge but reinforced by that of Manners and Smythe who had made an earlier detailed tour of the manufacturing districts.11

  • 12 A few days later Disraeli and Manners joined in defending Henry Ashworth, Cobden’s close colleague (...)

7Disraeli’s Sybil (1845) returned to the subject of the Northern manufacturing districts but Disraeli’s concern was now with the working people and their relationship to the aristocracy, rather than with the cultural challenges presented by Manchester. Its leading millowner, Trafford, of ‘Mowbray’, is not closely identified with Manchester and although he creates a model factory community, as the scion of old Roman Catholic landed family, he is highly unrepresentative of the Northen industrial elite, for cotton masters rarely came from landed or Catholic backgrounds (Howe 1984; S. Smith). Interestingly too in the Commons Disraeli distanced himself from some of his associates’ critiques of the millowners, in February 1846 acknowledging ‘I know that the industry of Lancashire is a well-ordered and a noble industry’ (Hansard 83 cc. 1344 (20 Feb.).12

  • 13 ‘[O]ne who represents a great idea—an idea which may lead him to power—an idea with which he may id (...)
  • 14 In a Punch cartoon of 1849, ‘The Schoolmaster at Home’, Disraeli is portrayed dutifully listening w (...)
  • 15 See too Monypenny & Buckle iii. 325 for this ‘appreciation’ of Cobden.
  • 16 For Disraeli’s perception of himself as the defender a ‘a proud aristocracy’ against the ‘revolutio (...)

8While the Corn Law Repeal of 1846 debates sharply divided Cobden and Disraeli, they did not spark any great personal confrontation between the two. This was in part because Cobden kept quite a low profile in the debates but mainly because Disraeli’s animus was reserved for the Tory leader Peel, whose acceptance of Repeal was for Disraeli a fundamental betrayal of the Tory party’s historic purpose as the defender of the ‘territorial constitution’ (O’Kell chaps. 9 and 11). It became a standard rhetorical device for Disraeli to suggest, as in 1845, in an anti-Peel barb, that ‘If we are to have Free Trade, I, who honour genius, would prefer that such measures should be proposed by the hon. the Member for Stockport [Cobden], than by one, who through skilful Parliamentary manoeuvres, has tampered with the generous confidence of a great people and of a great party’ (Hansard, 78, c. 1028 (17 Mar. 1845); Morley i. 324). For Disraeli, Cobden was a Carlylean heroic type who embodied a great idea, while Peel was the slave to the ideas of others (Hansard 83 cc. 115‒16 (22 Jan. 1846).13 That ‘great idea’ was summarized by Disraeli in 1846 in coining the phrase ‘the school of Manchester’. This term and its derivatives such as ‘Manchesterism’ later acquired considerable ideological prominence in Britain and continental Europe (Magnusson 46‒53). For Disraeli, this phrase had no exact economic meaning but embodied the threat emanating from the Anti-Corn Law League to the aristocratic cultural values he aspired to champion (Howe 2010). In turn the ‘Manchester School’ was virtually synonymous with Cobden (Hansard 83 cc. 1326, 1327, 1330 (20 Feb. 1846).14 As he mockingly declared during a reform debate in 1848 what could be worse than a redistribution of seats leading to seven MPs for Manchester, having to face ‘seven Richards in the field’ (Hansard 99 c. 957 (20 June 1848). His own views probably mirror those he ascribed to Lord George Bentinck, ‘he sincerely believed the Manchester confederation was hostile to the greatness and permanent prosperity of this country’ but ‘he respected Mr Cobden, for his talents, his position, the clear manner in which he had obtained it, and the considerable public sympathy which supported him’; while a dangerous foe, he was ‘an open foe’, another anti-Peel barb. ‘If Manchester principles were to predominate, he could not comprehend why they should not be administered by Manchester men’, a re-echo of Disraeli’s refrain (1851; Disraeli, 1861, 155‒56).15 In the wake of Repeal—in Disraeli’s eyes, the submission of Peel to Manchester principles—the future political contest would pose for Disraeli the stark choice between the territorial constitution and the revolutionary waves emanating from Manchester, between aristocratic or commercial principles.16 Here was perfectly illustrated what Parry has well described as ‘Disraeli’s epic conception of politics as a clash of ideas’ (Parry 2000, 724; Parry 2004).

  • 17 For Disraeli’s attacks on Cobden as a supporter of bankrupt exchequer and appealing to revolutionar (...)
  • 18 Had Cobden’s proposal for the American style conduct of public business succeeded, ‘the government (...)
  • 19 The ‘cry of Protection will rally no one to our standard here’ (Disraeli to Stanley 9 November 1849 (...)
  • 20 Oxford English Dictionary gives 1887; for the term and its usage, Howe 1997, 112, n. 7.
  • 21 Cobden spoke at Aylesbury on 7 January; this was billed as a challenge to Disraeli but he declined (...)
  • 22 Speech at Newton Pagnell 5 December 1849, see Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli 11 December 1849, BDL v. 2 (...)

9This ideological conflict was made more fully apparent in the years 1847‒52, when the political and social consequences of Repeal were to be worked out under Russell’s Whig government (Howe 1997, 38‒69; Parry 1993). Disraeli saw in Cobden and Manchester a genuine threat to the aristocratic order which he sought to defend. In Tancred (1847), among the more mundane challenges Disraeli set before his aristocratic hero was to secure for his order what remained of the power of Parliament after the ravages of Cobden and O’Connell (Disraeli 1927, 141; Parry 2017). The 1848 Revolution in France intensified his fear of the ‘Jacobin movement of Manchester’ (To Sir George Sinclair, 29 Feb. 1848, BDL v. 13).17 Besides the French-style threat of social equality, Disraeli had perceived a growing threat of American republican institutions, as when sitting with Cobden on the select committee on Public Business in 1848.18 He also consistently saw Cobden’s cosmopolitanism as a challenge to the ‘national’ interest, and was ready to mock its dangerous pacific utopianism (Hansard 96 cc. 953‒58 (18 Feb. 1848). But the root of their ideological antagonism remained that of free trade and protection, with Cobden ready to condemn anything short of full acceptance of free trade as the retention of protection. Disraeli, recognizing the political bankruptcy of protection, was desperate to find an alternative form of fiscal compensation attractive to the tenant farmers.19 Otherwise he feared the tenant farmers would be won over to Cobden’s schemes for financial reform, threatening the very survival of the aristocracy: ‘They will go for financial reform, wh: will be the death blow to the aristocracy and indeed of everything permanently great in this country’ (to Manners, 15 October 1849, BDL v. 230). In the process he introduced the term ‘Cobdenism’ which would only be popularized much later, seeking ‘to keep the farmers from running to Cobdenism’, ‘This is why they are all inclined to run to Cobdenism & reduce the taxation of the country ten million at one swoop’.20 Cobden, still Disraeli’s most tenacious opponent, was ready to carry his ‘Manchester principles’ into the latter’s home territory, venturing to Buckinghamshire to challenge him for the support of the tenant farmers.21 Although no personal meeting took place, this wider debate served both their purposes—Disraeli was able to sketch out his own ‘country party’ vision of the national interest, threatened by the rise of urban England, while Cobden was able to perpetuate his view of the regressive aristocracy, threatening the welfare of the people. Typically, in December 1849, Disraeli acknowledged Cobden’s ‘honest frankness, in wanting the country to be turned into a workshop and governed by the great towns’.22 By 1851 following the ‘body blow’ of the census (revealing Britain as a largely urban population for the first time), and the ineptness of two aristocratic parties, Disraeli feared the ‘triumph of Cobden’ within five years, writing to Stanley, ‘I never saw things tumble down so fast as the landed interest’ (To Stanley, 7 Dec. 1851, BDL vi. 531‒32).

  • 23 (29 March 1852), ‘one of his cleverest speeches’ ‘of the cosmopolitical school’; (30 March), on the (...)
  • 24 One of Disraeli’s greatest fears was of the imminent arrival of the ‘Manchester School’ in office, (...)
  • 25 See too Hansard (13 December, 123 cc. 1317‒36; Hawkins ii. 54); 4 December to George Wilson, ‘ . .  (...)
  • 26 Smith 118, 122, notes Disraeli’s occasional readiness to combine with fellow outsiders.

10With the collapse of the Whig ministry in February 1852, Disraeli entered office as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Derby determined to shore up the territorial constitution, even if the ultimate outcome of the government, as Cobden had long predicted, was final abandonment of protection by the Protectionist party (Hawkins ii. 1‒60). Disraeli remained an admirer of Cobden’s parliamentary oratory, frequently complimenting him in his letters to the Queen.23 But as the election of 1852 approached, both returned to the hostile rhetoric of the 1840s. Cobden, with the revived Anti-Corn Law League behind him, was keen to keep alive the Tory threat to free trade and the cheap loaf, while Disraeli was keen to heighten fear of Cobdenism and democracy (Howe 1997, 65).24 Nevertheless, when the new parliament met in November, the cause of protection was effectively dead (Stewart 197, 206). Disraeli sought to stave off the Manchester School’s free trade motion with his own counter-motion, endorsing free trade without ruling out some form of compensation to the landed interest. To Cobden, this was merely hair-splitting, which he roundly denounced, ‘on what was probably the very last occasion upon which the controversy between Protection and Free Trade may ever be heard in this House, (Hansard 123 cc. 666‒76 (26 Nov. 1852); Monypenny & Buckle iii. 415). After the Tory relinquishment of protection by supporting Palmerston’s free-trade resolution, the fate of Disraeli’s 1852 budget (and so of the Tory ministry) remained in the balance (Ghosh). In the Commons, Cobden was strongly critical of the Budget but privately noted ‘There was not a word or a figure in his budget that a free trader could object to—The controversy in now fairly at an end’ (4 Dec. to Frederick Cobden, LRC ii. 457).25 Spurned by the Peelites and the Irish Independent party, in extremis Disraeli sought, through John Bright, the support of the ‘Manchester School’ in order to pass the budget and stay in office. (BDL vi. 198 (Disraeli to Bright, 15 Dec. 1852); Bright, 128‒30; Blake 1966, 342‒43; Hawkins ii. 55). Such an unprincipled alliance was a mere pipedream, but, as the culture wars of the 1840s receded, it foreshadowed the primacy of expediency and opportunistic combination in the relations between Cobden and Disraeli.26

  • 27 In April 1853 Disraeli significantly identified himself with the ‘Manchester School’ cause of repea (...)
  • 28 Bright, Cobden, and the Manchester School were prominent critics of the Bill, in which they were jo (...)
  • 29 The letter from Disraeli was to warn Cobden that C. P. Villiers was unwell and so unable to open th (...)
  • 30 The original vote was held on 16 December 1852. Disraeli recalled this during the Treaty debates in (...)
  • 31 See too Cobden to Bright, 11 and 28 October 1855 as to The Times’ reports of ‘Manchester school’ co (...)
  • 32 In 1850 they had been in the same lobby voting against Palmerston’s foreign policy over the ‘Don Pa (...)
  • 33 Cobden, consumed by preparation for the Arrow debate, voted but did not speak; (26 March 1857, Stan (...)
  • 34 See too 20 July 1858 to John Mitchell LRC iii, 383; 4 October 1858 to James Thorold Rogers (LRC onl (...)
  • 35 I am grateful to Robert Saunders for Stanley’s proposed candidature (to Stanley 24 October 1858, BD (...)

11Already in 1852 Cobden had spoken of his ‘settled conviction, after long consideration of the question, that we have more to gain in the way of practical and administrative reforms (apart from Parliamentary Reform) from either the Tories or the Peelites than the Whigs’ (30 Aug. to Bright, LRC ii. 418). At the same time, in the post-Protection world, Disraeli accepted that the Tories could not be solely a landed party and took on the mission of reconciling town and country in a ‘new National party’ (to Malmesbury, 26 Jan. 1853, BDL vi. 207). This in turn dictated some openness to urban interests, and their representatives; increasingly, possibly influenced by Stanley, he now more readily viewed the ‘Manchester interest’ as solidly middle class rather than ‘democratic’ (Stanley Journal 116‒18, (25 Jan. 1854).27 By June 1853 Disraeli was ready to collude with the Manchester School in opposition to the Whigs’ India Bill.28 To this period belongs the only known letter exchanged between Disraeli and Cobden, 27 June 1853, at a time when Derby warned Disraeli, ‘an uneasy feeling among our Conservative friends as to a supposed understanding, and, to a certain extent combination, between yourself and the Manchester School’.29 Even so, in December 1853, Malmesbury reported that, following Derby’s renewed intervention, ‘Dizzy promises to be entirely Conservative’ and ‘to have no flirtation with the Manchester men’ (Lonsdale to Croker, 16 Dec. 1853, Croker ii. 485). Interestingly too Cobden came to regret that he had voted against the Derby government’s continuance in December 1852. That vote had paved the way for the Aberdeen coalition, to whose inept diplomacy Cobden now ascribed the Crimean War. He confessed ‘I look back with regret on the vote I gave on the motion that changed Lord Derby’s government. I regret the result of that motion, for it has cost the country 100 millions of treasure and between 20,000 and 30,000 good lives’ (Hansard, 139, cc. 581‒82, 11 July 1855).30 Cobden also commended to his Peace Society ally Joseph Sturge, ‘the excellent peace matter’ he found in Disraeli’s The Press (21 Nov. 1855), LRC online .31 Believing too that the Crimean War had eroded party differences, Cobden averred ‘ . . . it may be said that our leader [Palmerston] is at heart an aristocratic Tory, whilst the chief of the opposition is, if anything a democratic-radical’ (to W. S. Lindsay, 25 July 1856, LRC online). Cobden, while holding that Disraeli was perhaps ‘not troubled with any convictions’ (to H. Richard, 20 Aug. 1856, LRC online), continued to see in the Conservatives a valuable counterweight to Palmerstonian war propensities. Hence, when Cobden brought a motion of no confidence in Palmerston’s administration over the Arrow incident, and the deployment of British gunships, Disraeli was in the lobby with Cobden (and his Tory rival Gladstone) against Palmerston in March 1857.32 Significantly too, shortly before this division, Cobden and the Radicals had joined the Tories in (unsuccessfully) opposing Palmerston’s budget (Hansard, 23 February, 144 cc. 1060‒150).33 Cobden subsequently claimed, when speaking at Manchester in March 1857 that the Conservatives had adopted his own programme of non-intervention, diminished armaments expenditure and lower taxation; Disraeli and Gladstone ‘both took a most philosophical and able view of our finances’ (Cobden, 1870 ii. 70, 73). Nor is it surprising that, as Cobden’s rancour against Palmerston grew, he was quite ready to express his preference for Disraeli in office rather than Palmerston, a preference for overt, rather than as Cobden believed, covert Conservatism, ‘I consider, he wrote in October 1858, ‘Palmerston a much safer Tory than Disraeli’ (to Charles Wyndham, 24 Feb. 1858, LRC iii. 368).34 Simultaneously, Disraeli showed a renewed interest in Manchester, urging Stanley to stand at Manchester in 1858 and in the wake of a Tory revival in South Lancashire in the 1859 election, addressing the Annual Meeting of the Lancashire & Cheshire Mechanics’ Institutes in 1859, urging, as in 1844, education as the route to social mobility for the working classes, and acknowledging again Manchester’s leading part in cultivating the public mind (Howe 1984, 103, 123).35

  • 36 For Gladstone’s recalling ‘the battles of February, March, and April 1860’, (8 May 1862 Hansard 166 (...)
  • 37 Interestingly Sir Louis Mallet, who helped Cobden negotiate the Treaty also believed this (Howe 199 (...)
  • 38 For examples, see Hansard, 1 February 1849, 102 cc. 98‒100; Monypenny & Buckle iii. 198‒99.
  • 39 Malmesbury to Cowley 21 September 1852, on the readiness of the government to negotiate with France (...)
  • 40 Malmesbury to Cowley, 24 September 1852, (TNA FO 519/196 (Pt I); id. to id., 11 October 1852, ‘Disr (...)

12After this period of opportunistic, if also principled, alignment in the 1850s, one major issue re-awoke the ideological opposition of the 1840s, the 1860 Anglo-French Commercial Treaty. This was the major issue of the early 1860 parliamentary session and although Cobden was absent in France for the entirety of the session, in some ways he dominated it.36 Disraeli, with able allies such as the merchant banker Hubbard as well as unreconstructed Protectionists such as Newdegate, led a detailed critique of the treaty (without formally opposing it). He did so partly by comparison with the ‘Tory’ Pittite Anglo-French commercial treaty of 1786/7 which he not implausibly claimed was superior to that of 1860 (Hansard 156 c. 1369, 20 Feb. 1860).37 He also attacked the treaty as a return to reciprocity, supposedly abandoned under Peel, and therefore a return to the policy he himself had consistently advocated.38 Thus, the short-lived Tory government of 1852 had revived the series of attempts at an Anglo-French reciprocity treaty which had been made by the Whigs in the late 1830s and Peel in 1842.39 This attempt has never been studied in any detail but during the economic debates 1847‒1852 Disraeli had defended reciprocity as the ‘patriotic’ alternative to the visionary cosmopolitan policy of ‘free imports’ (Gambles). In office as chancellor, according to Malmesbury, Disraeli had had ambitious plans for trade policy: ‘I believe he will only encounter this question on a grand scale and as pitting Coal, Linen Yarn, and Cottons against Silks, brandy and wine’.40 Such a reciprocity treaty, we might note too, had been the form of negotiation recommended by Lord Monmouth in Coningsby (John Bright, Hansard 156 c. 1625 (23 Feb. 1860); Coningsby, Part IV, chap. 2). These schemes had come to nothing but Disraeli in 1860 was able to argue that there was an alternative Tory commercial policy, more likely to succeed than the ‘unnecessary’ Treaty negotiated by Cobden, and marked by his ‘idiosyncrasy’ (Hansard 156 cc. 92‒93 (24 Jan. 1860); c. 1371 (20 Feb. 1860). During the debates, Disraeli made several, pointed, at times, personal attacks on Cobden, claiming that as a ‘secret agent’ he had abused his power by pursuing his own goals of peace rather than national economic interests:

I do not think there ever was a treaty drawn up apparently with less forethought or less knowledge of the circumstances with which the negotiators had to deal, which altogether contains so many arrangements injurious not only to the trade of England, but also inferentially and ultimately to that of France, or which is better calculated to sow the seeds of discord and dissension between the two countries. (Hansard 156 c. 1805, 24 Feb. 1860; ‘secret agent’, c. 1371 (20 Feb. 1860).

13On another occasion, Disraeli charged ‘it has not been negotiated with the skill, knowledge, and attention which are required in such an instrument, and that, on the contrary, there is evidence of precipitation and carelessness’ (Hansard 157 c. 295, 9 March 1860).

  • 41 Disraeli was speaking in the debate on Palmerston’s administration initiated by Cobden.
  • 42 He urged Samuel Lucas, editor of the Morning Star (the mouthpiece of the ‘Manchester School’) to no (...)
  • 43 The figure is mentioned in Cobden (to Hargreaves 5 January 1862, LRC online).
  • 44 In some ways this speech proved counter-productive, with Palmerston making great play of the phrase (...)
  • 45 In May-June 1862 Disraeli was keen to exploit Radical opposition to Palmerston over finance but was (...)
  • 46 See too Cobden (Hansard 168 cc. 1096‒116); Disraeli (1 August 1862, 1127‒40); Cobden (to Thorold Ro (...)

14Although the Treaty was the official work of Palmerston’s government, Cobden himself became increasingly antagonistic towards Palmerston, whose extravagant programme of fortifications against France, seemed wholly antithetical to the peace policy on which he believed the Treaty was based (12 July 1860 to Bright, LRC iv. 83). As in the 1850s, this hostility led to opportunistic forays between the Radicals and Disraeli in opposition to government policy. To some extent both Cobden and Disraeli shared the view that Palmerston, in becoming premier in 1859, had used Reform aspirations to gain power but had then adopted Tory policies in office, particularly on parliamentary reform and foreign policy (Hansard 168 cc. 1127‒33).41 Both became critics of government extravagance. For example, in April 1861 Cobden was intent on creating a drive towards economy and arms limitation; this was not a policy to appeal to the Tory squires but it had strong appeal to Disraeli seeking to weaken Palmerston and widen Tory support. It also conformed to Disraeli’s consistent attachment to economy, whose pursuit guided his policy 1859‒1862 (Ghosh 266‒68). Cobden greeted Disraeli’s speech on armaments in July 1861 as ‘a bold bid for office to the Manchester School’.42 By January 1862 he was ‘ . . . quite sure if Dizzy can get in again it will be to retrench’, predicting savings of 5‒10 million (to George Moffatt, 26 January 1862, LRC online).43 In May 1862, Disraeli joined the attack on ‘bloated armaments’, although careful to differentiate his views from those of Cobden, ‘than whom no person can place before the country opinions in a more clear and captivating style’ (Hansard 166 c.1426, 8 May 1862).44 Cobden now noted the ‘apparent intention on the part of the opposition to play the game of economy & retrenchment’ (to Henry Richard, 26 May 1862, LRC online ). Arguably. had the grassroots Conservative party been less in thrall to Palmerston, there would have been a fair chance of overturning the Palmerston government as it lost Radical support.45 For Cobden, Disraeli was now destined to become the ‘political Tantalus’, tormented by the approaching prospect of office, only to have it constantly removed from his grasp by Palmerston’s drawing off opposition MPs by ‘pampering the services’ (to Hargreaves, 7 Aug. 1862, LRC online). When Cobden launched his own critique of Palmerston’s government at the end of the 1862 session, Disraeli, content to observe the ‘sufficiently rapid process of decomposition and demoralization’ in the Liberal party, joined in attacking the financial record of the administration, Trelawney noting Disraeli’s ‘driving in the wedge to increase the separation’ between the Radicals and Palmerston (Trelawney 217).46 Nevertheless after this ’stout party fight’, Cobden regretted Disraeli’s seeming ‘abdication’ in 1863, his ‘total absence from the debates and business of the session’ (Cobden to Wilson, 16 July 1863, LRC online; Cobden to Lucas, 27 July 1863, LRC online). Nevertheless, in March 1864 Cobden publicly welcomed Disraeli as a fellow spirit in opposing ‘bloated armaments’ (Speech at Rochdale, Cobden 1870, ii. 371).

15Armaments expenditure for Cobden and Disraeli was always linked to the wider issue of Britain’s readiness to intervene in foreign policy. This became the dominant issue in 1864 when the Schleswig-Holstein question returned to the forefront in diplomacy and politics. Palmerston found himself unable to intervene on behalf of Denmark against Prussian power (Brown 455‒59). Disraeli taunted him with the seeming impotence of the Foreign Office, vindication, he claimed, of the Manchester School’s critique of the conduct of British foreign policy:

The noble Lord says the influence of the country has not been lowered by the action of the Government, but that influence depends on intelligence, wealth, and so on. If our influence merely depends upon wealth, intelligence, success in the arts, and the development of our industry, I shall begin to think with the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Cobden) that it would be quite as well to do away with the Foreign Office (Hansard, 176 c. 1296 (8 July 1864).

16Although Cobden tactically was forced to support the Liberal government, Disraeli was keen to ram home the moral that Palmerston had been obliged to follow a ‘Cobdenite’ non-interventionist policy, a critical blow to the prestige of the Foreign Office and Britain’s traditional foreign policy. Disraeli, too, in a manner reminiscent of the anti-Peel rhetorical devices of the 1840s, now argued that if the country was to be governed on the principles of Cobden and Bright, it would be ‘more consistent and dignified’ if their principles were adopted openly by the government:

  • 47 See too Monypenny & Buckle iv. 345; Taylor suggested ‘Cobden was the real Foreign Secretary in the (...)

I must say myself that, judging from the past, I would prefer that the affairs of this country should be conducted on the principle of the hon. Members for Rochdale [Cobden] and Birmingham [Bright] than on the policy which is avowed and announced at least by the noble Lord. [Cheers] I think that in that case, as the consequences would almost be the same, our position would be more consistent; it would certainly be more profitable and in my opinion it would really be more dignified’. (Hansard, 176 c. 354 (27 June 1864)47

  • 48 In a letter to Queen Victoria, Disraeli wrote that ‘Thornberry was created in the style of Cobden a (...)
  • 49 See above.
  • 50 Granville, on Disraeli’s death, noted ‘I have heard one of Mr Cobden's dearest friends quote, as th (...)

17That Disraeli could regard the possibility of government by ‘Manchester School’ principles with some equanimity clearly illustrates how the class passions and fears of revolution of the 1840s had largely dissipated in the mid-century ‘Age of Equipoise’. The bitter conflicts between land and industry, aristocracy and middle classes, democracy and order had been succeeded by a process of national and social integration, with the Manchester millowners and Millbanks successfully absorbed within the monarchical constitution (Howe 1984). At the same time, the wilder flights of Disraelian feudal authoritarian government had been succeeded by a milder, arguably more ‘Peelite’ conservatism. These twin processes had permitted the temporary alliances between the respective supporters of Cobden and Disraeli, a sign of their shared readiness to operate within the existing political order rather than to supplant it. This was nicely recognized in Disraeli’s last novel, Endymion (1880). Here Cobden, in the form of Job Thornberry, is drawn in a largely friendly manner, the manufacturer risen to national greatness by hard work, but who, aspiring to replace feudalism with the ‘commercial principle’, but now a farmer and a member of the Cabinet.48 He achieves prominence through his ‘wonderful speeches’ in favour of Repeal of the Corn Laws but this creates for him a dominant position in the House, given his great oratorical gifts, a persuasive style that was winning and wisely controlled powers of sarcasm’. Interestingly, Disraeli also hints that Thornberry is now too respectable (addressed as ‘squire’, a title Cobden always declined) and about to be thrust aside by more plebeian radicals. This representation also roughly corresponds to Disraeli’s tribute to Cobden, on his death in 1865 where he returned to his theme of the late 1840s, idealizing Cobden as the pure type of the new middle class, although without the same revolutionary potential.49 But even more Disraeli was appreciative of Cobden’s parliamentarism, recognizing him as one of those ‘great men’ with an enduring legacy, opinions will be often quoted in this House; their authority appealed to, their judgments attested; even their very words will form part of our discussions and debates (Hansard 178 cc. 676‒77 (3 Apr. 1865).50 Here Cobden has become virtually an emblem of the constitution rather than a threat to it.

18If Disraeli left this highly favourable verdict on Cobden for posterity, the verdict of the ‘Manchester School’ on Disraeli was less generous. For in the judgement of Cobden’s great political partner, and alter ego, John Bright, himself a member of Gladstone’s Cabinet at the time of Disraeli’s death in 1881:

His life has been devoted to the pursuit of his own personal ambitions and the political principles of his Party have been made subservient to that end. His success shows what may be done by unworthy means and to offer him as an example is to encourage others to commit evil. Kind and generous where his main pursuit was not interfered with. (Bright 462, 17 April 1881)

19Cobden would have agreed with much of this, for their occasional parliamentary cooperation was largely based on Disraeli’s ambition for power. But arguably he would have given, by 1881, a more positive assessment of Disraeli’s popular success. This was barely perceptible in 1865 with Palmerston still preeminent. Nevertheless, before his death, Cobden judged the Tories capable of winning the imminent general election, certainly under ‘a Peel’, although he was less sure that Disraeli could pull this off (12 Feb. 1865 to Slagg, LRC online). Had Cobden lived only a few more years, he would surely have recognized in Disraeli’s Second Reform Act of 1867 the achievement of the ‘democratic-radical’ he had discerned in 1856.

Haut de page

Bibliographie

Blake, Robert. Disraeli. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1966.

Blake, Robert. Disraeli and Gladstone. Cambridge: CUP, 1969.

Boyson, Rhodes. The Ashworth Cotton Enterprise. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1970.

Bright, John. The Diaries of John Bright. Ed. Robert A. J. Walling. London: Cassell, 1930.

Cesarani, David. Disraeli. The Novel Politician. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2016.

Cobden, Richard. The Letters of Richard Cobden (1815-1865). Ed. Anthony Howe & Simon J. Morgan. 4 vols. Oxford: OUP, 2006‒2015. Cited as LRC.

Cobden, Richard. The Letters of Richard Cobden. Ed. Anthony Howe & Simon J. Morgan. 4 vols. Oxford: OUP, 2006‒2015. https://www.cobdenletters.org/ accessed 10 January 2025. Cited as LRC online.

Cobden, Richard. Speeches of Richard Cobden. Ed. John Bright & James E. Thorold Rogers. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1870.

Collins, Stephen. James Crossley, a Manchester Man of Letters. Manchester: Chetham Society, 2012.

Cook Taylor, William. ‘Jewish Emancipation’. Foreign Quarterly Review 11 (Apr. 1833): 441‒52.

Cook Taylor, William, Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire. London, 1841.

Croker, John Wilson. The Croker Papers. Ed. L. J. Jennings. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1884.

Dickens, Charles. The Letters of Charles Dickens, iii 1842‒43. Ed. Madeline House et al. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1974.

Disraeli, Benjamin. Coningsby or the New Generation. London: Henry Coulburn, 1844.

Disraeli, Benjamin. Sybil or the Two Nations. London: Henry Coulburn, 1845.

Disraeli, Benjamin. Tancred or the New Crusade. 1847. London: Peter Davies, 1927 (Bradenham edition).

Disraeli, Benjamin. Lord George Bentinck; a Political Biography. 1851. London: Routledge, 1861.

Disraeli, Benjamin. Endymion. London: Longman, Green and Co, 1880.

Disraeli, Benjamin. Benjamin Disraeli Letters. Ed. J. A. W. Gunn, et al. Vols 1‒9, 1815‒1867. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1982‒2013. Cited as BDL.

Disraeli, Benjamin, John Manners, and G. Sydney Smythe. Addresses by Lord John Manners, Benjamin Disraeli, G. Sydney Smythe. London: Hayward & Adam, 1845.

Disraeli, Benjamin. Disraeli’s Reminiscences. Ed. Helen Swartz and Marvin Swartz. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975.

Elliot, Arthur D. The Life of George Joachim Goschen, First Viscount Goschen, 1831‒1907. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1911.

Faber, Richard. Young England. London: Faber & Faber, 1987.

Gambles, Anna. Protection and Politics: Conservative Economic Discourse, 1815‒1852. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1999.

Gaunt, Richard. ‘Toryism and the Young England Movement’. The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism. Ed. Joanne Parker & Corinna Wagner. Oxford: OUP, 2020. 340‒52.

Ghosh, Peter R. ‘Disraelian Conservatism: a Financial Approach’. English Historical Review 99 (1984): 268‒96.

Hansard, 3rd series, 1837‒1901.

Hawkins, Angus. The Forgotten Prime Minister. The Fourteenth Earl of Derby. 2 vols. Oxford: OUP, 2007‒08.

Hewitt, Martin. The Dawn of the Cheap Press in Victorian Britain. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Horowitz, Evan. ‘Industrialism and the Victorian Novel’. The Oxford Handbook of the Victorian Novel. Ed. Lisa Rodensky. Oxford: OUP 2013. 357‒75.

Howe, Anthony. The Cotton Masters, 1830‒1860. Oxford: Oxford Historical Monographs, Clarendon P, 1984.

Howe, Anthony. Free Trade and Liberal England, 1846‒1946. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1997.

Howe, Anthony. ‘Two Faces of British Power: Cobden versus Palmerston’. Palmerston Studies II. Ed. D. Brown & M Taylor. Southampton: Hartley Institute, University of Southampton, 2007. 168‒92.

Howe, Anthony. ‘“The Manchester School and the Landlords”: the Failure of Land Reform in Early Victorian Britain’. The Land Question in Britain, 1750‒1950. Ed. Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 74‒91.

Langley, Helen. Scenes from an Extraordinary Life: a Bodleian Library Exhibition Marking the Bicentenary of Benjamin Disraeli. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2003.

The League. Cook Taylor, William, ed. London, 1844.

Leslie, Charles. Memoirs of the Life of John Constable R.A. Ed. Andrew Shirley. London: The Medici Society, 1937.

Lloyd’s Illustrated News: London, 1852.

Magnusson, Lars. The Tradition of Free Trade. London: Routledge, 2004.

Manchester Guardian, 5 Oct. 1844.

Millar, Mary S. Disraeli’s Disciple: The Scandalous Life of George Smythe. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2006.

Monypenny, William F. & George E. Buckle. The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. 6 vols. London: John Murray, 1910‒1920.

Morley, John. The Life of Richard Cobden. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1881.

Morning Star. London, 1855‒65.

The National Archives, Foreign Office records, cited as TNA FO.

O’Kell, Robert. Disraeli: The Romance of Politics. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2013.

Oxford English Dictionary https://www.oed.com/, accessed 14 January 2025.

Parry, Jonathan P. The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain. London: Yale UP, 1993.

Parry, Jonathan P. ‘Disraeli and England’. Historical Journal 43.3 (2000): 699‒728.

Parry, Jonathan P. ‘Benjamin Disraeli’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

Parry, Jonathan P. ‘Disraeli, the East and Religion: Tancred in context’. English Historical Review 132 (2017): 570‒604.

Punch, London, 1848-62.

Ridley, Jane. The Young Disraeli. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995.

Smith, Paul. Disraeli: A Brief Life. Cambridge: CUP, 1996.

Smith, Sheila M. The Other Nation: The Poor in English Novels of the 1840s and 1850s. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1980.

Stanley, Edward Henry. Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party. Journals and Memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley, 1849‒1869. Ed. John Vincent. Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1978. Cited as Stanley Journal.

Stewart, Robert. The Politics of Protection: Lord Derby and the Protectionist Party, 1841‒1852. Cambridge: CUP, 1971.

Taylor, Alan J. P. The Trouble Makers. 1957. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.

Teukolsky, Rachel. ‘Romanticism on the Right: Benjamin Disraeli’s Authoritarian Aesthetics’, Victorian Studies 64.2 (Winter 2022): 214‒39.

The Times, 1844.

Trelawney, John. The Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawney, 1858‒1865. Ed. Terence Jenkins. London: Royal Historical Society, 1990.

Watkin, Edward. Alderman Cobden of Manchester. London: Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co., 1891.

Watkin, Edward. The Diary of Edward Watkin. Ed. David Hodgkins. Manchester: Chetham Society, 2013.

Weintraub, Stanley. Disraeli: a Biography. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993.

Whibley, Charles. Lord John Manners and his Friends. 2 vols. London: William Blackwood, 1925.

Haut de page

Notes

1 See too https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/scenes-disraelis-extraordinary-life-curating-bodleian-2004-exhibition-and-widening-its-reach; Richard Cobden, Manchester Citizen to ‘International Man’, AHRC-funded exhibition, 5 April‒30 June 2023, Manchester Central Library.

2 For a rare social meeting at one of Monckton Milnes’s celebrated breakfast parties, see Cobden to Catherine Cobden 13 June 1846, ‘I breakfasted yesterday morning with Monckton Milnes, & met Suleiman Pasha, Prince Louis Napoleon, Count D’Orsay, D’Israeli & a queer party of odds & ends’, (LRC online); (BDL, iv. 233; Disraeli 1975, 27‒28).

3 For the broader literary context, see Horowitz.

4 ‘Saxon saint’ had been George Smythe’s term, with which Disraeli concurred (Disraeli 1975, 108); ‘Though perhaps he is not troubled with any convictions, —Excepting on one point—that the Jews are Christians! –Is it not strange that he should really have a conscience on this one question—the most embarrassing to him as a Tory leader!’ (to Henry Richard 30 August 1856, LRC online).

5 Exhibited in London in 1937. See too Leslie 349 and Plate 151. Now in private ownership in the United States.

6 Possibly Disraeli’s 1843 visit was partly in preparation for Coningsby.

7 O’Kell’s account of Coningsby ignores its ‘Manchester’ dimension (O’Kell 198‒230).

8 Cooke Taylor identifies himself in the review as an early commentator on Disraeli’s orientalism in a note Cooke Taylor 1833. See also Cooke Taylor 1841.

9 See too Gaunt 340‒52; Whibley i. 171‒80; Faber 129‒31; Blake 1966, 181; O’Kell 236‒39. Their speeches, with additional ones, were published in Disraeli, Manners, and Smythe.

10 Disraeli’s host on this visit was the merchant James Atherton, of Swinton Park, with whom Cobden had dined together with Disraeli and his wife, Crossley, the Mayor of Manchester, and other local notables (Watkin 2013, 138).

11 Millbank has been variously identified with the Manchester MP Mark Philips, with Cobden himself, with Henry or Edmund Ashworth of Bolton, while the model factory community depicted in Coningsby was that of William Bashall of Farington Lodge, Preston. Highly unusually for a Manchester manufacturer Millbank had been educated at Eton; Mark Philips and William Bashall both had Etonian nephews. Coningsby owed much to information acquired by George Smythe and Lord John Manners on a visit to leading Lancashire manufacturers in the autumn of 1841. See Whibley i. 99‒109; Boyson 124‒25, 257‒59; Millar 128‒31.

12 A few days later Disraeli and Manners joined in defending Henry Ashworth, Cobden’s close colleague in the League, from charges of ill-treatment of his workers. Manners was particularly eloquent in his defence: ‘I am perfectly ready to say that, as far as I know, Mr Ashworth has a deep sense of the responsibility that devolves upon him as one of the great cotton barons, as I may call them, under our present system—a responsibility greater than ever rested on the barons of olden time’ (Hansard 84 cc. 242‒46; 27 February 1846, 246‒47).

13 ‘[O]ne who represents a great idea—an idea which may lead him to power—an idea with which he may identify himself—an idea which he may develop—an idea which he may and can impress on the mind and conscience of a nation’ (Hansard 22 January 1846, 83 cc. 115‒16).

14 In a Punch cartoon of 1849, ‘The Schoolmaster at Home’, Disraeli is portrayed dutifully listening with other political leaders to Cobden’s lecture on economy. Punch (8 January 1860) depicted Napoleon III as a pupil of ‘Dame Cobden’. In an ill-tempered exchange with George Goschen in 1864, Cobden repudiated what he saw as a broad-brush definition of the scope of the ‘Manchester School’; rather Cobden saw the term simply as that given by Disraeli to the ‘League party’, ‘it never had any other than a Free Trade significance’ (Cobden to Thorold Rogers 8 February 1864 LRC iv. 473; Cobden to Goschen 12 February 1864, LRC online ; Elliot i. 75‒76).

15 See too Monypenny & Buckle iii. 325 for this ‘appreciation’ of Cobden.

16 For Disraeli’s perception of himself as the defender a ‘a proud aristocracy’ against the ‘revolutionary waves of Manchester’, see to Prince Metternich 13 January 1849, BDL v.131; for the ‘English aristocracy’ threatened by ‘the commercial principle’ to Lady Londonderry 30 December 1849, id. 281.

17 For Disraeli’s attacks on Cobden as a supporter of bankrupt exchequer and appealing to revolutionary nation as model of political perfection, Monypenny & Buckle iii. 94‒95.

18 Had Cobden’s proposal for the American style conduct of public business succeeded, ‘the government of this country will be taken completely out of the hands of the gentlemen’ (to Lady Londonderry 3 August 1848, BDL v. 48); in 1851 Disraeli feared that, were Sir James Graham to form a government, Cobden would serve in the Cabinet and ‘it is all up with old England & American principles will have gained the day’, (to Sarah Disraeli 8 March 1851, BDL v.416). Disraeli warned against ‘a party among us who yearn for the Transatlantic type’ (Disraeli 1861, 399).

19 The ‘cry of Protection will rally no one to our standard here’ (Disraeli to Stanley 9 November 1849, BDL v. 251). Disraeli was simultaneously fiercely critical of G. F. Young’s protectionist campaign as the ‘mere barren wail’ for a form of protection wh: can never be restored’ (to Philip Dauncey 22 October 1849, BDL v. 239).

20 Oxford English Dictionary gives 1887; for the term and its usage, Howe 1997, 112, n. 7.

21 Cobden spoke at Aylesbury on 7 January; this was billed as a challenge to Disraeli but he declined to attend an evening meeting as contrary to practice, preferring to meet Cobden in the House of Commons (to Stanley 11 January 1850, BDL v. 290; to John Cox 11 January 1850, 291), both reporting Cobden’s failure; to Frederick Cobden, (7 January 1850, LRC ii. 187‒88).

22 Speech at Newton Pagnell 5 December 1849, see Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli 11 December 1849, BDL v. 262 n. 1.

23 (29 March 1852), ‘one of his cleverest speeches’ ‘of the cosmopolitical school’; (30 March), on the ballot, ‘one of the best speeches of the evening’, ‘virulent and vivacious’; (4 May), ‘spoke with great ingenuity and animation’ (on the militia): (BDL vi. 44, 45, 56).

24 One of Disraeli’s greatest fears was of the imminent arrival of the ‘Manchester School’ in office, in the event of a Whig victory (to Stanley 19 January 1852, BDL vi. 16); ‘Cobden’s coming’ (Lloyd’s Illustrated News 23 June 1852).

25 See too Hansard (13 December, 123 cc. 1317‒36; Hawkins ii. 54); 4 December to George Wilson, ‘ . . .the Budget has finally closed the controversy with Protection  . . . The League may be disbanded when you like’ (LRC ii. 459).

26 Smith 118, 122, notes Disraeli’s occasional readiness to combine with fellow outsiders.

27 In April 1853 Disraeli significantly identified himself with the ‘Manchester School’ cause of repealing the Taxes on Knowledge (Hansard, 125 cc. 1173‒78; Hewitt 64). Cobden had identified Disraeli as a potential ally in 1852 (to William Hargreaves 23 April, LRC online).

28 Bright, Cobden, and the Manchester School were prominent critics of the Bill, in which they were joined by Stanley and Disraeli, voting together in the minority of 140 (with the Tory party itself split on this issue): Hansard 128, cc.1074‒75 for the division; 1032‒64 for Disraeli (30 June); Cobden spoke on 27 June (cc. 814‒33). Both attacked the nature of the ‘double government of India’, the inadequacy of the reforms proposed, and the need for postponement to evolve a more through scheme of reform. Bright had discussed India with Disraeli, 3 June, Bright 146‒47; Stanley Journal 104, 108‒09 (4 April & 3 June 1853).

29 The letter from Disraeli was to warn Cobden that C. P. Villiers was unwell and so unable to open the debate on the India Bill on 27 June. Cobden stepped in at short notice (‘he did not know whether he should have deemed it necessary himself to address the House’: Hansard 128cc. 814‒33).

30 The original vote was held on 16 December 1852. Disraeli recalled this during the Treaty debates in 1860: ‘I saw him rise in this House, and heard him say that there never was a vote in his life he regretted more than the one which expelled the Earl of Derby from office in 1852, because he said I have not the slightest doubt, from the information we possess, that that vote produced the Russian war’, (24 February 1860, Hansard 156 c. 1810).

31 See too Cobden to Bright, 11 and 28 October 1855 as to The Times’ reports of ‘Manchester school’ collusion with Disraeli (LRC iii. 152‒58).

32 In 1850 they had been in the same lobby voting against Palmerston’s foreign policy over the ‘Don Pacifico’ affair but Disraeli then was an even more reluctant opponent than he was in 1857 (Punch, 7 March 1857) depicted Lord Derby rather than Disraeli in its cartoon, ‘The Great Chinese Warriors Dah- and Cob-den’.

33 Cobden, consumed by preparation for the Arrow debate, voted but did not speak; (26 March 1857, Stanley Journal 150).

34 See too 20 July 1858 to John Mitchell LRC iii, 383; 4 October 1858 to James Thorold Rogers (LRC online). He voiced the same sentiment in the House of Commons (Hansard 3 March 1857, 144 c. 1844).

35 I am grateful to Robert Saunders for Stanley’s proposed candidature (to Stanley 24 October 1858, BDL vii. 265; to Sarah Brydges Willyams 7 November 1859, vii. 428).

36 For Gladstone’s recalling ‘the battles of February, March, and April 1860’, (8 May 1862 Hansard 166 c. 1401).

37 Interestingly Sir Louis Mallet, who helped Cobden negotiate the Treaty also believed this (Howe 1997, 97, n.150).

38 For examples, see Hansard, 1 February 1849, 102 cc. 98‒100; Monypenny & Buckle iii. 198‒99.

39 Malmesbury to Cowley 21 September 1852, on the readiness of the government to negotiate with France, ‘with a view to a general settlement of all commercial questions on the basis of liberal reciprocity’ consider the revision to duties (TNA FO 97/207).

40 Malmesbury to Cowley, 24 September 1852, (TNA FO 519/196 (Pt I); id. to id., 11 October 1852, ‘Disraeli appears charmed at the prospect you give him of a relaxed tariff’.

41 Disraeli was speaking in the debate on Palmerston’s administration initiated by Cobden.

42 He urged Samuel Lucas, editor of the Morning Star (the mouthpiece of the ‘Manchester School’) to notice ‘favorably’ Disraeli’s ‘very remarkable’ speech, ‘It must have been well considered & uttered with a purpose & will bear fruit’ (29 July 1861, LRC online ); ‘Naval Expenditure & Disraeli’ (Morning Star 29 July 1861); to Lindsay 27 July 1861, LRC iv. 192; to Bright 31 July 1861, LRC iv. 195; ‘a bold bid for office to the Manchester School’, Cobden to Slagg 28 July 1861, LRC online.

43 The figure is mentioned in Cobden (to Hargreaves 5 January 1862, LRC online).

44 In some ways this speech proved counter-productive, with Palmerston making great play of the phrase ‘bloated armaments’ (Hansard 166 cc .1428‒40); Trelawney judged ‘I think Disraeli will have lost caste among Tory landowners by his denunciation of ‘bloated armaments’, (9 May Trelawney 201; to Sarah Brydges Willyams 9 May 1862, BDL viii. 182; to Lord Debry 21 May 1862, 184).

45 In May-June 1862 Disraeli was keen to exploit Radical opposition to Palmerston over finance but was decisively abandoned by his colleagues (Monypenny & Buckle) where it is noted that Morley in his biography of Cobden ‘omitted to refer to this movement of Disraeli’s which was one of the most conspicuous features of the session of 1862’ (Monypenny & Buckle iv. 308‒12; Stanley Journal 3 June 1862, 186; Cobden to Alexander Ireland 28 May 1862, LRC iv. 300‒02; Blake 1966, 428; BDL viii. 188‒91).

46 See too Cobden (Hansard 168 cc. 1096‒116); Disraeli (1 August 1862, 1127‒40); Cobden (to Thorold Rogers 3 August 1862, LRC online). Cf ‘Drawing the Stumps’, Punch 16 August 1862, Palmerston ending his cricket innings not out, despite the efforts of the joint bowling attack of Cobden and Disraeli.

47 See too Monypenny & Buckle iv. 345; Taylor suggested ‘Cobden was the real Foreign Secretary in the early 1860s’ (Taylor 64‒66).

48 In a letter to Queen Victoria, Disraeli wrote that ‘Thornberry was created in the style of Cobden as an orator, with traits of John Bright and John Potter, Unitarian Mayor of Manchester who had sent his sons to Oxford only to find them turning Roman Catholic’. (Weintraub 640). However, Cobden had refused Palmerston’s offer to join the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade in 1859. O’Kell (437) gives Thornberry only a passing reference.

49 See above.

50 Granville, on Disraeli’s death, noted ‘I have heard one of Mr Cobden's dearest friends quote, as the most touching speech he ever heard, the tribute which Mr Disraeli paid in the House of Commons to his great and victorious Free Trade opponent’ (Hansard 9 May 1881, 261 c. 5). Disraeli supported the erection of a bust of Cobden in Westminster Abbey (Times, 20 June 1866).

Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique

Anthony Howe, « Disraeli and Cobden: ‘The Manchester School’ in Fact and Fiction »Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens [En ligne], 101 Printemps | 2025, mis en ligne le 07 avril 2025, consulté le 22 juin 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cve/15621 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13qsz

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search