- 1 This essay is drawn from a PhD thesis, Disraeli and Bentinck and Personal and Political Relationshi (...)
1In the immediate aftermath of the 1868 election, the result seemingly confirmed the supremacy of Liberalism and cemented the position of the Conservatives as a minority party.1 Politically, the position seemed bleak from a Conservative perspective. Disraeli had little option but to sit back and watch as Gladstone’s ministry, galvanized by a fresh majority, a new electorate, and renewed reforming zeal in public opinion, set about [reforming?] so many aspects of public and private life. It was ironic that having now reached a preeminent position in both his party and the country, Disraeli was now more powerless than ever. He understood better than anyone the futility of opposing a united majority; and, moreover, the particular policies which the Liberal government pursued did not offer much opportunity for opposition with hope of success. The Irish Church which Gladstone set about disestablishing in 1869 was an issue that united Liberal and divided Conservatives. The education, civil service, military, and Irish land reforms which followed were all fraught with difficulty from a Conservative perspective (Blake 516). The Liberals were more united than they had been since the zenith of Palmerstonian politics. But Disraeli knew that Gladstone had always represented a divisive rather than unifying figure in Liberal politics, and it remained to be seen if this unity would last. Meanwhile, there was little for Disraeli to do but to watch and wait. During the Age of Equipoise, when politics had been so much more fluid Disraeli had been kept busy as a change in circumstances or in parliamentary alignment had seemed constantly possible. This was no longer the case when faced with a unified and triumphant majority. With no tangible opportunity to change the circumstances of his party Disraeli seemingly took a step back, and the next four years saw him take more time away from politics than he had in the last twenty.
2In 1869, the news of Derby’s death dealt Disraeli a bitter personal blow. Derby passed away on the 23rd of October 1869 at Knowsley surrounded by his family, and his funeral, attended by no pomp and circumstance, saw him laid to rest in the parish church adjoining his estate, cementing his status as a preeminent patrician and reflecting his deep attachment to his Lancashire roots (Hawkins 2008, ii.384‒88). Following his retirement from politics the previous year, Disraeli had been completely faithful to his promise to Derby that he would not allow any ‘sentiment of estrangement to arise between us’ (to Derby, 27 February 1868: Derby Papers, 146/4: Hawkins 2008, ii.366); and he had been in almost constant correspondence with Derby with regard to politics, deferentially canvassing his opinion on various subjects. Just as with Bentinck, Disraeli parted from Derby with the friendship unclouded. For Disraeli it was a painful loss. He had lost his firmest ally and Derby’s death perhaps reminded him of his own increasing age and made him question his own ability to restore his party’s fortunes. The result of the loss of Derby, as well as the political landscape facing him, led him to retreat into fiction as he had in the 1840s. He began secretly writing in 1869 and his new novel Lothair was published the following year. It was his first novel since the completion of his trilogy in 1847 and was the first piece of writing of any substance since his biography of Bentinck in 1851. In contrast to some of his earlier work Lothair aroused great public interest and anticipation. It was the first novel ever written by a former Prime Minister, one who was still the leader of a major party. Moreover, it came with great financial reward. Disraeli turned down an advance of £10,000, but the book proved a best-seller. In 1870 alone there were eight editions published in England, while in America 80,000 copies were sold in the first five months following publication. By 1876 it had earned Disraeli approximately £10,000 (Bradford 287).
3There was clear continuity between Lothair and Disraeli’s earlier fiction. Much like his trilogy of the 1840s, it follows the journey of a young, somewhat priggish and naïve aristocratic scion in search of a philosophy that will resolve the religious dilemma facing him. Like nearly all of Disraeli’s later protagonists Lothair is somewhat vapid—a character in search of an identity. An heir to a great estate, he is orphaned as a young child and has an unhappy upbringing in Scotland under the guardianship of two men, one a Calvinist and the other a Catholic Cardinal. The plot was a thriller based loosely on the society sensation of 1868, when the fabulously rich young Marquess of Bute converted to the Roman Catholic Church (Bradford 287). The novel sees the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church, and secret nationalist societies each try and seduce Lothair for his influence and fortune. As in many of his other novels, some characters appear drawn straight from life. For the Anglican Church there is ‘the Bishop’, a thinly disguised version of Wilberforce, while for Rome there is Grandison the cardinal who served as Lothair’s guardian and could only have been based on Manning (Blake 517)—two men with whom Disraeli had close dealings in 1868 and by whom he felt equally betrayed. In his search for religious purpose the young Lothair, much in the same way that Paris must choose between three goddesses, must choose from three women all representing a distinct religious or political creed: an insipid and somewhat unconvincing Anglican Lady Corisande, a Roman Catholic niece of the St. Jerome family Miss Arundell, and Theodora a romantic, mysterious, and exciting Italian nationalist. The novel sees Lothair wind his way through high society undecided on his course until, eventually converted by Theodora to the nationalist cause, he ends up on the revolutionary battlefields of Italy fighting in Garibaldi’s campaign. Theodora is killed at Viterbo and with her last words ensures Lothair promises not to join the Church of Rome which she died fighting against. Therefore, after all this excitement Lothair returns to England to eventually marry the first and most inconspicuous of his potential suitors, Lady Corisande (Blake 517‒18).
4Lothair is somewhat distinct from his trilogy of the 1840s in that it has no overt political message. That is not to say it does not have one: in many ways it is a direct continuation of the style of his earlier novels, the difference is rather the context in which it was being written. Coningsby, Sybil and Tancred had all been composed during a time of domestic upheaval when England was facing great and pressing questions. The same could not be said for the late 1860s in which the aristocracy, ignorant of what the future would hold, ‘bathed in popularity, ruling by consent with skill and enjoyment’ (Vincent 1990, 105). It was the zenith of the last age of undisturbed aristocratic rule. Britain was more wealthy and more powerful than at any time in its history and with the passage of the Reform Act in 1867 the country was at peace with a new seemingly landed and aristocratic settlement. Lothair, which Disraeli started to write in 1869, is set in 1867 and grapples with contemporary issues. The novel is placed against the backdrop of the Risorgimento and the fight for Italian nationalism in which Rome was quite literally under siege from secular nationalist forces. Domestically it portrays a contented but purposeless aristocracy: as Froude recognized, it is the perfect portrayal of patrician society that was ‘then in its most brilliant period, like the full bloom of a flower which opens only to fade’ (Froude 231). There is, additionally, a subtly anti-Catholic motif—not in any violently protestant sense, because the Anglican church and the Bishop do not come off much better, but, no doubt inspired by the duplicitous deals of Manning over the Irish Church, Rome and its supporters are presented as shadowy, wily and untrustworthy, and Grandison in particular, who attempts to mislead Lothair into converting to Rome without his consent (Blake 518). The spirit of the revolutionary nationalist seems by far the most attractive doctrine. But in the end, despite the attractiveness and the romance of the revolutionary, they finally emerge as essentially seductive but dangerous forces. Disraeli had refused to meet Garibaldi: he was a defender of the established social order and despised revolution. As Vincent recognises, at the conclusion of Lothair, ‘modernity is firmly rejected . . . social optimism is firmly tied to traditionalism’ (Vincent 1990, 108).
5The publication of Lothair and the public interest it attracted did not immediately restore Disraeli’s enthusiasm for politics. In fact, Disraeli’s domestic life would further distract him. Mary Anne’s health, never the same following her illness in 1867, had been in constant decline during the first three years of Gladstone’s government. She was suffering with terminal stomach cancer, but she endeavoured to keep the seriousness of her illness from her husband. In 1872 she had insisted on accompanying him to Manchester where he delivered his famous speech at the Free Trade Hall. It was as Bradford puts it, ‘their last public triumph’ (Bradford 296). Upon her return to London, she once again collapsed. She had attempted to put a brave face on her illness, still attempting to attend society functions, but her illness was worsening. On May 6 she had to leave an evening party at Lady Waldergrave’s ‘almost immediately’ but took delight in boasting that ‘her illness was not found out’ (to Corry, 7 May 1872: Monypenny and Buckle v.222). On the advice of her doctor, she attended court the following day. It proved ill-advice, as Disraeli told Montagu Corry: ‘She was suffering as she went, and was taken so unwell there that we had to retreat precipitately’ (9 May 1872: Monypenny and Buckle v.222). This was repeated on July 17 when Mary Anne attempted to resume her social life and attended a party at Lady Loudoun’s and once again collapsed (Monypenny and Buckle v.223). Her illness could no longer be concealed and it was now obvious to all society that she was seriously ill. Indeed, the cancer had become so painful that in August she was not well enough to quit London for the rural seclusion of Hughenden (to Cairns, 17 August 1872: Monypenny and Buckle v.224). ‘Her illness’, Disraeli told Gathorne Hardy, ‘under wh. she has, to some degree, been suffering for many months, is a total inability to take any sustenance’ (16 September 1872: Monypenny and Buckle v.225). As her health declined, he confided in Corry his own despair: ‘To see her every day weak and weaker is heart-rending . . . to witness this gradual death of one, who has shared so long, and so completely, my life, entirely unmans me’ (16 September 1872: Monypenny and Buckle v.225).
6By the end of September Disraeli reported a ‘decided, and, I hope now, permanent improvement in my wife’s health’ (to Cairns, 26 September 1872: Monypenny and Buckle v.226). It was only a temporary remission in the illness, but it allowed them to travel back to Hughenden where it was hoped the country air might bring about an improvement. In the following months, however, she declined precipitately as the cancer took over, Disraeli occasionally worrying for the worst. In October he briefly updated Corry: ‘things here very bad’ (13 October 1872: Monypenny and Buckle v.226). After another lapse the following month, he told Corry ‘affairs have been going very badly; so badly that I telegraphed, yesterday, for Leggatt who came immediately’. The doctor’s advice was somewhat unhelpful as he suggested that if Mary Anne would eat her condition would improve. A frustrated Disraeli vented to Corry, ‘But how to manage that?’ (8 November 1872: Monypenny and Buckle v.226‒27). However, by mid-November her illness had abated enough that she was able to take visitors. In that month she was visited by Manners, Rosebery, the Harcourts, and Lord Ronald Gower. While all would be struck by her good spirits in the face of her adversity, Ronald Gower noticed the effect of the illness on both of them. Mary Anne’s appearance had changed: ‘she poor old soul sadly altered since London in looks. Shrunk & more like an anointed corpse than ever’ (quoted in Bradford 298). He was touched by the effect her illness was having on Disraeli, for when she wasn’t present, ‘his face, generally so emotionless, was filled with a look of suffering and woe that nothing but the sorrow of her whom he so truly loves would cause on that impassive countenance’ (Monypenny and Buckle v.228).
7In these final months, politics was largely forgotten as Disraeli became increasingly attentive and towards the end, he never left her side. That end was reached in December. On the 6th Disraeli, clearly fearing the worst, wrote to Rose: ‘Affairs are most dark here—I tremble for the result, and even an immediate one . . . I entirely trust to your coming to me, if anything happens, am totally unable to meet the catastrophe’ (6 December 1872: Monypenny and Buckle v.228). Monty Corry rushed down to Hughenden to support Disraeli in his wife’s final hours. By now she was suffering from severe delusions, in one moment describing Disraeli as her Jesus Christ, in the next raging violently against him (Bradford 299). On Sunday December 15, Mary Anne Disraeli, having refused to go to bed, died sitting upright in her chair. At the age of eighty she had faced death with courage. On December 20 she was buried alongside Disraeli’s brother James and his benefactor Mrs Brydges-Willyams in their family vault at Hughenden’s church. Her passing was the heaviest of blows imaginable to Disraeli. After her death tributes and condolences poured in. The Queen expressed her sorrow and wrote that she ‘knew and admired as well as appreciated the unbounded devotion and affection which united him to the dear partner of his life, whose only thought was him’ (15 December 1872: Monypenny and Buckle v.229). This was followed by a series of letters from various foreign dignities and major political figures. Perhaps the most interesting among them was the undeniably heartfelt message from Gladstone:
You and I were, as I believe, married in the same year. It has permitted to both of us to enjoy a priceless boon through a third of a century. Spared myself the blow which has fallen on you. I can form some conception of what it must have been and be. I do not presume to offer you the consolation which you will seek from another and higher quarter. I offer only the assurance which all who know you, all who knew Lady Beaconsfield, and especially those among them who like myself enjoyed for a length of time her marked though unmerited regard, may perhaps render without impropriety; the assurance that in this trying hour they feel deeply for you, and with you. (19 January 1873: Monypenny and Buckle v. 230)
8For Disraeli the loss was something from which he would never truly recover. Their marriage had been odd. She was fifteen years older than him and he had married her for her money. But they had become totally devoted to each other. Moreover, he had not just lost his wife, but he had also lost her income of £5,000 a year and also his London home at Grosvenor Gate, both of which now reverted back to her family (Blake 526). It meant that suddenly the financial worries that had plagued him most of his life threatened once again to return. Some thought the grief of this loss might see him retire from politics. In fact the death of Mary Anne would prove to have quite the opposite effect.
9Following the election defeat in 1868 there had been criticism of Disraeli in some quarters of the party. Quiet murmurs had started circulating that perhaps he was no longer the right man to lead the party. His most vocal critics were those rebels that could not forgive him for the supposed ‘surrender’ of Conservative principles during the passage of the Reform Bill in 1867, particularly after their great concessions were not rewarded in tangible electoral gains. Cranbourne, now titled Salisbury following his father’s death in 1868, continued his anonymous attacks on Disraeli in the Quarterly Review. In one particularly savage attack in October of 1869 he denounced Disraeli as a ‘mere political gamester’, clearly displaying the level of opposition in Disraeli’s leadership within some of the party ([Salisbury] 553); and while the most active criticism came from long-standing critics, there was a more widespread disquiet. As Blake has observed, this may have been because of Derby’s immense prestige and the level of regard in which he was held by the party: it is easy to underappreciate the anti-climax which was occasioned by Disraeli’s succession (Blake 520). This juxtaposition, between the pre-eminence of Derby and the lesser regard for Disraeli, has perhaps been somewhat overstated. Any politician who led a party into such a dismal election result was inevitably going to receive some criticism from their followers. But nonetheless, any sense of disquiet that did exist in 1868‒69 was intensified following Disraeli’s return to writing and the sensational publication of Lothair. Despite the public mania that surrounded its release, there were many misgivings in political circles, particularly Conservative ones, concerning the propriety and respectability of a former Prime Minister cashing in on his political pre-eminence. As Monckton Milnes reported ‘his wisest friends think that it must be a mistake, and his enemies hope that it will be his ruin’ (Monypenny and Buckle v.164). For many Tories it was yet another symptom of Disraeli’s increasing detachment from politics. Over the next two years the distraction of Mary Anne’s terminal decline and the state of his own health would prove further worries for his supporters.
10His apathetic opposition to the Liberals was creating more ground for concern. Gladstone’s government which had at first burned through the sky like a comet, was in danger of burning out. The much-vaunted reforms of that administration had incurred the enmity of powerful interests. The Licensing Act of 1872, which regulated the production and sale of alcohol simultaneously angered both the brewery interest who saw it as an attack on their independence and the working classes who thought it an infringement of personal liberty. Cardwell’s military reforms banning the sale of commissions displeased a predominantly aristocratic military interest. The disestablishment of the Irish Church which destroyed Anglican hegemony in Ireland, Forster’s Education Act which interfered with Church influence over education, and the Universities Tests Act which removed the Anglican monopoly on teaching at universities, all incited the disapprobation of Anglican interest. Moreover, Gladstone’s foreign policy was increasingly giving the opposition ammunition with which to bombard the Government. Admittedly Disraeli had already scored occasional points against Gladstone in the House, particularly in a condemnation of his handling of the Franco-Prussian war, a well-aimed and stinging attack: ‘This war’ Disraeli argued, ‘represents the German Revolution, a greater political event than the French Revolution of last . . . Not a single principle in the management of our foreign affairs, accepted by all statesmen for guidance up to six months ago, any longer exists’. The result of the Government’s policy towards the Franco-Prussian war was that ‘the balance of power has been entirely destroyed, and the country which suffers most, and feels the effects of this great change most, is England’. Through their non-interventionism they had allowed Russia to violate the Treaty of 1856 which had been hard won by the sacrifices of the Crimean War. Moreover, their failings had meant that Britain had lost all control over European affairs to the point that there ‘is not an engagement between Powers which is not impugned or looked upon with suspicion and without confidence’ (Disraeli 1871, columns 81; 81‒82; 82; 93). One on-looker described the attack: ‘The Premier was like a cat on hot bricks and presented a striking contrast to Disraeli; for Disraeli cuts up a Minister with as much sang-froid as an anatomist cuts up a frog . . . when Gladstone rose, you could see that every stroke of Disraeli had gone home. He was in a white passion, and almost choked with words’ (Monypenny and Buckle v.135‒36).
11However, these victories were few and far between. Disraeli’s general lack of activity in bringing the government to account had convinced many of his colleagues that it was time for him to step aside. Following Stanley’s ascension to the Earldom upon the death of his father in 1869, many had mentioned him as the natural successor to Disraeli. The leadership of the Lords had come vacant upon the fourteenth Earl’s death, and Disraeli had implored the new Lord Derby to take up the leadership of the upper House. He was the overwhelming favourite; but he turned down the position. The other natural figure to fill that role was Salisbury, but he would have been an impossible candidate given his hatred of Disraeli. Fortunately for Disraeli Salisbury turned it down too, and the role was filled by the well-respected if ineffective Duke of Richmond. Disraeli knew Derby far better than many in the party. Their relationship went all the way back to the early 1850s. He divined better than most Derby’s natural proclivity for cautious indecision and the inner dichotomy between his Liberal principles and Conservative heritage. He had been pressed to take the leadership on more than one occasion, Disraeli had even offered to step aside for him, but on each occasion he had refused. In spite of his pedigree he was not a natural leader. Disraeli understood this.
12However, whatever his own beliefs about Derby, by 1872 Disraeli’s position as the leader of the Conservative Party was as precarious as it had ever been. On the 1st of February a meeting of leading Conservatives convened at Burghley, the family seat of Lord Exeter, to discuss the leadership of the party. That it was Lord Cairns, a colleague for whom Disraeli had great respect, who first broached the question of the leadership gives us an indication of how far unrest at his leadership had spread. The vast majority, it seemed, were resolved on Derby taking the lead from Disraeli. Noel the Chief Whip expressed his belief that the name alone would bring them forty to fifty seats and ‘it seemed conceded’ that under present arrangements, ‘the old Government could not, or would not, stand again’. That said, there were still great reserves of loyalty towards Disraeli. While Manners had been alone in professing his ‘ignorance of the feeling in or out of doors’, Hardy expressed his ‘view that Disraeli has been loyal to his friends, and that personally I would not say that I preferred Lord D’. However, even more loyal members of the group, such as Hardy, who did not possess much enthusiasm for Derby could not help ‘but admit that Disraeli, as far as appears, has not the position in House and country to enable him to do what the others might’ (Johnson 149). The question then remains: why did Disraeli go on as leader when almost all were convinced he could not deliver them into government? The first and perhaps most comical reason was that, whether through lack of courage or a last reserve of deference to him, none of those present at the meeting actually informed Disraeli of the conclusions they had reached. Second, politics was central to Disraeli’s existence. He had a tenacity uncommon in the amateur political environment of the nineteenth century. He had endured a series of devastating setbacks and hardships in his career. Despite the result of the 1868 election, he sensed that the Conservatives were closer than they had been at any point since 1846 to re-establishing themselves a national political force. Third, Disraeli understood that politics was a landscape that could change quickly—especially when Gladstone was leader of the Government. He thought, much like the old Earl of Derby had, that Gladstone would prove a divisive rather than a unifying figure if left to his own devices. In fact, by 1872 there were already signs that the strain of overseeing every department of Government was showing, as it had with Peel. Gladstone was increasingly prone to angry outbursts and shortness of temper. Both Malmesbury and Cairns reported that Liberals expected their leader to ‘either die or break down’ if he continued at his current rate (Bradford 291; Vincent 1978, 341).
13In February of 1872, Disraeli received the first indicator that the wind had changed and public opinion was shifting in the Conservatives’ favour. This change of the weather was remarkably confirmed on the 27th when along with all the other leading statesmen he attended St. Paul’s Cathedral for the thanksgiving service following the recovery of the Prince of Wales from typhoid. Sir William Fraser, recalling the event described it as a day which ‘no doubt changed Disraeli's destiny’ (Fraser 374). If it was generally considered that ‘as regards the Premiership, his chances were over’, the reaction of the crowd told a different story. On exiting the service the crowd gave him a rapturous ovation, in stark contrast to the silence and occasional jeering that met Gladstone. Disraeli was followed by the cheering of the crowds as he travelled through London from St. Paul’s to the Carlton Club, so much so that ‘the cheers which greeted him from all classes convinced him that, for the day at least, a more popular man did not exist in England’. When Fraser saw him later that morning at the Carlton in conversation with a Tory squire, Fraser noted that he ‘never saw him with such a countenance as he had at that moment. I have heard it said by one, who spoke to Napoleon I . . . that his face was as of one who looks into another world: that is the only description I can give of Disraeli’s look at the moment I speak of. He seemed more like a statue than a human being: never before nor since have I seen anything approaching it’. Later that day Fraser took the chance to speak to the same county member to enquire as to his conversation: ‘“What was Disraeli talking about when I came into the room?” He replied, “About some County business: I wanted his opinion.” I said, “I will tell you what he was thinking about: he was thinking that he will be Prime Minister again”’ (Fraser 374‒76).
14This might seem a somewhat fanciful and romanticized retrospective recollection of events written down more than fifteen years after the election victory of 1874. But, as Hurd and Young have argued, it illustrates a truth about the fickle nature of public opinion in the nineteenth century (Hurd and Young 227). It is difficult truly to appreciate the significance that events such as the excited crowd outside St Paul’s could have on a Victorian politician’s understanding of the public mood. There existed then no such modes of political forecasting or accurate opinion polling so prevalent today. As Disraeli’s often wild predictions of election results shows, the political leaders of the nineteenth century were often simply guessing how the public would react to their policies. The policy of Church defence had failed in both 1865 and 1868, for example, when Disraeli had predicted it would yield a Conservative majority. So, this outpouring of popular adulation for the Tory leader was not to be dismissed, and the sense of a more national shift in opinion was further bolstered by elections in which the Liberals lost a total of thirteen seats in 1871 and 1872 (Blake 528).
15Disraeli knew the time had come to launch a counter-offensive and to get on the front foot. In April of 1872 he undertook his first national speaking campaign. The vast majority of Disraeli’s public speeches outside of the House had been made to his Buckinghamshire constituents. He had never built up the reputation Gladstone or Bright had in addressing large crowds. He was not, as he called them, a demagogue. Managed by John Gorst, whom Disraeli had commissioned to oversee the reconstruction of the Conservative party machine and the foundation of the Conservative Central Office, he went to Manchester to deliver the first of two speeches which reestablished his supremacy within his party and vaguely mapped out future Conservative policy. On the 3rd of April Disraeli addressed the gathered audience at Free Trade Hall. He performed well and spoke for three and a quarter hours, sustained by consuming increasingly strong potations of brandy (Monypenny and Buckle v.187). The main thrust of the speech was to repudiate the claims of their opponents: ‘that the Conservative party have no political programme’. Disraeli admitted that, ‘If by a programme is meant a plan to despoil churches and plunder landlords, I admit we have no programme. If by a programme is meant a policy which assails or menaces every institution and every interest, every class and every calling in the country, I admit we have no programme’. Rather, he contended, ‘the programme of the Conservative party is to maintain the Constitution of the country’ (Kebbel ii.491). The vast majority of the speech was an elucidation on this theme. He stirred up the dangers of radical reformers which threatened the Lords, Church and Crown for ‘when the banner of Republicanism is unfurled . . . the fundamental principles of our institutions are controverted’; and he charted the contributions that the great institutions of the state had made to national safety and prosperity. This speech, like so many of Disraeli’s other orations, was founded on his own understanding of the constitution, and was not really new material, for in much of the speech he was restating the principles which he had expounded some thirty-five years earlier in Vindication and Spirit of Whiggism. Admittedly Disraeli tailored his message to a contemporary audience, briefly touching on the condition of the working class and the importance of domestic health legislation: ‘Pure air, pure water, the inspection of unhealthy habitations, the adulteration of food, these and many kindred matters may be legitimately dealt with by the Legislature . . . Sanitas sanitatum omnia sanitas’ (Kebbel ii.516). In perhaps the most famous passage of the speech he vividly compared the government to ‘one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest’ (Kebbel ii.516). He concluded with a series of blistering attacks on the Government’s foreign policy which, when entwined with the dangerous military reforms and naval economies, had ‘intimated the decay of the power of England and the decline of its resources’. In contrast, Disraeli stated his ‘confident conviction that there never was a moment in our history when the power of England was so great and her resources so vast and inexhaustible . . . [For] it is not merely our fleets and armies, our powerful artillery, our accumulated capital, and our unlimited credit on which I so much depend, as upon that unbroken spirit of her people, which I believe was never prouder of the Imperial country to which they belong’ (Kebbel ii.522).
16This speech was followed up at the end of June by another public oration at London’s Crystal Palace. Once more Disraeli returned to another of his well-rehearsed themes: the history of party politics and historical and present character of the two great parties. Paraphrasing an earlier speech, he argued, ‘the Tory party unless it is a national party, is nothing. It is not a confederacy of nobles, it is not a democratic multitude; it is a party formed from all the numerous classes in the realm’. By contrast, the Liberals, like the Whigs before them, were ‘influenced in a great degree by the philosophy and the politics of the Continent, they endeavoured to substitute cosmopolitan for national principles’ (Kebbel ii.524; and see also Disraeli 1867). This was followed by a repetition of what he had said at Manchester: that the central principle of the Conservative party was ‘to maintain the institutions of the country—not from any sentiment of political superstition, but because we believe that they embody the principles upon which a community like England can alone safely rest’ (Kebbel ii.525)—institutions that had been systematically assailed and assaulted by the forces of Liberalism. Once again, he touched upon the domestic health reforms, the ‘policy of sewage’ as his opponents had coined it, but for Disraeli a broad subject that ‘involves the state of the dwellings of the people, the moral consequences of which are not less considerable than the physical. It involves their enjoyment of some of the chief elements of nature—air, light, and water. It involves the regulation of their industry and the inspection of their toil’. Moreover, it was ‘the policy of the Tory party’ as it was only the ‘hereditary, the traditionary policy of the Tory party, that would improve the condition of the people’ (Kebbel ii.532‒33). One area in which he expanded on Manchester was his ideas about empire. Here his narrative was largely focused on ‘the attempts of Liberalism to effect the disintegration of the Empire of England’. He made some predictably vague suggestions for the reordering of the colonies, conceding the necessity of colonial self-government, but arguing that it ‘ought to have been conceded as part of a great policy of Imperial consolidation’. He floated ideas of an ‘Imperial tariff’ and a ‘military code’ by which the defence of the Empire might be regulated, and even suggested a ‘representative council . . . which would have brought the Colonies into constant and continuous relations with the Home Government’ (Kebbel ii.529‒30).
17What is most striking when one reads these speeches is the contrast between, on the one hand, their popular reputation as the announcement of a new policy of Tory democracy and a new imperialism and, on the other, what they actually say. The vast majority of these speeches represented a repetition of exactly the same arguments that Disraeli had made over the last four decades, and made in almost exactly the same manner. With regard to empire Disraeli may have thrown around a few new notions, but he was certainly not pre-empting the imperial policy of Joseph Chamberlain at the end of the century. The constructive suggestions he did make were bandied around casually. In the main his allusions to empire were an attack on Liberal imperial policy and an attempt to reclaim foreign policy as the natural domain of the Conservative party. His ideas about empire, at any rate, remained obscure and somewhat undefined. His vision of foreign policy was not any innovation either, but rather an extension of Palmerston’s conception that international prestige was an asset which one could take to the bank. Britain’s role as a major imperial power could only be maintained if she was willing to assert herself internationally, a view which contrasted greatly with the non-interventionist foreign policies pursued by Gladstone’s Government. It seems unlikely, as Morley argued, that Disraeli’s ‘rare faculty of wide and sweeping forecast’ allowed him to ‘read aright the signs and characteristics of the time’ (Morley ii.392). However, whether by luck or judgement, his vague ideas of rejuvenated imperial and confident foreign policy resounded with a country full of an increasing national pride and international self-assertiveness. Similarly, in the brief passages about social reform, there were certainly echoes of the sentiments contained in Sybil, and the imagery in the speech certainly takes us back to slum dwellings of Marney or Wodgate: in essence nothing had changed, for these were the same ideals he had expressed in the 1840s. Now they were framed in a more practical manner, a matter for legislation rather than romantic aristocratic paternalism; but what that legislation might look like was still anyone’s guess. Far from being the inception of a new brand of Conservative politics, then, the public speaking campaign of 1872 was a firm restatement of the same Conservative principles he had contrived in his formative years. The importance of these short passages was only decided later on by true One Nation Conservatives and Tory Democrats who saw in such utterances the germination and historical precedent of their own political creed.
18At the end of 1872 Gladstone’s reputation suffered further damage. His handling of both the Collier and Ewelme affairs were ‘widely regarded as showing that exhaustion combined with an imperious nature were leading Gladstone away from judgement and proportion towards a petulant authoritarianism’ (Jenkins 370; and see Monypenny and Buckle v.180). But even with momentum gathering for the Conservative outside, they were still in need of a parliamentary victory to signal the change in their fortunes. This opportunity came in the first session of 1873. Gladstone’s Irish University Bill was intended to be the crowning glory of his government’s Irish policy which had already dealt with religious and land reform. Moreover, it intended to succeed exactly where Disraeli had failed in 1868: to institute a Roman Catholic university in Dublin by amalgamating the existing Anglican establishment, Trinity College Dublin with the Catholic University of Ireland where J. H. Newman was Rector. It was a move which, as Blake astutely noted, ‘satisfied neither Catholics nor Protestants’ (Blake 527). Indeed, both the parliamentary groups most representative of those respective religious interests were openly hostile to it. Gladstone’s ‘intensity of feeling’ was beginning to exasperate even his own followers. Not only was the Irish University question not a major priority, ‘many Liberals did not think it should be a question at all; there was no interest in it in the party, and strong private opposition in many quarters’ (Parry 266‒68). When the Bill came to its Second Reading it was roundly criticized by an unusual, though not totally incompatible, alliance of Conservatives and Irish Roman Catholics. Tracing the history of Irish policy, Disraeli declared the policy of concurrent endowment ‘dead’, arguing that in spite of its faults ‘it was at least a policy and the policy of great statesmen. It was the policy of Pitt, of Grey, of Russell, of Peel, and of Palmerston’ (Disraeli 1873, column 1824). In contrast Gladstone had substituted it for
the policy of confiscation. . . . You have had four years of it. You have despoiled Churches. You have threatened every corporation and endowment in the country. You have examined into everybody’s affairs. You have criticized every profession and vexed every trade. No one is certain of his property, and nobody knows what duties he may have to perform tomorrow. This is the policy of confiscation as compared with that of concurrent endowment. The Irish Roman Catholic gentlemen were perfectly satisfied when you were despoiling the Irish Church. They looked not unwillingly upon the plunder of the Irish landlords, and they thought that the time had arrived when the great drama would be fulfilled, and the spirit of confiscation would descend upon the celebrated walls of Trinity College, would level them to the ground, and endow the University of Stephen’s Green . . . I believe that the people of this country have had enough of the policy of confiscation. (Disraeli 1873, column 1827)
19Disraeli defiantly concluded by announcing his intention to vote against a Bill which he believed to be ‘monstrous in its general conception, pernicious in many of its details, and utterly futile as a measure of practical legislation’ (Disraeli 1873, column 1829). The Opposition held firm in the face of Government threats of dissolution. When the House divided, it voted 287 to 284 against the Bill.
20For Gladstone it was a shocking reverse. His Government resolved on resignation. This was eventually offered to Victoria who promptly asked Disraeli to form a new administration. However, sensing that the political tide was turning in his favour and perhaps still bruised from his experiences as Prime Minister in 1868, he was unwilling once again to take office as a minority administration, especially when the Liberals had such an overwhelming majority in the House. In an audience with the Queen, he made his position clear: ‘I decline to form a Government in the present Parliament, and I do not ask for a dissolution’ (Monypenny and Buckle v.209). Gladstone was outraged at this move declaring that it was the constitutional obligation for the opposition to attempt to form a government when that opposition had defeated the current government on a vote that was made an issue of confidence (Blake 528). Disraeli argued that this was not the case when the groups that had allied themselves against the measure, in this case the Conservatives and the Irish Home Rule members, had nothing in common except for their opposition to the Irish Universities Bill. As for ‘the Irish lot’, Disraeli could conceive of no alliance with such a group, whom, he admitted to Ponsonby, ‘I detest and disagree with, and who would throw me over whenever it suited their purpose’. When pressed by the Private Secretary on his responsibility to form a government after defeating Gladstone he simply argued, ‘No . . . we did not defeat the Government. We threw out a stupid, blundering Bill, which Gladstone, in his tete moniee way, tried to make a vote of confidence. It was a foolish mistake of his; but he has condoned for it by resigning. He can now resume office with perfect freedom’ (Monypenny and Buckle v.211).
21Gladstone in his typically suspicious way accused Disraeli of some kind of trickery. In this he was likely wrong. Disraeli was under no compulsion to form a government and would have been foolish to attempt to do so in such a Liberal House of Commons. However, that is not to say that there was not some calculation behind Disraeli’s actions. He realised the mood of the country was shifting, but he did not yet know how strongly or how the situation had been transformed. As he told Ponsonby, if he was to form a minority government with the intention of dissolution, ‘for two months at least Parliament must continue, while the regular estimates, Mutiny Act, etc., are passed. The Conservatives are gaining favour in the country, but these two months would ruin them. They would be exposed in a hostile House to every insult which the Opposition might choose to fling at them, and the party would be seriously damaged, while the business of the country would suffer’ (Monypenny and Buckle v.211). Instead, Disraeli wished to put a disgruntled and increasingly irritable Gladstone back into bat. For, as Hanham argues, ‘by waiting and allowing Liberal divisions to become deeper the Conservative position was immensely strengthened’ (Hanham 221). The whole episode was testament to Disraeli’s restraint: it was a decision distinctly at odds with that of the political adventurer. Blake was quick to contrast this ‘masterly restraint’ with his ‘readiness to profit by adventitious Radical alliances’ when Derby was leader (Blake 529). However, the situation was much changed. First, Disraeli, in contrast to some of his colleagues, did not see Toryism and Radicalism as mutually exclusive creeds. The broad agreement over the Second Reform Act had evidenced that. Disraeli saw both as national political forces which represented the interests of the English people, two sides of the same coin. The same could certainly not be said of Irish Nationalists whose coincidental agreement with Conservative condemnation of the Irish Universities Bill had brought about Gladstone’s defeat. Second, politics had changed after 1867. It is doubtful that Disraeli clearly perceived this, but perhaps he dimly sensed it. Whereas in the 1850s and 1860s a feasible conservative majority could have been found through a combination of Conservatives and other groups, Disraeli’s exchanges with the Queen show that by 1873 he realised that a new majority could only be delivered by an election and a new popular mandate. The Age of Equipoise had ended and after the death of Palmerston a more distinct demarcation between political parties and their political principles had been established. As party began to supersede personality, so elections rather than parliamentary confidence decided the lifespan of a government.
22Disraeli’s position had greatly improved. In the opinion of both the Conservative party and the public, the decision not to take office had only enhanced his standing in the country. Delane, editor of The Times, that organ of moderate opinion, reported to Disraeli via Lennox was of the opinion that: ‘you now stand in the highest position in which any statesman has stood for many years past; that you had by your decision given proof of the very highest order of statesmanship, both unselfish and patriotic . . . will earn for you the gratitude of your followers and the respect and admiration of your opponents; and lastly that in this matter you have displayed a judgment and a spirit of which Gladstone would be utterly incapable’ (Monypenny and Buckle v.218). With over two years left in the current parliament Disraeli was now willing to watch and wait as internal Liberal divisions drove public opinion to favour the Conservatives. He was certainly in no rush for an election. Given the choice in the prevailing political climate, it seems likely he would have preferred to wait until 1875 and the end of the parliament before going to the polls.
- 2 While Lowe was not directly at fault for the scandals, they did somewhat get back to him. Moreover, (...)
23By contrast, with the Conservatives unwilling to form a minority administration Gladstone was once again forced to take the helm and in a far weaker position than he had been before. As Shannon put it, he ‘was now the leader of a wounded and limping ministry without cause’ (Shannon 252). Furthermore, it was made worse by his decision to dispense with the services of Lowe as Chancellor following a series of scandals connected with the misallocation of public funds to the telegraph and postal services.2 Lowe was reshuffled to the Home Office and Gladstone took up the Exchequer himself. This not only increased his workload but also raised a quite serious legal point. Gladstone was not a Member with a safe seat: his majority in Greenwich was not large and he was not even the senior Member. This brought about the question of Gladstone’s re-election in order to take up ministerial office. As Blake noted, ‘this was no mere academic point’ (Blake 529). Gladstone found legal advice that assured him he need not resubmit himself, but this opinion was far from unanimous and gave ammunition to the critics who already accused Gladstone of dictating to his party and bending the rules for his own purposes (Shannon 254). Defeat had left the Liberal party directionless, having achieved so much in the first few years of his government, there now seemed to be no great issue on which a majority agreed. Gladstone’s decision to take the Exchequer upon himself signalled that he was returning to what was historically productive and popular hunting ground to bring about a renewed Liberal unity. As he told Bright: ‘what we want at present is a positive force to carry us onward as a body . . . It may possibly, I think, be had out of finance’ (14 August 1873: quoted in Shannon 255). He hoped that Liberal popular authority might be restored through the ‘abolition of the Income Tax & Sugar Duties with partial compensation from the Spirits & Death Duties’ (to Cardwell: quoted in Shannon 255). In consultation with Bright, Wolverton and Granville they calculated a required budgetary surplus of £8 million in order to facilitate the proposed tax reductions. Since accurate estimates were not available until the last quarter and the new financial proposals contained in a popular ‘big’ budget needed careful planning, the reconvention of parliament was postponed until the 5th of February 1874 (Shannon 255‒6).
24It soon became apparent that Gladstone could only find a surplus of around £5 million. To find the required surplus would involve substantial austerity measures from both the Admiralty and the War Office. Gladstone, as was his wont, had become ideologically committed to the necessity and political sanctity of these financial proposals. As he mused in his diary: ‘Have the Govt. & party any other mode of giving their friends fair play at the elections, than by such a budget as has been sketched’ (19 January 1874: Gladstone 1968‒94, viii.442‒4). Gladstone was destined to be disappointed as both Goschen at the Admiralty and Cardwell at the War Office were forced to admit defeat in finding the required surplus. Gladstone’s mind turned toward the future and found a chance to invert his thinking. As Shannon shrewdly recognised, he went from ‘a big budget being the means of restoring public authority to the government prior to a dissolution’, to dissolution becoming ‘the means of providing public authority needed to launch a big budget’ (Shannon 257). With this new realisation, Gladstone moved quickly to snatch the initiative. Indeed, Disraeli was very surprised when having just arrived in his London hotel on Friday the 23rd of January, he awoke the next morning to find The Times announcing an immediate dissolution of parliament in preparation for a general election and reporting that Gladstone had simultaneously launched his campaign with a public statement (Monypenny and Buckle v.272). This came in the form of a public letter to the electors of Greenwich which celebrated the government’s achievements in Ireland and formally announced that the next great reforms would be in the realm of finance. Gladstone claimed that he did ‘not fear to anticipate as the probable balance a surplus exceeding rather than falling short of £5,000,000’ and thus with such a surplus great ‘boons . . . will now be in the power of the new Parliament at once to confer’. This would come in the form of the immediate repeal of the Income Tax which had historically been employed as a ‘war tax’ but had unintentionally achieved a more permanent status when introduced by Sir Robert Peel ‘principally to allow of important advances in the direction of Free Trade’ and ‘the great work of liberation which has been accomplished by its aid’. But now the government was faced with ‘a great opportunity of affording relief to the community, and an opportunity which ought to be turned to the very best account’—the opportunity to do away with the Income Tax entirely, for ‘at the sacrifice for the financial year of something less than £5,500,000, the country may enjoy the advantage and relief of its total repeal’ (Gladstone 8). As Buckle summarized: ‘Gladstone, in appealing to the electors to give him a new lease of power, had dangled before their eyes a surplus of several millions, and promised therewith to abolish the income tax’ (Monypenny and Buckle v.272).
25It was a bold move by Gladstone and one that looks to modern onlookers to be really quite opportunistic. It was tantamount to buying votes with the promise of reduced taxation, though he would have no doubt preferred to have passed the budget before going to the country. Despite promising reforms which pandered to a steadily growing working-class electorate, it was striking that Gladstone’s campaign was accompanied by none of the great public speaking displays that had accompanied the great reform debates or the 1868 election. The ‘People’s William’ was conspicuous by his absence from the circuit of great demagogic orations. Indeed, he spoke in his own constituency of Greenwich three times, but he did not speak outside it. He did not undertake a great national campaign as he had in the past (Jenkins 377). His campaign, directed towards his own electors in Greenwich, reflected far more closely than his usual practice Disraeli’s own understanding of politics: Disraeli rarely expressed his opinions to the public outside of his two homes, the county of Buckinghamshire and the House of Commons. Gladstone, who was usually so more in touch with the public mood than Disraeli, was on this occasion strangely ignorant of the groundswell of Conservative feeling in the country. In fact, the promise of Income Tax abolition was a strange choice of rallying cry for the country. To be sure, it was an attractive proposal, the abolition of taxes always is; but, since 1842, income tax had seemed increasingly more permanent and its annual approval increasingly perfunctory. In stark contrast to his warning in 1866 that ‘You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side . . . those great social forces are against you; they are marshalled on our side’, his attitude in 1874 was distinctly passive (Disraeli 1866, 152). As Jenkins put it, his fiscal programme was ‘so manifestly the last shot of an old war rather than a harbinger of the future’ (Jenkins 376).
26Disraeli, far from being caught off guard, was stung into action. Gathering all his available colleagues to Edward’s hotel to formulate their own manifesto. As Disraeli told Lady Chesterfield, ‘I telegraphed to my secretary, Montagu Corry . . . Ld. Derby, Lord Cairns, Mr Hardy, and Sir Stafford Northcote. Lord Cairns and Mr Hardy soon appeared, my secretary at night; and working hard all the next day we got copies prepared for all the Monday morning’s papers’ (Monypenny and Buckle v.273). In his response, an address to the electors of Buckinghamshire, he declared Gladstone’s manifesto a ‘prolix narrative’. It mentioned many of the great questions which confronted the state but contained ‘nothing definite as to the policy he would pursue’. Much of the address followed Disraeli’s time-honoured attacks on the Liberals. While there was reason to believe that Gladstone was not yet ‘opposed to our national institutions or to the maintenance of the integrity of our Empire’, there were many among his followers who ‘assail the Monarchy, other impugn the House of Lords’, some supported Home Rule while others wished to pursue a policy of ‘disestablishing the Anglican as he has despoiled the Irish Church’, while others still wished to remove ‘Religion from the place it ought to occupy in National Education’. By far the most significant parts of Disraeli’s manifesto were a lengthy attack on the conduct of Gladstone’s foreign policy regarding the Straits of Malacca and the promise to resist further Parliamentary Reform, for the Tories, having ‘proved they are not afraid of popular rights’ now wished to uphold the historic differences ‘between the franchises in the two divisions of the country’. With regard to domestic policy he believed that ‘English people are governed by their customs as much as by their laws’. Therefore, he promised to bring to an end the ‘incessant and harassing legislation’ of the current government who should have ‘put a little more energy into our foreign policy and a little less into our domestic legislation’. Disraeli’s address was little different from anything he had offered voters in the past: in essence it was the same promise to preserve institutions in contrast to those dangerous anti-constitutional Liberal reforms that had signally failed so many times before. Admittedly he added the empire to his list of great national institutions but he said very little about it, while any indication of a grand programme of social legislation was limited to a promise to ‘continue to endeavour, to propose or support all measures calculated to improve the conditions of the people’ (Disraeli 1874, 8).
27All of this hardly added up to a new political programme. In fact, none of Disraeli’s ideas seemed particularly novel. The address was undoubtedly, as Buckle long ago recognised, ‘rather of a negative character’ (Monypenny and Buckle v.274). Indeed, it was somewhat ironic that, having accused Gladstone of offering no clear direction with regard to policy, he should be equally, if not more, indistinct in his own statement. That was not surprising. Disraeli very rarely dealt in detail, he was a politician who thought in great principles and grandiose visions, not in the minutiae of legislation, and he was hardly likely to change that habit in his seventieth year. When the result of the 1874 election began to come clear, it was one that not many had predicted. Disraeli, who had so often been over-optimistic about Conservative chances, was equally wrong in his conservative estimate in 1874. Gorst, just as Spofforth had in 1868, predicted a small Conservative majority: Conservative 328 others 325. A result which would have left Disraeli at the mercy of malcontent backbenchers (Monypenny and Buckle v.277). However, all were proved wrong when the final result saw the Conservative’s returned with a majority over the Liberals of 108 and an absolute majority of nearly 50 (Craig 301). The question that needs some investigation is why, at nearly seventy years old, with apparently no change of political direction, under an even larger electorate than in 1868 and after the introduction of the secret ballot the effects of which most moderate politicians had so long feared, was Disraeli able to secure a landslide victory and form one of British history’s great reforming ministries? There is no simple answer, but rather a multifaceted combination of factors which turned out, for once, to be in Disraeli’s favour.
28First, Gladstone could not have called for a dissolution at a worse time. While Conservative stock had been rising across the country for some years and some form of swing back to the Tories was to be expected, he called for an election when his party was at its most vulnerable. His own seat in Greenwich was far from safe and having taken on the Exchequer without resorting himself to re-election had been the source of criticism, not least from Disraeli (see Disraeli 1874). Moreover, the party was in a situation in which its foreign policy was under fierce attack from the opposition and the cabinet was split over the ways and means for Gladstone’s plan to abolish the Income Tax. The issues were interconnected. Gladstone’s obsession for political economy had seen defence spending plummet to its lowest figure since before the Crimean War, which gave his critics ammunition to attack his foreign policy and hound him for enfeebling the nation in the face of a growing German military threat and an increasingly intransigent Russia (Parry 1993, 269). With regard to the Income Tax, Gladstone had done nothing to address the split in the party. Rather, in typically impulsive fashion, instead of seeking a compromise with his colleagues, he had appealed over their head to ‘the people’ to get the mandate he needed to hammer his new plan through parliament. While the dissolution took Disraeli and the leading Conservatives by surprise, it came an almost equal surprise to most Liberals who were now divided and unprepared with many moderate figures concerned as to the long-term consequences of Gladstone’s actions (Blake 535; Parry 272).
29Second, and perhaps most easily identifiable, was the vast leaps the Conservatives had made in terms of party management. Disraeli, having always looked at politics in terms of great parties, was perhaps ahead of his time when it came to party organisation. He had been working on the reorganisation alongside his friend Philip Rose since the 1850s. But their defeat in 1868 had shown how insufficient the old system was for an age of household suffrage and large popular constituencies (Monypenny and Buckle v.184). Under the direction of Disraeli, John Gorst oversaw a complete overhaul of the Tory party machine. He succeeded Spofforth as the party’s principal agent and set up the Conservative Central Office which began to oversee all of the party’s electoral management. For the first time candidates were formally chosen in advance of elections and selected by a group of local Conservatives who formed themselves into local associations. In 1874 the Tories were able to contest far more elections than they had in the past: the Liberals conceded nearly 100 seats to the Conservatives uncontested, while they were forced to go to the polls in far more constituencies (Craig 1977, 304). While the Liberal party machine would outstrip their rivals’ by the end of the century, in 1874 the Conservatives’ organisation was far superior and, despite the unexpected nature of the dissolution, far more prepared for an election than its Liberal counterpart. It was undeniable that Disraeli, in instigating this quiet revolution in the Conservative party’s management had contributed to the creation of the ‘first great party machine’ which helped reap ‘the harvest in the victory of 1874’ (Monypenny and Buckle v.186).
30The third factor, and one that needs greater investigation, was how far the changes to the electoral system made in 1867 and during Gladstone’s government contributed to Conservative success in 1874. Of course, the 1868 election had been fought on the 1867 franchise, but the register was yet to include those who had previously compounded their rates. Moreover, by 1869 following widespread protest, the practice of compounding was reinstated by Goschen who allowed men to compound their rents and rates while maintaining the vote, thereby stripping away the much-vaunted principle of selection: the personal payment of rates (Hawkins 2015, 274‒75). This added even more voters to the register, including all those who would have been disqualified by default thanks to Hodgkinson’s amendment. Therefore, in 1874 the borough franchise was now pure household suffrage and consequently the borough electorate was far larger than it had been in 1868, increased by some 200,000 voters (Blake 546). There had always been some suggestion during 1866 and 1867 that there might be found among urban working classes, outside of the great metropolises, a strong vein of Conservatism. Indeed, Disraeli had been advised in 1868 that ‘the Conservative feeling is more predominant in the humbler portion of the householders’ (quoted in Blake 536). At the very least, Disraeli had never feared the extension of the vote to the borough working classes would seriously damage the influence of the landed interest and propertied classes in smaller boroughs where ‘the influence of land and wealth would be supreme’, as it was ‘always known’ that the working classes of the small boroughs were deferential and ‘under the patronage of the Upper classes’ (Carnarvon diaries, 25 February 1867: Gordon 152; Disraeli to Derby, 25 February 1867: Derby Papers 146/3).
31This faith in the deference of the English working classes was very much put to the test by the removal of open voting and the introduction of the secret ballot. When the bill was first introduced in 1870, Disraeli had argued that the electoral system was still one of virtual representation: as they had not yet reached universal suffrage, each voter was representative of those who were not in possession of a vote. In that sense he had never ‘looked upon the franchise as a trust’, far less a right, rather he had ‘always looked upon the franchise as a privilege’ one that ‘ought to be freely exercised . . . a matter entirely apart from the merits or demerits of secret voting’ (Disraeli 1870, column 1037). This contradicted the radical canon which believed the ballot would secure the vote from intimidation and influence: Disraeli, rather, had ‘always thought that the wider the suffrage the less claim there will be for the adoption of the Ballot—that the strength and security of the voters will be proportionately increased . . . that the larger the constituency the greater will be its moral power, and the less would be the inclination, or the opportunity, to bring improper influence upon the exercise of the franchise by that constituency’ (Disraeli 1870, columns 1037‒38). Nevertheless, the first election held under a secret ballot yielded a Conservative landslide. Most remarkably the Conservatives were able to win a majority of those boroughs where the Liberals had long been predominant. The question remains: why? Perhaps they were right to believe in 1867 that in the English working classes would be found a solid core of Conservative voters but there is little to suggest that this was foreseen, though they had more chance with the settlement of 1867 than the consistently Liberal ‘shopkeepers’ franchise of 1832. Perhaps, as Bernal Osbourne argued in 1867, the ballot might check the influence of those radical trade unions and protect ‘the position the poor voter was in from the tyranny that might be exercised upon him by his own class’ (Osbourne 1445). The increased working-class electorate and the introduction of the ballot almost certainly contributed to Conservative success, these two electoral changes coinciding with a reversal of Conservative fortunes in the boroughs and ending an uninterrupted hegemony of Whigs and Liberals tracing back to 1832. Even Peel in 1841 had not managed to win the number of borough seats Disraeli did in 1874. It is hard to say just how far these electoral changes alone effected Conservative fortunes: for now, we must be content merely to include them in the web of factors contributing to the Conservative success.
32One prevailing view was that the British people had become so tiresome of Gladstone’s meddling and incessant reforming that they removed him from office. Gladstone himself assigned his defeat to the ingratitude of the English people, declaring to his brother that we have been ‘drowned in a torrent of gin and beer’ (Bradford 304). There was undoubtedly some truth in this. Gladstone’s government had gone about reforming nearly every aspect of British public and private life, and Disraeli in his election address had promised to bring to an end the ‘incessant and harassing legislation’ undertaken by the Liberal government (Disraeli 1874). But it was not just the working classes who had been harassed and instructed by Gladstone’s legislating: the reforms had given much influence to fringe groups within the party. As Parry has recognised, ‘too many electors believed that vociferous Dissenters, “Little Englanders” and Irish Catholics had excessive power over the party’ (Parry 271). In addition, Gladstone’s Irish policy, especially the disestablishment of the Irish Church, when combined with his proposed abolition of the Income Tax, had provoked disaffection among propertied and Anglican interests who sought safety within the ranks of a Conservative party promising stability and repose. Furthermore, Gladstone had never been a unifying figure within Liberal politics, but the policies of his government had and the manner in which he had forced them through had created a fracture between him and the moderate Liberal and Whig elements who came to see him as a despot (Parry 271‒72). All of this played a large part in contributing to Conservative success without totally explaining it. Dissatisfaction with one leader or one party rarely causes a landslide for another.
33One factor that historians have so often overlooked with regard to the 1874 election—indeed Blake does not mention it in relation to the Conservative victory in 1874—was Disraeli’s own newfound popularity. The warmth of feeling for Disraeli had been demonstrated by the public demonstrations of affection at Glasgow where he was elected Rector of the university, in London following the service at St. Paul’s, and later in Manchester where crowds had lined the streets to see him before his famous address at Free Trade Hall. Why there was this seemingly sudden change in public feeling for him is difficult to say for sure. Popularity is fickle and hard to define (especially in an age prior to opinion polling). However, in Disraeli’s case, he had long been a household name and had achieved a kind of pet status among the public. He was always referred to as ‘Dizzy’ and was rarely far from a Punch cartoon yet nevertheless a fixture at the head of British politics (Bradford 1982, 294). It is not so great a leap to imagine that a British public and newly enfranchised electorate, who had been captivated by Gladstone force of moral certainty in 1868, could have come to admire an opponent who had patiently and courageously weathered defeats, abuse, and continued setbacks in his leadership of the party. This is a somewhat romanticised view of the popularity Disraeli discovered throughout the 1870s, which is not to say that it is unrealistic, but it must be tempered by the contrasting fortunes of Gladstone’s own popularity. His government’s reforming zeal had worn thin with the enthusiasms of the new electorate and his non-interventionist foreign policy had clashed with the emerging spirit of a new age, brimming with national pride and seeking patriotic prestige. Disraeli’s attacks in this quarter when coupled with his attempts to move the Conservative party to the position for so long occupied by Palmerston undoubtedly resonated with the new electorate. But ultimately, it seems the British public came to admire him less for what he said or did, than for what they perceived him to be: non-typical, celebrity novelist, mysterious genius, and familiar face of politics. His views were as consistently Conservative as any other in the party. His aims in politics had not materially changed since the 1840s. He expressed them with imaginative flair and romantic flourishes, but nevertheless they boiled down to a vindication and maintenance of the existing sociopolitical and constitutional arrangements of the country. By contrast, his public image, thanks in much part to the press, was of a man quite unlike any other in England. As Fraser recalled, Disraeli possessed an attraction and charm which ‘his origin, appearance, and manner’ might have belied. As one Tory county member, Mr Pell once expressed to him, “‘In spite of it all, damn the fellow! One cannot help loving him!”’ (Fraser 478‒79). Perhaps Buckle best recognised this shift in popular opinion when he long-ago suggested that in the 1870s, ‘there was now an awakening to the fact that his patience, his courage, his genius, his experience, and his patriotism constituted a character round which popular feeling, disappointed in its idol, might safely rally’ (Monypenny and Buckle v.182).