BENJAMIN DISRAELI Selected Political Writings EDITED BY Ishaan H. Jajodia Publisher Publisher Name Location Address Contact © !"!", Ishaan H. Jajodia. ISBN #": ISBN #$: All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. ✥ CONTENTS Chronology … iv Introduction … vi A Note on the Texts … xli General Preface to the Longman Collected Edition (#%&#) … # !e Voyage of Captain Popanilla (#%!%) … ## A Vindication of the English Constitution (#%$') … !# First Speech as Member of Parliament (#%$&) … ##' !e Acquirement of Knowledge (#%(() … #!$ Selections from Sybil: or the Two Nations (#%(') … #$' Is Man an Ape or an Angel? (#%)() … !$' An Address to the Working Men of Edinburgh (#%)&) … !'! On Becoming Prime Minister (#%)%) … !)& Conservative Principles: Speech at Manchester (#%&!) … !&! Conservative and Liberal Principles: Speech at Crystal Palace (#%&!) … $"! Inaugural Address as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow (#%&$) … $#( !e Agricultural Situation (#%&*) … $!' ✥ CHRONOLOGY #%"( Born on !# December to Isaac and Maria D’Israeli in London. #%#& Benjamin D’Israeli was baptised into the Church of England on July $# following a recurring dispute between his father and the Bevis Marks Synagogue; starts at Higham Hall in Epping Forest. #%!# D’Israeli was articled in November to the solicitors Swain, Stevens, Maples, Pearse, and Hunt on the insistence of Isaac D’Israeli. #%!! Benjamin D’Israeli changes his last name to Disraeli. #%!) +e ,rst volume of Vivian Grey is published in April, anonymously, by Henry Colburn. #%!& Disraeli enters his name at Lincoln’s Inn in April. #%!*–$" Writes !e Young Duke. #%$# Disraeli withdraws his name from Lincoln’s Inn; !e Young Duke is published. #%$! Stands as a Radical candidate for the constituency of High Wycombe in a by-election in January and then in the general election in December; loses both times. Contarini Fleming: A Psychological Autobiography. #%$$ !e Wondrous Tale of Alroy. #%$( Publishes his sole book of poetry, !e Revolutionary Epick, and, along with his sister Sarah, A Year at Hartlebury. Meets Lord Lyndhurtst and becomes his secretary. #%$' Stands with Tory support as a Radical at High Wycombe in the January general election. In the spring, he stands for the Taunton by-election, this time as a Tory. Loses both. Publishes A Vindication of the English Constitution. #%$) Elected to the Carlton Club, the de facto Tor y social and political headquarters. #%$& Returned to Parliament as one of two members for the borough of Maidstone as a Tory; makes his maiden speech on December &; and publishes Henrietta Temple and Venetia. iv CHRONOLOGY #%$* Marries Mary Anne Lewis; publishes his sole play, !e Tragedy of Count Alarcos. #%(# Returned as Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury. #%($ +e ‘Young England’ group comes to be, along with George Smythe, Lord John Manners, and Alexander Baillie-Cochrane. #%(( Coningsby, or the New Generation. #%(' Sybil, or the Two Nations. #%(& Ta n c red, or the New Crusade. #%'! Serves as Chancellor of the Exchequer between February !& and December #&. #%'% Appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer on February !). #%'* Resigns Chancellorship after the Tories lose their majority in the general election on June ##. #%)) Appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer on July ). #%)% Resigns as Chancellor on February !*; appointed Prime Minister on February !&; resigns after general election defeat for the Tories on December #, when he is appointed Leader of the Opposition. #%&! Disraeli’s wife, Mary Anne, dies on December #'. #%&( Resigns as Leader of the Opposition on February #&; appointed Prime Minister the next day. #%&) Elevated to the Earldom of Beacons,eld, created for Disraeli. #%%" Resigns as Prime Minister on April !# following a Liberal victory at the general election; made Leader of the Opposition. #%%# Dies on April #*. v INTRODUCTION “Power,” Benjamin Disraeli wrote, “has only one duty—to secure the social welfare of the people.” Disraeli—novelist, Prime Minister, political theorist, and conservative par extraordinaire—was writing in #%(', when just about everything seemed to be changing and that old world that he loved so dearly was slipping away from underneath him. Rapid change brought on by the maturation of the Industrial Revolution had produced a wake of normlessness and emptiness in its wake, and Disraeli sought to allay this precipitous decline, through the means of a unique brand of conservatism that took him to the very top of English politics. “Before Disraeli,” Anthony Quinton notes, “conservative thinkers had kept the social problems of an industrial society at some distance from their thinking.”1 +e onslaught of radical change had seemingly transformed English society, and the zeitgeist tended to favour those seeking to make themselves anew in the image of this new world. Disraeli was cut from another cloth, and while he very much understood these changes could not be reversed or exchanged for a pastoral, bucolic ideal, he defended the old in light of the new. It is thus that an opportunity must be taken to make mention of the great travesty that has been wrought upon Benjamin Disraeli. Even his most ardent supporters recognised that he was no better than “a third of fourth-rate novelist.”2 Yet, his star has shone brighter in departments of literature than with students of political theory, where he has been condemned to a purgatorial obscurity, waiting for his vindication. Most political theorists think of him as a -aneur obsessed with gossip-,lled tales of high society and over-the-top renditions of subjects that may seem remote to the form in which political theory ought to be studied. 1 Anthony Quinton, !e Politics of Imperfection: !e Religious and Secular Traditions of Conservative !ought in England from Hooker to Oakeshott, !e T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures " (London: Faber and Faber, #"$%), %&. 2 Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beacons"eld Interviewed: Remarkable Statements of His Lordship Concerning the Game of Politics ; the Origin and Character of Political Parties ; the ‘Great Conservative Party’ ; Liberalism, Radicalism and the Whig Party ; Parliamentary Government ; Personal Rule and the Royal Prerogative ; the Church, the Eastern Question; the English Aristocracy; the English System of Land Tenure; the Agricultural Labourers: &c, &c, &c, ed. A. C. Y. and A. G. S. (Manchester and London: John Heywood, #%$"), iii. vi INTRODUCTION Whatever the reasons might be—and one must not deny that Disraeli belongs at this moment to the historian and the critic more than the political theorist—it cannot be the case anymore. We all think we live in unprecedented times. Surely Disraeli thought that was the case for his own life. +e century before had been marked with rivers of blood brought to -ow by revolutionary fervour; his century was marred by another sort of red river, this time of the machines that released e.uents into the pristine rivers hour after hour, waiting for no one and no thing. If the e/cient functioning of the guillotine had marked the century prior, Disraeli’s was to be marked by the monotony of industrial society that reduced men to undigni,ed commodities and alienated man from social nature. “It is gone,” Burke remarked, “that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour.”3 For Burke, chivalry and decorum had died a horri,c death; for Disraeli, it seemed that all of society was to be condemned to banishment and exile and a new one raised with the clanging of machinery while man was forced to give up his traditional attachments. Industrial society has given way to digital society; the world of yesterday seems increasingly remote from today’s; and, as Yeats so remarkably put it, “+ings fall apart; the centre cannot hold; \ Mere anarchy is loosened upon the world.” Where does the conservative ,t into what might seem to be an era of rapid change without turning to iconoclasm or reactionary politics? It is this very anxiety that animates the writings of Benjamin Disraeli, writings that have been culled and printed in this volume, the ,rst in many decades. It is not intended to be an exhaustive source of Disraeli’s political writings—such a tome would be rather unwieldy and more suitable for physical usage against Disraeli’s opponents of choice, the “Brutalitarians” and “Dutch ,nance.” Previous collections of Disraeli’s political writings have focused more on his Parliamentary career, entangled in the muddles of history and the battles and congresses that necessarily detract from the object of our inquiry—what did Benjamin Disraeli think about politics?4 +is collection also serves to challenge another common supposition, one rampant even among professed admirers of Disraeli—that Lord Beacons,eld was a very di0erent man 3 Edmund Burke, Re#ections on the Revolution in France, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, #"%$), '$. 4 Benjamin Disraeli, Whigs and Whiggism: Political Writings, ed. William Hutcheon (New York: !e Macmillan Company, #"#(). Hereinafter W&W. vii INTRODUCTION from Benjamin Disraeli, although they shared the same body and mind. Robert Blake, who professes support and sympathy for Disraeli and defends him from general charges of hypocrisy and opportunism, remarks that Disraeli’s principles—principles that this tome will show were held sincerely from the very beginning to the very end—were “leather and prunella.”5 +is volume seeks to establish Disraeli as a political thinker in his own right. Who was Benjamin Disraeli, in the ,rst place? What was the world he was writing of, and into which his writings were thrust? What did he think of the role and practice of politics, and who did he consider his teachers? And, perhaps most importantly, why must we care today? I seek to answer these questions in turn, with responses that will hopefully render Disraeli and his words alive in the imagination of the reader. ✥ Benjamin Disraeli (#%"%–%#) was born to Isaac and Maria D’Israeli (née Basevi) in Bloomsbury, London.6 His education, though regular, was not notable.