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Home , Arthur Balfour, Benjamin Disraeli, Coningsby (novel), Earl of Beaconsfield, George Earle Buckle, Lord Randolph Churchill

BENJAMIN Selected Political Writings

EDITED BY Ishaan H. Jajodia

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© !"!", Ishaan H. Jajodia.

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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 : or the Two Nations (#%(') … #$' Is Man an Ape or an Angel? (#%)() … !$' An Address to the Working Men of (#%)&) … !'! On Becoming Prime Minister (#%)%) … !)& Conservative Principles: Speech at Manchester (#%&!) … !&! Conservative and Liberal Principles: Speech at Crystal Palace (#%&!) … $"! Inaugural Address as Lord Rector of the (#%&$) … $#( !e Agricultural Situation (#%&*) … $!' ✥

CHRONOLOGY

#%"( Born on !# December to Isaac and Maria D’Israeli in . #%#& Benjamin D’Israeli was baptised into the on July $# following a recurring dispute between his father and the Bevis Marks ; starts at Higham Hall in Epping Forest. #%!# D’Israeli was articled in November to the solicitors Swain, Stevens, Maples, Pearse, and Hunt on the insistence of Isaac D’Israeli. #%!! Benjamin D’Israeli changes his last name to Disraeli. #%!) +e ,rst volume of is published in April, anonymously, by Henry Colburn. #%!& Disraeli enters his name at Lincoln’s Inn in April. #%!*–$" 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 in a by-election in January and then in the general election in December; loses both times. 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 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. #%$) Elected to the , the de facto Tor y social and political headquarters. #%$& Returned to Parliament as one of two members for the borough of as a Tory; makes his maiden speech on December &; and publishes Henrietta Temple and Venetia. iv CHRONOLOGY #%$* Marries Mary Anne Lewis; publishes his sole play, !e Tragedy of Count Alarcos. #%(# Returned as Member of Parliament for . #%($ +e ‘’ group comes to be, along with George Smythe, Lord John Manners, and Alexander Baillie-Cochrane. #%(( , 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 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,” wrote, “has only one duty—to secure the social 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 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 of Conservative !ought in England from Hooker to Oakeshott, !e T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures " (London: Faber and Faber, #"$%), %&. 2 Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beacons"eld Interviewed: Remarkable Statements of His Lordship Concerning the Game of Politics ; the Origin and Character of Political Parties ; the ‘Great Conservative Party’ ; Liberalism, and the Whig Party ; Parliamentary Government ; Personal Rule and the Royal Prerogative ; the Church, the ; the English Aristocracy; the English System of Land Tenure; the Agricultural Labourers: &c, &c, &c, ed. A. C. Y. and A. G. S. (Manchester and London: John Heywood, #%$"), 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 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 , Re#ections on the Revolution in France, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, #"%$), '$. 4 Benjamin Disraeli, Whigs and : 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 , London.6 His education, though regular, was not notable. Although Isaac D’Israeli—a prominent litterateur and critic of his times who kept the company of , among others—was Jewish, he had recurring spats with the , and in #%#&, a particularly contentious dispute landed Benjamin Disraeli in the arms of the poet Samuel Coleridge’s nephew and the Church of England, into which he was baptised on July $#.7 Following this, Disraeli was dispatched to Higham Hall in Epping Forest—unlike his younger brothers, who went to Winchester. He seems to have acquired a classical education; he quoted from the classics frequently and extensively in his speeches. Higham Hall was undistinguished—Blake describes it as “a rather dim little place,” lacking the pedigree of Eton or Rugby.8 Disraeli did not attend college, unlike his lifelong rival, the Liberal politician , who succeed him both times as Prime Minister; Gladstone, following school at Eton, read Classics and Maths at Christ Church, Oxford.

5 Robert Blake, Disraeli (New York: St. Martin’s Press, #"'$), $'&. 6 !is sketch owes much to Robert Blake and Jonathan Parry’s biographies of Disraeli. Jonathan Parry, ‘Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beacons)eld (#%*(–#%%#), Prime Minister and Novelist’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, &*##). 7 Blake, Disraeli, ##. 8 Ibid, #&. viii INTRODUCTION Shortly after his departure from school, in November #%!#, Disraeli was articled to the solicitors’ ,rm of Swain, Stevens, Maples, Pearse, and Hunt; Maple was a dear friend of Isaac. +e following year, Benjamin dropped the apostrophe from his last name. Disraeli seems to have been a good clerk, but he professed later “his utter un,tness to become a solicitor.”9 Disraeli felt it necessary to leave, and following a brief sojourn with his father in #%!( to Germany, wrote a book, Aylmer Papillion, of which nothing remarkable survives. +e same year, he entered into the ,rst of two debt-inducing business ventures. He sought to capitalise on a “speculative bubble in South American mining companies,” writing pamphlets to push the market to behave in the manner that he wanted it to; by June of the following year, he had been in-icted with losses of 1&,"""—about 1)'",""" in today’s money—that he was personally liable for. In #%!', he approached his father’s friend, John Murray, to invest and publish a newspaper, !e Representative, that folded within six months. +us ended Disraeli’s foray into business, and he now proceeded—chased by creditors—to write his ,rst novel, Vivian Grey (#%!)), a parody of high society published by Henry Colburn that alienated his most prominent literary backer, John Murray, publisher to literary greats such as Lord Byron, Jane Austen, and . While Vivian Grey is published anonymously, it does not take long for the veil of anonymity to be pierced, ,rst speculatively, then de,nitively. Disraeli, writing in #%&", seemed to be sick of Vivian Grey and the pain it had caused him, calling it “essentially a puerile work … [that] has ba.ed even the e0orts of its creator to suppress it.” !e Voyage of Captain Popanilla appeared in #%!%, written ‘by the author of Vivian Grey.’ Disraeli did little to ask his publisher Henry Colburn to suppress his identity, and the book is not as admittedly infantile or immature as one would expect from the author of Vivian Grey. Whilst writing Captain Popanilla’s tall tale, Disraeli entered his name into the registers of Lincoln’s Inn, for he aspired to the bar, but four years later he decided against it and that tryst with the legal profession that had taken up the better part of his twenties came to an end in #%$#. Captain Popanilla is a mocking book, much like Vivian Grey, but the author seems to have decided that his not untalented writing, tinged with the acerbic overtones of a melancholic writer beset with “a

9 Ibid, #%. ix INTRODUCTION major nervous crisis,” was better directed to more politically engaging subjects.10 Popanilla mocks the Utilitarians and the state-of-nature theorists. Proximity must breed contempt, for Disraeli grew up no more than a stone’s throw away from what is now the University College London, founded under the auspices of , the grand doyen of the Utilitarian creed. +e UCL Library, to this day, holds Bentham’s carefully preserved body, a sight one might imagine would have further fostered terror in the depths of Disraeli’s imagination. In Popanilla, we see the ,rst glimpses of the onset of maturity; his arguments against the Utilitarians were recycled wholesale and repackaged into an open letter seven years later. Instead of preparing to be called to the bar, Disraeli embarked upon another enterprise; this time, it was a novel, !e Young Duke, of which nothing of note can be said save for the leisure it brought its author, who soon excised himself from the registers of Lincoln’s Inn. On a vacation sponsored by the ,nancial success of the book, Disraeli cavorted around the Mediterranean and caught a particularly nasty bout of venereal disease.11 A year after his return, Disraeli was seized by the sails of a blowing wind, unleashed by the Reform Act of that year—politics. At last, it seemed, the wind would be taking him away from the cli0s and toward the calm, open sea. At the start of #%$!, High Wycombe, a constituency not very far from Beacons,eld, the earldom of which would be created for Disraeli four and a half decades later, was faced with a vacant seat in the House of Commons. Disraeli contested the by-elected as an independent radical. +e constituency was a Whig stronghold, and Disraeli vied, once again, as an independent radical, to be returned to Parliament in December of that year. At the general election, he had remarked that “Toryism is worn out, and I cannot condescend to be a Whig.” He lost both elections, but his sailboat was beginning to show the existence of a keel and a rudder. +is was a sentiment that continued into the following year, where he published What is He? as a pamphlet. “+e Reform Act [of #%$!] was a law,” Disraeli noted, “not to destroy close government, but to destroy Tor yism.” 12 +e Reform Act increased the voters of the country by one- half in England and thirteen-fold in Scotland; attempted to reform

10 Parry, ‘Disraeli.’ 11 Ibid. 12 W&W, #%. x INTRODUCTION ‘pocket boroughs,’ where a single individual controlled the vote, especially in absence of the secret ballot which Disraeli introduced in the Reform Act of #%)%; and uni,ed eligibility criteria for voters across the country. “If the Tories indeed despair of restoring the aristocratic principle,” Disraeli observed, “it is their duty to coalesce with the Radicals, and permit both political nicknames to merge in the common, the intelligible, and the digni,ed title of a National Party.”13 If Disraeli had won the return to Parliament, he likely would have remained a lonely ,gure, and it was a fortuitous occurrence that in #%$(, the commercial and literary failure of his book of epic poetry, !e Revolutionary Epick, was o0set by a new acquaintance and patron: John Copley, the ,rst Baron Lyndhurst, whose ,rst encounter with Disraeli seems to have taken place on July #", #%$(.14 He soon became Lord Lyndhurst’s private secretary—an uno/cial post—handling political matters and correspondence; the post was a usual stepping stone into the political arena.15 Lord Lyndhurst, impressed by his protégé, sought to exercise his in-uence to acquire for Disraeli the Tory candidature for the borough for Lynn, a Tory stronghold. +e ploy seems to have failed, but Lyndhurst secured for Disraeli 1'"" in Tory party funds to contest the January #%$' general election for High Wycombe. Speaking on December #) of the year prior, in the run up to the election, he maintained his characteristic dislike of the Whigs, for whom “Peace consisted of blockades.”16 Disraeli is, at this stage, yet a.icted with youthful gaudiness, remarking of a certain “Mr. Merryman” that he “now lies despairing length in the middle of the stage, with his jokes exhausted and his bottle empty!”17 +is, too, bore no immediate fruit; the Whig incumbent, Robert Smith, was returned to Parliament with more than two times the votes cast for Disraeli. In the long run, however, this completed the ,rst few steps of the ladder to success. Despite the loss—crushing, one might add—two months later, in March, Disraeli was nominated to the Carlton Club, the uno/cial Conservative Party headquarters. For the April !*, #%$) by-election to Taunton, Disraeli

13 W&W, #"–&*. 14 Letter ++% to Sarah Disraeli. All letters are numbered according to the edition of Disraeli’s correspondence. 15 Disraeli had his secretary ennobled upon his resignation as Prime Minister in #%%*. 16 W&W, ++. 17 W&W, (*. xi INTRODUCTION polled !%! votes against his Whig opponent Henry Labouchere’s ('!; the latter was returned to Parliament.18 Lord Lyndhurst’s ,ngerprints are all over the work in this volume that date from the latter half of the #%$"s. Lyndhurst egged Disraeli on to write a defence of Tories. By November #*, #%$', Disraeli had deposited the manuscript of his sole work of political theory in the abstract—a defence of the English constitution—with Lord Lyndhurst. He dispatched a letter to the publisher John Murray, who he had earlier caricatured in Vivian Grey, asking for the immediate publication of the work now known as A Vindication of the English Constitution in a Letter to a Noble and Learned Lord, printed here in its entirety.19 By December #!, Saunders and Otley had agreed to typeset the book and sent two copies to Sarah Disraeli; for a book of the size—!#" pages—such a turnaround is enviable, even by today’s standards.20 +e book was ,nally published on Wednesday, December #); Sir , then Leader of the Opposition following a loss in the general election of #%$', is sent a copy, along with his father.21 Isaac wrote back, admittedly pleased. “Your nobler political birth has occurred this week,” he remarked.22 +e Vindication did much to raise Disraeli’s pro,le. Writing to Baron Eliot, Disraeli noted with a degree of glee, “the publication of my book has brought me several communications which I could not read without pleasure, especially one which I little expected from Sir Robert Peel.”23 By July of #%$), Disraeli’s Vindication was being brandished as authoritative in the ; by January of the following year, Peel was replicating its arguments in the Commons.24 +e Globe ran an article attacking it, but the sympathy and support Disraeli received indicated that he had, in fact, made it into the Tory party. Disraeli’s Vindication was his ,rst and sole work of political theory, even if it was written as political propaganda. It begins with a wondrous

18 Labouchere seems to have also been the incumbent for this seat, but stood for election once again because of his appointment to a junior ministerial position—par for the course at the time, but now no longer customary. 19 Letter ((# (Nov #", #%+,) o-ers it exclusively to John Murray, who declined without asking for the manuscript in a letter dated Nov &#. 20 Letter ((" (Dec #&, #%+,) to Sarah Disraeli. 21 Letter (,* (Dec #,, #%+,) to Isaac D’Israeli; Letter (,# (Dec #', #%+,) to Sir Robert Peel. 22 Letter (,*n. 23 Letter ($& (Jan #%, #%+') to Baron Eliot. 24 Letter ,##n; Letter ,,%n. xii INTRODUCTION attack on the Utilitarians, for whom “man is only in-uenced by self interest: it is in the interest of man to be a tyrant and a robber: a man does not change his nature because he is a king; therefore a king is tyrant and a robber.” +e Utilitarians attracted such strong denunciation on their part also because of the various contraptions they conjured— Bentham’s “Industry Houses were a nightmare of minute utilitarian administration enforced by all the chicanery of scienti,c management.”25 Bentham spent much of his career advocating for holier-than-thou contraptions that were desirous of providing a return on investment for the government that could part with its bullion in exchange for his fantastical beasts, but not once did Bentham and his ‘Brutilitarians’ think that the return required upon such projects was the upliftment of the downtrodden and the revitalisation of the national spirit. Later Utilitarians even had the gall to appropriate Edmund Burke to their cause, even though he, as Peter Stanlis shows, detested both the form and substance of their thinking.26 It is possible that Disraeli saw Burke being championed as a proto-Utilitarian, and the drivel drove him to pick them as his punching bag of choice, as the Rev. Dr. Price had been for Burke’s introductory passages in his Re"ections. Like all great writers on the English Constitution, Disraeli founds the inheritance of the Englishman on the Magna Carta of #!#', which provided barons protections against arbitrary and capricious actions taken by the monarch. It is unlikely that King John of England understood the importance of his actions, but, fortunately, the and the Earl of Pembroke did. +e fact of the matter remains that this baronial protection seems to have percolated down to the common peoples; its role in the of the West as a foundational and canonical document can not be disputed, and neither can its visionary and lofty goals, however guided they might have been by abject necessity at that point for King John. “Man,” Disraeli tells his (mostly Tory) readers, “was the child of the State, and born with ,lial duties.” +e ancient nature of the inheritances of the English ensured their continued propagation, but Disraeli felt pressed to bring forward this vindication of the now fashionably derided constitution.

25 Karl Polanyi, !e Great Transformation: !e Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, &nd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, &**#), #&&. 26 Peter J. Stanlis, Edmund Burke and the (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, #",%). xiii INTRODUCTION +ere was no good “to be found ensconced behind a revolutionary barricade, or -oating in the bloody gutters of an incendiary metropolis.” Disraeli’s powers of imagination were always better put to use in his ,ction, and here he seeks more to replicate the horrible scene of Burke’s Re"ections—the scene that decries the despoliation of chivalry and honour—than the horri,c scenes of Parisian barricades, which have sprung up like clockwork every decade and a half since the events of #&%*. “+ey not only destroyed law and custom,” he informs us, “but they destroyed their country.” Revolutionary sentiments cause more damage to the country than can be repaired “in a single morning,” as Louis XVIII found out. In this he concurred with Burke. Where he diverges—and he diverges, for this is important—is the role of customary re-ection and deliberation in the political life of a nation. Most contemporary readers of Disraeli might term the Vindication to be cut from a jejune cloth after they have been enthralled by Burke’s Re"ections, but they mistake entirely the point that Disraeli brings to the forefront. +e Revolution destroyed far more than the remnants of the ancien regime in France—it destroyed, through each consecutive fall of the guillotine, the national character of that nation, until all that was left was abstract, revolutionary principles. +e French had never enjoyed the bene,t of a house like the Commons of England, and when Louis XVIII sought to create a new constitution after he was returned to the throne after the bitter ambition of Napoleon had gone south, he forgot that “political institutions, to be e0ective, must be founded on the habits and opinions of the people whom they pretend to govern.” +e French, although sharing in a degree of common ancestry with the English, did not develop the same systems of governance, and they sought to do in the span of a morning, Disraeli reports, what the English endeavoured to do over the span of a millennium. +e Revolution was a one-way street—once they went down that road, even those customs and traditions that the French had possessed in the past would become alien to them. +is did not mean that stagnation was desirous, but rather the means of a0ecting change ought to be seriously considered, as must the speed of that change. Slow, measured change is the only way through which lasting change can be brought about. “An English revolution is at least a solemn sacri,ce,” Disraeli reminds his readers, taking after Burke, but “a French revolution is an indecent massacre.”

xiv INTRODUCTION Disraeli proceeds to take on the origins of the House of Commons and to discredit the superstition of its democratic origin. +e Commons represents the equestrian class, ‘the estate of the knights,’ descended from the minor nobility. To call it representative of “an estate of the People involves a contradiction in terms.” As the lower nobility and what we now call the aristocracy went di0erent ways, the former being signi,cantly more numerous than the latter, some device was required through which the equestrians could be represented alongside the aristocracy. Changes in society made the di0erentiation between the landed gentry and minor nobility, and the burghers, untenable. +us, we have the Commons, an institution distinct from the Lords since at least the end of Edward I’s reign in #$"&. “It never was the House of the People,” Disraeli concludes from his antiquarian and archaeological mission, adding that “the members of the House of Commons never were the representatives of the people.” +e House of Lords and the hereditary principle are next in Disraeli’s line of defence. +e Lords, then a hereditary institution save for the !) Lords Spiritual—the !) seniormost bishops of the Church of England— was the original organ of governance and consultation. A proto-Lords made the compact with King John that we now call the Magna Carta. +e Lords are in most aspects equal in privilege to the Commons, Disraeli argues, but it is the special task of the former to be the trustees of the mos maiorum, the ancient customs of the land. +e Lords are ,rst and foremost hereditary legislators, a role they took on once the age of warrior nobles had drawn to a close. Disraeli admits that the very idea of hereditary legislators seems preposterous and might even resemble doggerel to some, but the principle is itself sound because of its long practice of ,ve centuries, during which it has secured the “progressive welfare” of all. +e hereditary Lords are bound by the knowledge that for generations forth, their progeny will be judged by the honour and virtue of their actions; that they are not merely sons of the soil who represent the landed interest but the general welfare of all, the summum bonum, and are “from the womb to the grave trained to loathe and recoil from everything that is mean and sordid.” By virtue of their station, the demands placed upon them are greater than the demands placed on squires and burghs, who represent the now. +e Lords—like diamonds— are forever.

xv INTRODUCTION Once the defences are out of the way, Disraeli returns to the topic that creates the pressing need for him to work on this tract—the Whigs, who, in the name of “Civil and Religious Freedom” have campaigned for “a doge and no bishops,” like the Venetians. Readers of this volume might do well to remember the split in the Whigs that was addressed by Edmund Burke in his ‘Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,’ where the some Whigs are pointed out as espousing and propagating the abstract principles of +omas Paine and acting as apologists for the ills of the French Revolution. +e Whigs that remained were not the Whigs that Burke led and supported, but, as Disraeli puts it, “an anti-national party” that is the home of anti-constitutional writers and authorities. Disraeli believes the Whigs to be working against the institutions of English governance, and he points out: “Without our Crown, our Church, our Universities, our great municipal and commercial Corporations, our Magistracy, and its dependent scheme of provincial polity, the inhabitants of England, instead of being a nation, would present only a mass of individuals governed by a metropolis, whence an arbitrary senate would issue the stern decrees of its harsh and heartless despotism. … In such a state of society a state of society which France has accomplished, and to which the Whigs are hurrying us, no public avenues to wealth and honour would subsist …”. +e Whigs had been in power for so long that they had entrenched themselves and began to transform the English body politic into a Venetian one. +is is the charge levelled against the Whigs—that, and the adoption of abstract, revolutionary principles. A chunk of this characterisation can be attributed to Disraeli’s imagination. But there is more than a morsel of truth that lurks behind this wall of seemingly biased rhetoric. Burke minces no words, writing in the third person: “!ese new Whigs hold, that sovereignty, whether exercised by one or many, did not originate from the people (a position not denied, nor worth denying or assenting to) but that, in the people the same sovereignty constantly and unalienably resides; that the people may lawfully dispose kings, not only for misconduct, but without any misconduct at all; that they may set up any new fashion of government for themselves, or continue without any government at their pleasure; that the people are essentially their own rule, and their will the measure of their conduct; that the tenure of magistracy is not a proper subject of contract, because magistrates have duties, but no rights; and if a contract de facto is made with them in one age, allowing that it binds at all, it only binds those who were immediately concerned in it, but does not pass to posterity. !ese doctrines concerning the people (a term which they are far from accurately de)ning, but by which, from many circumstances, it is plain enough they mean their own faction, if they should grow by early arming, by treachery, or violence, into the prevailing force) tend, in my opinion, to utter xvi INTRODUCTION subversion, not only of all government, in all modes, and to all stable securities to rational freedom, but to all the rules and principles of morality itself.”27 Disraeli might be erring in comporting to the entirety of the Whiggish interest an odiousness, for he terms them as such for all times’ sake. +e party that Disraeli criticised was the party that rose up against Burke for his defence of the English constitution and a stern denunciation of the French Revolution, accusing him of hypocrisy and forcing him to break ranks and cross the -oor of the Commons. Disraeli’s debt to Burke is irredeemable, but one can, with surety and certainty, trace the line of in-uence back from one great statesman to another. From this point onwards, Disraeli started to fall upwards. Lord Lyndhurst ensured for Disraeli the two-seat borough of Maidstone; the ,rst and second highest polling candidates would be returned to Parliament. +e Whigs had one; the Conservatives the other. In the July–August #%$& general election, Disraeli and Wyndham Lewis, both conservatives, were returned to Parliament from Maidstone. It was a symbolic start—the election returned the ,rst Parliament of ’s long reign, a Parliament that included Disraeli, who would become a particular favourite of the Queen’s. Disraeli never lost an election; his spate of losses had paved the road to victory for the next three decades. He continued to be returned to Parliament without a break until he was elevated to the House of Lords in #&*). Lewis tragically died in March #%$%, and Disraeli married Lewis’ widow, Mary Anne, not long after, on August !%, #%$*. Disraeli’s biographers are unequivocal about the primary reason for his attraction—the 1',""" annuity that came with Mary Anne was extremely attractive to the heavily indebted Disraeli—but they also agree in noting that what began as a convenient marriage for him ended up becoming the ideal marriage for both, providing “a picture of remarkable mutual devotion and respect.”28 Disraeli made his ,rst speech in the House of Commons on December &, #%$&, a speech reproduced here in its entirety. At the end of the speech, Disraeli, who was heckled and shouted down by the Whigs from across the chamber, told the Commons: “I sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me.” Perhaps if Daniel

27 Edmund Burke, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, &nd ed. (London: John Dodsley, #$"#), ,'–,$. 28 Parry, ‘Disraeli.’ xvii INTRODUCTION O’Connell, the M.P. for Dublin—who had mocked him with an anti- Semitic screed some years prior, noting the “utter abhorrence which I entertain for such a reptile”29—would have recognised the greatness of the man he mocked so jeeringly and perniciously, he would have thought twice; that he did not is to our bene,t, and we have the bene,t of seeing Disraeli, itching to ,ght, in his very ,rst Parliamentary appearance. +e next few years were a mixed bag. Disraeli’s star was undoubtedly rising. In #%(#, the Conservatives won a majority in Parliament in the general election and Peel was made Prime Minister. Disraeli wrangled for a Cabinet post, but his posturing did not pay o0, and for some time he seems to have made peace with the fact that for now, his star would rise no further. He was, by now, a prominent , and he certainly took it upon himself to improve his lot. A trip to that resulted in a crucial meeting with the French King Louis Phillipe followed with the blessings of Lord Lyndhurst. Once in Paris, he wrote to his sister: “I am in personal as well as political favour there.”30 On his return, Disraeli found a new spirit in him, voting with the Radicals against the government on foreign policy issues.31 His stature as a statesman seemed to rise even if he moved little from the backbenches. At this crucial juncture, Disraeli was “bored, restless, [and] vaguely discontented.”32 His biographers tend to look upon this period as “new and esoteric,” the result of a fundamental dissatisfaction with the in Parliament. Faction had arisen in the party, and Peel seemed unable to hold it together. +is is where the dispute—a considerable one— begins between admirers of Disraeli. Monypenny and Buckle, authors of the monumental six-volume biography of Disraeli, understood that a perusal of Disraeli’s rhetoric in his early Radical years would reveal that the principles of Young England were but an incremental re,nement from the mode of rhetoric he had previously been drawing upon. “For ten years,” they note, “he had been preaching the political truth that was in him to an inattentive public and an indi0erent House of Commons,

29 William Flavelle Monypenny and , !e Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beacons"eld, ' vols (New York: !e Macmillan Company, #"#'–&*), #.&%%. Hereinafter M&B. 30 M&B, &.#,%. 31 M&B, &.#'*. 32 Blake, Disraeli, #'$. xviii INTRODUCTION and had only succeeded in adding to his reputation of political adventurer the reputation of political visionary, which was still more damaging.”33 Now, he had ,nally found his audience. Robert Blake, on the other hand, notes that “Disraeli was not the man to take it too seriously.”34 Such a position is prima facie untenable, if only because a perusal of Disraeli’s major political treatise, his Vindication, reveals a consciously and powerfully articulated set of principles that found articulation in Disraeli’s Young England trilogy of novels. On December #), #%$(, some seven years before Disraeli’s ,rst acquaintance with the Young England group, he made some remarks to the electors of High Wycombe in what would turn out to be an abortive attempt. +e Church of England’s established position was “a guarantee of civilisation and a barrier against bigotry.”35 +e Church represented the inheritances of those who did not get anything from their fathers—it was “their patrimony, their only hereditary property.”36 Already we can see the germination of the seeds that sprouted fully a decade after this speech in Sybil, reproduced here in part, and one might not be mistaken in believing these quotes to come from the second book of that famed political novel. Disraeli believed that “the spirit of the most comprehensive toleration [was] required,” and worked ceaselessly to advocate for Catholic Emancipation and the rights of the Dissenters. +e ,rst bene,ciaries of “Financial Relief” ought to be “the agricultural interest … [which] is fearfully depressed,”37 a belief he recounted in #%&*—as Prime Minister—to the Royal Central and Central Bucks agricultural association.38 All this, in #%$(, before he was returned to Parliament or even elected to the Carlton Club. Disraeli wrote to Louis Phillipe, the French monarch, in #%(!, recommending that “a party of the youth of England, in-uenced by the noblest views” was the only conduit through which Anglo-French relations could be improved.39 Who were these young men who fascinated Disraeli? George Smythe, later the seventh Viscount

33 M&B, #''. 34 Blake, Disraeli, #$&. 35 W&W, &$. 36 W&W, &'. 37 W&W, &,. 38 !is being the last chapter of the present volume. 39 ‘Memorandum for the King of the French’ in M&B, &.(*"–#+. xix INTRODUCTION Strangford, was the ringleader before Disraeli entered the scene. Some years after the end of the Young England group’s activities, he would go on to achieve fame and notoriety as the last man to ,ght a on English soil—he was merely trying to defend his honour before a numbing and career-ending loss at the election soon after.40 Disraeli seems to have thought that Smythe was “puerile,” changing his opinion only after “he sni0ed the incense of Smythe’s hero-worship.”41 +e group drew heavily upon the resources of Henry Hope, whose Deepende House was the group’s country retreat of choice. Missing from the account of the group in Disraeli’s general preface to his novels are John Manners, later the seventh Duke of Rutland, and Alexander Baillie Cochrane, later the ,rst Baron Lamington. All were Tory members of the Commons at the time. Disraeli was an unusual leader of the coterie of Eton schoolboys who spent their formative years at Cambridge. Disraeli was a most unlikely member and later leader of this band of a.uent aristocrats, but they found fraternity in politics. Disraeli had once been a radical and then a Tory and a Radical, and then ,nally settled on being a Conservative. But that middle phase—the Tory Radical—never left Disraeli’s imagination, and it was partly the happenstance of history that left him to rise to the very top of the Conservative party. +e Young England group “turned their backs on the degenerate Toryism of privilege and immobility,” and there was no better leader than Disraeli, upwardly mobile and from a comparatively unprivileged background.42 +eir Parliamentary activities as a prominent faction of the larger party were more or less led entirely by Disraeli, and while they achieved some degree of success they were not a concentrated force with de,nitive goals as much as a group of like- thinking Tories. +e Young England group was most certainly a doctrinaire group. Paternalistic in disposition, romantic in origin, the group held discernible views on the Church, the class system, and politics. +e great objects of distrust were the Whigs and the middle classes; the former, for surrendering the country to ,nancial interests that cared little for the peoples, and the latter, for their worship of materialism and fascination with utilitarianism. “+ey had that faith in the lower orders which the

40 Blake notes that Smythe received seven votes in the following election. Disraeli, #'". 41 Ibid. 42 M&B, &.#'(. xx INTRODUCTION Tory party had lost, and the courage to believe that it might be possible to redeem them from the misery and serfdom into which they had fallen.”43 +ey bemoaned the loss of the noble and lofty sentiment that had guided the English through periods of hardship and success—duty and obligation—and sought to permanently impress in the new generation of the aristocracy and landed gentry the necessity of that old order which they had sought to abandon when they saw the cogs of change slowly begin to turn in the mills and looms of the industrial belt. For Disraeli, this meant that the goals of political activity ought “to elevate the physical as well as the moral condition of the people, by establishing that labour required regulation as much as property; and all this rather by the use of ancient forms and the restoration of the past than by political revolutions founded on abstract ideas.” Disraeli’s revolution as a political thinker occurred most prominently in Sybil, and his importance cannot be overstated. He was the ,rst conservative political thinker to actively engage with the e0ects of industrialism on social and political thought.44 Disraeli’s work is often mentioned as derivative and of secondary importance to his more frequently mentioned counterparts, Burke. But it is notable that Burke avoided, for the most part, mention of the problems of industrial society. +e di0erence can largely be explained through historical di0erences, but it cannot be denied that there is a degree of dissonance and di0erence between the economic thinking of the two luminaries. “In the age of Burke,” Quinton notes, “the human symbol of rapid economic success was a canal-building Duke, a member of the ancient governing order, deftly exploiting new opportunities.”45 +e industrialist of Disraeli’s time was not so much part of the ancient order as a sworn enemy of it. Burke recognised this fully in his now controversial tract, ‘+oughts and Details on Scarcity.’46 He writes that the “throats of the rich ought not to be cut … because, in their persons, they are trustees for those who labour, and their hoards are the banking houses of the latter.”47 +e recommendations of Burke’s tract are apt for an agrarian

43 M&B, &.#',. 44 !is point I owe to Quinton, Politics of Imperfection, %&. 45 Ibid, $+. 46 Edmund Burke, ‘!oughts and Details on Scarcity (#$",) in Select Works of Edmund Burke, ed. Francis Canavan, ( vols (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., #"""), (.'#–"&. 47 Burke, ‘!oughts on Scarcity,’ '&. xxi INTRODUCTION society where people live o0 the land, but the tract has not aged well in the industrial and post-industrial societies of to-day. Adam Smith admired the pin factory, with all its division of labour and the attendant pro,ts. But discontentment over that system was long brewing; Sir +omas More’s Utopia (#'#)) ,rst rang the alarm. +e ,rst book of Utopia mentions at length the problems of early modern England. More distinguishes between thieves and those who steal from fear of privation: “For great and horrible punishment should be appointed for thieves. Whereas much rather provisions should have been made, that there were some means whereby they might get their living, so that no man should be driven to this extreme necessity.”48 More’s solution is to revitalise the traditional agricultural industries of England—“let husbandry and tillage be restored; let clothworking be renewed, that they may be honest labours …”49 Disraeli draws from More a concern for the nature and quality of work, which he found to be increasingly alienating for those subject to it. He alludes to More’s Utopia by name more than twice across Sybil at key junctures but, more importantly, draws from the concerns More established.50 It was not enough to provide employment—it ought to be ful,lling and supportive of life. Disraeli borrowed most certainly from More his concerns for the nature of work, and we see this especially in the handloom weaver’s monologue in Sybil. “Once he was an artizan: at the best, he now only watches machines; and even that occupation slips from his grasp … we sink, lower, and lower; lower than the beasts of burden.”51 More points out the need to give full expression to ful,lling work; Disraeli gives that expression. If one must search for novelty arising from Disraeli’s -irtations with the Young England group, it is his concern with the nature of work and the disastrous e0ects of industrialisation. In his earlier speeches, and even in his Vindication, there had been scarce little to adjudicate his views on the subject, but in Sybil we get the fullest expression of this yearning for a lost England, an England that can be recovered not through con-ict and mass mobilisation—the means of the Chartists—

48 !omas More, ‘Utopia’, in !ree Early Modern Utopias, ed. Susan Bruce, trans. Ralph Robinson, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, #"""), #%. 49 More, ‘Utopia’, &(. 50 Sybil, Bk. # Ch. ,. 51 Sybil, Bk. & Ch. #+. xxii INTRODUCTION but the recognition of the duties and responsibilities that were entailed by the privileged. An aristocracy without a sense of noblesse oblige is no di0erent from a rapacious Venetian oligarchy. In October of #%((, Disraeli, for the ,rst time, visited factories in the industrial belt, along with Smythe and Cochrane, and saw for himself the degraded conditions of workers trampled and left behind by the fast march of industrialisation. If Disraeli had been a reactionary, we would not have had the pleasure of his description of an idyllic factory in Sybil, a factory where those who worked were treated with dignity and o0ered the opportunity to actualise some larger aspect of themselves: “[Mr. Tra0ord] imbibed, at an early period of his career, a correct conception of the relations which should subsist between the employer and the employed. He felt that between them there should be other ties than the payment and receipt of wages.”52 Tr a0ord’s factory was completely di0erent from the factories of his time—airy, well ventilated, a township where houses would be provided along with schools and baths and church. It is the sort of place where toil does not translate to pain, where the moral obligation of the employer to the employee is focal to the relationship between them. +at camaraderie between the Cambridge boys and Disraeli was not to remain for long; parental obligations beckoned Smythe and Manners, who were soon returned to the watchful eyes of the party whip from which they had a0ected an escape under the trance of Disraeli’s leadership. By the end of #%(', this extremely promising group was no more. +e next few years were of some political importance, but for the most part, between #%()–'!, he was animated by “excitable naivety rather than ,endish cunning.”53 Even though the Conservatives had been in the wilderness, Disraeli managed to make his way to the front benches, this time across the benches from Her Majesty’s Government. For the most part of #%'!, following a Conservative victory at the polls, he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer for the ,rst of what would eventually be three spells, each somewhat longer. +e biggest change that took place in the intervening years—in the two-decade period between the #%(' publication of Sybil and the #%)(

52 Sybil, Bk. + Ch. %. 53 Parry, ‘Disraeli.’ xxiii INTRODUCTION speech to the Oxford Diocesan Society, Disraeli expended more energy on the ful,lment of his political ambitions than on thinking about politics. Disraeli split in those two decades with Peel—a split that had ,rst begun with the Young England bloc voting with the Radicals, against the Conservatives, in the Commons. He advocated strongly for to protect English farmers from ruin and campaigned against the repeal of the . Long an advocate of Burkean designs on Indian a0airs, Disraeli ,nally succeeded in #%'%, following the First Sepoy Mutiny, of doing what Burke was unable to do—as Chancellor of the Exchequer and the ranking Conservative of the Commons, he pulled through the commons the Government of India Act of #%'%. +e Act had the desirous e0ect of devolving the East Indian Company of all power and authority in India, which was to be governed by the English directly. Burke had reproached Warren Hastings only seven decades earlier in the opening of his impeachment trial; in Burke’s estimation, it was clear that in accordance to the ancient customs and laws of the English, “no subject, in no part of the Empire, can fail of competent and proportionable justice.”54 Five years earlier, Burke had passed judgement on the in the Commons: “… an oppressive, irregular, capricious, unsteady, rapacious, and peculating despotism, with a direct disavowal of obedience to any authority at home, and without any ,xed maxim, principle, or rule of proceeding …..”55 Burke, this time, did not stop with a denunciation—he proceeded to impeach Hastings ,rst in the name of the Commons in Parliament, and then of all of Great Britain, then the peoples of India: “I impeach him in the name, and by virtue, of those eternal laws of justice, which he has violated. I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life.” Disraeli—whose self-fashioning in the image of Burke began with the Vindication and never really ended—found inspiration from his intellectual master in this endeavour, too. Although Disraeli openly

54 Edmund Burke, ‘Speech in Opening the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (#$%%)’, in On Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Speeches and Letters, ed. David Bromwich (New Haven: Yale University Press, &***), +$$–(**, +%(. 55 Edmund Burke, ‘Speech on Fox’s East India Bill (#$%+),’ in On Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Speeches and Letters, ed. David Bromwich (New Haven: Yale University Press, &***), &%&–+$*, +(,. xxiv INTRODUCTION decried the use of “an arrow from the quiver of Indian reformers,”56 he continued: “!ey are explained—they are apologised for—extenuating pleas are urged in favour of those who exercise power: but the most experienced servants of the Company or of the Crown will not come forward and tell you that there have not been wars, and almost continual wars; they will not come forward and tell you that the native population of India is a wealthy and thriving population; they do not come forward to tell you that the condition of the country is changed; that the means of communication which were wanting have been provided … I say that under these circumstances the House of Commons and the Parliament of this country are bound to attempt to discover what is the cause of this misgovernment of India—this chronic misgovernment of India.”57 Disraeli seems to have expended signi,cant energies on Indian a0airs, and like Burke, his vision of Empire was admirable and benevolent, founded on a fundamental equality governed by the rules of justice. +ose subject to the Empire were not to be subject to capricious despotisms. Disraeli spoke these fateful words in #%'$, warning of calamitous occurrences in the future if the governance of India was not improved and turned over to the political regime of the , away from the East India Company, whose activities were more suitable for rapine than commerce or political rule. He had campaigned for dismantling of the East India Company, which was founded upon a Parliamentary charter in constant need of renewal; ,ve years later, following a divisive and reckless mutiny spurred by Company mismanagement and the loss of tens of thousands of lives across the subcontinent, Parliament acquiesced. +is was neither Disraeli’s ,rst nor his last tryst with Empire. In #%&), Disraeli as Prime Minister pushed the Royal Titles Act through the Commons, making Queen Victoria the Empress of India. It is worth noting that Disraeli’s most important tryst with the —a cult he promoted, no doubt, as one can see in the Crystal Palace and Conservative Principles speeches in this tome— was a tryst fundamentally concerned with the application of justice. If the ,fties were dominated by Indian and Irish a0airs, the following decade was dedicated to the pursuit of o/ce, and the actualisation of a long-held dream. Disraeli was appointed Prime Minister in #%)% after Lord Derby resigned following a particularly nasty bout of the gout.58

56 Hansard vol. #&%, c. #*+'. 57 Hansard vol. #&%, cc. #*(#–(&. 58 Parry, ‘Disraeli.’ xxv INTRODUCTION However, the Reform Act of that year, which Disraeli actively championed, expanded the franchise drastically and signi,cantly. In the ensuing election, Disraeli lost a working majority in the Commons, and spent the next six years as Leader of the Opposition. It is from this period that we get the famed Crystal Palace speech and the Conservative Principles speech of Manchester—primarily intended for getting a leg up on his rivals, the speeches speak to something far more profound. A perusal of these speeches, delivered not too long apart, will show that the Disraeli of #%&! di0ered very little from the Disraeli of Young England. +e Liberals had taken up the banner of Republicanism, and Disraeli found it extremely painful that he had to content with such forces. He thought them for some time now to be pernicious; in the Vindication the Whigs were declared “an anti-national party” for their pursuit of a Venetian oligarchy. In the Crystal Palace and Manchester speeches, Disraeli refers to a certain speech made by a certain Sir Charles Dilke. Dilke, a Liberal, proposed the abolishment of the aristocratic principle, the logical result of which would be the abolishment of the House of Lords and the banishment of the aristocracy from their avowedly public duties and political role. +e ‘advanced guard of Liberalism’ also proposed a ‘House of Peers,’ stacked with life peers—a principle that was revived and put on a plinth with the Life Peerages Act of #*'% and the House of Lords Act of #***; the former permitted the creation of life peers beyond the Law Lords; the latter prevented all but ninety hereditary peers from claiming their seats in the Lords. Disraeli feared for the equalising force of his times. Even the Conservative Prime Minister Lord Derby at the time found the principle acceptable— Disraeli reports that “the other day [he] gave in his adhesion to a limited application of this principle.” In his Crystal Palace speech, given later in #%&!, Disraeli notes that the zeitgeist has been “to attack the institutions of the country under the name of Reform, and to make war on the manners and customs of the people of this country under the pretext of Progress.” Disraeli’s use of the word ‘Progress’ is all over the place. When he speaks of it as a political principle, it is generally decried, for it entails the destruction of the old even when it is not necessary, along with an unhealthy dose of quick change, the consequences of which are more often than not both unknown at the moment the change is occurring, and disastrous. He xxvi INTRODUCTION tells the members of the Manchester Athenaeum the importance of “public virtue and public spirit” in “light[ing] the path of human progress to educated man,” but when it comes to making statements about the Doctrine of Progress instead of more local claims, Disraeli is averse to the very idea. Morley, the socialist, tells Egremont in Sybil of the “irresistible law of progress” that causes the demise of the undesirable and the replacement of it with a more robust conception, re-ecting the teleological thinking of the German Idealists. In his address as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow the year after his Crystal Palace address—to an audience that would have included students as much as members of the university faculty and administration—he reckons that “our boasted progress has only been an advancement in a circle, and that our new philosophy has brought us back to that old serfdom which it has taken ages to extirpate.” Yes, there can be improvement in the human lot; of this there is no doubt. Disraeli would not have campaigned and then delivered on his promise to regulate factories and big businesses— an accomplishment he was extremely proud of—if he did not believe that it was the welfare of its subjects was the responsibility of a conservative government. In a land where everyone was equal under the eyes of the law, where freedom of expression and the rights of petition were inalienable and absolute, and where active e0orts were being made to restore the nature and dignity of work and the working classes, a doctrine of progress would imply dissatisfaction with the customs and traditions that Disraeli inherited and wielded. He was ready to admit the ills of industrial society, but not at the cost of admitting the failure of those customs and traditions—for him, the materialist mentality that had percolated society began with the Whiggish interest and the introduction of Dutch ,nance into the bucolic English countryside and aristocracy. It was primarily a failure of those who forgot the duties imposed upon them by their social and political status. +e Whiggish interest—understood best as the zero-sum commercial mind that leaves each to their own devices—was the intellectual force of decay and despotism that had despoiled the English peoples of their dignity. We see in Disraeli’s ,ction the appearance of the lazy aristocrat—Lord Marney is most certainly one of them—and although the lazy aristocracy can be of either political leaning, the concerns that animate their dereliction of duty are seen to be more Whiggish contrivance than English in origin. “An aristocracy xxvii INTRODUCTION distinguished merely by wealth,” Disraeli points out, “must perish from society.” Disraeli took it upon himself “to change back the oligarchy into a generous aristocracy,” and while he was not alone in this, it is surprising that it took the fortuitous intervention of an outsider—Disraeli very much was one, and even fashioned himself in such a manner in dress and conduct—to remind them of the absolute and urgent necessity of assuming, once again, the roles that they had been endowed with. +is, in part, leads Disraeli to a repudiation of social, material, and physical equality. +e three classes are symbiotic and they play their irreplaceable part in the grand scheme of the nation. Material advancement is vapid and meaningless without the aid of other social and political mores: “Society has a soul as well as a body. !e traditions of a nation are part of its existence. Its valour and its discipline, its religious faith, its venerable laws, its science and erudition, its poetry, its art, its eloquence and its scholarship, are as much portions of its life as its agriculture, its commerce, and its engineering skill. Nay, I would go further, I would say that without these qualities material excellence cannot be attained.” Material prosperity must be understood not as a good in itself but as a subordinate pursuit in our lives. Work is to be treated as part of the demands of life, but it ought not to infringe upon the national character and the ability of the people to partake in the customs and traditions of the land they are inheritors of. A world bereft of the social and the political ties that hold a nation together and make it more than a mere assemblage of persons who, by some accident, share in a common spatiotemporal span, is a “world which deserves to be enslaved.” Disraeli felt extremely strongly about the importance the new generations played in participating in an old nation of venerable antiquity. “+e youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity,” he tells the working men of Manchester who have gathered at the Athenaeum, who “occupy a position which, under all circumstances, at all periods, and in every clime and country, is one replete with duty.” Duty was no charade through which the machinations of the powerful were imbued with meaning but the vital force that held together a functioning society. In his Vindication, he praises the Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester, who called the Parliament of #!)( as leader of the baronial rebellion against Henry III. Disraeli dismisses “any very revolutionary tendency in his conduct;” he is most certainly full of praise for those barons who stepped up to the cause when the monarchy failed in its

xxviii INTRODUCTION duty. Montfort, in Disraeli’s view, led a rebellion because he “anticipated in some degree the necessities of his age,” and the result of his rebellion—a word Disraeli never uses to describe Montfort’s actions— was to secure the next generation unparalleled peace and prosperity. +e duties of each class served as the customary check of balance and power. Disraeli was no fool—he did not think that man was, on the whole, unfailingly noble and virtuous—but he was also no pessimist, and allowed for the possibility for man to better his lot. In his Politics, Aristotle recommended to the legislator of his ideal city that “there are three things which make men good and virtuous; there are nature, habit, and rational principle.”59 Disraeli sought to capitalise on all three. We have seen hitherto observed the font and extent of Disraeli’s concern for the peoples, and it is necessary to make mention of the role of civic religion in his political thought. Some critics of Sybil thought it apt to criticise the sympathetic treatment of the Catholic Church, and they are correct in noting that the Anglo-Catholicism of the devolved into Catholicism. A more inclusive version of High Church , however, was the end which Disraeli desired. +e customs and traditions of the people were inevitably bound up with their faith, and to sustain both it was deemed necessary for the truly national Church of England to embrace that necessity. However, Disraeli was no fan of faction within the Church, even though he openly acknowledged the role that con-ict played in the early Christian churches. +e exclusivity of the so-called ‘Ritualists’ was threatening the spirit of the Church, Disraeli argued in his speech to the Oxford Diocesan Society, and the Church’s future successes were contingent upon the various factions sharing the “common platform of true Church principles.” St. Lys, who pastored over the -ock at Marney, and who, despite its poor condition, remained proud in his role, even if it had been much degraded by the social conditions around that he could do little to alleviate the burden of. He did not forget, however, what the Church was: “Formerly religion undertook to satisfy the noble wants of human nature, and by its festivals relieved the painful weariness of toil. !e day of rest was consecrated, if not always to elevated thought, at least to sweet and noble sentiments. !e church convened to its solemnities under its splendid and almost celestial roofs amid the )nest monuments of art that human hands have raised, the whole Christian

59 Politics #++&a(*; Benjamin Jowett’s translation. xxix INTRODUCTION population; for there, in the presence of God, all were brethren. It shared equally among all its prayer, its incense, and its music; its sacred instructions, and the highest enjoyments that the arts could a-ord.”60 It is this that presented a problem for Disraeli—when the condition of the people was so degraded, what was the ,rst responsibility of the Church? Was the Church to regale those with lavish ritual, or was it to care for of those they pastored to? +ese were most certainly not mutually exclusive choices, but they presented a dilemma when confronted with the vast but limited resources of the Church. Although Disraeli’s High Church sentiments remained strong, he began to see through their air of exclusivity, and with a suggestion of odiousness on their behalf comported to them the quality of tending to their theological interests more carefully than to the peoples they were the shepherds of. Disraeli sought “to infuse life and vigour into the Church, as the trainer of the nation, by the revival of Convocation, then dumb, on a wide basis.” He wanted to give the Church the opportunity to discuss and deliberate in its own right; if there was to be faction and controversy in the Church, it was best to let it play out in a limited space, behind closed doors and with vigour, and then put on a uni,ed front when performing their vital task: the care and nurture of the English peoples. “In recognising the Church as a powerful agent in the previously development of England,” Disraeli held that it was also “the most e/cient means of that renovation of the national spirit which was desired.” +e Church contributed to and maintained the national character of the English. When the people were faced with widespread normlessness and rapid change, it was the Church who was responsible for ensuring that damage to the souls was alleviated and “faith in the spiritual nature of man” was revived. +ere was no State without Church, and no Church without State. Materialism Disraeli equated with “an atheistical society, though it may be polished and amiable.” +ere was the added bene,t of Whig and Liberal threats to disestablish the Church of England—a threat they carried out in part in #%$!, when both Houses of Parliament, previously synods of the Church of England, became lay synods. +ere was another topic that Disraeli felt very strongly about, and it was agriculture. Admitting Anthony Quinton’s argument that Disraeli’s great service to conservative thought was his engagement and acceptance

60 Sybil, Bk. & Ch. #&. xxx INTRODUCTION of increasing industrialisation, it does not necessarily follow that the trials and tribulations of the landed, agricultural interest were of no interest to Disraeli, either as a politician or a political thinker. As early as #%(', he had voiced concern over agricultural distress, in a speech the rather sympathetic editor of Disraeli’s speeches termed “another philippic against the Government.”61 One might question whether Disraeli’s speech had the power of Demosthenes’ oration or the tragic sublimity of Cicero’s, but it can be emphatically stated that agricultural distress would move him to vote against Her Majesty’s Government, even when his party was the one helming it. Disraeli’s path to becoming a statesman and eventual leader of the Tories was lit in no small part by the manner in which he championed the farmers and rural interest of England whilst contending with the advance guard of industrialism. One of his last speeches on agricultural distress, given in #%&*, is reproduced in this volume for the clarity with which it elucidates the peculiar characteristics of English agriculture and its relation to the manner in which it assisted in the creation of the great British class system, a creation fundamentally tied to its political institutions, as Disraeli would maintain from his Vindication. +e origins of the three classes are the three “pro,t of the soil,” which Disraeli posits must be paid regardless of whether a single individual or entity represents more than one recipient of pro,t—land rent, labour, capital. +e agricultural distress that pained Disraeli so much was caused by a slowdown in the market, exacerbated by the rapid import of corn and other agricultural products. It is, as has been done previously, point out the protean nature of duty and obligation, but Disraeli here does not shy away from doing so. +e circumstances were unnatural—the English had never seen such a protracted period of agricultural distress— but the large part of land rent and capital going to a concentrated class made it tenable to ask them to shoulder the burden. Disraeli says, “It is in my mind the duty—and from all that I have heard I believe it to be the willing duty—of the proprietors of the soil to come forward and stand by that class from whom, under all circumstances, there has never been any want of loyalty and devotion. I say I believe that the landlords of England are prepared to do their duty on this occasion.”

61 Benjamin Disraeli, Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable Earl of Beacons"eld, ed. T. E. Kebbel, & vols (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., #%%&), #.$(–%#. xxxi INTRODUCTION +e landlords were the safety net that the peasantry could rely upon— support and devotion here coming not merely in the form of prayers, but in the form of substantive change to alleviate pain to the extent possible. It did not solve most problems, Disraeli acknowledged, but that did not prevent him from pursuing—and, to the extent possible, intervening, as he then was Prime Minister—relief for the yeomen and farmers of England. +e Whigs could not be bothered on the subject— they were the party of free enterprise and the prosperity gospel, the party solely of the middling urban classes who had dealt with agricultural issues “with a feeling of hostility to the agricultural interest … because they believe it is the agricultural interest of this country that upholds and tends to maintain that free and aristocratic Government.” +e aristocratic principle was well and alive in rural England, if only because the relationship between tenant and aristocrat was functional and substantive. Disraeli had for his entire life expounded upon that special bond that existed between two sons of the same soil; whether they found themselves in the Commons or Lords was wholly immaterial. In the midst of a ferocious Parliamentary battle spanning #%('–(), Disraeli made an impassioned plea for the protection of agriculture, a position he admitted seemed to be coming from the wrong quarters, considering the more urban constituency he then represented. But, for Disraeli this was a ,ght over the very essence of England and its mode of governance. He termed it a “territorial constitution,” a phrase that is not mentioned even once in his Vindication but surprisingly features in Sybil.62 What does this entail? “… we should give a preponderance, for that is the proper and constitutional word, to the agricultural branch; and the reason is, because in England, we have a territorial constitution. We have thrown upon the land the revenues of the Church, the administration of justice, and the estate of the poor; and this has been done, not to gratify the pride or pamper the luxury of the proprietors of the land, but because, in a territorial constitution, you, and those whom you have succeeded, have found the only security for self-government, the only barrier against that centralising system which has taken root in other countries.”63 It is in the land of England that the rights and liberties of the Englishmen are vested, whether it be through Poor Relief or a general sense of belonging that cannot be replicated elsewhere. +e English continue to invest in their land because it is their obligation to do so,

62 Bk. & Ch. $. 63 Disraeli, Selected Speeches, #.#(&. xxxii INTRODUCTION Disraeli argues, even when that investment could be more pro,tably used elsewhere. But the return on land includes the “honour peculiar to” the possession of land that gives “the landowner a position which is superior to that of any other class.”64 +e possession and development of land, however, is not the sole aim of the territorial constitution; neither must it be. It prevents the devolvement of centralised government into a behemoth and restricts the impulse that +omas Hobbes’ Leviathan tapped into when it recommended the form of a Biblical monster for a bene,cent force. It is by virtue of the importance of land in the English system that two directive principles of state policy can be better achieved—for the government must “feed the people, and employ the people.”65 Disraeli had always felt strongly about those “being left without resource” and recourse, and it was his drive to “protect the industry of our fellow- subjects” that drove him to rebel against the Conservative government of the time.66 Disraeli, moved by the agricultural distress of #%(', remarked in a speech to the Commons his “belief that a Conservative Government is an organised hypocrisy.”67 One cannot imagine such statements endearing him to his own party or to Sir Robert Peel, against whom the invective was weighed and -ung, but the style and the direction of this strongly worded and rebellious protest reveals the extent to which Disraeli was willing to go to support the agricultural interest in a country that was fast industrialising. In agriculture, he not only saw the preservation of the constitution of England and its attendant civil liberties, but also the preservation of work that had provided for the people of England for as long as one could remember. Agriculture, for Disraeli, was the English way of life. A visibly sick Disraeli could have only been removed from the Lords to attend to the Royal and Central Bucks Agricultural Association in the penultimate year of his Prime Ministership if he had felt the pressing need to mount a defence of agriculture, and the last speech in this volume is a testament to that. In the interim, Disraeli had been created the ,rst Earl of Beacons,eld by Queen Victoria in #&%), a title originally coveted by Edmund Burke, whose estate, Gregories, was not too far away from

64 Ibid, #.#+'. 65 Ibid, #.#+(. 66 Ibid, #.#+&. 67 Ibid, #.%#. xxxiii INTRODUCTION Disraeli’s . Burke’s son, Richard, predeceased him, and with that went all hope of being ennobled, though it is extremely likely that had his son survived Burke would have had a title created for his services to the Crown, especially as a staunch defender of its values. It is unlikely that the symbolism and coincidence would have escaped Disraeli, who fashioned himself consciously after Burke for much of his life. One of the animating factors in Disraeli’s ennoblement was his poor health, which rendered it impossible for him to continue with the daily rigmarole of the Commons. A poor economy caused a Conservative loss in the election of #%%", ending Disraeli’s last spell as Prime Minister.68 Disraeli, now Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the Conservatives in the Lords, su0ered from another bout of ill health that resulted in the development of “severe bronchitis,” and on April #*, #%%#, breathed his last.69 He was buried not far from Edmund Burke, who too rests in Hughenden Church. Queen Victoria, immensely fond of him, sent primroses to the funeral, along with three princes of royal extraction; everyone but his arch-rival Gladstone came to his wake. Sometime later, the Queen erected the sole monument to this date from a British monarch in honour of a subject—a memorial in Hughenden Church. ✥ ✥ Queen Victoria’s gift of primrose -owers was only the beginning of Disraeli’s long life after his death. He was, and remains to this day, known for his political thought, which has been extremely in-uential in English conservatism. +e philosopher and Conservative M.P. Jesse Norman, for instance, remarked once that conservatism could be best understood by the competing strands present within it—the ,rst, a free market, laissez faire group, the second “a paternalist conservatism that has prioritised community and social stability.”70 +e conservatism of the Margaret +atcher, he reasons, was the revival of “”—the very thing that Disraeli fought so hard against.71 Norman is hardly the ,rst conservative to anchor his conception of conservatism on Disraeli, which for him “represents a nineteenth

68 Parry, ‘Disraeli’; M&B '.($$. 69 Parry, ‘Disraeli.’ 70 Jesse Norman and Janan Ganesh, Compassionate Conservatism (London: , &**'), &". 71 Ibid, +*. xxxiv INTRODUCTION century high watermark of Tory paternalism.”72 In recent years, the One Nation Conservatives has wielded immense power over the Conservative Party, claiming “over #"" Conservative M.P.s, accounting for almost one-third of the Parliamentary party.”73 +is is, by no means, a recent phenomenon. Gladstone outlived Disraeli for almost two decades but did not live to see the dawn of the new century. While Disraeli was breathing his last, his legacy was just being born. Lord Randolph was close friends with Benjamin Disraeli. He was ,rst elected to the Commons at the start of Disraeli’s second ministry, but Disraeli’s death alienated Churchill from the Conservative party. By the end of #%%", Churchill, along with fellow Conservative M.P.s Henry Drummond Wol0, (later the ,rst ), and John Gorst, took inspiration from Disraeli’s Young England parliamentary faction and the ideas the group espoused, rebelled against the party to set up the ‘’ faction, much like Disraeli did in the #%("s, launching particularly heated diatribes against Gladstone and their fellow conservatives for their moral and political failures.74 ’s son, , took inspiration from both Disraeli and his father and found himself a member of the ‘Hughligans,’ a similar group that disrupted the Conservatives’ parliamentary presence. +e , founded by the elder Churchill and his ‘Fourth Party’ colleagues, drew upon the memory of Queen Victoria’s funerary bouquet of primroses to galvanise the working classes in favour of the Conservatives and grew out of annual remembrances of Disraeli on the anniversary of his passing, on April #*. +e institution of Primrose Day was the brilliant idea of the Anglo-Indian Sir George Birdwood, who wrote anonymously in the importance of creating a “spontaneous expression of popular sentiment” by commemorating “great names with particular -owers.”75 Buckles note that importance of the Primrose League to English conservatism at the time—“a League

72 Ibid. 73 https://one-nation-conservatives.com/about/ 74 Blake, Disraeli, $'&. 75 M&B, '.'&". Monypenny had died some years prior and did not write the last four volumes of the six-volume biography. xxxv INTRODUCTION which has long taken rank as one of the most numerous and most e/cient political organisations in existence.”76 Disraeli had long shared a contentious relationship with his fellow Victorian, +omas Carlyle, who book on great men includes this snippet of wisdom: “We all love great men; love, venerate and bow down submissive before great men: nay can we honestly bow down to anything else?” It is in these terms that Disraeli was remembered for the most part. Buckle, writing the closing words of the magni,cent six-volume account of Disraeli’s life, remarks that “Disraeli appears a grand a magni,cent ,gure, standing solitary, towering above his contemporaries; the man of fervid imagination and vision wide and deep, amid a nation of narrow practical minds, philistine, Puritan-ridden; his life at once a romance and a tragedy, but a splendid tragedy; himself the greatest of our statement since the days of Chatham and Pitt.”77 As a political thinker and theorist, Disraeli’s legacy can be demarcated into two di0erent—but by no means mutually exclusive—traditions. +e ,rst bears a substantive and signi,cant relation to Disraeli’s disposition and his thought on the whole, de,ned commonly as Tory Radicalism. +e second is the rhetoric of ‘One Nation Conservatism’, taken from the famous encounter between Egremont, Walter Gerard, and Stephen Morley in Book !, Chapter ' of Sybil. Let us dispatch with the second ,rst, for it oft bears little relation to the substantive ideas presented in this introduction and the following pages of book, but nonetheless represents a key component of Disraeli’s political legacy. +e British Labour Party ran in the !"#! general election under the banner of ‘’ in what thought to be “an audacious raid deep into Conservative heritage.”78 Even Margaret +atcher—whose brand of politics made audacious raids deep into Gladstonian liberalism—alluded to Disraeli’s Reform Act of #%)& which signi,cantly expanded the franchise before remarking that the “Conservatives are returning power to the people.

76 M&B, '.'+*. !e Primrose League fell into oblivion in the #"$*s, when Disraelian conservatism was no longer fashionable or popular; it is no longer the force it once was. 77 M&B, '.'('. 78 Patrick Wintour, ‘ Moves to Claim Disraeli’s “one Nation” Mantle’, !e Guardian, & October &*#&, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/&*#&/oct/*&/ed- miliband-one-nation-speech#. xxxvi INTRODUCTION +at is the way to one nation, one people.”79 Disraeli, one must note, would be aghast at the libertine tendencies of +atcher’s government; it was the very thing he fought against. In many ways, the term ‘one nation’ has lost the tether it once had in articulating a signi,cant commitment to Disraelian ideas as a whole and is now devoid of speci,c meaning beyond usage as a rhetorical -ourish and a hat tip. +e appropriation and misappropriation of the term is cause of concern for the historian of ideas, but insofar as it presents fodder for exegesis, it is merely a façade for all sorts of ideas, many of which the Disraeli revealed in the following pages would ,nd wholly alien and absurd in relation to his work. +ere is, however, the presence of a more substantive legacy in political thought that must be recounted and upheld—that of the so- called ‘Tor y Radical.’ Disraeli was ,rst an independent Radical and then a Tory, but that did not stop him from borrowing liberally from both traditions. +e term itself might seem to be an abiding contradiction— how can a radical be a conservative? It must be admitted that Disraeli was neither the ,rst nor the last, but he was most certainly the most in-uential in this line of thought. +e Tory Radicals are a group that can be de,ned by their commitment to paternalism in governance; support for hierarchy and a prominent, marked Anglophilia; and an articulation of the importance of civic religion.80 +e sobriquet is most commonly used in connection with a near contemporary of Disraeli’s, Richard Oastler; Cecil Driver’s biography of Oastler is entitled Tor y Radical.81 Other contemporaries who shared signi,cant commonalities with Disraeli’s thought include John Ruskin and +omas Carlyle, though in both cases it must also be stressed that despite similarities, they di0er ever so slightly but importantly. Insofar as they partook in the common tenets of what we term ‘Tor y Radicalism’ they enjoined themselves to that common cause, but Carlyle was most prominently not above putting his considerable talents to use in the creation of vicious personal invective against Disraeli. “Even Carlyle,” Buckle notes, “whose teaching was in many respects so similar to

79 Margaret !atcher, ‘Speech to Conservative Party Conference #"%'’ (!atcher Archive, #"%'), https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/#*'("%. 80 !e de)nition provided here di-ers from the one o-ered by John McGowan, ‘!e New Tory Radicals’, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal $&, no. &/+ (#"%"): ($$–,**. 81 Cecil Driver, Tor y Radical: !e Life of Richard Oastler (New York: Oxford University Press, #"('). xxxvii INTRODUCTION Disraeli’s, treated him as a ‘superlative Hebrew conjurer’.”82 Carlyle declined the baronetcy, a royal honour, and a pension that Disraeli had secured for him from Queen Victoria; he soon relapsed into vitriol against Disraeli.83 Ruskin and Disraeli saw eye to eye on questions of Empire and thought similarly of the importance of civic religion, but Ruskin articulated a less moderate version of Disraeli’s beloved squires and aristocrats standing in protection of the populace.84 Ruskin and Disraeli, however, would have found such remarkable common ground on the phantasmagoria of the Gothic and the Medieval they produced that it would not be unhealthy or improper speculation to wonder if they would have gotten along like old friends; perhaps, if Ruskin had walked another path, it would have been more likely he would have found camaraderie with the brilliant upstarts of Young England. +e next generation of British thinkers—R.H. Tawney in particular, and, to a great degree, George Orwell—would have found in Disraeli a kindred spirit. Tawney and Orwell were both sons of the British Raj; the former was born in Calcutta, the latter in Motihari, a small town in the Bengal Presidency. Tawney remarks of the gulf between the modern and the medieval: “But common habits, common traditions and beliefs, common pressure from above gave them a unity of direction, which restrained the forces of individual variation and lateral expansion; and the centre towards which they converged, formerly a Church possessing some of the characteristics of a State, was now a State that had clothed itself with many of the attributes of a Church.”85 For Tawney, one of the pervasive features of contemporary life was “the degradation of those who labour, but who do not by their labour command large rewards.”86 +e sentiment here re-ects that put forth by Disraeli’s brilliant monologue in Sybil in which the handloom weaver recounts with excruciating pain how the looms are squeezing the life out of him, drip by drip. But if this were the sole point of agreement, it would be a stretch to posit anything beyond mere coincidence. “+e concept that tied all this together for Tawney,” Tim Rogan notes, “was

82 M&B, +.("–,*. 83 M&B, ,.+,,-. 84 Quinton, Politics of Imperfection, %&. 85 R. H. Tawney, !e Acquisitive Society (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, #"&*), #*. 86 Ibid, +,. xxxviii INTRODUCTION the concept of tradition.”87 Tawney and Disraeli found common ground, too, on their conception of the role of the Church in the State, although Tawney was quicker to re-ect more medievalist conceptions of order that might seem dated in comparison to Disraeli’s early modern visions. George Orwell was a self-described Tory Anarchist who served as a police o/cer in Burma following schooling at Eton. +e Empire that Kipling brought to him was rather di0erent from the one that Kipling inherited from Disraeli, and the disillusionment that befell him led him to term the imperial enterprise now corrupt and -ailing, much like Disraeli and Burke had done in their own times and in their own peculiar manners.88 Orwell’s socialism was always a protean beast, and indeed it has been remarked that it never meant very much beyond what Disraeli o0ered— it was the government’s job to “feed the people, and employ the people.”89 Orwell di0ered most strongly with Disraeli on questions of class—Disraeli was an ardent advocate of the aristocratic principle, while Orwell was animated by an accepting egalitarianism. Beyond that, however, the self-described ‘Tor y Anarchist’ and the ‘Tor y Radical’ have much in common. ✥ ✥ ✥ Disraeli was himself a protean beast, and the inheritors of his legacy have su0ered from the same allusiveness that a.icts him. Disraeli concluded a chapter that Burke had begun, but at the risk of extending a metaphor further than it should be, it must be stated that the book is still being written to-day. His memory has been twisted and contorted in all manners. He is today one of those thinkers who is oft alluded to and almost never read; even if he is read, a single novel is thought to su/ce. In putting together this new volume of Disraeli’s political writings, it is hoped that justice can be done to Disraeli’s work, and the real Disraeli discovered, once again—not the Disraeli that produced what is now the most commonplace and trite soundbite of English politics, but the Disraeli whose -ashes of brilliance illuminated the social ills of industrial society, re-ected sincerely and deeply on the panacea to that malaise, and tried

87 Tim Rogan, !e Moral Economists (Princeton: Princeton University Press, &*#$), ,*. 88 John Rodden and John Rossi, ‘A Political Writer’, in !e Cambridge Companion to George Orwell, ed. John Rodden, Cambridge Companions to Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, &**$), #–##, &. 89 Disraeli, Selected Speeches, #.#+(. xxxix INTRODUCTION his best to put into motion a paternalistic, loving theory of politics that had the care of the people as the ,rst and foremost object of its deliberations and actions. ❧

xl A NOTE ON THE TEXT

SPEECHES +e standard edition of Disraeli’s speeches is the #%%! edition of his selected speeches: Benjamin Disraeli, Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable Earl of Beacons#eld, ed. T. E. Kebbel, ! vols (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., #%%!). While it is generally considered authoritative, it omits three important speeches. It presents a third-person rendition of Disraeli’s ,rst speech in the Commons; it does not include Disraeli’s ,rst speech as Prime Minister; it does not include the speech given at Glasgow. +e Glasgow speech is reprinted from: Benjamin Disraeli, Innaugural Address Delivered to the University of Glasgow, November $%, $&'(, by the Right Hon. Benajmin Disraeli, M.P., Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, !nd ed. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., #%&$). +e speech entitled ‘On Becoming Prime Minister’ is reprinted from Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates. Disraeli’s ,rst speech is reported in the ,rst person and follows closely the account contained in Hansard and reprinted in Kebbel’s volume: John Henry Barrow, ed., !e Mirror of Parliament for the First Session of the !irteenth Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland, in the First and Second Years of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Appointed to Meet November $), $&(', and from !ence Continued till August $*, $&(&., vol. #, Second Series (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, Paternoster-Row; John Murray, Albemarle-Street; and J. Richards & Co., Fleet-Street, #%$%), '$!–$).

VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION +e text of Disraeli’s Vindication is reprinted from the ,rst edition: Benjamin Disraeli, Vindication of the English Constitution in a Letter to a Noble and Learned Lord (London: Saunders and Otley, #%$').

NOVELS +e text for both the extracts are from the #%&" collected edition of Disraeli’s novels, as is the ‘General Preface’.❧ xli