Disraeli and England

Historical Journal

Volumn 43, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 699-728

  Parry, J P ^a  

^a PEMBROKE COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 61949452503     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X99001326     Document Type: Article

References (170)

1. See J. Garrard, 'Parties, members and voters after 1867', in T. Gourvish and A. O'Day, eds., Later Victorian Britain, 1867-1900 (Basingstoke, 1988), pp. 127-50.
2. D. A. Hamer, 'Gladstone: the making of a political myth', Victorian Studies, 22 (1978-9), pp. 36-7.
3. Ibid..
4. E. Biagini, Liberty, retrenchment, and reform: popular Liberalism in the age of Gladstone, 1860-1880 (Cambridge, 1992), ch. 7.
5. E. T. Turnerelli, Memories of a life of toil: the autobiography of Tracy Turnerelli, 'the old Conservative' (London, 1884), pp. 184-231.
6. On this repackaging, see M. Pugh, The lories and the people, 1880-1335 (Oxford, 1985), ch. 1, and P. Smith, Disraeli: a brief life (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 213-15.
7. P. Smith, Disraclian Conservatism and social reform (London, 1967);
8. M. Cowling, 1867: Disraeli, Gladstone and revolution: the passing of the second Reform Bill (Cambridge, 1967).
9. For the view that social reform was 'aimed explicitly at the urban and industrial working classes', see R. W. Davis, Disraeli (London, 1976), p. 173, supported by J. T. Ward, 'Derby and Disraeli', in D. Southgate, ed., The Conservative leadership, 1832-1332 (London, 1974), pp. 92, 100. For the view that imperialism was adopted for similar reasons, see especially F. Harcourt, 'Disraeli's imperialism, 1866-1868: a question of timing', Historical Journal, 23 (1980), pp. 87-109, and e.g. D. Southgate, 'Imperial Britain', in C. J. Bartlett, ed., Britain pre-eminent: studies of British world influence in the nineteenth century (London, 1969), p. 162.
10. E.g. in criticizing the extra-parliamentary agitation for the return of Protection in 1849; in refusing to pander to the Bonapartist war scares of 1852-3 and 1859; in opposing the extension of the Crimean War in 1855-6; in attacking the anti-native hysteria in the British media generated by the Indian Mutiny of 1857; in refusing to meet Garibaldi on his visit of 1864. The best case on the other side is Disraeli's occasional leaning towards anti-Catholicism, but the extent of this can easily be exaggerated: see e.g. W. F. Monypenny and G. E. Buckle, The life of Benjamin Disraeli earl of Beaconsfield (6 vols., London, 1910-20), III, pp. 374, 399-401, 543-5.
11. As late as 1876, Bagehot wrote that 'ten miles from London... there is scarcely any real conception of him': N. St John-Stevas, ed., The collected works of Walter Bagehot: III the historical essays (London, 1968), p. 504.
12. See James Ogden, Isaac D'Israeli (Oxford, 1969), pp. 109-13.
13. He therefore urged leniency towards Chartism: Hansard's parliamentary debates. 3rd series (H), LI, 729, 28 Jan. 1840. In Sybil (1845), Egremont says: 'the People can never be strong': bk IV, ch. 15.
14. See e.g. the satire on aristocratic philistinism in the opening chapter of Sybil, and on the poverty of upper-class language and sympathies in Lothair (1870), chs. 28, 81. Lothair and Endymion are both very bland heroes.
15. A selection from the diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th earl of Derby (1826-33) between September 1863 and March 1878, ed. J. Vincent (London, 1994), pp. 416, 198. Disraeli criticized the 'movement of the middle classes for the abolition of slavery' as.'virtuous, but... not wise': in its ignorant selfrighteousness, it had 'ruined the colonies and aggravated the slave trade': Lord Georgt Bentinck: a political biography (London, 1852), p. 324.
16. Coningsby (1844), bk 3, ch. 1. See his Inaugural address delivered to the university of Glasgow (2nd edn, including the occasional speeches, London, 1873), pp. 9-10, and H, cclv, 107-8, 3Aug. 1880. That is, the intellectual spirit of the age, as opposed to the social forces that could not be countered: for an example of his use of the phrase in the latter sense, see his 1852 election address, in Buckle, Disraeli, III, p. 369.
17. I. Machin, Disraeli (Harlow, 1995), pp. 5, 165. R. W. Davis argued that 'for him, politics was a perpetual jockeying for power and place, and little eke': Disraeli, p. 222.
18. For slurs by Graham and Herbert, see Lord Stanmore, Sidney Herbert Lord Herbert of Lea: a memoir (2 vols., London, 1906), 11, pp. 173, 177, and Herbert's controversial remark about circumcision in the highly charged circumstances of H, CXXIII, 610, 26 Nov. 1852. For high tory anti-Semitism see Buckle, Disraeli, IV, p. 44.
19. [Lord R. Cecil,] 'The budget and the Reform Bill', Quarterly Review, 107 (1860), pp. 544-50.
20. Tancred (1847) includes lengthy discussions between Fakredeen and Tancred on these concepts. The wondrous tale of Ahoy (1833) and Lothair also touch on them. Bentinck, ch. 1, contains interesting reflections on Lord John Russell as a literary man yet man of action.
21. In Roy Jenkins's view, 'he does not inspire sustained admiration... It is almost true to say that the better he is known the less he is respected': review of J. Ridley, The young Disraeli, in Daily Telegraph, 11 Feb. 1995, p. 7.
22. Even after his first political foray, he published What is he? (1833). In H, lxxxvi, 279, 8 May 1846, he maintained that he had arrived at his ideas by himself, rather than have 'hereditary opinions caned out' for him.
23. On Metternich, see Disraeli to Metternich, 12 Oct. 1848, 3 Jan. 1849, M. G. Wiebe et al., eds., Benjamin Disraeli letters: V: 1848-1851 (Toronto, 1993), pp. 93, 123. On Burke, see the heartfelt passage in Sybil, bk I, ch. 3.
24. J. Vincent, in Disraeli (Oxford, 1990), was one of the first recent writers to reflect suggestively on the importance of Disraeli's prose works for his politics, though in general keeping them separate. The most prominent of revisionists is Paul Smith: see especially his Disraeli, and C. Richmond and P. Smith, eds., The self-fashioning of Disraeli, 1818-1851 (Cambridge, 1998). There is some interesting analysis of Disraeli's early novels in J. Ridley, The young Disraeli (London, 1995). A different tack has been pursued by some valuable recent articles which have taken the mature Disraeli seriously as a thoughtful policy-maker: P. Ghosh, 'Disraelian Conservatism: a financial approach', English Historical Review, 99 (1984), pp. 268-96;
25. A. Warren, 'Disraeli, the Conservatives and the government of Ireland', Parliamentary History, 18 (1999), pp. 45-64 and 145-67, and A. Warren, 'Disraeli, the Conservatives and the national church', Parliamentary History, 19 (2000), pp. 96-117.
26. See also A. Hawkins, British party politics, 1852-1886 (Basingstoke, 1998), p. 213.
27. See Richmond and Smith, Self-fashioning, and Smith, 'Disraeli's politics', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 37 (1987), p. 85, where he claims that the purpose of Disraeli's writings of the 1840s was psychological and 'not to supply a programme of political action'.
28. The determination and inaccuracy were both highlighted by Frederick Greenwood in 'Beaconsfield', Encyclopaedia Britannica (IIth edn, London, 1910), III, p. 570.
29. 'Nations have characters as well as individuals': Vindication of the English constitution in a letter to a noble and learned lord (London, 1835), p. 16. As Smith points out, 'Young England' could be seen as concerned with 'the liberation of the national genius': 'Disraeli's politics', p. 81.
30. On this, see Coningsby (1844), bk IV, ch. 1.
31. See Disraeli's Revolutionary Epick (1834, on Napoleon) and his speech on Ireland, H, lxxi, 437, 9 Aug. 1843.
32. H, lxxxvi, 279, 8 May 1846.
33. Disraeli's peerage title of Beaconsfield was the one that Burke had wanted. It is interesting that Disraeli seems to have had little concern about being known to posterity by an English rather than a Jewish name.
34. Coningsby, bk IV, ch. 15; Bentinck, p. 497.
35. Coningsby, bk IV, ch. 13.
36. Address at Glasgow, pp. 15-16;
37. Buckle, Disraeli, iv, pp. 350, 410.
38. 1863: Buckle, Disraeli, IV, p. 372.
39. Address at Glasgow, p. 16;
40. Bentinck, p. 331.
41. Tancred, bk 11, ch. 1.
42. R. Shannon, Gladstone: 1: 1809-1865 (London, 1982), p. 127.
43. Bentinck, p. 331, lists among surviving 'Saxon' characteristics 'the love of toil, the love of money, the love of peace, the hatred of the Pope... the aversion to central justice'.
44. E.g. at Edinburgh, 29 Oct. 1867, and at Crystal Palace, 24 June 1872, cited in T. E. Kebbel, ed., Selected speeches of the late right honourable the earl of Beaconsfield (2 vols., London, 1882), 11, pp. 487-8, 524. In 1851 he described the struggle over the corn laws as merely an initial stage in the 'great contention' between the two principles on which 'the fate of this island as a powerful community depends': Bentinck, p. 583. In 1854 he announced that the Aberdeen coalition was divided between the school of'British opinions' represented by Palmerston and Russell and the 'school of Russian politics' headed by Aberdeen, who should bear the blame for the descent into war: H, CXXXII, 298, 31 Mar. 1854.
45. 'General preface', Lothair (1870), pp. ix-x; H, lxxxiii, 1346-7, 20 Feb. 1846.
46. On the last, see H, xlix, 694, 732, 23 Apr., 24 Apr. 1839.
47. Speeches, II, p. 455, 30 Aug. 1848.
48. Times, 18 June 1868, p. 9;
49. Benlinck, p. 310.
50. H, cliv, 128, 7 June 1859; Speeches, 1, p. 110, 11, p. 492-3, 22 Jan. 1846, 3 Apr. 1872. These were Disraeli's mature views: in the early 1830s he had rejected both parties, seeing them as exclusive and incapable factions.
51. Speeches, II, p. 455, 30 Aug. 1848.
52. 'Coalition', 7 May 1853, in Whigs andwhiggism: political writings, ed. W. Hutcheon (London, 1913), P. 435;
53. Disraeli to the queen, 16 Mar. 1873, Buckle, Disraeli, v, p. 217.
54. Speeches, 1, pp. 97, 88, 11 Apr. 1845.
55. H, CXXIII, 1666, 16 Dec. 1852.
56. Speeches, 11, pp. 453-6, 30 Aug. 1848.
57. Vindication, p. 193.
58. Sybil, bk I, ch. 3.
59. In 1880 he attacked the 'new foreign political organisation' of the Liberal party, i.e. the caucus. Buckle, Disraeli, VI, p. 576.
60. Bentinck, p. 496.
61. Address at Glasgow, pp. 12-16, where Disraeli also distinguished these evil forms of equality from civil equality - which was 'the only foundation of a perfect commonwealth'.
62. He did this not only in novels, e.g. Lolhair, but also in parliament, earning the ridicule of opponents and some historians: e.g. H, CCXXXI, 213, CCLVin, 1931, 31 July 1876, 1 Mar. 1881.
63. H, clxxxv, 215, 11 Feb. 1867.
64. Sybil, bk I, ch. 3, bk IV, ch. 3.
65. H, XCIX, 952, 20 June 1848.
66. Buckle, Disraeli, III, p. 500;
67. H, XCIX, 956, clii, 979-81, 20 June 1848, 28 Feb. 1859.
68. See H, clii, 985-7, 28 Feb. 1859.
69. Speeches, II, pp. 453-5, 30 Aug. 1848.
70. See also his criticism of parliament's damaging pressure on the weak governments of 1829-30 and 1834-5 to reduce estimates too far' to please the public' (H, CII, 110-11, 1 Feb. 1849), and his speech of 20 Mar. 1873 refusing to take office in a minority (Speeches, II, p. 547).
71. R. Blake, Disraeli (London, 1966), pp. 444-7.
72. H, lxiii, 390, 10 May 1842.
73. H, lxvi, 627-8, 14 Feb. 1843.
74. H, CIV, 691, CVI, 1169-71, 23 Apr. 1849, 2 July 1849. The definition of the 'aristocratic principle' is from Bentinck, p. 557.
75. Speeches, 1, p. 323, 11 Feb. 1851.
76. Disraeli to Manners, 15 Oct. 1849, Disraeli letters, v, p. 230.
77. See Ghosh, 'Disraelian Conservatism';
78. H. C. G. Matthew, 'Disraeli, Gladstone, and the politics of mid-Victorian budgets', Historical Journal, 22 (1979), pp. 619-20.
79. However, urban and rural ratepayers were vociferously demanding relief in the early 1870s, and the first budget of Disraeli's government, in 1874, delivered this.
80. Ghosh, 'Disraelian Conservatism', p. 286.
81. Diaries of Derby, p. 97, 19 Jan. 1872.
82. Coningsby, preface to 5th edn (1849).
83. 'General preface', Lothair, p. xv.
84. Buckle, Disraeli, v, p. 25;
85. Oct. 1874, The letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield, ed. marquis of Zetland (2 vols., London, 1929), 1, p. 156.
86. Warren, 'Disraeli and the national church' offers the best account of these activities.
87. Disraeli to Lady Bradford, 5 June 1874, Buckle, Disraeli, v, p. 322. In his own parish in September 1874 he made a Protestant speech in protest at the 'stoled priests' who sought to dominate the service of reconsecration of Hughenden Church: S. Bradford, Disraeli (London, 1982), pp. 325-6.
88. Vincent, Disraeli, p. 51.
89. 'General Preface', Lothair, pp. xv-xvii; Lothair, ch. 17.
90. Buckle, Disraeli, IV, p. 374.
91. Bentinck, p. 509.
92. Lolhair, ch. 77. Though this may superficially appear an exotic confection, it was, in part, a contribution to the debate launched by Matthew Arnold's Culture and anarchy (1869).
93. As two Catholic characters predicted in Lothair, chs. 50, 84.
94. Speeches, II, pp. 389-90, 11 Mar. 1873.
95. This is not to say that Disraeli believed that the current Anglican establishment had the vision to bring this about. Lothair surely projects a strong undercurrent of doubt about the capacity of the leaders of the day in church, state, or society to fulfil their historic function.
96. Address at Glasgow, p. 69.
97. Buckle, Disraeli, V, p. 275.
98. H, CCXXI, 78-80, 15 July 1874.
99. For his quarrel with O'Connell, see Buckle, Disraeli, I, pp. 286-95.
100. See e.g. Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative party: journals and memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley, 1843-1863, ed. J. Vincent (Hassocks, 1978), pp. 40-1, 16 Feb. 1851.
101. E.g. H, lxxi, 434-5, LXXII, 1007-17, 9 Aug. 1843, 16 Feb. 1844.
102. Speeches, 1, pp. 84-8, 11 Apr. 1845.
103. See also Sybil, bk IV, ch. 14. He had made a similar 'anti-Prussian' argument against the whigs' national education scheme for England of 1839: Buckle, Disraeli, 11, p. 62.
104. In 1863, advocating the right of Catholic prisoners to receive ministration in their own religion, he decried a narrowly Protestant policy in England or Ireland and claimed that any support for 'the religious principle' was in the interests of the Church of England: H, clxx, 430, 20 Apr. 1863.
105. H, lxxii, 1017, 16 Feb. 1844; Speeches, 1, pp. 87-8, 11 Apr. 1845.
106. Buckle, Disraeli, III, pp. 270-1, 400-1, 543-4.
107. J. P. Parry, Democracy and religion: Gladstone andthe Liberal party, 1867-1875 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 267-g, 272;
108. Warren, 'Disraeli and Ireland', pp. 63-4.
109. Speeches, 11, pp. 387-9, 11 Mar. 1873;
110. Buckle, Disraeli, V, p. 203.
111. H, ccxx, 951-63, 2 July 1874.
112. Warren, 'Disraeli and Ireland', p. 165.
113. See his public letter to the duke of Marlborough, 8 Mar. 1880, Buckle, Disraeli, V, pp. 514-16.
114. H, lxvi, 615-28, CII, 109, 14 Feb. 1843, 1 Feb. 1849.
115. H, lxvi, 620, 14 Feb. 1843.
116. On 'peace and plenty', see H, XCVII, 436, 10 Mar. 1848; for 1852, Buckle, Disraeli, III, PP. 395-7.
117. Whigs and whiggism, pp. 426-7.
118. Disraeli to Stanley, 28 Dec. 1849, and to Derby, 9, 18 Dec. 1851, Buckle, Disraeli, III, pp. 235-7, 333-5. There is now a good general overview of Disraeli's attitudes to empire: C. C. Eldridge, Disraeli and the rise of a new imperialism (Cardiff, 1996).
119. Disraeli to Derby, 30 Sept. 1866, Buckle, Disraeli, IV, p. 476. The most recent misinterpretation is in Machin, Disraeli, p. 6. S. R. Stembridge, 'Disraeli and the millstones', Journal of British Studies, 5 (1965), pp. 122-39, was the first to put the record straight.
120. Stembridge, 'Millstones', pp. 130-1.
121. His occasional allegations of Liberal weakness on imperial issues did not stick: ibid., p. 133.
122. Disraeli to the queen, 11 Feb. 1879, Buckle, Disraeli, VI, p. 424.
123. Machin, Disraeli, p. 169.
124. H, cxxviii, 1042, 30 June 1853.
125. Ibid., 1032-64.
126. This was not a new, opportunist manoeuvre. Already in 1842 he had called for a closer superintendence of the Indian budget and an attack on extravagance: H, lxii, 1028, 22 Apr. 1842.
127. H, CXLVII, 440-81, 27 july 1857; at Newport Pagnell, 30 Sept. 1857, Buckle, Disraeli, IV, p. 99.
128. H, CXLVII, 479, 27 July 1857.
129. The proposal of 1876 originated with the queen. Disraeli admitted to Salisbury the advantage of making it appear 'deep and organised policy' in order, partly, to disguise that fact: 11 Jan. 1876, Buckle, Disraeli, v, p. 458. But this does not mean that it was imposed by the queen;
130. Disraeli often resisted her views. The fact that in 1875-6 there was no urgent crisis in India explains why the idea was hers rather than his. But there is no reason to think that he did not welcome it in principle; he justified it on the same grounds as in 1857, that it would 'touch and satisfy the imagination': ibid., p. 465.
131. Memorandum to Louis Philippe, 1842, ibid., III, p. 411.
132. He suggested this in Contarini Fleming (1832), pt vii, ch. 2, and worked it out in the Revolutionary Epick (1834);
133. for his views in 1848, see Buckle, Disraeli, III, pp. 166, 178.
134. Bentinck, pp. 554-5. In 1873, Disraeli raised the spectre of the return of'old serfdom' through conquest by a more vigorous race: Address at Glasgow, p. 16.
135. H, CVI, 1165-8, 2 July 1849.
136. Disraeli to Lady Londonderry, Buckle, Disraeli, III, p. 195.
137. See e.g. ibid., IV, p. 25.
138. It is possible to put a more sceptical construction on Disraeli's difficulties in finding a consensual patriotic policy for his party in 1855-6: see J. R. Vincent, 'The parliamentary dimension of the Crimean war', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 31 (1981), pp. 37-49.
139. Buckle, Disraeli, IV, pp. 54-5, 216-26. The quotation (1858) is at p. 218.
140. Ibid., IV, pp. 304, 323, v, p. 128; H, clxxvi, 723-5, 4 July 1864.
141. Disraeli to Stanley, 22 Apr. 1867, ibid., IV, p. 471.
142. The quotation is reported in Lord R. Gower, Records and reminiscences (London, 1903), p. 350.
143. Disraeli's 'sheer expediency' and 'nearly total... flexibility' during the Eastern crisis are laboured by R. W. Seton-Watson, Disraeli, Gladstone and the Eastern question: a study in diplomacy and party politics (New York, 1972 edn), p. 552, R. Millman, Britain and the Eastern question, 1875-1878 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 168, 454, and Davis, Disraeli, pp. 200, 202. P. J. V. Rolo, 'Derby', in K. M. Wilson, ed., British foreign secretaries and foreign policy: from Crimean War to First World War (London, 1987), p. 107, writes of Disraeli's 'prestige-conditioned reaction' to the Berlin Memorandum of 1876.
144. Disraeli saw Russia's attack on Turkey in 1877 as a war of 'extermination... against a religion & a race': Diaries of Derby, p. 442, 5 Oct. 1877.
145. Disraeli to Salisbury, 29 Nov. 1876, Buckle, Disraeli, VI, p. 104.
146. Millman's claim of Disraeli's expedient flexibility (fn 124) rests on his (short-lived) proposal of a quick settlement in the Balkans, involving some partition but brokered by England. But this was surely more conservative in spirit than a partition conditioned by pan-Slavism and war. It is true that Disraeli was flexible about the broader question of the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, but that was because he never regarded it as a major (or very traditional) objective of British foreign policy.
147. M. Swartz, The politics of British foreign policy in the age of Disraeli and Gladstone (Basingstoke, 1985), p. 67.
148. Diaries of Derby, pp. 402, 418, 464, 23 May, 12 July, 17 Dec. 1877. Disraeli's claim in 1878 to have achieved 'peace with honour' was a reference to Russell's famous veiled criticism of Aberdeen in Sept. 1853: 'if peace cannot be maintained with honour, it is no longer peace': S. Walpole, The life of Lord John Russell (2 vols., London, 1889), II, p. 190.
149. Swartz, Politics of foreign policy, p. 101;
150. H. J. Hanham, Elections and party management: politics in the time of Disraeli and Gladstone (Hassocks, 1978 edn), p. 228. H. Cunningham, 'Jingoism in 1877-78', Victorian Studies, 14 (1970-1), pp. 451-3, stresses the weakness and ephemeral nature of jingoism.
151. Disraeli to Derby, 25 Jan..1871, Buckle, Disraeli, v, p. 132.
152. In an age accused, 'perhaps not unjustly, of selfishness, and a too great regard for material interests', it was a legitimate cause of pride to have elevated not just the military, but also the 'moral... character of England throughout the world': Speeches, 11, p. 132, 2 July 1868;
153. Times, 18June 1868, p. 9. Harcourt, 'Disraeli's imperialism', adopts the other view.
154. Buckle, Disraeli, VI, p. 515.
155. For Liberal propaganda of this sort, see A. S. Wohl, '"Dizzi-Ben- Dizzi": Disraeli as alien', Journal of British Studies, 34 (1995), pp. 375-411;
156. R. Koebner and H. D. Schmidt, Imperialism: the story and significance of a political word, 1840-1960 (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 135-65.
157. In H, CXXVIII, 1033-6, 30 June 1853, Disraeli distinguished between three categories of issue: 'purely party' questions, concerning the distinctive principles of the opposing parties; difficult problems, on which the parties competed for the honour of settling them; and other, lesser matters. The idea of social reform as bipartisan is valuably stressed by P. Ghosh, 'Style and substance in Disraelian social reform, c. 1860-1880', in P. J. Waller, ed., Politics and social change in modern Britain: essays presented to A. F. Thompson (Brighton, 1987), pp. 59-90.
158. Hence Disraeli's remarks in 1874 that the temper of the time favoured the consideration of social questions: Buckle, Disraeli, v, pp. 311, 359.
159. Diaries of Derby, p. 448, 25 Oct. 1877.
160. On the former, see D. J. Mitchell, Cross and tory democracy: a political biography of Richard Assheton Cross (New York, 1991), p. 89, and Buckle, Disraeli, v, pp. 371-2. On the latter, see his remarks to the queen in Blake, Disraeli, pp. 557-8.
161. This helps to make sense of ambiguous evidence about Disraeli's views on the importance of social reform. It did not feature as one of the 'deeper and higher' questions that he identified as emerging in 1873: the defence of the monarchy, aristocracy, Commons, church, corporations, landed interest, and other property: Speeches, 11, p. 552, 20 Mar. 1873. On the other hand, in Sybil, Disraeli had argued that it was the duty of those in power to 'secure the social welfare of the PEOPLE': bk IV, ch. 14. But this was not a statement about the role of the state; rather, it was an encouragement to local property-owners to adopt a paternalist approach to their communities rather than surrender to materialism and political economy. It was partly in that context that Disraeli, on writing a new preface to his novels in 1870, listed the elevation of 'the physical as well as the moral condition of the people' as the sixth aim of a reconstructed tory party: 'General preface', Lothair, pp. x-xi. He also wanted to smear the Liberals as the political economy party: at the Crystal Palace in 1872 he associated the tories with the factory legislation of the 1840s, ignoring the cross-party nature of voting at the time: Speeches, II, pp. 531-2.
162. Buckle, Disraeli, v, p. 391.
163. Russophobia was probably less dominant in the 1870s than in the 1850s. For his social policy, see above. His church patronage policy of 1868 seems to have assumed that popular Protestantism was as powerful as when he was struck by its intensity in the 1845-53 period. In predicting the likely instincts of Dissenters, he may well have assumed that conservative Wesleyanism was more influential than it was by the 1860s and 1870s. As Warren points out, his church reform strategy of 1861-5 foundered partly on the increasing unwillingness of many church defenders to put their faith in partisan political campaigns: 'Disraeli and the national church', pp. 113-14.
164. See e.g. Disraeli to Lady Bradford, 10 Aug. 1875, 14 Aug. 1879, Letters to Lady Bradford, I, P. 273. II, P. 231.
165. Moses and Mahomet had done it: Tancred, bk IV, ch. 3.
166. Buckle, Disraeli, VI, p. 524.
167. J. T. Tussaud, The romance of Madame Tussaud's (London, 1920), pp. 156-62;
168. e.g. Punch, 76 (Jan.-June 1879), pp. 186-7, 227, 306, ibid., 77 (July-Dec. 1879), pp. 96, 237.
169. His refusal can be contrasted with his acceptance of a golden casket and address, celebrating the same events, from British bankers and traders in California, who thanked him for maintaining the empire: Times, 12 Dec. 1878, p. 6, 20 Dec. 1878, p. 8.
170. Though Disraeli was probably less dismissive of party pressures than Gladstone, it is none the less striking that the intensity with which he and Derby pursued parliamentary reform in 1859 and 1867 lost no fewer than five cabinet ministers, while in 1878 his foreign policy drove out of cabinet Derby's son, who had spent as long at the very centre of Conservative politics as Disraeli, with much higher rank.