Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st earl of Beaconsfield

Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st earl of Beaconsfield (1804–81). Conservative statesman and novelist. Of a Christianized Jewish upper middle‐class family, his father a distinguished man of letters, Disraeli led an early life that handicapped his political career. Egotistical, raffish, self‐publicizing, he combined recklessness in financial and sexual matters with a talent for scrambling up lifelines. Helped by his patron Lyndhurst, Disraeli became a Conservative MP in 1837. Desperate for office, he was ignored by Peel in 1841. More notice was gained by his novels, which he wrote partly for money but which also developed social and political ideas then current. Coningsby (1844) explored the nature of aristocratic party politics and Sybil (1845), a ‘condition of England’ novel, deplored the gulf between the ‘Two Nations’ of rich and poor; Tancred (1847) completed the trilogy. Disraeli had belonged to the otherwise aristocratic Young England group of political romantics and his growing hostility to Peel expressed itself in the House over Maynooth and the Corn Laws in 1845–6. Disraeli's devastating mockery of Peel gave him prominence for the first time. The shortage of talent on the protectionist front bench made Disraeli indispensable and by 1849 Stanley (the future earl of Derby) had accepted him as leader in the Commons. Disraeli gained in experience and weight through the long service, and also benefited from his marriage in 1839 to the wealthy and older Mary Anne, widow of a Conservative MP. Never a protectionist on principle, Disraeli had to be restrained by Derby from jettisoning protectionism with indecent haste (it was abandoned after the 1852 defeat). Hungry for office, he deplored Derby's rejections of opportunities in 1851 and 1855. His biography Lord George Bentinck (1852) repaid a considerable personal debt; the Bentincks also provided the money to set Disraeli up as a country gentleman at Hughenden in Buckinghamshire.

Disraeli served as chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the Commons in the three Derby minority ministries of 1852, 1858–9, and 1866–8, though a major triumph came only in 1867 when his cynical handling of the government's Reform Bill divided the Liberals and enabled the Conservatives to cling to office long enough to pass a measure. Scarcely ‘democratic’ in intention, it minimized the damage a Liberal measure would have done to Conservative interests. Disraeli succeeded Derby as premier in 1868 (‘I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole’) and, in opposition after electoral defeat, survived party discontent. By 1872, when he made major speeches at Manchester and Crystal Palace proclaiming a supposedly distinctive Conservative philosophy, Gladstone's Liberal government was disintegrating. The election victory of 1874, the party's first since 1841, owed more to Gladstone than Disraeli, but it gave the latter the prolonged period of office he sought. Disraeli's platform in 1874—stability at home and the patriotic assertion of national interests abroad—was pure Palmerston.

Disraeli's name rests mainly upon his ministry of 1874–80. Its social legislation was the work of Richard Cross at the Home Office and had no obvious link with the social theorizing of the premier's Young England past. Only the trade union legislation of 1875 went markedly beyond what any government might have passed. This phase was over by the time an ageing Disraeli moved to the Lords as earl of Beaconsfield in 1876. More significant was his forwardness in foreign and colonial matters. Disraeli seized the chance to buy a controlling interest in the Suez canal, sent the flamboyant Lytton to India as viceroy, and his 1876 Royal Titles Act proclaimed Victoria empress of India. Over the Eastern Question, the struggle between Russia and Turkey in the Balkans, a dramatic confrontation developed between Beaconsfield and the former Liberal leader Gladstone: at the expense of cabinet resignations, the government decided to intervene to sustain Turkey. Beacons field's reward was a personal triumph at the Congress of Berlin, a Balkan settlement that suited Britain (‘Peace with Honour’), and the cession of Cyprus by Turkey. But colonial wars in Afghanistan and southern Africa went less well and gave Gladstone the chance to attack ‘Beaconsfieldism’ in his Midlothian campaigns. A new nationalist mood in Ireland and economic depression also contributed to the heavy electoral defeat of 1880, which put Gladstone back in office. Though not retiring as party leader, Disraeli was depressed by developments, and his death in 1881 came at a low ebb of party fortunes.

Soon Randolph Churchill and the Primrose League were active in cultivating a mythology of Disraelian ‘Tory Democracy’. In fact the substance of Disraeli's politics was more orthodox than romance suggested: a matter of upholding the ‘aristocratic constitution’, the monarchy, the Union with Ireland, property rights, and social stability. His foreign policy helped to claim a patriotic and imperial identity for the Conservative Party. But none of this matched the rhetoric, wit, and phrase‐making that Disraeli brought to politics. What distinguished him was his immense stamina, his great loyalty to the Conservative Party, and his unquenchable thirst for office, power, and patronage. He was a great arriviste.