1

The session opened unpromisingly. Disraeli launched a two-pronged assault against the Government’s foreign policy and the budget. He did not get very far on either front. Foreign policy is seldom a profitable field of attack: the cards are too heavily stacked in favour of the Government with its confidential information that an outsider cannot effectively controvert. The issue which Disraeli raised turned out to be something of a mare’s nest; the existence of a secret treaty signed in December 1854, whereby France, with British encouragement, guaranteed the integrity of the Austrian dominions in Italy. This, so Disraeli claimed, was a flagrant contradiction of the pro-Italian policy currently pursued by Palmerston, But, in fact, it was nothing of the sort, and, although Palmerston appeared in a bad light and spoiled his own case by first denying that the treaty had ever existed, he had a good answer: the treaty was an unsuccessful but legitimate attempt to draw Austria into the war against Russia, and no one regarded it as having any validity after the war had ended. Derby, who was laid up with gout, thought so all along. ‘Your treaty’, he wrote on February 11, ‘appears to have been what I was afraid it would turn out to be – the old arrangement limited to the war and, according to Palmerston, never executed.’1

Disraeli’s informant was a young man by the name of Ralph Earle who was in the Foreign Service.2 Earle was born in 1835, member of a well-known Whig family of Liverpool. He was educated at Harrow, and was appointed by Lord Clarendon as an attaché at the Paris Embassy in 1854. Disraeli had met him on his visit there a few weeks before. Earle, like Manners, Smythe and Lennox, fell under the spell which the magician could always cast over youth. He struck up an alliance with Disraeli which did neither of them much credit, for in flagrant disregard of his duty to the service and to his chief, Lord Cowley, he entered into an agreement, possibly an unspoken one, to supply Disraeli with secret information for use as ammunition against the Government. The quid pro quo – again it was probably not stated in so many words – was that Disraeli would advance Earle’s career when the occasion arose. A flood of letters from Earle signed ‘X’ or not signed at all poured in to Disraeli during the next twelve months. His replies have not survived. It seems likely that he communicated with Earle via John Bidwell, an official of Tory persuasion who had been promoted on successive days in the last week of the Derby administration to a second-class clerkship (December 14, 1852) and to the post of précis writer to the Secretary of State (December 15). Bidwell later became Malmesbury’s private secretary when the latter returned to the Foreign Office in 1858. The evidence is by no means conclusive, but Dr Henderson makes the reasonable guess that the dying Tory ministry decided to plant a sympathizer in this important position and that ‘Disraeli had his secret service in the Foreign Office as well as in the Paris Embassy.3

Disraeli’s proven use of Earle and his probable if unproven use of Bidwell cannot be defended even by the standards of the time. The only plea which can be made in mitigation is that the concept of a non-political Civil Service had not yet been generally accepted and, as with the Admiralty and the Board of Trade in 1852, Derby and Disraeli could legitimately feel uneasy because the key posts in most departments had been filled either by Whig or Peelite patronage. But, although it is not unknown even today for a party which obtains power after a long interval to put its own supporters into the governmental machine, that is a far cry from Disraeli’s system of espionage when in opposition. Earle evidently hoped that Disraeli would have the Foreign Office in Derby’s next administration. On this assumption he wrote to him on March 4, 1857, when Palmerston’s fall seemed imminent. He offered himself as Disraeli’s private secretary and went on:

So much for continuity of foreign policy.

During the second Derby administration Earle acted as Disraeli’s private secretary and continued in that position for the next eight years, replacing to some extent Henry Lennox in his chief’s affections. Lennox greatly disliked him, and the feeling was reciprocated. Each complained to Disraeli about the other’s honesty and discretion. The historian reading their letters is irresistibly reminded of Tadpole and Taper; the same small change of politics, rumours, gossip, false alarms, speculative combinations, subterranean intrigues, flavoured with a strong dash of personal place-hunting. In May 1859 Earle entered the House – ‘only 23 but a man in matured thought and power of observation’, Disraeli told Mrs Brydges Willyams.5 Under a bargain with his opponent he resigned the seat in August, and remained out of Parliament until the election of 1865, when he was returned for Maldon in Essex.

Earle was obviously a much abler man than Lennox. He must have had some powers of pleasing, or Disraeli, who was fastidious about personalities, would not have employed him for so long. But his letters do not leave a pleasant taste in the mouth. His behaviour towards Lord Cowley was vindictive, disloyal and unpatriotic. Although he admitted that the Ambassador was ‘at least honest and resolute’, he advised Disraeli to move for the reduction of his salary in order to drive him out of office. ‘If we cannot reward friends, it is something, at any rate, to punish enemies.’6 In fact, Malmesbury on becoming Foreign Secretary successfully urged Cowley to remain, and the Ambassador did not retire until 1867. This, one feels, served Earle right. It may account for the satisfaction with which he drew Disraeli’s attention to a Times leader describing Malmesbury as ‘a tenth rate mediocrity’.7

But the worst example of Earle’s lack of patriotism was an interview with Napoleon III on April 19, 1860, which he recounted in a letter to Disraeli. He told the Emperor that he could ‘safely adopt a policy of resistance to the demands [réclamations] of the English Cabinet’. He gave him a summary of the case which might be published by the French Government against Palmerston, and advised the Emperor to revive the Suez Canal scheme – a notorious bête noire of Palmerston’s – in order to emphasize British dependence on French goodwill in the East. In effect he was inciting Napoleon to pursue an anti-British policy in the hope that the resulting fracas would bring down Palmerston as it had in 1858, and thus risking the danger of a serious quarrel between Britain and France and the ultimate possibility of war. The absence of clear evidence about Disraeli’s attitude cannot absolve him from complicity. It is very unlikely that Earle would have written as he did unless he had good reason to expect a favourable reception. As Henderson puts it, ‘the chances are that he was as deeply involved as his Private Secretary’. It is doubtful whether Earle’s activities in foreign policy either then or earlier when he was still in the Paris Embassy gave his chief any real help. Disraeli’s irresistible penchant for intrigue explains but cannot excuse such a correspondence.

Defeated over the alleged secret treaty, Disraeli turned to his second line of attack, an onslaught on the budget. Here he had Derby’s approval, for there seemed a chance of bringing Gladstone over to the Tory side on this issue. He and the other Peelites, apart from Newcastle, the late Secretary for War, who was under a cloud because of cargoes of left boots and the like, had joined Palmerston in 1855, only to resign a fortnight later on an esoteric issue which few people understood. They had been in a detached position ever since, and it seemed possible that they would respond to a skilful bid. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, was a cool and scholarly intellectual who never hesitated to put forward unpalatable propositions if he believed them to be true, even though it was quite unnecessary to do so. In his budget speech he made some heterodox obiter dicta on the desirability of having a large number of small taxes rather than a small number of large ones. His budget in content did not depart much from financial orthodoxy, but his utterances put Gladstone into a state of excitement. He told his friends that the ghost of Peel would haunt him if he did not controvert them.8 The opportunity was too good to miss, and Derby acted as intermediary in drafting a hostile resolution, for direct dealings with Disraeli were insurmountably repugnant to Gladstone. Nevertheless a temporary pact was formed, and the two men fought together as champions of economy and the reduction of military establishments. They did not succeed. Gladstone was too violent, Disraeli too rhetorical, and the sting of their attack had been drawn by Lewis’s decision to reduce income tax to 7d from 1s 4d, where it stood as a result of the Crimean War.

The Government won by eighty votes, but a few days later it capsized in a wholly unexpected storm. Palmerston had indulged in some very high-handed conduct towards China, reminiscent of his behaviour over the Don Pacifico affair. The moral consciences of Radicals, Peelites and Conservatives were alike outraged, and Derby decided to mount a full-scale attack. Reversing for once their usual roles, Disraeli was doubtful. He remembered how successfully Palmerston had extricated himself from the earlier row. But he was overruled and for the moment Derby seemed vindicated. As they had over Don Pacifico, all the leading statesmen of the day condemned Palmerston, who was defeated in the House of Commons by 263 to 247. He soon got his own back. Accepting Disraeli’s challenge to appeal to the nation, he dissolved Parliament. Gunboat diplomacy was more popular with the electorate than the House. Palmerston struck the keynote in what turned into a personal plebiscite by stigmatizing the Chinese Mandarin who governed Canton as ‘an insolent barbarian’. Out of 660 members in the new House, he had some 370 very diversely assorted followers. The Manchester Radicals were routed, and the Peelites scarcely fared better.

Disraeli took the defeat philosophically. For the first time after nine contests he was personally unopposed. As for the party, he reckoned that, although its numbers had shrunk in theory from 280 to about 260, the former figure had never been a reality.

On the same day he wrote to his sister:

I don’t think Palmerston’s name carried a single vote. In the boroughs for a Tory Opposition we were really successful in many great seats and only lost four on the whole. As for the Counties, Protection being dead, they returned to their natural influences as was already foreseen … It is a great thing irrespective of the Peelites to have got rid of Deedes & Co.10

Disraeli was wrong about Palmerston, whose name, according to most contemporaries, carried a large number of votes. On the other hand, his analysis of the counties was probably correct. In a sense the Tories had done unnaturally well there in the 1852 election, carrying, thanks to the anti-free-trade cry, several which normally followed the lead of the local Whig magnates. There was no chance of repeating this in 1857, when all parties were agreed that free trade had come to stay. The Whig counties reverted to their old allegiances, with the result that the Tories lost no fewer than twenty-three county seats,11 quite enough to account for their decline.

Palmerston now appeared unassailable, although in reality his majority was by no means as solid as it seemed. Russell and the dissident Whigs were biding their time, and even the jingo section of the Radicals could not be relied on to support indefinitely a Prime Minister whose views on all domestic matters was quite as conservative as Derby’s. But he was safe for the time being. All eyes were fixed on events in India, where the Mutiny was running its alarming course from early May onwards, and there was no disposition to shake the Government at such a time of crisis.

Disraeli had for some time past taken a keen interest in Indian affairs. He had been a member of the Select Committee which in 1852 inquired into the government of India. He was convinced that it was high time to abolish the East India Company, and he carried his conviction, as we saw earlier, to the point of a serious rift with Derby and the other Tory leaders in 1853. Disraeli also held strong views on another aspect of Indian policy. From 1815 onwards there had been two schools of thought on the question of Westernization. The Whigs believed that it was Britain’s duty to introduce Western institutions and to ‘civilize’ India; Lord William Bentinck, Governor-General 1828–35, and Macaulay, the legal member of his council, were the arch-exponents of this policy, and it was reasserted in a most vigorous manner by the Peelite, Lord Dalhousie, who governed India from 1848 to 1856. The Westernizing policy also had the support of the missionaries hoping to convert the Indian masses to Christianity and their zeal was shared to a surprising degree by officers of the Indian Army.

Disraeli did not sympathize with this school of thought. He looked with alarm at Dalhousie’s high-minded but doctrinaire attempt to undermine Indian customs and to dispossess the princes. He was in this respect (though not in others) on the side of men like Lord Lawrence, whose lives had been bound up with native India, and who believed that Indian traditions should be respected. The Mutiny confirmed all his misgivings, and on July 27 he made a notable speech expounding his views on the whole problem. He denounced the doctrine of ‘lapse’ and the annexation of Oude. We were concerned here, he argued, with a genuine revolt against British policy, not a mere protest at the violation of a taboo. ‘The rise and fall of empires are not affairs of greased cartridges.’12  English rule had been accepted because it imposed order on anarchy, and guaranteed the rights of property and religion. Latterly, however, it had created nothing but unease and anxiety in every class or caste from the princes downwards. Whatever the upshot of the hostilities, he urged the Government to announce at once that the relation between the people of India ‘and their real Ruler and Sovereign, Queen Victoria, shall be drawn nearer’. Indians should be told that the Queen would respect their laws, customs and religion. ‘You can only act upon the opinion of Eastern nations through their imagination.’ A monarch was more likely to have this effect than a chartered company, however venerable and worthy.

The atrocities committed by the mutineers, above all the revolting brutality of Nana Sahib at Cawnpore, caused a general cry for revenge. Disraeli was perhaps unduly inclined to discount the stories of these horrors; although some were manufactured, the reality was quite bad enough. He erred in the same way twenty years later when he pooh-poohed the Bulgarian atrocities. But his scepticism had one good result: he used his influence against the public pressure for indiscriminate reprisals.

The Mutiny, as Disraeli predicted, took much longer to suppress than Palmerston, who treated it throughout rather casually, seems to have expected. But the worst was over by the end of the year. Meanwhile during a December session of Parliament called to deal with a wholly separate issue, the suspension of the Bank Charter Act, Palmerston announced that he intended in the new year to legislate for the abolition of the East India Company. This put Disraeli in a dilemma. In principle he was in favour of such a course and had said so, but he thought that Palmerston was cheating by thus appearing to shift the blame on to the Company when, in fact, it was due to the Government’s policy. All the same, he would probably have been well advised to avoid the charge of faction by letting the Bill go through. Not for the first or last time, however, he overdid the principle that an Opposition should oppose. On February 18, 1858, a hostile amendment which he supported was lost by 318 to 173; at least eighty Conservatives refused to follow him.

At this juncture a sudden and most unexpected change came over the fortunes of the Conservative party. Palmerston, who had been unbearably jaunty and self-confident for the past few months, committed one gross error and followed it by one serious misjudgement. The gross error was to appoint to the vacant post of Lord Privy Seal his wife’s friend, Lord Clanricarde. The latter was a character of whom it could have been said even more truly than Derby had said of the Duke of Buckingham, ‘his character and habits of life would render his appointment to high office discreditable to any Government’. Lord Clanricarde had an illegitimate son by a Mrs Handcock who died in 1853. This fact might not have mattered, had not public attention been roused by an action in the Dublin Court of Chancery, in which her relatives alleged that all her property had been bequeathed to the son, owing to the improper influence exercised by Lord Clanricarde over her daughters, who had been induced to forgo their rights. When Lord Lansdowne heard of the appointment he asked Palmerston ‘if he was out of his mind’. The Queen, it need hardly be said, was scandalized. Disraeli was surprised. ‘The appointment’, he wrote to Lady Londonderry on January 7, ‘… has greatly injured the Government – but I hear that everything was tried and everybody sounded before it was decided on…. When all failed, Lady Palmerston rallied, and made a successful charge, and carried her protégé. There is nothing like female friendship – the only thing worth having.’14 But mid-Victorian respectability was already casting its shadow before it. What would have done even in 1837 would not do twenty years later.

The Government was therefore in bad odour and its supporters much disgruntled when Palmerston was faced with a difficult problem, over which he completely misjudged public opinion. An Italian fanatic by the name of Orsini unsuccessfully attempted to blow up the Emperor in Paris with a bomb made in Birmingham. A large number of onlookers were killed, there was an uproar in France, and menacing remarks about England as a shelter for assassins were made in the addresses of congratulation presented to the Emperor upon his escape. Count Walewski, the French Foreign Minister, sent a dispatch couched in strong language asking for legislation to tighten up the law against conspiracy to murder. It did not on the face of things seem unreasonable to make the manufacture of infernal machines a felony instead of a misdemeanour, and Palmerston introduced a measure to that effect.

Disraeli voted for the first reading on February 9, but prudently declared that he was not committing himself over the later stages. The next ten days saw a strong upsurge of opinion against the Bill. There was a general feeling that the Government was supinely yielding to French threats, and when Bright of all people started to condemn Palmerston for ‘truckling to France’, Disraeli saw that the Government might fall. Overriding Derby, who counselled caution, he used the argument that the Government had never answered Walewski’s dispatch as a reason for voting against the second reading. It was not a very good point, but it sufficed. Palmerston, who displayed unusual ill temper, was defeated by 234 votes to 215, and he promptly resigned. Of the majority, only 146 were Conservatives – an indication that Disraeli was far from being in control of his own followers. His victory was due to the defection of some eighty Liberals, and it is probable that a great many of them were influenced as much by the Clanricarde appointment as by the actual issue on which they were voting.

2

‘The Captain’ did not hesitate this time. He made overtures to Lord Grey and to Gladstone. Both declined. But Derby recognizing, as he said to the Queen, that ‘if he refused the Conservative party would be broken up for ever’, went ahead and formed a government from his own supporters. It was not quite such a feeble affair as in 1852. Herries and the Duke of Northumberland had retired from the scene; so had Lord Lonsdale (‘Lord Eskdale’ in Tancred), ‘a man with every ability, except the ability to make his powers useful to mankind’. Three new members of the Cabinet could be regarded as taking their places, though not their exact offices; Lord Ellenborough, Stanley, and – a notable acquisition – General Peel, Sir Robert’s brother. Undoubtedly the Cabinet gained by this exchange, though Ellenborough was destined to be a very dubious asset. One other change took place: Lord St Leonards refused the Lord Chancellorship, and Thesiger, created Lord Chelmsford, took his place. Disraeli disliked him, and before long they were on the worst possible terms.

As in 1852, Cabinet-making was by no means an easy process. The weakness in 1858, as on the former occasion, was in the House of Commons. Derby himself could dominate the upper House, but in the Commons it was difficult to rival such figures as Gladstone, Russell, Palmerston, Graham, Cobden and Bright. Derby tried to remedy this by appointing Disraeli’s old friend Bulwer Lytton to the Colonial Office, but Lytton declared that he could not face his reelection for Herts. He was angling for a peerage, ‘which I will not do for him’, wrote Derby. ‘If he is to be of any use, it must be in the H. of Commons.’ Disraeli agreed. ‘I … never contemplated that Lytton should even have been in the Cabinet, had it not been for our Chief’s too gracious notice of him in 1855…. I think Lytton too impudent.’15 The Colonial Office was now offered to Lord John Manners, who was much alarmed at the prospect of being ejected from his chosen haven of the Office of Works. But at the last minute Stanley, who evinced much reluctance to enter the Cabinet at all, was persuaded to take the position – to the umbrage of Lytton, who now declared that he had been misunderstood, and had only meant that he might lose the re-election, not that he would not attempt it. His explanation was too late, and he remained out for the time being.

The Cabinet was thus composed:


      First Lord of the Treasury Earl of Derby
      Lord Chancellor Lord Chelmsford
      Lord President Marquess of Salisbury
      Lord Privy Seal Earl of Hardwicke
      Home Secretary Spencer Walpole
      Foreign Secretary Earl of Malmesbury
      Colonial Secretary Lord Stanley
      War Secretary General Peel
      Chancellor of the Exchequer Benjamin Disraeli
      First Lord of the Admiralty Sir John Pakington
      President of the Board of Control Earl of Ellenborough
      President of the Board of Trade J. W. Henley
      First Commissioner of Works Lord John Manners

The Tory Government was in an even weaker position politically than in 1852, for it was outnumbered by something like three to two in the House, and could easily be overthrown if the Opposition could only agree. Disraeli, very conscious of this weakness, made a bold attempt to influence public opinion by trying to enlist The Times on his side. He wrote a private letter to Delane giving him details of Derby’s interview with the Queen while the Cabinet was forming. ‘I suppose this is about as imprudent a letter as was ever written, but it is written in our old spirit of camaraderie – I never forget your generous support of me in 1852.’16 Delane was at this time a strong supporter of Palmerston and a regular frequenter of the great parties at Palmerston’s house. He did make some friendly remarks on Disraeli personally, but his comment on the Cabinet was scarcely what Disraeli hoped for. The list was ‘a penitential sheet’, Derby’s Government being, so Delane argued, a self-inflicted punishment for the humiliation of the Orsini affair.17 Disraeli continued to be polite despite this rebuff, but after enduring further attacks in May he rounded on Delane, and everyone knew who was meant when, in a famous sentence, speaking at Slough he declared that ‘leading Organs are now place-hunters of the Cabal, and the once stern guardians of popular rights simper in the enervating atmosphere of gilded saloons’.18 The personal quarrel was made up in the autumn, but the Government continued to get a bad press from The Times in spite of ingratiating efforts on the part of some ministers.

In his opening speech in the House of Lords, Derby announced that his principal measure for 1858 would be an India Bill, for 1859 a Reform Bill. These and the budget were to be Disraeli’s chief concern. India twice almost brought the Government to a speedy end. The trouble was the choice of Lord Ellenborough as President of the Board of Control. He had been Governor-General from 1841 to 1844 and had the distinction of being the only one on whom the Company used its semi-abeyant but legal right of recall. He was a man of gigantic vanity, and no sense of proportion. While Governor-General he had caused general ridicule by his attempt to celebrate the end of the Afghan War: the troops were to march under a triumphal arch through an avenue of salaaming elephants; the arch nearly collapsed, and the elephants panicked and rushed away. Lord Ellenborough now proceeded to draft a Bill for the government of India. It created a Secretary of State and a council of eighteen. Half were to be Crown-appointed, but the other half were to be chosen on a system worthy of the Abbé Sièyes: four were to be elected by those who had either served in India for ten years or who possessed a certain amount of stock in the Company or other scheduled Indian investments; five were to be elected by the constituencies of London, Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool and Belfast; the four in the first category must have served for ten, or traded for fifteen years in India, and the five in the second category must have been engaged in commerce with India for five years or to have lived there for ten. Disraeli himself, as his Reform Bills were to show, had a certain sympathy for eccentric qualifications of this sort, but its anomalies were so obvious that the Cabinet soon had to beat a retreat. There was something farcical in a system which disqualified John Stuart Mill, while it qualified anyone who happened to have exported beer in a small way to India for five years.

But Lord Ellenborough’s next effort was almost fatal to the Government and wholly fatal to himself.19 The unlucky Canning, who had been censured by public opinion for ‘clemency’ in the autumn of 1857, issued on March 14, 1858, after the capture of Lucknow, a proclamation declaring that with a few exceptions ‘the proprietary right in the province [of Oude] is confiscated by the British Government which will dispose of that right in such a manner as it may seem fitting’. This apparently draconian policy produced a revulsion when it was published in England two months later. In fact, Canning’s intention was nothing like as drastic as it sounded. Unaware of the change of government, he explained the real nature of his policy in a letter to Ellenborough’s predecessor, Vernon-Smith, but Vernon-Smith failed to pass it on to Ellenborough, who proceeded to draft a dispatch censuring Canning in the severest language. He showed it to Derby, Disraeli, Pakington and Manners, all of whom agreed, but, owing to pressure of business, it was never formally approved by the Cabinet, nor was it shown to the Queen, before being sent to Canning.

Thus far no great harm had been done, for if secrecy had been preserved Canning would have had a chance of explaining in confidence exactly what he meant. But Ellenborough had an author’s vanity for a good thing. Without consulting anyone he sent copies to Granville and Bright. On May 6 his dispatch appeared in The Times. There was at once a furore. Whatever people thought of Canning’s proclamation, Ellenborough’s reproof was deemed arrogant and offensive to the highest degree. Motions of censure were put down in both Houses. The Government would have fallen if Ellenborough had not saved the day by resigning on May 10. In the House of Commons immense excitement prevailed. ‘I have never seen,’ wrote Sir William Fraser, ‘anything approaching the personal feeling, and resentment, which was shown during this debate … The cheering, groaning, laughing were beyond belief.’20

Issues of principle scarcely divided members at this time, but ill feeling was not of course lessened for that reason. Indeed, it was accentuated. Men can respect opposition based on principle more readily than opposition based solely on a desire to replace the ‘ins’ by the ‘outs’. Disraeli secured a notable triumph in the end, for Cardwell who proposed the motion, decided to withdraw, probably for fear of a dissolution. The Government was now safe and was able to ride out the rest of the session.

The problem now was to fill the vacancy caused by Ellenborough’s resignation. Inevitably Derby and Disraeli turned to Gladstone. Disraeli offered to resign the leadership in favour of Graham in order to help matters, but Graham declined. Disraeli then decided to make a personal appeal, and on May 25 wrote a remarkable letter.21 He omitted the usual ‘Dear Sir’ and ‘Yours …’ signing himself simply ‘B. Disraeli’.

I think it of such paramount importance to the public interests that you should assume at this time a commanding position in the administration of affairs that I feel it a solemn duty to lay before you some facts, that you may not decide under a misapprehension.

Our mutual relations have caused the great difficulty in accomplishing a result which I have always anxiously desired.

Listen without prejudice to this brief narrative …

Disraeli then described the various offers that he had made to give up the leadership of the House to Palmerston and Graham, in order to facilitate Gladstone’s adherence, for he saw the difficulty of Gladstone serving under himself. He went on:

Don’t you think the time has come when you might deign to be magnanimous?

Mr. Canning was superior to Lord Castlereagh in capacity, in eloquence, but he joined Lord C. when Lord C. was Lord Liverpool’s lieutenant, when the state of the Tory party rendered it necessary. That was an enduring and, on the whole, not an unsatisfactory connection, and it certainly terminated very gloriously for Mr. Canning.

I may be removed from the scene or I may wish to be removed from the scene.

Every man performs his office, and there is a Power, greater than ourselves, that disposes of all this …

The last sentence does not sound much like Disraeli’s normal tone – as Gladstone would certainly have noticed. His reply, described by Sir Philip Magnus as ‘polished but cold as ice’, and by Morley as expressed in ‘accents of guarded reprobation’, was sent on the same day.

Disraeli did not attempt a personal approach again. In refusing Derby’s offer Gladstone made no allusion at all to Disraeli. Derby was to make one last attempt a year later to persuade his ‘half-regained Eurydice’, as he called him, to ascend into the light of the Conservative day, but nothing came of it.

No doubt Gladstone believed what he said when he denied any personal element in his decision to reject these offers, but it is difficult for any man to be sure that he really has discerned his own motives. Gladstone’s mind must have been very evenly balanced about his choice of party. For he could not – and he knew it – abstain much longer from making some choice. Yet he himself had recently said to Graham that no worse minister than Palmerston had held office in their time. It is hard to avoid the impression that antipathy to Disraeli was the dominant element in his decision, and that during these years he was half consciously searching for an issue which could publicly justify a definitive separation from Disraeli. However bad Palmerston might be, he was twenty-five years older than Gladstone, whereas Disraeli was only five years Gladstone’s senior. When a year later Gladstone found in the Italian problem the question of principle that he needed, he threw himself with an almost feverish enthusiasm into it, as if he had to convince himself that Derby and Disraeli were irrevocably on the wrong side, although, in fact, their attitude was by no means clear cut. The truth was that he could never have co-operated with Disraeli. He was right to choose as he did. Derby and Disraeli were pursuing a mirage.

Gladstone had been given his choice between the Board of Control and the Colonial Office. Derby now decided to transfer Stanley to the former, and to offer the latter to Bulwer Lytton for the second time. He accepted, and agreed to face the necessary by-election. He was opposed by nobody except his wife, who unexpectedly appeared on the hustings to denounce him for a long list of matrimonial offences. Bulwer briskly riposted by getting a doctor to certify her, and have her locked up in a mad-house. But her friends intervened with rival doctors and she was freed. There was widespread adverse comment on an episode which, though scarcely comparable to the Clanricarde affair, was not calculated to do the Government much good. Lady Lytton was understandably in a somewhat peevish humour when released and she proceeded to enliven the post-bags of Lytton’s colleagues with a series of what Disraeli called ‘letters … of an atrocious description such as, I thought, no woman could have penned accusing you of nameless crimes, at least wh: can only be named by her …’23 ‘I had thought’, Disraeli said, ‘that you had tamed the tigress of Taunton’ (where Lady Lytton lived). ‘What can be the explanation? Is it possible that your agent has been so negligent or imprudent as to leave her allowance in arrear?’ But it was persecution mania, not money, which was the trouble. Only the threat of legal action brought a halt to this stream of vituperation.

Lytton probably gave more trouble to Derby and Disraeli than did all their other colleagues put together and his tenure of the Colonial Office was not a happy one. He was very deaf and could therefore seldom intervene in debate, but had to wait to read Hansard before replying to attacks. His health was not good, he was a notable hypochondriac, and his nerves were constantly on edge, partly as a result of his unhappy private life. He was, moreover, a man of almost morbid vanity. But he could make an eloquent speech full of splendid phrases which read well in the Press, although his mode of delivery was almost incomprehensible to his audience, and so his opponents, too, had to read Hansard before answering. He added a touch of colour to a rather uninspiring Government, ‘a name of European celebrity’, as Earle wrote to Disraeli. There was, of course, a good deal of public merriment at the spectacle of two romantic novelists in the same Cabinet – a phenomenon unique in British history before or since.

The principal measure of the session was the India Bill, which laid down the principles on which the great sub-continent was to be governed for sixty years. Disraeli operated in close alliance with Stanley over its later stages. He had great admiration for Stanley’s industry, efficiency and business-like qualities. But he did not always agree with him. There was in Stanley an element of the humdrum. Disraeli wrote once:

There was a rumour that when the India Bill became law, Canning, who certainly had some cause to be annoyed at the Government’s behaviour, would resign. Who would in that case be the first ‘Viceroy’? Some people wondered whether the choice might fall on Disraeli himself. ‘It is quite on the cards’, Delane wrote to W. H. Russell. ‘He wants the money, and the high station. They want to get rid of him here.’25 Whether any such offer would have been made it is impossible to say. Canning did not resign, and so the world never had a chance to see the intriguing spectacle of Dizzy and Mary Anne holding the gorgeous East in fee.

Instead, the autumn of 1858 saw Disraeli engaged in more mundane occupations: the preparation of a Reform Bill, plans for his budget, and a number of problems in patronage. The budget and the Reform Bill will be discussed in the next chapter. To patronage, as we have already seen, Disraeli attached much importance. In an era when divisions of principle between the parties were blurred, and when party machinery was in an embryonic condition, it was indeed true that patronage was almost the only method of cementing party allegiances. He would certainly not have dissented from Earle’s view: ‘These questions of patronage are of the greatest importance & under present circumstances it seems to be only by attention to party claims that the Conservatives can be kept together.’26 But on the particular matter raised by Earle, who was strongly supported by Rose and Joliffe, he did not agree. There was for once a Tory Lord Mayor of London, Sir Robert Carden. He was also MP for Gloucester. He expected a baronetcy and threatened to resign his seat, which was said to be unsafe, if he did not get it. ‘The Whigs’, wrote Earle,27 ‘have made so many Civic Baronets that it will be a pity if you find your only Conservative Ld Mayor to be too bad even for that dignity.’

Disraeli, however funny he might be about them in Sybil, believed that baronets were the backbone of the Country party, and he was not too sure that Derby with his Whiggish grandeur always remembered the fact. He promptly wrote to ‘the Captain’:

He [Carden] has no property and very little character, & is now ridiculous. It wd be the last blow to the order wh: you of all Ministers ought to revive and elevate. The Queen too must have had enough of civic Baronets, as the last one she has made has just gone through the insolvent court … As for Carden resigning his seat for Gloucester that is nonsense.28

Moreover, even if he did, Disraeli had a solution suggested by the Duke of Richmond through Lord Henry Lennox.29 Did not Sir Maurice Berkeley of Berkeley Castle control Gloucester and some six seats in the neighbourhood besides? And had not the Berkeley family been engaged for years in endeavouring first to prove their right to an earldom and, after that had failed, in prosecuting a claim of unbelievable complexity to an ancient barony by virtue of their tenure of Berkeley Castle? Baronies by tenure, if allowed, were open to the gravest objection. Lennox wrote: ‘I know Lord Brougham is much alarmed that he [Berkeley] could prove his claim which would be the signal to deluge the House of Lords with the lowest Parvenus who have hitherto not advanced their claims.’ The solution was for Derby to create him a peer in time for him, as Lennox put it, ‘to register so as to befriend Ld Derby’s Govt. As you know, his Electioneering interest is unbounded.’ Alas, though Derby was willing, the Queen had doubts about Sir Maurice’s character. These were later allayed, but not in time for Derby. Palmerston secured a peerage for him in 1861. Carden did not get his baronetcy and lost his seat at the next election.

Although Disraeli was cautious over honours, he was less so over places. When the new Indian Council was formed he implored Stanley to appoint at least one or two deserving partisans. ‘Patronage’, he wrote,30 ‘is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, and that is Power.’ If patronage were to be withheld from MPs, the House of Commons would degenerate into a mere debating club. ‘I entreat you’, he ended, ‘to think well of this matter. An over scrupulosity in public life often leads to arrangements which are less justifiable than a course of conduct which, at first blush, might seem more coarse and obvious.’ Stanley demurred. ‘A suspicion of jobbery, from which we at this moment stand clear, and the Whigs, as a body, do not, would hurt us far more than we should be helped by gratifying one or two individuals.’31

Later in the year Disraeli had a similar battle with Sir John Pakington at the Admiralty, a department which, as in 1852, caused him much trouble with regard to patronage and estimates. It was customary in those days for at least some members of the Board of Admiralty to have seats in Parliament and support the Government, even though they were at the same time professional naval officers. This situation was becoming an anachronism by 1858, but while it still existed Disraeli was naturally anxious, if only for voting strength, to have some of the Lords of Admiralty in Parliament. He told Pakington that ‘our staff in the House of Commons … ought not to be less than 35’.32 But, in fact, it was only twenty-nine, and the absence of two Lords of Admiralty accounted for part of the deficiency. The difficulty was that professional naval officers were reluctant to incur the expense and trouble of finding seats, especially if it was in aid of a government which seemed likely to be short-lived. However, by means of a complicated arrangement with the Duke of Northumberland it seemed possible that two seats could be found, as long as the Duke’s wishes were respected with regard to the appointment of the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth. But instead of appointing the Duke’s protégé, Sir Thomas Herbert,33 Pakington, after consulting Derby but not Disraeli, appointed Admiral Bowles. Disraeli was furious.

I cannot refrain from expressing [he wrote to Pakington] my surprise and mortification at the course you have taken in this respect … Nothing is more ruinous to political connection than the fear of justly rewarding your friends and the promotion of ordinary men of opposite opinions in preference to qualified adherents. It is not becoming in any Minister to decry party who has risen by party. We should always remember that if we were not partisans we should not be Ministers.

I hope my dear Pakington that you will not misconceive the spirit in which these remarks are written. I make them for the common interest and to prevent fatal consequences …34

Disraeli’s anger is understandable, but Pakington had a good answer.35 Admiral Bowles, his choice, was admittedly seventy-eight, whereas Herbert was sixty-five, but Portsmouth always went to a full Admiral, Herbert was only a Vice-Admiral, and what was more the most junior kind – a Vice-Admiral of the Blue. There was no question of passing him over, as Disraeli claimed. Moreover, ‘from his defect of sight he is physically unfit for the duties of the office’. Pakington pointed out that he had consulted Derby, who concurred at the time.

I fear he has repented his decision. I cannot say that I have. I think it was right & I believe it will do us more good than we should have derived from the Helstone seat or the Duke of Northumberland’s pleasure.

I am very sorry on personal grounds to have annoyed the Duke in any way … but in this case I blame him for having so much desired an appointment which he ought, as an old Sailor, to have known would not be a good one …

… I disapprove of carrying party motives & objects into matters with which they have no legitimate connexion. And I believe that the exercise of patronage, with fairness & justice & strict regard to the public interest, gives more real strength to an Administration than an opposite course, though it may sometimes secure a temporary object.

I cannot doubt that you concur in these principles …

By all later standards Pakington was in the right, despite the antiquity of his actual choice, and Disraeli in the wrong. But in this twilight era between the publication and the implementation of the Trevelyan-Northcote Report the matter was not as simple as it subsequently became. Disraeli had to manage the House of Commons. The patronage whether for places or honours was nearly all in the hands of other people, and as if Stanley and Pakington were not troublesome enough, there was the Lord Chancellor, whose views on patronage enraged Disraeli even more. Lord Henry Lennox bitterly complained on his father’s behalf about Lord Chelmsford’s clerical appointments in Sussex. ‘My father reasons that if, as he hears, the Govt. intend to extend the County Franchise, the choice of clergy in these small parishes is most important. The three or [four] voters to be created would infallibly follow the lead of their Parson.’ But neither the Duke nor Colonel Wyndham nor any of the local Tory magnates were consulted and lamentable choices were made, such as the new incumbent at the village of Merstham. ‘The living’, wrote Lennox, ‘was given to a man who had been Curate of our Parish and had distinguished himself by preaching fanatical sermons against the Goodwood Races of which, as you are aware, my Father is the patron.’36 Disraeli was to have a long score against the Lord Chancellor before he could at last get rid of him ten years later.

One agreeable event, however, did occur in the field of patronage. Disraeli was most anxious to reward Rose for his party services by a County Court Treasureship, one of the few posts which a solicitor could hold at the same time that he carried on his practice. It so happened that a Commissionership of Excise was vacant and Derby suggested that James Disraeli should be promoted, thus leaving his County Court Treasureship vacant for Rose. Quite properly, Disraeli at first declined to consider it. ‘Any appointment which has the appearance even of preferring private interests and feelings to the efficiency of the public service must be avoided’, he wrote. Derby did not press the matter at once, but ten days later insisted that James should have it, and that Rose should get his reward. Although gratified, Disraeli was very sensitive. Lennox, early in September, being disappointed in certain expectations of his own, was so ill-advised as to remark that his brother, Lord March, would have liked the commissionership, but had at once withdrawn on hearing that James was a candidate.37 Disraeli wrote a long letter in reply explaining the appointment and alluding inter alia to Lennox’s ‘erroneous expectations’. It was now Lennox’s turn to take umbrage.

… when I consider that you have written 3 sheets to justify to me the appt. of your Brother I confess I do feel somewhat annoyed. I was perfectly aware that you had refused it for your brother & also that when pressed and accepted not a soul even among our enemies dared say a word about it.38

There was a rapprochement; but Lennox and Disraeli were never quite on the same terms again.

A more important matter was the conferment in January 1859 of a long-sought place upon Disraeli’s faithful henchman, G. A. Hamilton, who was hard up and now exchanged the political office of Financial Secretary for the top permanent post in the Treasury, the previous occupant, Sir Charles Trevelyan, having accepted the governorship of Madras. There were murmurs against a post normally reserved for Civil Servants going to a MP, but Disraeli was able to reply that the governorship of Madras was usually regarded as a political plum, and so the balance was undisturbed. Disraeli was anxious to strengthen the Government with persons of official experience. The vacancy created by Hamilton’s appointment gave him a chance. For some time past he had had his eye on Sir Stafford Northcote, who had been Gladstone’s secretary at the Board of Trade, Derbyite MP from 1852 to 1857, when he lost his seat, and co-author of the famous report on the Civil Service. The day of the proprietary borough was not dead and Disraeli persuaded him in July to accept Lord Exeter’s offer of Stamford on the promise of an official place as soon as possible. Early in the new year he was able to give Northcote Hamilton’s vacant place as Financial Secretary.

Northcote was very unlike Disraeli. A conscientious, efficient, virtuous, Puseyite baronet, he belonged spiritually to the Peelites. He had indeed acted as a link between them and the Tories in 1856. In the autumn of 1855 he had made a peace speech of which Disraeli approved. This was just the sort of man who would give a respectable new look to Derbyism and the lie to the Liberal claim that the Tories were ‘the stupid party’. The alliance between Disraeli and Northcote was destined to be a long and fruitful one, both for each of them and for the cause which they represented.

1 Hughenden Papers, Box 109, B/XX/S/146.

2 See G. B. Henderson, Crimean War Diplomacy (1947), 267–89 for an interesting essay on Earle.

3 ibid., 269–70. If Disraeli did use Bidwell in this way, the fact does not seem to have made him regard the Foreign Office clerk with esteem. See below, p.1, for his comments on Bidwell and Malmesbury.

4 ibid., 271–2, quoting from Hughenden Papers.

5 M. & B., iv, 234.

6 Henderson, 273, quoting from Hughenden Papers.

7 Hughenden Papers, Box 96, B/XX/E/50, n.d.

8 Morley, Gladstone, i, 560.

9 M. & B., v, 76.

10 Hughenden Papers, Box 6, A/I/B/367.

11 Hughenden Papers, Box 98, B/XX/H/62, Hamilton to Disraeli, April 25, 1857.

12 Hansard, 3rd Series, cxlvii, 475.

13 M. & B., iv, 99.

14 Letters to Lady Londonderry, 171.

15 M. & B., iv, 118.

16 History of The Times, ii, 1841–1884 (1939), 328.

17 loc. cit.

18 M. & B., iv, 151.

19 Michael Maclagan, Clemency Canning (1962), ch. viii, gives the best account.

20 Fraser, Disraeli and His Day, 253–4.

21 M. & B., iv, 157–8.

22 ibid., 158–9.

23 Knebworth Papers, n.d.

24 Hughenden Papers, Box 26, A/X/A/59.

25 M. & B., iv, 177.

26 Hughenden Papers, Box 96, B/XX/E/70, October 26, 1858.

27 ibid., Box 96, B/XX/E/69, October 25, 1858.

28 Derby Papers, Box 145/5, October 26, 1858.

29 Hughenden Papers, Box 102, B/XX/LX/117, September 23, 1858.

30 M. & B., iv, 174. August 10, 1858.

31 ibid., 175, August 12, 1858.

32 ibid., 256, December 19, 1858.

33 Hughenden Papers, Box 107, B/XX/P/44. The name is left blank by M. & B. (iv, 257).

34 Hughenden Papers, Box 107, B/XX/P/44, draft.

35 ibid., B/XX/P/45, Pakington to Disraeli, December 21, 1858.

36 ibid., Box 102, B/XX/LX/122, December 27, 1858.

37 ibid., B/XX/LX/113, September 1858.

38 ibid., B/XX/LX/114, September 16.