Disraeli had little chance during the 1858–9 Ministry to make his mark on the nation’s financial policy. His first budget was virtually framed for him: it was too late to do much about the estimates at the end of February when he took office. The Government fell before he produced his second budget; although his plans were prepared, the actual task fell to Gladstone. Nevertheless, the preliminaries have a certain interest.
The year 1858 inaugurated a period of major expenditure on defence, which has been with us ever since. It saw the first of those great technical revolutions which have at intervals vexed the Exchequer and the Service Departments from that day to this. The Service affected was the one which was most important for British security – the Navy. For half a century the British fleet had enjoyed a long and seemingly irreducible lead in wooden ships, but suddenly at the end of the 1850s the simultaneous emergence of steam, screw, iron, and armour plate transformed the situation. Warrior, the first British ironclad, was not launched till 1860, although the decision to build the ship was taken by Derby’s Cabinet in 1858. The extent of the revolution is shown by the fact that Warrior could have sunk single-handed every battleship built before the Crimean War. The result of this vast change, which was appreciated by the French earlier than by the British, was to put the navies of the world on a par with each other. Everyone had to start from scratch. A great increase in expenditure seemed imperative; the more so since there was general fear of the alleged aggressive intentions of the French Emperor.
On October 9, Disraeli, who was alarmed for his budget, wrote a long letter1 to Derby about the service departments. He began with the War Office which had miscalculated the cost of the new barracks at Aldershot to the tune of £85,000. ‘After this parliamentary control over expenditure is a mere farce … There wants a commission on Sir B. Hawes, Mr Godley & Co …’ This, however, was small beer compared with the Navy.
I am assured on the highest authority that nothing could be worse than the condition of the Admiralty as far as the naval members are concerned. All the men that Pakington has chosen … are the most inefficient that could be selected. The Admiralty is governed by Sir B. Walker2 who has neither talents, nor science – & as I believe – nor honor – but the last is suspicion, the first are facts. He has frightened the country and has lowered its tone & his only remedy is building colossal ships wh: have neither speed nor power & wh: are immensely expensive from their enormous crews …
Heavy frigates, Disraeli argued, were better, and more economical.
Derby entirely agreed about the barracks. ‘Whoever is responsible must be brought to book’, he wrote.3 But he was not so sure about the Admiralty.
I think you are hard in your judgment of the Board of Admiralty and Sir Baldwin Walker. I have no predilection for him, nor have I any reason for it; and I still think he acted towards us in 1852 as no man of honourable feeling would have done; but I think you underrate his professional character and that naval men generally will not concur in the opinion you express as to the comparative merits of line of Battle Ships and heavy Frigates. The points on which I look to the necessity of increased expenditure are … the conversion of old sailing vessels into Screw Steamers, and possibly the construction of some iron plated ships. We must have a naval preponderance over the French, however inconvenient the outlay may be …
Disraeli was not convinced. He returned to the charge at the end of November with a memorandum drafted by Earle demonstrating that Sir Baldwin Walker’s calculations were based on the assumption that Britain would have to fight simultaneously all the other powers of the world united. This was as foolish, he said, as the argument recently advanced, that every single part of the coast should be fortified: ‘the same frenzy which a reductio ad absurdum demolished a year ago’.4 Disraeli then proceeded to circularize the Cabinet with an eloquent plea for economy.5
Derby, too, was in favour of reasonable economy, ‘but not at the sacrifice of great national objects’.6 In a later letter7 he urged Disraeli to consider raising the money by a loan ‘… I say the larger the cost which you can prove, the better. I should look on this as a case in which our Navy had been to a great extent destroyed …’ And he pointed out, with Knowsley doubtless in mind, that if one’s mansion was destroyed by fire one would charge the capital sum by way of a loan against the estate, not attempt to pay for the whole lot out of current income. But Disraeli was against a loan in peace-time. It would never, he said wrongly, be accepted by the House of Commons.8
Certainly the services were not efficient, but Disraeli was unduly blinkered by considerations of his own department. He seems to have been so shaken by his experience over his first budget that he now bent over backwards to exercise the full rigour of Treasury orthodoxy. It was as if he wanted to out-Gladstone Gladstone. The result is that we find him displaying during these years, and indeed in 1866–8, too, a surprising streak of Little-Englander hostility to armaments. He failed to appreciate that in 1858–9 there really was a problem. No reductions achieved by efficient accounting and mere cutting of frills could counterbalance major expenses on renewing the Navy. Had he been at the head of affairs he would soon have seen this. As it was, the fact that Britannia continued to rule the waves owed nothing to Benjamin Disraeli.
But this time the budget was not the main issue. The fiscal question had been settled in 1852–3. The problem now was parliamentary reform. Much has been written on the subject, but in reality it is fairly simple. Disraeli had long argued that the Whigs had no divine right to a monopoly in this field and that the Conservatives were under no obligation to conserve a settlement which, made as it was by their enemies, was designed to operate – and, in fact, did operate – against their interests. He had maintained this general attitude ever since 1848, when in a speech on Hume’s motion for household suffrage he had declared that the Country party was as much entitled as any other to ‘reconstruct the estate of the Commons’ when the time was ripe. He did not think that it was ripe in 1848, but three years later his attitude had somewhat changed. Although he supported Russell in opposing Locke King’s annual motion to equalize the county and the borough franchise, he now declared that he had no fear of the artisan class: he was confident that they would not vote Radical, but would support the Monarchy and the Empire. Thus early Disraeli recognized a possibility which was appreciated in the Continent before it was ever accepted in England: given suitable safeguards, universal suffrage might be a conservative not a revolutionary measure.9
Nevertheless, he knew how difficult it would be to persuade his colleagues, and he considered that on balance it would be better to let it alone, as long as the Whigs would do the same. But in 1852 Russell himself took the initiative in abandoning ‘finality’. True, his Reform Bill was immediately smothered in the collapse of his government, and his next attempt in 1854 was equally unsuccessful owing to the Crimean War. But the Whigs by thus ending the tacit pact between the two front benches had raised public expectations. The matter could not rest for ever in abeyance, and the Tories could now feel absolved from their self-denying ordinance. In the brief December session of 1857 even Palmerston, who was no lover of Reform, indicated that he intended to deal with it soon. He was defeated before he had time to do anything, but it was natural in all the circumstances that Derby should announce a Reform Bill as part of his programme for the session of 1859; he would have lost important adherents, including his own son, if he had not done so.
It would be absurd to claim that Disraeli viewed the matter other than first and foremost in the light of party expediency. The prolonged arguments of 1858–9 and 1866–7 all boil down in the end to that. Electoral geometry gave the politics of those days a complication, now removed by the general acceptance of universal suffrage and equal electoral districts. In the mid-Victorian era there was immense scope for elaborate calculations in that now vanished political dimension. It was not only a matter of the franchise. There was the question of redistributing seats; and here the Conservatives had a real grievance, for the counties, on a population basis, were heavily underrepresented compared with the boroughs; although this was a delicate argument to be used by a party which hitherto had never conceded that population had any relevance in determining the representative system. And the franchise itself gave endless opportunity for argument. Would the five-pound householder be more, or less, radical than the ten-pounder? Would the assimilation of borough and county franchises help or hinder liberalism in the counties? Was household suffrage conservative or was it revolutionary?
Although Disraeli did not exclude the idea of household suffrage, he was never at any time a believer in democracy as the word was then understood. When he defended the Reform Bill of 1859 he used words which were later often to be flung in his face by angry diehards:10
I have no apprehension myself that if you had manhood suffrage tomorrow the honest brave and good natured people of England would resort to pillage, incendiarism and massacre. Who expects that? … Yet I have no doubt that … our countrymen are subject to the same political laws that affect the condition of all other communities and nations. If you establish a democracy you must in due course reap the fruits of a democracy.
And he went on to list them: great impatience at taxation combined with great increases in expenditure; ‘wars entered into from passion … peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained’; ‘property less valuable … freedom less complete.’
Disraeli believed – and repeatedly said that he believed – in aristocracy. Where he differed from contemporaries who held the same belief was in having a very much more open mind about the best way of preserving ‘the aristocratic settlement of this country’. And the openness of Disraeli’s mind meant that he sometimes played with ideas that were impracticable, even foolish, and that he very often made observations totally contradicting opinions which he had propounded earlier or was to propound later. That is why judicious selection can make Disraeli appear a consistent democrat or an inconsistent demagogue, according to taste. The truth is that he had one real objective, but that he had a mind full of half-thought-out theories which sometimes emitted flashes of brilliant intuition, but sometimes, as Baillie-Cochrane had observed, ended in ‘the mere phantasmagoria of politique legerdemain’.
Throughout November 1858 a committee of the Cabinet held repeated meetings to draft a Reform Bill for the next session. Rose, as manager of the party’s electoral affairs, was called into close consultation by Disraeli and Derby. Disraeli also worked closely with Stanley, who favoured as large a measure as possible. The committee, by substantial majorities, came down in favour of three main proposals: to establish a £10 household franchise in the counties as well as the boroughs, together with a new £20 lodger franchise in both; to oblige the forty-shilling freeholder living in a borough to vote in the borough and not, as the existing law stood, in the county; to redistribute some seventy seats which were to be taken away from the smaller boroughs and given to the larger boroughs (18) and to the counties (52). These proposals, while not very drastic, were too controversial to command unanimity in the Cabinet. Henley and Walpole were the leading dissidents, and Derby was dismayed to receive an eighty-seven-page memorandum of protest, ‘as long as a chancery brief, drafted by Walpole.
At this juncture when Cabinet solidarity was vital, Lytton for quite separate reasons asked to resign. He was in poor health, and did not enjoy office. He preferred Knebworth, saying, according to Earle: ‘It is so delightful to see the trees bowing to their Lord.’11 Lytton’s conduct of affairs was far from perfect, and his departure might in normal circumstances have been welcome. One of the Colonial Office clerks described him to Earle as ‘insolent, wild and reckless’, and added that ‘he puts letters in the wrong envelopes and sends secret and confidential documents to his clerks by mistake for official despatches’.12 But, whatever his deficiencies, his resignation would have been very inopportune just then. Disraeli told him that it would be attributed to political differences and wholly misunderstood, and that it was easy to exaggerate ill health. Lytton was not the man to take this lying down. He promptly replied that his pulse, normally 70, was up to 90,
… and is as weak as it was strong. I have studied pathology eno’ to know this must end if it cannot be set right; it ends but in 3 ways. 1st consumption to which I have so far a tendency that one lung is affected … 2ndly organic heart disease most probably inducing rapid termination by dropsey – 3rdly & most dreadful & in the case of nervous excitement perhaps the most probable of all – sudden paralysis …
As for public misunderstanding: ‘… the delicacy of my health is sufficiently stamped on my appearance & the work I have gone thro’ during life may well be supposed to have told on me.’13
Forwarding to Derby this ‘wonderful performance’ which he wished to have returned, ‘for it is worth keeping in the family records’, Disraeli observed:
… His symptoms are regularly divided under the head of (1) consumption, (2) dropsy, (3) paralysis. I have had them myself often, and five-and-twenty years ago in overwhelming degree, yet here I am writing to you …14
If it was really health, he continued, Lytton could probably be induced to stay. ‘But if instead of health his wife is behind the curtain, then he will go, and the sooner the better for all concerned.’ Derby thought health was genuinely the reason. ‘He tells me that he is going to Malvern to try hydropathy from which he has before derived benefits (he will probably kill himself) … I think he has made up his mind and that you will not be able to keep him.’15 But on New Year’s Day, Disraeli could report a triumph. ‘He remains … He expects to die before Easter but if so I have promised him a public funeral.’16
Meanwhile, Cabinet after Cabinet was held on the Reform Bill, but failed to produce agreement. It would be tedious to chronicle the various proposals, counter-proposals, amendments, compromises, which were put forward in order to reshape a bill which was in any case rejected by the House of Commons. In its final form it contained a number of additional franchises to those propounded by the Committee. Although documentary evidence is lacking, everything points to Disraeli as the author of such curious provisions as the clauses conferring votes on those who had an income of £10 a year from the Funds; on possessors of £60 in a savings bank; on persons receiving government pensions of £20 a year; on doctors, lawyers, university graduates, ministers of religion, and certain categories of schoolmasters.
The Bill, which was introduced on February 28 never had much chance of success, and got off to a bad start because The Times ‘scooped’ its contents the day before. Disraeli did his best for it in a fine opening speech. But the situation was not helped by the statements of Walpole and Henley, who both resigned, and it soon became obvious, though not apparently to Disraeli himself, that the House would reject it. The Radicals were never going to accept a Bill which did nothing for the artisan class and scarcely touched the problem of redistribution. The Whigs and Liberals were bound to oppose changes which, however much Disraeli might dress them by such euphemisms as ‘lateral extension of the franchise’, amounted in the end to strengthening the Conservatives at the expense of the Liberals. And, of course, everyone could have immense fun in dealing with what Bright in a famous phrase dubbed ‘the fancy franchises’. A touching picture was drawn of the man who to help an indigent parent drew out £5 from his accumulated wealth in the savings bank, thereby depriving himself of the vote. Was this a proper reward for Christian charity? Financiers shook their heads gravely at money going into the savings banks at all. Was it the best form of investment, they asked? The prospect seemed ominous, but Disraeli remained sanguine and full of expedients.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet vacancies had to be filled. Lord Chandos, the son of the bankrupt Duke of Buckingham, was one of Disraeli’s favourite candidates. But the trouble was that the Duke was still up to his old tricks, borrowing money which he had no intention of repaying. ‘The late D of Buckm’, wrote Disraeli to Corry in 1866, ‘had the talent of inspiring ruffians with enthusiasm, of charming creditors, & of taking swindlers in.’17 With such a tiresome father, Chandos, who was bent on restoring the shattered Grenville fortunes, was most reluctant to give up his valuable position as Chairman of the Great Western Railway. He declined, and Derby fell back on Sotheron-Estcourt, a great country gentleman, and Lord Donoughmore, for the Home Office and the Board of Trade, although Disraeli was doubtful about the latter ‘in case the country gentlemen require one of their order in the cabinet wh: I think they would’,18 Sotheron-Estcourt presumably being not enough by himself. The question of the proper representation of the hard core of the Country party in the Cabinet was always tricky.
But these subtle considerations were to be of no avail. Palmerston and Russell were already beginning to make up their old feud, and a skilfully drafted resolution was put by Russell, worded in such a way that it could be supported both by those who thought the Reform Bill did too much and by those who thought it did too little. There were good speeches on the Government side, and Lytton at last justified his selection by a really eloquent performance. ‘Deaf, fantastic, modulating his voice with difficulty, sometimes painful – at first almost an object of ridicule to the superficial – Lytton occasionally reached almost the sublime, and perfectly enchained his audience’.19 Thus Disraeli described it to Queen Victoria, to whom, as before, he continued to write the regular letter of the Leader of the House in a style unlike that of any other Leader before or since. Lytton’s eloquence was in vain. Nor did a surprising intervention on the part of Gladstone, who made a vigorous if irrelevant defence of rotten boroughs and voted for the Bill, help to save the day. Russell’s resolution was carried by 330 votes to 291.
Derby had made it as clear as he properly could that he intended to dissolve and not to resign. The Queen who was better disposed to the Tories than hitherto – largely on grounds of foreign policy – raised no difficulties this time. On April 4, Derby announced the dissolution; the elections were to begin on the 29th. Lytton, true to form, again promptly tendered his resignation; whether for fear of health or of a repetition of his wife’s appearance on the hustings is not clear. Derby, who was much overwrought, regarded this as the last straw. ‘Ecce iterum Crispinus,’ he wrote to Disraeli, and a day later, relapsing into the vernacular, ‘What on earth is to be done with this fellow?’ Disraeli evidently wrote a very stiff letter to his old friend, for it elicited a reply on April 4 which might have come out of one of Lytton’s novels, beginning without any prefix: ‘The letter you have sent me I would fain regard as unwritten …’20 However, his feelings were quickly soothed, and he agreed to stay on.
Optimistic as ever, Disraeli thought that the Conservatives had an excellent chance of winning the election. He told Greville that with good luck they would gain sixty seats, and when Greville asked him what they would gain without good luck, he said forty. Greville was sceptical; his Whig friends put the figure at ten. In fact, it was about thirty, and Disraeli could fairly claim to have had positively bad luck, for some seats were lost by very narrow margins. It was an apathetic election and if any conclusion emerged it was the total indifference of the electorate to parliamentary reform. This was the Conservatives’ best effort since Disraeli had been leader. In 1852 they had about 280, in 1857 260 – now 290, but it was still not enough.
Disraeli at once began a series of manoeuvres to strengthen his position. Even before the election was over he wrote to Palmerston asking him ‘in our ancient confidence’ whether he would agree to lead the Conservative party and, by bringing over some ‘20 or 30 gentlemen’, provide the basis for a solid government? On one point, he said, he must speak ‘with delicacy but without reserve’ – the position of Lord Derby. ‘A point of honor alone attaches him to the party post which he fills. He feels that he can never desert the Conservative party while it is in a minority, and while there is no member of it to succeed him. I have not written this with his knowledge … I have, however, frequently and amply brought the general views of this letter before him.’21 Palmerston’s reply was polite – he was always polite to Disraeli – but it was cool and brief. He did not, he said, regard it as necessary to go into the many reasons that made such an arrangement impossible, though he need hardly say that ‘want of personal good feelings toward Lord Derby and yourself or any other members of your Government’22 was not among them. He made no reference to ‘our ancient confidence’. Disraeli’s efforts to woo the Irish and the Independent Liberals were equally unsuccessful, and so was an overture, the last of many, from Derby to Gladstone.
At this juncture a latent, and for the Conservatives explosive, element began to affect the chemistry of politics. The 1850s were a decade in which foreign affairs had a quite exceptional importance in the English domestic scene. The crises of 1851, 1857 and 1858 all in some degree revolved around matters of foreign policy. In 1859 a more significant and far-reaching problem than any of them arose to perplex British statesmen: the question of Italy. It was one of those great ideological conflicts which from time to time polarize English opinion. The Italian question aroused passions not unlike those stimulated in later years by the Bulgarian atrocities, by the Spanish Civil War and by Suez.
The question, briefly, was this: what attitude ought England to take to the war which by the end of 1858 seemed almost certain to break out between the Emperor of the French, supporting Piedmontese ambitions to ‘liberate’ Lombardy, and the Hapsburg monarchy, determined to retain its Italian dominions. Behind this conflict lay the struggle for national self-determination against dynastic rights – an issue on which all good Liberals were united, but on which Conservatives were uncertain and hesitant, partly because they were not well disposed towards French ambitions. In one sense the Government owed its existence to the anti-French outburst which upset Palmerston in February 1858, and its members were well aware of the hostility with which they were regarded in Paris. Some Liberals, too, felt uneasy about Napoleon III and suspected that he would never support even the best of causes except to further some carefully calculated and crafty design of his own. What we now know about the Emperor suggests that, far from making careful calculations, he was influenced by obscure intuitions, romantic dreams and theatrical phrases. But these were perhaps just as dangerous. His character and purpose remained the great enigma which for nearly twenty years puzzled successive occupants of the Foreign Office.
Disraeli, however, did not think that it puzzled Malmesbury enough, or that he was sufficiently active in enquiry. Nor did he trust Cowley, the Ambassador in Paris. He was influenced by Earle, who did not forgive the man whom he had injured. Characteristically, Disraeli, who was no believer in diplomatic etiquette, sent Earle to Paris on a confidential mission at the end of the year without consulting Malmesbury. Earle carried with him a letter written by his chief to himself, but intended to be shown to the Emperor. The wisdom of thus crossing lines with Malmesbury was extremely dubious. Malmesbury had endeavoured to divert Napoleon’s mind from war by a suggestion that the Emperors of Austria and France should try in co-operation to ameliorate the government of the Papal States, and he offered England’s ‘moral support and even her material aid eventually’.23 As for Lombardy, he maintained that it was as much the rightful property of Austria as Ireland and India were the property of England – a two-edged argument. Disraeli may well have been more realistic than Malmesbury about the French Emperor when he wrote in his letter to Earle:
I have no jealousy of the external movement of France. I look upon the old political maxims about Spain and Italy as rococo in an age which has witnessed the development of America and the discovery of Australia. I have said this often to you: I have even expressed it, and in detail to the Emperor himself.
I contemplate the possibility of the eventual increase of his dominions. He is an Emperor and he must have an empire; but all this should be attempted with the sanction, or at least the sufferance of England, not in spite of her …24
On the other hand, such a message was scarcely calculated to check imperial ambitions in Italy. It is fair, however, to say that nobody knew the nature of a secret agreement at Plombières in the summer, whereby the Emperor had promised Cavour to fight on the side of Piedmont for the acquisition of Lombardy, receiving in exchange for his help the cession of Savoy and Nice to France.
In writing an account of Earle’s mission to Derby, Disraeli said nothing about his own message to the Emperor, but he was very critical of Malmesbury, who, he considered, wholly underestimated the situation. The Emperor, he said:
… ever since the Orsini business has been more or less fitful and moody and brooding over Italy … Having himself belonged to the Carbonaro Society he knows that he is never safe while they continue to regard him as a renegade. He is resolved, therefore, ‘to do something for Italy … Sometimes he talks of placing himself at the head of the army of invasion, as he once talked of going to the Crimea. And he would do it, for, in dealing with this personage we must remember we are dealing with a mind as romantic as it is subtle.25
The same might have been said of Disraeli. Indeed, he analysed Napoleon with the acumen of one who half sympathized—from the experience of his own thoughts and dreams. The parallel between the two men was often drawn at the time.
All efforts for peace were in vain. The Austrian Government on the very day of the prorogation of Parliament put itself hopelessly in the wrong by launching an ultimatum which demanded the disarmament of Piedmont. Disraeli, with his tendency to attribute great historical events to the chance of personality, maintained in retrospect that there would have been no war if England had had a competent Ambassador in Vienna. Even Lord Cowley, he considered, would have been better than Lord Augustus Loftus, ‘a pompous nincompoop and of all Lord Malmesbury’s appointments the worst – and that’s saying a good deal’. Malmesbury, he suspected, was ‘the tool of his Private Secretary, Bidwell – an F.O. man, a jobber and the employed agent of the man he counselled his patron to promote.’26 But, however deplorable these revelations about the Foreign Office in Malmesbury’s day, it is unlikely that peace could have been preserved in the spring of 1859 by any action on the part of the British Government.
From now onwards the current of public opinion ran strongly against the Conservatives. The month of March had seen a great pro-Italian outburst. Neapolitan prisoners passing through London on their way to exile were fêted. Gladstone had all his memories revived of the régime which he had once declared to be ‘the negation of God erected into a system of Government’. Derby and Malmesbury were regarded, like the Court, as pro-Austrian; indeed the Court seems to have thought so, too. Derby found himself for once in favour with the Queen and the Prince, although more from fear of the alternative than from any love of him. Palmerston and Russell, apart from the other numerous causes that they had given for royal resentment, were known to be violently pro-Italian. Palmerston made Italian liberation a feature of his election address; the French did not conceal their hope that he would be returned to power, and it was alleged by Malmesbury that the French Ambassador distributed money in support of Liberal candidates. A somewhat ambiguous declaration by Derby in the House of Lords just before war broke out was twisted by the Opposition into a suggestion that he might intervene on the Austrian side, although he could hardly have been more explicit in condemning Austria when hostilities began. Disraeli was never much interested in the rights of oppressed nations struggling to be free. Their cause left him cold, and for all his talk about ‘race’, he simply did not understand nationalism. But he was not the man to disregard public opinion. The election had shown how dangerous Italophile sentiment was for the Government. Now that the vital parliamentary battle impended, he pressed Derby strongly, and successfully, to resist some potentially pro-Austrian modifications of the Queen’s speech suggested by the Queen herself.27 It was too late. Already the Opposition was beginning to come together to eject the Government.
This consolidation culminated in a famous meeting held on June 6 at Willis’s Rooms, when Palmerston and Russell agreed each to serve under whichever of them was sent for by the Queen. That meeting may fairly be called ‘a turning-point’ in English political history. It is true that if all the historians who have used this expression are right, English history would be as full of turnings as the Hampton Court maze; but there are occasions when it is legitimate. The meeting marks the real beginning of that union of Whigs, Peelites and Liberals which became the Liberal party of the later nineteenth century. The experiment had already been tried under Aberdeen; and it had ended after a bare two years in bathos and discredit. No one could have been confident in the aftermath of that fiasco that the alliance could ever be put together again.
As in 1852, Disraeli’s unconscious role was by no means negligible. It may be followed in Sidney Herbert’s correspondence from the Reform Bill debate onwards. ‘There was a day,’ wrote Graham to Herbert, ‘when conduct of this kind [Disraeli’s] would have been scouted as intolerable with unanimous scorn; but the House of Commons had never consented to be led by a Jew Adventurer.’28 And a few days later Herbert wrote to Gladstone: ‘Disraeli’s quibblings about the date of dissolution are very disgraceful … But the rogue is capable of anything for a party or personal object.’29 Then it was Gladstone’s turn. If Disraeli was in opposition, he told Herbert, his force would be increased, ‘and he will use it, if a judgment is to be formed from the past, with very little scruple’.30 And Gladstone, on informing Wood that in the crisis ‘a “broad bottom” Government would have pleased me best’, received the reply: ‘Who can be expected to join with Disraeli?’31 One sometimes wonders whether Disraeli has a claim not only to be the architect of the Conservative party, but the unconscious founder of the Liberal party, too.
On June 6, a meeting of nearly three hundred Whigs, Liberals, Radicals and Peelites was held in Willis’s Rooms. The reconciliation of Palmerston and Russell was symbolized, amidst some merriment, by the former, sprightly as ever at seventy-five, helping Lord John by the hand up to the dais from which they were to speak. It was decided that a major attack should be launched and that Lord Hartington should move an amendment of no confidence in the debate on the Address.
No doubt the bargain sealed the Government’s fate in the long run, but it was by no means certain that it would be defeated at once. Disraeli was unintentionally responsible for this, by committing a serious and, for him, unusual blunder. Malmesbury had strongly and rightly urged that the Blue Book containing his Italian dispatches, should be laid before the House. It effectively answered Palmerston’s accusation that the Government had failed to avert war because its pro-Austrian feeling prevented it from warning Austria in sufficiently categorical terms. This was one of the main charges against the ministry. Yet Disraeli did not produce the Blue Book in time for the debate, although its publication had been promised in the Queen’s speech. Malmesbury maintained afterwards that twelve to fourteen members had come to him separately to assure him that if they had seen the dispatches they would not have voted for the amendment. Since it was carried by only thirteen, his complaint seems justified. Disraeli evidently knew that he was in the wrong, for he never gave any explanation. Malmesbury notes in his account of the retiring Cabinet’s visit to Windsor to deliver up their seals of office: ‘All my colleagues, as they were coming back in the railway carriage praised the Blue-Book on Italy, except Disraeli who never said a word.’32 Possibly, as Buckle suggests, his mistrust of Malmesbury prejudiced him into believing that the Blue Book would do no good. Or perhaps, as Malmesbury himself believed, Disraeli simply had not read it, and was determined not to expose his ignorance.
The night before the final division Disraeli conceived one of those romantic generous ideas which dispel the notion that he was merely a self-seeking adventurer. Why not save the situation, he wrote to Derby, by both of them retiring from the scene in favour of Stanley? He would command the support of a good many Liberals and with the Conservatives behind him could form a more stable government than Russell or Palmerston. Nothing came of this startling proposal. It is surprising that Disraeli should have regarded Stanley, a cautious, and slightly angular young man of thirty-three, as a suitable prime minister. Certainly Stanley did not see himself in that role. The division was taken the next night. Some twenty independent members, apart from recognized supporters, voted with the Government, including Gladstone. But the alliance concluded at Willis’s Rooms was too strong. Hartington’s amendment was carried by 323 votes to 310, a larger majority, so Greville says, than either side expected. Derby resigned immediately and the Queen, after an unsuccessful attempt to avoid an odious choice by sending for Granville, appointed Palmerston as Prime Minister. Few people guessed in the summer of 1859 that he was to hold office uninterrupted for over six years.
One highly individualist Tory had no doubt that Derby and Disraeli deserved to be beaten:
Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli have led the Conservative party to adopt every measure which they opposed as Radical ten years ago [wrote Henry Drummond to Joliffe,33 who forwarded this ‘unpleasant letter’ to Disraeli.] They have made that party the tool of their ambition & sacrificed everybody’s private & public interest, beginning with Walpole. I do not think it creditable to the intelligence or to the honor of the country gentlemen of England to vote black to be white or white to be black at their bidding.
This is the eternal cry of the diehard whether of the Right or the Left – that the way to his party’s political salvation is to adhere more rigidly than ever to the very principles on which it has suffered defeat. All leaders hear that cry often before their careers end. Most of them ignore it. Disraeli was no exception.
1 Derby Papers, Box 145/5.
2 Surveyor of the Navy, 1848–60. Opposed Stafford over dockyard scandal. See above, 1.
3 Hughenden Papers, Box 109, B/XX/S/182, October 12, 1858.
4 M. & B., iv, 255.
5 Hughenden Papers, Box 96, B/XX/E/145, n.d.
6 ibid., Box 109, B/XX/S/182, October 12, 1858.
7 ibid., Box 110, B/XX/S/237, n.d.
8 ibid., B/XX/S/258, January 5, 1860, Derby to Disraeli. Referring to the events of a year before, Derby noted that Gladstone was now going to do just this, ‘a course which I should have considered advisable when we were in office but was deterred from taking by your strong objections and your estimate of the opposition it would encounter in the House of Commons’.
9 Malmesbury took Disraeli’s view. ‘He contends’, wrote Stanley to Disraeli early in 1853, ‘that the five pounders are democratic, the labourers conservative; therefore if we must go as low as £5 he would rather go on to universal suffrage.’ ibid., Box 111, B/XX/S/588, January 28, 1853.
10 M. & B., iv, 208–9, quoting Disraeli’s speech, March 31, 1859.
11 Hughenden Papers, Box 96, B/XX/E/76, Earle to Disraeli, n.d., but probably November 1858.
12 loc. cit.
13 ibid., Box 104, B/XX/LY/112, December 22, 1858.
14 M. & B., iv, 191.
15 ibid., 192.
16 loc. cit.
17 Hughenden Papers, Box 95, B/XX/D/19, September 11, 1866.
18 Derby Papers, Box 145/6, February 23, 1859.
19 M. & B., iv, 206.
20 Hughenden Papers, Box 104, B/XX/Ly/120.
21 M. & B., iv, 235–6.
22 ibid., 237.
23 Benson and Esher, Letters of Queen Victoria 1887–61, iii, 391, December 10, 1858.
24 M. & B., iv, 218.
25 ibid., 222–3.
26 Hughenden Papers, Box 26, A/X/A/36. For Bidwell, see p. 1, above.
27 See Disraeli’s letter to Derby of June 2, M. & B., iv, 245–6, and Derby’s letter of the same day to the Queen, incorporating Disraeli’s phraseology verbatim, Letters of Queen Victoria, 1837–61, iii, 430–3.
28 Stanmore, Sidney Herbert, ii, 173.
29 ibid., 177.
30 ibid., 185.
31 ibid., 197.
32 Memoirs, ii, 191.
33 Hughenden Papers, Box 101, B/XX/J/73.