Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

b. 1804; d. 1881

British statesman, novelist, and one of the architects of the modern Conservative party, born in London. He was the son of Isaac D'Israeli, the descendant of a family of Sephardic Jews. As a result of quarrels with his synagogue in 1813, Isaac had his children baptised in 1817 - a fact which made it possible for Benjamin to enter politics for, until 1858, practising Jews could not sit in Parliament. Benjamin was articled to a firm of solicitors in 1821 and entered Lincoln's Inn in 1824 where he kept nine terms. In 1826 he published the first part of Vivian Grey, a second part of which followed the next year. He left England in 1828 and spent three years in the East. On his return he entered London social and literary circles and soon came to be known, if not necessarily liked, by most of the celebrities of the day. At this period he was extremely good looking, somewhat conceited, and delighting in his reputation as a dandy. In 1837 after a number of unsuccessful attempts, he was finally elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP for Maidstone and made his maiden speech the same year. On this occasion he was howled down by the House and replied 'I will sit down now but the time will come when you will hear me'.

In 1839 he married the widow of Wyndham Lewis. In her he found the sympathy and courage which were to be so necessary an asset in his life. With her fortune, which was not the least important reason for his marrying her, he was able to buy an estate at Hughenden. From the time of his first failure in Parliament he awaited his opportunity, prominent in the House only for the bitterness with which he attacked the Whigs. By 1842 he was known as the leader of the Young England party which was hostile to the traditional conservatism of Peel. Relations between Disraeli and Peel were becoming increasingly strained and the former's championship of the Protectionist cause in the Corn Law debate of 1846 confirmed the breach. When Peel resigned Disraeli became virtual leader of the Conservative party, although, nominally, it remained under the leadership of Lord George Bentinck, who, with Disraeli, did much to reorganise and reinvigorate the party machine in the years immediately following 1846.

In 1844 had appeared Coningsby, in 1845 Sybil, and in 1847 Tancred, three political novels which were intended to explain the origin and the positions and duties of the great political parties. In 1852 he was chancellor of the Exchequer for a short time; in 1858 he again returned to office, but the 'fancy franchises' drove him and his party out of office for seven years, during which he added to his reputation as a debater and politician. In 1867 he came back into office in the third Derby administration, and then came one of the most striking political incidents, the 'leap in the dark' which 'dished' the Whigs'. In that year he introduced a parliamentary reform bill more democratic and sweeping than anything which the Liberals had introduced; it effectively doubled the electorate. In the next year he succeeded Lord Derby as the head of the administration, but at the end of the year, not having a majority, he resigned.

In 1870 he published Lothair. In 1874 he began his second administration notable for its many measures of social reform, as well as for its foreign and imperial policy; in 1875 he acquired the half rights in the Suez Canal; in the following year he proclaimed Queen Victoria, whose favourite minister he was, Empress of India, and the same year was elevated to the House of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield. In 1878 followed the Congress of Berlin, which raised him to the greatest height of his power, and gave Britain 'peace with honour'. The wars in Afghanistan and Zululand, together with the commercial depression, gave the Opposition their opportunity, and the 'imperial' policy was condemned at the general election of 1880. A large Liberal majority was returned and the government resigned. In the same year appeared the novel Endymion, really a book of personal memories. The following year Disraeli died, and was buried at Hughenden.

It is primarily as a statesman that his fame lives, his role as a novelist being by way of understudy to the greater part. It is doubtful whether his novels, which are in many ways autobiographical, faithfully reflecting the mystical cynicism of his politics, would survive on their own merits, though in manipulation of plot and in vividness of characterisation, he showed considerable skill. But the purpose of his novels was always political; his most characteristic novels were Coningsby and Sybil, and they were powerful because they were ancillary to his political convictions. As a member of the Young England party, he wanted to attack the governmental policy generally as being a break with classic Tory tradition. The lesson he tried to convey was that the Tory governments, from the 1688 Revolution to the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832, were oligarchies which had whittled away the royal prerogatives. Coningsby like Sybil, is notable for his championship of the rights of the peasantry, which Disraeli held to have been encroached on by the Poor Law; but Sybil went further, and embodied his horror of the misery and squalor of the lives of the working classes in the industrial north, and there is no doubt it was effective propaganda for the cause of factory reform. The two novels were a definite expression of the new Tory gospel of the Young England party, which was the assertion of the royal prerogative and the freedom of the Church, and also of the co-equality of the rights of labour and property - which latter doctrine was so eloquently voiced in his famous Chartist speech, alluded to in one of the novels. Finally, Coningsby is also a moving plea for the Jewish race. As writer Disraeli is always informative and interesting, and his style, if mannered and turgid, contains brilliant phrases and shrewd maxims.

© JM Dent/Historybookshop.com

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