Abstract
The task of political reconstruction facing Disraeli and the mid-Victorian Conservative party is brought out very clearly in the following table, which lists the General Election returns for 1859. This represented the best Conservative performance at the polls in the period between the Corn Law crisis of 1846 and the triumph of 1874.1
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3 Constructing the ‘Tory Democracy’
Figures from Robert Stewart, The Foundation of the Conservative Party, 1830–1867 (London, 1978), p. 340.
Robert Blake, The Conservative Party from Peel to Thatcher (London, 1985), p. 46.
T. A. Jenkins (ed.), The Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858–1865 (Royal Historical Society, Camden 4th Series, Vol. 40, 1990), 7 August 1862. For Disraeli’s speech, on 1 August, see W. F. Monypenny and G. E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (London, 1929 ed.), Vol. II, p. 113.
June 1863, Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, Vol. II, p. 114.
See Ibid. Vol. II, pp. 83–114, for the whole of this section. Four of Disraeli’s speeches on Church matters from this period are printed in T. E. Kebbel (ed.), Selected Speeches of the Earl of Beaconsfield (London, 1882), Vol. II, pp. 555–613.
Disraeli to Malmesbury, 22 February 1861, in Lord Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex–Minister (London, 1884), Vol. II, p. 247.
The issue was settled, through a bipartisan arrangement in parliament, in 1868.
Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli Vol. II, pp. 115–35.
Robert Blake, Disraeli (London, 1966), pp. 490–4.
J. R. Vincent (ed.), Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party: The Political Journals of Lord Stanley, 1849–69 (Hassocks, 1978), 15 March 1869.
Disraeli to Malmesbury, 13 August 1852, in Malmesbury, Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 344.
One scholar has suggested that Disraeli, in the 1830s, came to see Britain as ‘the destined inheritor of the civilising mission of his race. The British Empire became the translation appropriate to his needs of Jewish universalism.’ Paul Smith, ‘Disraeli’s Politics’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Series, XXXVII (1987), p. 85.
Disraeli had shown an interest in the idea of imperial representation in the Westminster Parliament as early as 1851, arguing that colonial MPs would tend to be allies of the Conservative Party and might therefore ‘allow us to preventchrw… the increase of the town, or democratic, power, with[ou]t the odium of directly resisting its demands.’ Disraeli to Derby, 9 and 18 December 1851, M. G. Wiebe (ed.), Benjamin Disraeli Letters, V (University of Toronto Press, 1993), Nos. 2205, 2209.
Stanley R. Stembridge, ‘Disraeli and the Millstones’, Journal of British Studies, V (1965), pp. 128–32.
See the unsatisfactory article by Freda Harcourt, ‘Disraeli’s Imperialism, 1866–1868: A Question of Timing’, Historical Journal, XXIII (1980), pp. 87–109.
For the events of 1866–7, see Blake, Disraeli pp. 436–47, 456–77; Stewart, Foundation of Conservative Party pp. 358–66. The Stanley Journals are an excellent detailed source for this period.
i. e. the tenant paid his rent and rates to the landlord, who then paid the rates to the local authority on the tenant’s behalf. In such cases, the tenant was not eligible for the vote, because it was a requirement that he should be a direct ratepayer.
William White, The Inner Life of the House of Commons (ed. Justin McCarthy, London, 1897), Vol. II, pp. 75–8 (17 August 1867).
Selected Speeches Vol. II, pp. 470–89.
Richard Shannon, The Age of Disraeli, 1868–1881 (London, 1992), pp. 15–23.
Blake, Disraeli p. 486.
Ibid. p. 508. For what follows, see Shannon, Age of Disraeli pp. 52–76.
J. C. Lowe, ‘The Tory Triumph of 1868 in Blackburn and Lancashire’, Historical Journal, XVI (1973), pp. 733–48;
R. L. Greenall, ‘Popular Conservatism in Salford’, Northern History, IX (1974), pp. 123–38
Patrick Joyce, ‘The Factory Politics of Lancashire in the Later Nineteenth Century’, Historical Journal, XVIII (1975), pp. 525–53.
Nancy E. Johnson, (ed.), The Diary of Gathorne Hardy, Later Lord Cranbrook, 1866–1892 (Oxford, 1981), 20 March and 2 June 1869.
T. A. Jenkins (ed.), The Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1868–1873 (Royal Historical Society, Camden 5th Series, Vol. 3, 1994), 22 April 1869.
Gathorne Hardy Diary 28 May 1870. Cf. Stanley Journals 3 March 1869.
Gathorne Hardy Diary 26 February, 28 February, 19 May, 21 July, 11 August 1871.
Trelawny Diaries 5 June 1871. See also 6 February 1872.
Lord Derby’s diary, 5 February 1871, cited by Shannon, Age of Disraeli p. 103.
Gathorne Hardy Diary 3 February 1872. The fact that Lowry Corry’s son, Monty, was Disraeli’s private secretary suggests that the Conservative leader was probably aware of what was going on at Burghley.
For the friction between Disraeli and these peers, see E. J. Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory Party (Oxford, 1968), pp. 3–10.
Selected Speeches Vol. II, pp. 490–535, from which all the quotations that follow are taken. For a recent commentary, see Shannon, Age of Disraeli pp. 137–42.
Shannon, Age of Disraeli pp. 107–11.
See P. R. Ghosh, ‘Style and Substance in Disraelian Social Reform, c. 1860–80’, in P. J. Waller (ed.), Politics and Social Change in Modern Britain (Hassocks, 1987), pp. 59–90.
Gathorne Hardy Diary 16 December 1872; 22 January 1873.
See Shannon, Age of Disraeli pp. 149–52.
Ibid. pp. 172–4.
Figures from Feuchtwanger, Tory Party p. 81.
Ibid. pp. 113–31.
Stewart, Foundation of Conservative Party pp. 279–84, 325–51; Shannon, Age of Disraeli pp. 118–25, 179–81.
Lord Derby’s diary, 23 September 1873, cited by Shannon, Age of Disraeli pp. 162–3.
Cited by Shannon, Age of Disraeli pp. 180–1.
Blake, Disraeli pp. 525–6. For a similar chance encounter between a leading Conservative and suburbia, see Stanley Journals 24 April 1867.
Schreiber to ?, 2 July 1860, Hylton MSS (Somerset Record Office), DD/HY/24/22/5. East Surrey was a particularly tempting target for the Conservatives, since one of the sitting MPs was a prominent Radical, Peter Locke King.
Peek’s attitudes and ambitions are of considerable interest, from the point of view of the social assimilation of the middle classes into the Conservative party. In 1864 he wrote to the Chief Whip pointing out that, in the previous sixteen years, the firm of Peek Brothers & Co. had paid some £6 million in indirect taxes — a sum equivalent to one–seventieth of the entire gross revenue of the UK Treasury during that period. His letter continued: ‘With my standing as a Merchant I have every reason to be satisfied — the advancement of my only child, a boy intended for the public service, would alone induce me to wish for any higher social position’. He was therefore willing to spend a substantial amount of money to secure election to the House of Commons. At the end of his letter, Peek added: ‘allow me to say that connected as I am with five or six thousand of the influential electors in all parts of the Country I am perfectly sure that the Cold shoulder given by the Conservative leaders to the Merchant & associated classes — differing so palpably from the policy of their opponents — has been very damaging: the Liberals while liberal enough in every way to their Aristocratic Connections have likewise secured the good will & co–operation of Jews, dissenters & other compact bodieschrw… I cannot but think that a lesson might be learned out of their book not only to party but to public advantage.’ Peek to Jolliffe, 2 April 1864, Ibid. DD/HY/24/ 14/11. After much pressure, Peek was eventually awarded a baronetcy by Disraeli in 1874. His son does not appear to have made much of a mark, but his grandson, the third baronet, served with distinction in the Great War.
The Times 31 May, 17 and 21 July 1865.
Ibid. 25 and 28 August 1871.
Paul Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform (London, 1967), pp. 319–25.
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Jenkins, T.A. (1996). Constructing the ‘Tory Democracy’. In: Disraeli and Victorian Conservatism. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24865-0_3
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