High Minds

by Simon Heffer

  Despite marrying as well as, or even possibly better than, he might have expected, his financial straits were by now dire. He struggled to pay his election expenses, and such relief as his creditors did get was with Isaac’s help. Isaac frequently bailed him out; but this did not prevent him, by the time his party returned to power under Peel in 1841, having debts estimated at £20,000, an awesome sum for the times and equivalent perhaps to £1.7 million today. He continued to write novels, though these struggled to make him much money; and he continued to live extravagantly to keep up with the society that he had decided should be his natural place. His biographer alludes to two arresting facts about him in this early phase in politics: that his wife (who eventually bailed him out to the tune of £13,000) probably knew little, for a long time, about the scale of his indebtedness; and that he was not always truthful on political matters, denying he had said or written things that he had certainly said or written.35

  His most serious lie – to the Commons, when he was forty-two years of age and had sat in it for nearly nine years (so he cannot be excused an indiscretion of youth or inexperience) – was uttered on 15 May 1846, in the third reading debate on the Corn Importation Bill. He had spoken for the best part of three hours in attacking Peel. Peel rarely bothered to acknowledge Disraeli, whose brilliance as an orator had developed since his first humiliation, but on this occasion he made an exception. Disraeli, having accused Peel of deceiving his party and of adopting ‘Machiavellian manoeuvres’, had gone on to say that Peel ‘has traded on the ideas and intelligence of others. His life has been one great appropriation clause. He is a burglar of others’ intellect. Search the Index of Beatson, from the days of the Conqueror to the termination of the last reign, there is no statesman who has committed political petty larceny on so great a scale.’36

  This was strong stuff for a backbencher to offer the leader of his party, even given the open hostility against Peel. He had then concluded with a peroration of grandstanding quality – ‘I have faith in the primitive and enduring elements of the English character . . . when their spirit is softened by misfortune, they will recur to those principles that made England great . . . then, too, perchance they may remember, not with unkindness, those who, betrayed and deserted, were neither ashamed nor afraid to struggle for the “good old cause” – the cause with which are associated principles the most popular, sentiments the most entirely national – the cause of labour – the cause of the people – the cause of England.’37 Greville was not taken in, finding the speech ‘very clever, in which he hacked and mangled Peel with the most unsparing severity, and positively tortured his victim. It was a miserable and degrading spectacle. The whole mass of Protectionists cheered him with a vociferous delight, making the roof ring again.’38 It was the sort of performance that made Ashley say of him that he was ‘without principle, without feeling, without regard to anything, human or divine, beyond his own personal ambition. He has dragged, and will continue to drag everything that is good, safe, venerable, and solid through the dust and dirt of his own objects.’39

  Disraeli was followed by Russell, in support of the bill, and then Peel rose (‘they screamed and hooted at him in the most brutal manner,’ Greville noted). His conduct of the question, since he had decided upon repeal, had been marked by its earnestness. He departed from that, outraged by Disraeli’s remarks. ‘I foresaw that the course which I have taken from a sense of public duty would expose me to serious sacrifices,’ he said. ‘I foresaw as its inevitable result, that I must forfeit friendships which I most highly valued—that I must interrupt political relations in which I felt a sincere pride; but the smallest of all the penalties which I anticipated were the continued venomous attacks of the Member for Shrewsbury.’40 He then alluded to Disraeli’s having asked him for a job in 1841, expressing his surprise that he should have wanted ‘to unite his fortunes with mine in office’, given he was guilty of such ‘larcenies’ as Disraeli had alleged he was.

  After a long and, after that, earnest speech, Peel sat down and Disraeli rose once more to correct the ‘insinuation’ the Prime Minister had made against him of being ‘disappointed of office’. ‘I can assure the House nothing of the kind ever occurred, I never shall – it is totally foreign to my nature – make an application for any place.’41 This was the great lie. Peel had the letter requesting a place and others, at that juncture, had seen it. Peel chose not to expose Disraeli, but told the House Disraeli had misinterpreted him. Had he exposed him, Disraeli’s political career might have ended there. Perhaps Peel felt it would be stooping to Disraeli’s level: and he did not, morally, rate Disraeli highly. As Lord Blake, in his peerless biography, notes: ‘It is not an episode on which his admirers care to dwell.’42 Greville was disgusted, saying that ‘to see the Prime Minister and leader in the House of Commons thus beaten and degraded, treated with contumely by three-fourths of the party he had been used to lead, is a sorry sight, and very prejudicial to the public weal.’43

  Disraeli positioned himself on what would now be called the left of the Tory party, opposing harsh treatment to the leaders of the Chartist movement. His irregularities, inconsistencies, financial instability and simple lack of clout had caused Peel to overlook him when forming his ministry in September 1841, causing in turn Disraeli to write him a letter that describes the open wound the author felt he had sustained to his esteem: ‘I have tried to struggle against a storm of political hate and malice which few men have ever experienced . . . I have only been sustained under these trials by the conviction that the day would come when the foremost man of the country would publicly testify that he had some respect for my ability and my character. I confess to be unrecognised at this moment by you appears to me to be overwhelming, and I appeal to your own heart – to that justice and magnanimity which I feel are your characteristics – to save me from an intolerable humiliation.’44 Peel was unmoved. The letter, which could have done such damage had Peel aired it in 1846, is but one proof of what a political figure before his time Disraeli was: the tone of the aggrieved career politician of the late twentieth or early twenty-first century is apparent in his words. From the moment Peel spurned him, his vendetta against Peel was launched. Disraeli started to feel like an outsider in his own party.

  IV

  Gladstone, as one of Peel’s most devoted admirers, gained the measure of Disraeli by witnessing this scandalous behaviour. When Disraeli became Chancellor in February 1852 his main concern was to find measures that would keep Lord Derby’s first administration in power. When Gladstone succeeded him in December of that year it was an opportunity for him to exercise his obsession with the scrupulous use of public money. Fundamental to that was reducing taxation as far as possible, and limiting the operations of the State. He wrote to John Ward of the Inland Revenue on 18 February 1853, before his first budget, on the options open to him. ‘One of course would be the immediate abandonment of the Income Tax: and I wish for the best advice upon the question what are the means which we possess of supplying it’s [sic] place by a collection of substitutes reaching in all to the same or nearly the same amount of product? Firstly, can this be done at all? Secondly, if at all, how can it be done? It is clearly in the Department of Inland Revenue, if anywhere, that the solution lies.’45 He suggested a 2.5 per cent land tax and a tax on ‘steam boat receipts’.

  This was the period of the development of the feud between Gladstone and Disraeli. Gladstone had been the model for the character Oswald Millbank in Coningsby, published in 1844 when both men were notionally still Tories. It is ironic that the author, educated at a small private school in Walthamstow, should have represented the Old Etonian Gladstone as someone who only just made it to above the salt in 1830s Eton. Millbank comes from Manchester and his people are in trade; and we first hear Coningsby’s view of him when the hero rebukes a friend for asking Millbank to a breakfast party. ‘“Well,” said Coningsby, as if sullenly resigned, “never mind; but why you should ask an infernal manufacturer!”’46 It is
one of those passages that shows Disraeli’s uncannily tin ear for dialogue. As well as depicting Millbank as socially inferior, Disraeli compounds the insult by disclosing that ‘the secret of Millbank’s life was a passionate admiration and affection for Coningsby.’47 Gladstone was, nonetheless, occasionally charitable about Disraeli’s literary attempts. In his papers are rough notes he made on having read Sybil, mainly quoting phrases from the book, but also terming one of them ‘a capital passage’.48

  The beginning of the great parliamentary rivalry between the two men is usually dated to the early hours of 17 December 1852. It was the end of the debate on the Budget, the first delivered by Disraeli at what turned out to be the denouement of Derby’s ‘Who? Who?’ ministry (so named because each time one of its nonentities rose to speak in the Lords, the deaf and almost dead Duke of Wellington bellowed at Derby ‘Who? Who?’ as he had heard of none of them). Disraeli did not want to be Chancellor but, being ambitious, could not refuse the position when offered it. His Budget speech had been applauded, perhaps as much because of the physical achievement of delivering one of such length (about five hours) as because of what it contained. Disraeli had no feel for economics (as his personal finances showed), no understanding of detail, and had to be led by his officials. His Budget was quickly pulled apart, notably for its decision to cut the malt tax and increase the house tax. Gladstone, strong in every department in which Disraeli was weak, chose the last possible opportunity in the debate to savage the proposals. He did so clinically and by analysis, and without the recourse to sarcasm and invective that characterised Disraeli’s speeches.

  He spoke directly after the Chancellor, rising in a packed, poorly lit House of Commons at one o’clock in the morning. Disraeli realised the difficulties, and in the closing moments of his own speech had warned against the coalition of opinion being raised against him – by Peelites and Whigs – in uttering his notable remark that ‘England does not love coalitions’.49 He was jeered by Derby’s supporters, partly because they would have hoped to be getting home to bed, partly because Gladstone was, like them, still notionally a Conservative, and was attacking one of his ‘own’ side in a way that, it soon became apparent, would kill rather than just wound. He began with a form of moral rebuke for Disraeli, for having used the argumentum ad hominem rather too often in his speech: Gladstone intimated he would stick to facts.

  He demonstrated the regressive nature of the taxation Disraeli was introducing. He illustrated the hypocrisies of the man who had brought down Peel – the administration of nonentities, after all, had survived in office only so long as it had because of its decision to abandon all ideas of protection, yet much Peelite doctrine in the matter of commercial reform was in the government’s programme. He questioned Disraeli’s figures. He deplored his implication that the income tax would be permanent, when Peel had always intended it to be temporary. He said that by voting against the Budget one would be upholding Conservative principles, not by supporting it. He spoke for two-and-a-half hours. His speech preceded the vote, in which the government was defeated, and Derby had no option but to resign.

  The change of government brought Gladstone and Disraeli into conflict, but on the most ridiculous of matters. For all the height of his mind, Gladstone was not above pettiness when dealing with his rival, and Disraeli, as might have been expected, returned the compliment wholesale. Gladstone agreed to serve in Aberdeen’s essentially Peelite ministry, and succeeded Disraeli. Acrimony between the past and present Chancellor was immediate. The furniture in the official residence had hitherto been the Chancellor’s private property, and a fee was agreed between chancellors at the change of incumbent to ensure no one went out of pocket. It had been decided that this arrangement was cumbersome, and that the furniture should be sold to the Office of Works, becoming their property in perpetuity. Therefore, at the end of January 1853 Gladstone wrote to Disraeli and said that the Office of Works would be reimbursing him; and he also asked: ‘There is, I believe, a robe which passed down under some law of exchange from one Chancellor of the Exchequer to another, and I shall be very happy to retrieve it from you on the ordinary footing, whatever that may be.’50

  Disraeli, however, wrote to Gladstone to ask him to pay £307 16s for the costs of the furniture. He had paid the Office of Works £787 12s 6d when he succeeded Sir Charles Wood, but having expressed his ‘dissatisfaction’ at having to take ‘many things which I did not require’ he was out of pocket. The Office of Works had reimbursed Disraeli £479 16s for furniture it agreed was ‘in rooms of public reception’ and Gladstone was asked to pay the rest on assuming his new role.51 He said nothing of the robe. This garment had belonged to Pitt the Younger and Disraeli simply intended to keep it, another interesting mark of his probity.

  Gladstone replied that the Office of Works would handle the financial settlement, and reminded Disraeli that he had not mentioned the robe.52 Disraeli did not want to try to extract the money from the government, but decided to badger Gladstone for it. He sent a curt note in the third person a week later, the aggressiveness of which may or may not have been a cover for his determination to avoid discussion of the robe: ‘Mr Disraeli regrets very much, that he is obliged to say that Mr Gladstone’s letter repudiating his obligation to pay for the furniture of the official residence is not satisfactory.’53 He accused Gladstone of having breached the regulations ‘between gentlemen’ that had existed in changes of chancellor ‘which his predecessors had recognised’. He continued: ‘He was bound to act towards Mr Disraeli as Mr D had acted towards Sir Chas Wood.’ The note ended: ‘As Mr Gladstone appears to be in perplexity on this subject, Mr Disraeli recommends him to consult Sir Charles Wood, who is a man of the world.’

  Gladstone replied, also in the third person, that he ‘has read with regret and pain the note which he received last night from Mr Disraeli. He has endeavoured in this correspondence to observe towards Mr Disraeli the courtesy which was his due [the words ‘he thought’ have been crossed out after ‘which’] ‘and he is not aware of having said or done anything to justify the tone which Mr Disraeli has thought proper to adopt.’54 Gladstone suggested an independent valuation of what was left, to try to close the matter down; and he concluded: ‘It is highly unpleasant for Mr W. E. Gladstone to address Mr Disraeli without the usual terms of courtesy; but he abstains from them only because he perceives they are unwelcome.’ Disraeli’s biographers – Monypenny and Buckle, and Blake – agree that Gladstone should have paid up (which in the end he did) and not have expected the new rule about the ownership by the Office of Works to be made retrospective; but they also agree that Disraeli behaved badly about the robe, which remained in his family, and is still on display at Hughenden.

  Unlike Disraeli, Gladstone saw no personal benefit in power. He wrote to John Bright on 22 February 1858, saying that ‘The opinions, such as they are, that I hold on many questions of Government and administration, are strongly held; and although I set a value, a high value, upon the power which office gives, I earnestly hope never to be tempted by its exterior allurements, unless they are accompanied with the reasonable prospect of giving effect to some at least of those opinions, and with some adequate opening for public good.’55 However, Gladstone – still at this stage a Peelite, and therefore notionally a Tory – was regarded as a prize by Derby and his supporters, including Disraeli. Their hopes of establishing a stable ministry once they took office again in February 1858 seemed to rest upon Gladstone’s agreeing to be a part of it, and bringing other Peelites with him. Despite – or, perhaps, because of – the rancour between them, Disraeli was sent with the olive branch.

  In May 1858 he sent a note to Gladstone marked ‘confidential’.56 It began, without any salutation:

  I think it of real 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 formed the great difficulty in accomplishing a result, wh I have always anxiously denied.

  Listen, without prejudice to this brief narrative.

  There follows a self-justificatory account of Disraeli’s public life since 1850, when he said he had through Lord Londonderry ‘endeavoured . . . for some time and without hope to induce Sir James Graham to accept the post of Leader of the Conservative Party, which, I thought, would remove all difficulties.’ He continued: ‘When he finally declined this office I endeavoured to throw the game into your hands.’ However, Gladstone had not sought it. Then, in 1855, Palmerston had become leader of the Commons and Prime Minister. Earlier in 1858 Disraeli had once more sought to persuade Graham to take over the leadership of the party ‘to allow both of us to serve under him.’ Graham had replied that ‘his course was run’. He added:

  Thus you can see, for more than eight years, instead of thrusting myself to the forward place, I have been at all times actively preparing to make every sacrifice of self for the public good, wh I have ever thought identical with your accepting office in a Conservative government.

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

  Mr Canning was superior to Ld Castlereagh in capacity, in acquirements and in eloquence but he joined Lord C when Lord C was Ld Liverpool’s lieutenant and when the state of the party rendered it necessary . . . to be inactive now is, on your part, a real responsibility. If you join Ld Derby’s cabinet, you will meet there some warm personal friends; all its members are your admirers. You may place me in neither category but in that, I assure you, you have ever been most mistaken. The vacant post is, at this season, the most commanding in the commonwealth; if it were not, whatever office you filled, your shining qualities would always render you supreme; and if . . . necessities retain me formally in the chief post . . .