BEACONSFIELD, BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF (1804-1881), British statesman and novelist, eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli (q.v.) and Miriam (or Maria) Basevi was born on Dec. 21, 1804, at 6 King's road, Bedford row, now 22 Theobald's road, London. His grandfather, Benjamin D'Israeli (or Israeli) had come to England in 1748 from the Italian Jewish colony of Cento in Ferrara, as a trader; by his death he had risen to be a member of the Stock Exchange committee and left an estate of £35,000. This Benjamin D'Israeli's second wife was Sarah Siprut de Gabay Villareal, descended on the one side from the great Spanish Jewish house of Ibn Xaprut, on the other from the famous Portuguese Jewish family, the Villareals. Their son, Isaac D'Israeli, student of letters and dilettante, remained until 1813 a member of the Portuguese synagogue in Bevis Marks, but in consequence of a quarrel that he had in that year with the officials of the congrega tion, decided to sever his connection with the religion of his fore fathers, and permitted his three surviving sons and his daughter to be baptized. Benjamin's christening took place on July 3r, 1817, at St. Andrew's Holborn, and by this indifferent decision of his sceptical father was made possible the political career from which, as a Jew, he would by the laws of the time have been debarred.
Benjamin Disraeli was sent to school first at a Mr. Potticany's at Blackheath and then to Higham hall, near Walthamstow, a prosperous academy kept by a Unitarian minister, the Rev. Eli Cogan. At the age of 17 he was articled to a solicitors' firm in Old Jewry, but three years' experiment convinced a young man of adventurous and romantic temperament, whose dandified dress already attracted notice, that he was not cut out to be a lawyer. His first essays in a wider field were, however, unfortunate. By gambling in South American stock in 1825 he loaded himself with heavy debts, and by attempting, with the aid of a ready tongue and a bold address, to organize, on behalf of Murray the pub lisher, a new daily paper, the Representative, of which Lockhart, Scott's son-in-law was to be editor, he involved himself in a journalistic failure and made enemies of Murray, of John Wilson Croker, the Tory publicist, and other influential persons. His for tunes took a turn for the better, however, when, at the sugges tion of his friend, Mrs. Austen, a solicitor's wife, he embodied and embellished some of his experiences in the daring roman a clef, Vivian Grey, which was published by Colburn, with strenuous puffing in 1826. In spite of its youthful crudeness, the novel made a stir by its lively plot and witty dialogue, as much as by the audacity with which the chief figures of society were introduced into it under thinly disguised names. On returning to England after a tour in Italy with the Austens, Disraeli published in 1828 a satire on English life and institutions, entitled The Voyage of Captain Popanilla; he also entered at Lincoln's inn for the Bar, but, overtaken by illness and depression, largely in consequence of the burden of debt, passed some time in comparative idleness at his father's new country home, Bradenham manor, at the foot of the Chiltern hills. Among the subjects of his meditation at this period appear to have been the history and destiny of the Jewish race, to which he belonged, and he fretted to visit the East and the home of his people. To gain money for the journey he wrote a second society novel, The Young Duke, for which in 183o he was paid f 500, and thus enabled to sail from Falmouth in the summer of this year, accompanied by William Meredith, who was engaged to marry his sister Sarah.
This voyage deeply influenced Disraeli's ideas. The itinerary included Spain, Albania, Athens, Constantinople, Palestine and Egypt. Although he indulged his fantasy by wearing a belt full of pistols and daggers, "red cap, red slippers, broad blue striped jacket and trousers," his observation was keenly at work, as is shown in the letters he wrote home to his sister Sarah, the sub stance of which he later incorporated into his novel Contarini Fleming. It was the East that particularly fascinated him, alike in the Alhambra at Granada, at Constantinople, where he was enchanted by the character and life of the Turks, and at Jerusa lem, where he had the daring to seek an entry into the mosque of Omar, on the site of the Jewish temple, but. was "quickly sur rounded by a crowd of turbaned fanatics and escaped with diffi culty." In Cairo he had an interview with the great. pasha, Mehemet Ali, with whom he discussed parliamentary government. Much of Disraeli's policy in later life may be traced to these experiences. His solicitude for the oriental empire of Britain, his support of Turkey against her enemies, his swift perception of the importance of the Suez canal, above all his unfailing pride in his own Jewish ancestry all owed something to his experi ences during this memorable journey. After his return (which was darkened by the death of his companion Meredith from small-pox) he utilized his impressions for two books, Alroy, a historical novel based on the exploits of a Jewish national leader in western Asia during the i 2th century under the Caliphate, and the "psychological romance" called *Contarini Fleming. In this latter story, one of the finest of Disraeli's works, his own fiery ambitions are portrayed in the character of the hero, who is the son of a great minister in an imaginary Scandinavian kingdom and on his mother's side of Venetian descent, as Disraeli believed that he was himself. Contarini, like his creator, suffers from the conflict between his poetical and political ambitions, and also from the sense of being half an alien in the country of his birth. In none of his books has Disraeli given a clearer view of his own nature and ambitions.
In fact, the time was now at hand when he himself was to make the choice between letters and politics as the main object of his career. In 1832 he offered himself at a bye-election in High Wycombe, near his home, as a Radical candidate, supported by O'Connell, Hume and Burdett. He was twice defeated in this borough, and then, with an audacious change of front, came for ward to contest a county seat as a Tory. His quick wit soon showed him that he was laying himself open to the charge of being an adventurer without principles, and when planning his next candidature in Marylebone (which never actually took shape) he issued a pamphlet "What is He?" in which he sought to show that it was possible honestly to be both a Tory and a democrat. At the moment such a contention might seem the merest oppor tunism, but in fact it represented one of the deepest and most lasting of Disraeli's political convictions. He was shrewd enough, however, to realize that he must, if he wished to succeed, range himself under one party banner or the other, and accordingly he drew near to the Tories attaching himself particularly to the ex chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, a restless and somewhat discredited intriguer. He had still a third and a fourth defeat to suffer, at Wycombe in the general election of 1834 and at Taunton in a bye-election in 1835, but during 1835 and 1836 he laid the basis of a political reputation by three brilliant polemical pamphlets, The Runnymede Letters in The Times, attacking Melbourne's Whig Government with bitter sarcasm, and two constitutional tracts entitled A Vindication of the English Constitution and The Spirit of Whiggism. These writings, in spite of their extravagance of phrase and their exotic flavour, expose a coherent philosophy of Conservatism. The theories of abstract rights and the a priori sys tems of the utilitarians are disputed in favour of an organic view of society and of national growth. National character is fash ioned by history and institutions and to destroy a nation's insti tutions is to destroy its life. The House of Commons is not the "house of the people"; it is the house of an "estate" of the realm, that is to say of a particular section of the nation who have the privilege of representation in it. Civil liberty and equality, which make England essentially democratic, are only to be preserved by maintaining the balance of our institutions as a whole, and it is the Whigs who have always been the really anti-popular party by endeavouring to maintain the supremacy of a class on the ruins of those popular bulwarks, the monarchy and the Church. The Tories, in appearance the champions of royal and ecclesiastical absolutism, have really been the champions of national liberty against a veiled oligarchy. Toryism does not proscribe the en largement of the "third estate" by prudent extensions of the fran chise; it only objects to the "sectarian" character of the Reform Act which the Whigs carried in 1832 with a view to consolidating their own political strength. Besides throwing into literary shape these theories which in substance guided the whole of his career as a British statesman, Disraeli in these waiting years published a Lucianic volume of satires including Ixion in Heaven and the Infernal Marriage, and two more novels, the love story, Henrietta Temple (1836) and Venetia (1837), which presents some of the chief episodes from the lives of Byron and Shelley in the form of fiction. The year of the publication of Venetia was that of the death of William IV. and the accession of Queen Victoria. A new reign then meant a dissolution of Parliament, and Disraeli at last gained a seat as Conservative member for Maidstone.
It is well known that his maiden speech on an Irish topic in the House of Commons on Dec. 7, 1837, was a failure. The extrava gance of his attire (more suited to the company of his friends, the dandies, D'Orsay and Bulwer, or to the dining-table of the "gorgeous" Lady Blessington than to Parliament) and the exuber ant similes with which his speech was bejewelled made an impres sion of affected absurdity and he was laughed down, but not before he had warned his interrupters that one day they would have to listen to him. He quickly set himself to learn the style of the House and began to claim attention both by his command of facts and figures and by his independence. This he showed especially in the debates on the Chartist petition and disturbances 1$39-4o, which proved that his desire to improve the conditions of the working-class was no mere affectation of Radicalism. While he was thus strengthening his parliamentary position, he had also improved his social status by his marriage in 1339 to Mrs. Wynd ham Lewis (born Mary Anne Evans) . the widow of his fellow Conservative Member for Maidstone, who had lately died. Mrs. Disraeli brought to her husband. who was 12 years her junior. a house in Park Lane, a considerable fortune and the unceasing de votion of an affectionate. but not particularly intellectual. nature.
Fortified by these advantages. Disraeli considered himself im portant enough to solicit from Sir Robert Peel, the Conservative leader. a place in the Government that he formed on the fall of Melbourne's Whig administration in 1841. Peels reply was a curt refusal prompted. it is believed, by a member of his cabinet. Lord Stanley. and the rejected applicant thus entered the new Parlia ment (where he was returned for Shrewsbury) in a mood of dis content with his leader which gave edge to a divergence of political ideals that must in any case have led to a breach. Peel's Con servatism was of a prudent and conciliatory type, which aimed especially at securing the support of the wealthy manufacturing middle-class that had risen to power by the industrial revolution. Disraeli's Toryism was more romantic and literary. at once more aristocratic and more popular. He believed strongly in the power of the Crown, in the preponderance of the old landed aristocracy, in the influence of the Church (which was at this date being cham pioned with a new fervour by the Oxford Tractarians) and in the need of protecting the labouring class from exploitation by the factory system. These were the ideals that inspired also the small group of youthful Tories (numbering in their ranks George Smythe. later Lord Strangford. Lord John Manners. afterwards Duke of Rutland, and Ambrose Phillips de Lisle, a Roman Cath olic gentleman with large estates) who acquired the nickname of "Young England." Under Disraeli's leadership this band of enthusiasts began to harass Peel with criticisms and sarcasms in the House ; and to give publicity to their aims Disraeli wrote and published in 1844 Coningsby, or the Younger Generation, the first of a projected series of three political novels and one of his most powerful books, which has given to English literature such cele brated characters as Lord Monmouth (based. like Thackeray's Lord Steyne on the actual Lord Hertford). Mr. Rigby, a bitter satire on John Wilson Croker, Taper and Tadpole, the election eering jackals, and the mysterious Jewish millionaire, Sidonia. embodying many of Disraeli's own characteristics of mind and temper. The next year appeared the second volume of the trilogy, Sybil or the Two Nations, which is a moving and carefully docu mented picture of the Chartist movement and of the distressful condition of the working classes in the "hungry forties." To deliver the lower of the two "nations" (the poor) from the op pression of the upper (the rich). Disraeli looked to the crown without specifying clearly how the young queen could intervene. The book gave added weight to the attacks of the author and his disciples on Peel's factory legislation, for falling short of the dras tic reforms of hours and conditions of labour demanded by the Tory reformer. Lord Ashley (afterwards Lord Shaftesbury). It was becoming increasingly clear both to Disraeli and to the landed gentry who formed the bulk of the Tory party that Peel in his regard for the great mill-owners and for the expansion of British industry was approximating more and more to the ideals of the Liberal opposition, that. as Disraeli phrased it. he had "caught the Whigs bathing and walked away with their clothes." The conflict was now to come to a sharp issue on the crucial question of the corn laws.
Ever since the foundation of the Anti-corn-law league in 1838 by Cobden and Bright the protective duties on foreign corn, which had been left in an invidious prominence by Huskisson's reduction of tariffs between 1823 and 1827. had been the object of fierce at tack by the manufacturing middle-class. Peel. who had been called to office after defeating the Whigs on a proposal to reduce protec tive duties, was nominally the champion of this bulwark of the landed interest, but his sympathies and his intellectual convictions were being more and more captivated by the theories of the free traders, a fact which became so obvious that in the beginning of the session of 1845 Disraeli amid applause declared that "a Con servative Government is an organized hypocrisy." In the autumn of the same year a ruinous harvest. coinciding with the outrirsix of the potato disease in Ireland hastened Peel's decision. He u-_ upon his cabinet the necessity of repealing the corn laws. and s:. they hesitated. Peel. feeling his hand to be forced by Lord Jo Russell's Edinburgh letter of Nov. 2; announcing his own version to complete free trade. handed in his resignation to queen. Russell failed to form a Liberal Government throw die._ sensions in his own party and Peel returned to office in Jan_ 1 y with a reconstructed cabinet. from which the principal secs- was Lord Stanley. the brilliant minister for the colonies. Disrae. s former enemy. Peel at once introduced proposals for abrogating the corn laws, and in the bitter struggle which filled the between Peel with his followers and the protectionist raeli and a sporting nobleman. Lord George Bentinck. led tl opposition. The force of invective with which Disraeli assi.1 the prime minister during this session made him the leading :7 of the House of Commons and an indisputable chief of the ,..: Tory party. A painful incident of the duel between Peel and revolted follower was Disraeli's denial. in answer to a taunt fr: the minister, that he had ever solicited office from him, which been variously interpreted as a lapse of memory or a falsehood. The protectionists did not succeed in staying the reps of the corn laws. which was finally carried on June 25. 1846. they succeeded on the same night in turning out the m;- ister by voting against him (with scant consistency) on a p71 posed measure of coercion for Ireland. The Conservative party was now irretrievably split. and a period of reconstruction :n opposition awaited them.
The years of Liberal Government between 1S46 and IS_ _ spent by Disraeli in attempts to extricate his party from eclipse into which it had fallen. The death of Peel from a r .±..nz. accident in 1850. and of Bentinck from heart failure in cleared the political stage. In spite of the lingering dislike s:.... felt for him by Stanley. the leader of the protectionists in Lords. Disraeli. who from 1S47 to the end of his career in Commons sat as member for the county of Buckingham. beta- by degrees the acknowledged leader of the party in the Comm: though he remained unpopular with sections of his following : : two main reasons. One was the racial pride with which he em: sized his Jewish descent. This was shown by the support he g_ . Russell against his own party in 184; in removing the barriers excluded professing Jews from Parliament. and even more by the publication in the same year of the third volume of the political trilogy. Tancred or the New Crusade. This volume had been planned to deal with the Church. but in fact it implies the impo tence of the Church and the emptiness of English politics ge-: erally. which leads the hero. a wealthy young noble. to Jerusalem and wander in the holy land inspiration frc "the angel of Arabia." that is, from the genius of the Semitic stock. The second cause of the distrust felt for Disraeli at this epoch was his determination to bury- the issue of protection and to rally the Conservatives round some fresh programme. The completion in 1851 of his vivacious biography of Lord George Ben tinck was in effect his final tribute to what he had come to hold an irreparably lost cause. His private life during these waiting years was marked by the purchase in 1848 of the picturesque estate of Hughenden in Buckinghamshire and by his romantic friendship with Mrs. Brydges Willyams, an aged Jewess of Torquay. who left him her considerable fortune on her death in 1863, and was buried in his family grave at Hughenden.
The time of waiting ended in 1852, when the destruction of Russell's Government through his feud with Palmerston placed Stanley (who had in 1851 succeeded to the title of Earl of Derby) for a brief while in office. It was an insecure ministry, since neither Palmerston nor William Ewart Gladstone, the chief figure among the so-called "Peelites," could be persuaded to join it. and in a House overwhelmingly free trade in conviction Disraeli. as chancellor of the exchequer, had an insuperably difficult task. The budget that he brought forward in December, 1852, designed to relieve the agricultural interest by other means than a reversion to protection. was fiercely attacked both by Gladstone and by the Whigs and brought about the fall of the ministry. During Aber deen's coalition Government that followed, with the sequel of the Crimean War, Disraeli was principally occupied with organizing and conducting The Press, a weekly paper that criticized the hesi tations and inefficiency of the ministry with savage irony. Derby would have been the natural person to take office when the coali tion split in 1855 amid the disasters of the Crimean expedition, but he shirked the task and it was not until 1858, when Palmerston, the successor of Aberdeen's luckless combination, was overthrown over the Conspiracy bill which he promoted after Orsini's attempt (planned in England) to murder Napoleon III., that the Derbyite party found itself once again in office. Although Disraeli wrote a most magnanimous letter to Gladstone, hinting that he might him self be willing to "be removed from the scene," Gladstone still refused to return to the Conservative fold. The main problem with which the ministry found itself faced was that of parliamentary reform. It was widely felt that the time had come to enlarge the franchise which the Act of 1832 had extended to the middle classes so as to take in the best elements at least of the working class. Disraeli brought forward a tentative Bill in Feb. 1859, which low ered the qualification for the county franchise (an advantage to the Conservatives) and attempted to give some actuality to Dis raeli's old dream of "estates of the realm" by what came to be known as the "fancy franchises," votes given to certain profes sions and standings, as those of the clergy, lawyers, schoolmasters, investors in savings banks and so on. It was too timid to please, and the overthrow of the Government soon followed. Palmerston, resuming in June, 1859, the premiership which he held until his death in 1865, systematically damped down all attempts to fan the flame of reforming zeal. Gladstone, however, who had been a Lib eral minister since the overthrow of the Conservatives in was determined to advance in this direction (after Palmerston's death) and to enfranchise the masses. As leader of the House of Commons under Russell's premiership, he brought forward in 1866 a Reform bill that was hotly opposed not only by the Conserva tives but by a revolted section of his own followers headed by Robert Lowe, who saw in it a surrender to pure democracy. The Liberal Government fell with its bill in the summer, and left to the new cabinet formed by Derby the duty of dealing with the reform question, now rendered more pressing than ever by John Bright's inflammatory oratory, the riots in Hyde Park, and the insistence of the queen on the necessity of allaying the agitation. After much cautious feeling of the way the cabinet in Feb. 1867 agreed on a plan of which the main features were household suf frage for all personal ratepayers, a second vote for those who paid also 20S in direct taxation and certain fancy franchises. But the bold advance. made by such a scheme in the direction of democ racy produced an abrupt crisis in the cabinet. During the week end of Feb. 23—Feb. 25, Lord Cranborne (Robert Cecil), the Indian secretary, and one of the strongest men in the Govern ment, convinced himself by a fresh study of the statistics that the new Bill would go further than its promoters realized in throwing the balance of power in the constituencies into the hands of the new popular voters. He won over to his view Lord Carnarvon, the colonial secretary, and General Peel, the war minister, and on Monday morning, the very day upon which Disraeli was to unfold the bill to the House, the dissentients announced to Derby that they withdrew their support from the measure. As a result of this unexpected blow Disraeli had to confront the House with some lame suggestions, derisively known as the "ten minutes" bill. But in a few weeks, Derby and Disraeli, rallying from the shock, re solved to return to their original project, at the cost of losing Cranborne and his two sympathizers. Accordingly, Disraeli on March 18, brought in a bill on the lines already mentioned. In its first draft it was not extreme, since the grant of household fran chise in the boroughs to ratepayers (which accompanied a reduc tion on the qualification for the county franchise) was balanced by the dual vote, the fancy franchises and the exclusion of the "compound householder," i.e., the householder, usually poor, who compounded with his landlord for the latter to pay his rates. But in the course of the debates Disraeli with astute parliamentary skill yielded to critics of the measure on all these vital points without forfeiting the prestige of the Government. He agreed to lower the county franchise still further, to a f basis, to abandon the dual vote and the two years residence qualification, to include lodgers, and finally to abolish the system of compounding for rates, which made the "fancy franchises" otiose and enormously increased the mass of voters. The bill was finally passed on Aug. after bitter opposition from Gladstone (who was, however, abandoned by his own party), Lowe and Lord Cranborne, who denounced the "Conservative surrender." Undoubtedly Disraeli had departed far from his theory of balanced "estates" and his often repeated hostility to a democracy of numbers, while Derby confessed to "a leap in the dark." They could, however, plead something like a national mandate to settle the reform question on broad lines in order to avert revolution, while the extended electorate of their creation proved by no means unfriendly to Conservative principles.
Its gratitude, however, was not immediate. Disraeli (who be came prime minister on Derby's retirement in Feb. 1868) was overthrown, when Gladstone (who had become formal leader of the Liberal Party by old Lord Russell's retirement in 1867) brought forward in 1868 his project for disestablishing the Irish Church. The electorate supported the Liberals and from the autumn of 1868 to 1874 Disraeli was again condemned to hold together a party languishing in the chill of opposition. He had been overthrown on a Church question and religious interests filled a great part of his mind at this period. He had endeavoured, while prime minister, to distribute Church patronage so as to discourage both the Ritualist (Anglo-Catholic) and Broad Church parties, and in a famous speech delivered at Oxford in 1864 he had criticized rationalism and Darwinism, declaring himself "on the side of the angels" against those who (he said) favoured the view that man was rather an ape. He now gathered up the results of his religious thinking in Lothair, the most successful of his novels, published in 1870, which depicts the struggle of the revolutionary sects against the papacy, the progress of Roman Catholic prose lytizing in England, the conflict between Semitic and Hellenic ideals and other burning topics of the hour in the form of a good natured satire on English society. His home life was darkened in 1872 by the death of his devoted wife, for whom on leaving office four years earlier he had secured the title of Viscountess Beacons field; but he found some solace in his Platonic but ardent, affec tion for Lady Bradford, for whom, as for her sister, Lady Chester field, he unceasingly declared the warmest sentiments in his let ters. Politically he had little to do but to watch Gladstone's ad ministration break up under the strain of its own mistakes, though he plied it with keen criticisms, and in especial urged the need of maintaining imperial cohesion against what he considered the "cos mopolitan" indifference of the Liberal rulers to England's colonial heritage. His patience and tenacity were rewarded, when, after the crushing defeat of Gladstone in 1874, he returned to power with a large majority and was able to form an exceptionally strong Government in which Lord Salisbury (formerly Lord Cranborne), now at length reconciled, accepted the India Office again, while Lord Derby (Edward Stanley), the son of Disraeli's old chief, became foreign secretary, Lord Carnarvon, colonial secretary, and a powerful lawyer, Sir Hugh Cairns, lord chancellor.
Yet a further source of strength to the new ministry lay in the special sympathy felt by Queen Victoria for its chief. At the outset of his political career Disraeli had been regarded with some distrust both by the queen and the prince consort; but a better understanding of his ability, his patriotism and his sincere devotion to the monarchical idea had worked a change in the views of the royal couple. After her husband's death, Queen Victoria found great support in the courtly deference and loyal affection with which Disraeli treated her; and though it is difficult to clear him from the charge of gaining certain ends by flattering her self esteem, there is no reason to doubt either his faith in the prin ciple of monarchy or that his romantic temperament sincerely responded to the ideal of devotion embodied in her whom he called (following Spenser) the "faery." He had not been long in office before he conferred a fresh lustre on her crown by securing the addition of the title "empress of India" to her royal and im perial style. This imaginative measure, carried in 1876, had the further effect, which Disraeli with his oriental sympathies clearly foresaw, of binding the princes and peoples of India by a closer, more personal tie of loyalty, to the English rule.
Queen Victoria, perhaps, valued almost as highly the support which her prime minister gave her in promoting the passage into law of the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874. This bill, pro posed by the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Tait, had for its object. to restrain the alleged illegalities of ceremonial practised by the Anglo-Catholic party in the Anglican Church ; in Disraeli's picturesque phrases it aimed at "putting down ritualism" and abol ishing "the mass in masquerade." An untoward incident of the debates on the measure was a bitter interchange between the prime minister and Lord Salisbury (a moderate High Churchman), who opposed the bill and was described by his chief as "a great master of gibes and flouts and jeers." The remark, however, did not lead to a breach with his powerful lieutenant, and the vehement Prot estantism of the queen was gratified by Disraeli's remark that the success of the bill had been wholly due to "the personal will of the sovereign." That "personal will" was not less strongly felt in the principal matter with which Disraeli's last and greatest administration had to deal, the Eastern question (q.v.). Ever since his youthful tour in the East, he had taken a specially keen interest in that depart ment of politics and the concern for Britain's Indian empire which had spurred him on to give the queen her new title made him vigilantly jealous of all possible encroachments on British su premacy in the East. In 1875 a unique opportunity occurred for gaining possession of one of the chief doorways to the orient. The khedive of Egypt found himself compelled by his heavy debts to offer for sale his 177,000 shares in the Suez canal. Disraeli, on re ceiving early news that the shares were to be disposed of, promptly borrowed the four millions needed from the Rothschilds in the name of the cabinet and waited for parliament to sanction his audacious stroke. It may be reckoned the greatest service that in his long career he rendered to his country.
More complicated was the trouble that arose in 1876 in the Balkan peninsula. Following Palmerston and the great diploma tist Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who had directed the policy that culminated in the Crimean War, Disraeli was deeply convinced that only by maintaining the Turkish empire with its centre at Constantinople could Russia be prevented from obtaining a posi tion at the Straits from whence ultimately she would threaten British dominion over India and elsewhere in the East. The Bul garian revolt of 1876, however, suppressed by the Turkish govern ment with hideous barbarity, seemed to give Russia only too plau sible an excuse for interfering in the Near East in the interest of humanity. Disraeli made an initial blunder when he dismissed the news of the atrocities committed by the Turkish troops in Bul garia as "coffee-house babble," and the apparent callousness of his attitude enabled his opponent Gladstone (who had temporarily retired from the leadership but not from the fighting ranks of Lib eralism) to mobilize an immense weight of public opinion against him by vigorous pamphlets and by speeches demanding the expul sion of the Turkish government "bag and baggage" from Europe. Disraeli was not shifted from his position by the outcry, and as the situation became more entangled by Montenegro and Serbia declaring war on the Sultan and by Russia peremptorily demand ing an armistice, he delivered at the Lord Mayor's banquet in November a defiant speech on England's readiness for war. This seemed doubly unfortunate since shortly before a conference of representatives of the Powers had been convoked at Constanti nople, with Lord Salisbury representing England. Although Salis bury reached a friendly agreement with Ignatiev, the Russian representative, and a plan for reorganizing the government of the Sultan's Balkan possessions was accepted by the conference, the upshot was a failure, through the obduracy of the Turkish Gov ernment, who considered that the attitude openly displayed by the British Minister and more cautiously shown by the foreign minis ter, Lord Derby, justified them in believing that the failure of the negotiations would not displease the British Government. In pur suing this line Disraeli (who had in the summer of 1876 gone to the House of Lords with the title earl of Beaconsfield) had the energetic support of the queen, who dreaded the spectre of Rus sian aggression in the Near East and was revolted by the extrava gant agitation of the Liberals and High Churchmen in favour of the Balkan Christian States.
The result of the failure of the conference was the outbreak of war between Russia and Turkey in the summer of 1877, and Dis raeli was now faced with the triple task of maintaining a threat ening front against a possible Russian advance upon Constanti nople, preserving the unity of his cabinet (in which Salisbury and Carnarvon by no means shared his enthusiastically pro-Turkish convictions, while Derby grew progressively more and more alarmed at the possibility of England being involved in the war), and restraining the ardour of the queen, who was passionately desirous of throwing down the gauntlet to Russia. When after sharp vicissitudes of success and failure, the Russian armies in December captured Plevna, which had heroically resisted their advance, and appeared on the outskirts of Constantinople, Dis raeli, still hotly pressed by the queen who even spoke of abdica tion, began to concert measures of warlike preparation and a schism in the Cabinet became inevitable. Carnarvon was the first to go, and when on Feb. 8, 1878, the English fleet was sent up to Constantinople, and on March 27 the cabinet decided to call up the reserves and to seize as military post Cyprus and Alex andretta from which to control the eastern Mediterranean, Derby also resigned his position. Fortunately for Beaconsfield, Salis bury was indisposed to tolerate the demands made upon the Sultan by Russia in the Treaty of San Stefano, dictated, as it were on the field of victory. It provided for an autonomous Bulgaria with far reaching frontiers, the entire independence of Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro, the cession of Kars and Batum to Russia and the payment of a war indemnity by the vanquished Turks. Salis bury agreed to take Derby's place at the Foreign Office and promptly issued a circular to the Governments of Europe demand ing that Russia should submit the Treaty in all its parts to a congress. Russia was in no position to refuse, but before the congress met at Berlin and while Disraeli was summoning Indian troops to Malta a secret agreement between England and herself conceded the division of Bulgaria into two parts, the Southern enjoying less independence than the Northern and the retention by Russia of Kars and Batum subject to England finding com pensation in another quarter, which was effected by requiring Turkey to cede Cyprus in return for a guarantee of her Asiatic possessions. This arrangement naturally robbed the congress which opened on June 13 of much of its actuality. Beaconsfield and Salisbury represented Great Britain, and the "old Jew" greatly impressed Bismarck by his firmness. At one moment when the Russian representatives seemed inclined to waver on the new ar rangements about Bulgaria, he ordered his special train to be got ready for his departure from Berlin. The influence of Bismarck and of Austria-Hungary, which had been placated by receiving the right to administer Bosnia and Hercegovina, ultimately in duced Russia to yield to the chief English demands; a Treaty in that sense was signed on July 13 and Beaconsfield and Salisbury returned to England in triumph, the former claiming to have brought with him "peace with honour." It was his last triumph. Misfortune gathered round the last months of his Government. Both in South Africa, where the Zulus massacred an English force at Isandhlwana and in Afghan istan, where the British Resident at Cabul was murdered with his staff, it seemed that Conservative policy was rash and ill-judged. The efforts made by the able home secretary, Richard Cross, to improve artisans' dwellings and public health (a legacy of the ideas expressed in Sybil) did less to strengthen Conservatism than the acute agricultural depression did to destroy its popularity. A shattering defeat was encountered at the polls in 188o and Bea consfield did not tarry in resigning. He took up again a novel he had left unfinished when called to office, and produced in Endymion, which was published towards the end of the year, a political novel that was rather a romantic retrospect of the years he had known, than the enunciation of a programme or of a set of principles. In March 1881 Beaconsfield was attacked by a chill, which proved fatal on April 19. He was buried in the family vault at Hughenden between Lady Beaconsfield and Mrs. Brydges Willyams, and a few days after the interment Queen Victoria came herself to lay a wreath with her own hand upon the grave of her favourite minister.
The character and achievements of Benjamin Disraeli have been variously estimated. As a novelist, for all his wit and his moments of acute realism, he was too individual and fantastic to be classed with a school or to perpetuate a tradition. In consider ing him as a statesman few would be found to deny that by his courageous seizure of opportunity in the matter of the Suez canal shares he did more to consolidate British power in the east than has fallen to most statesmen to do at a single stroke. Only preju dice again could refuse him the credit of having by tenacity and astuteness reconstructed the Conservative party, shattered by Peel's face-about on the corn law question, and incapable of being restored to its old strength by Derby's dilettante and capricious leadership. Disraeli not only held Conservatism together; he secured for it a new lease of prosperity by making it a popular rather than a restrictive cause. It has on the other side been urged that many or most of his peculiar ideas proved imprac ticable or sterile. His championship of protection and the pre ponderance of the landed class, his theory of "estates of the realm" as an alternative to democratic parliamentarism, his faith in the recovery of personal power by the crown, his desire to draw the cords of empire closer by a tariff, a military code and a continuous council representing the Dominions in London, his ecclesiast policy of warring on both the latitudinarian and Catholic elements of Anglicanism, all proved designs that were either abandoned by their author or failed to commend themselves to posterity. Nor was his Near Eastern policy, on which he especially plumed him self, anything but a grandiose failure. The division of Bulgaria, with the whole scheme of maintaining Turkish rule in the Balkan peninsula, has passed like a dream, while the establishment of the Hapsburg monarchy in Bosnia and Hercegovina paved the way for the conflagration of 1914. In spite of these considerations, how ever, Conservatives are loth to admit that Disraeli left no legacy beyond the sentimental tradition that founded the "Primrose League" on one of his alleged floral preferences. They feel that they have inherited from him a spirit if not a set of dogmas. The union of Toryism with democracy, the acceptance of the duty of social reform, pride in the empire apart from considerations of material profit, the veneration of the crown as the sacramental symbol of national and imperial unity, are all principles that the modern Conservative finds expressed with incomparable force and felicity in the speeches, novels and epigrams of this undoubtedly mysterious personality.
To solve that fascinating mystery many attempts have been made. Disraeli's personal integrity is no longer doubted. His zeal for his party and his country makes it inappropriate to call him an "adventurer," however adventurous on many occasions his policy. Yet he continues to baffle critics. Few have been more successful in summarizing his character than Frederick Greenwood in the memoir that appeared in earlier editions of this Encyclopedia, part of which may fitly be quoted here:—"He was thoroughly and unchangeably a Jew. At but one remove by birth from southern Europe and the East, he was an Englishman in nothing but his devotion to England and his solicitude for her honour and pros perity. It was not wholly by volition and design that his mind was strange to others and worked in absolute detachment. He had `none of the hereditary prepossessions of the native Englishman.' No such prepossessions disturbed his vision when it was bent upon the rising problems of the time, or rested on the machinery of government and the kind of men who worked it and their ways of working. The advantages of Sidonia's intellect and temperament were largely his, in affairs, but not without their drawbacks. His pride in his knowledge of the English character was the pride of a student ; and we may doubt if it ever occurred to him that there would have been less pride but more knowledge had he been an Englishman. It is certain that in shrouding his own character he checked the communication of others to himself, and so could continue to the end of his career the costly mistake of being the atrical in England." BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Novels and Tales by the Earl of Beaconsfield Bibliography.-Novels and Tales by the Earl of Beaconsfield Hughenden edition II vols. (1881) , and Bradenham edition (1926, etc.) ; Selected Speeches of the late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield (ed., T. E. Kebbel, 1882) ; Lord Beaconsfield's Letters 183o-52 (ed. R. Disraeli, 1887) . See also W. F. Monypenny and G. E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield 6 vol. (1910-20) ; O. A. H. Schmitz, Lord Beaconsfield in Die Kunst der Politik (1911) ; J. A. Froude, The Life of the Earl of Beacons field (1914) ; Sir E. G. Clarke, Benjamin Disraeli (1926) ; D. L. Mur ray, Disraeli (1927) ; The Marquis of Zetland, The Letters of Disraeli to Lady Chesterfield and Lady Bradford (1929) .