Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield,
KG,
PC,
FRS, (21 December 1804 – 19
April 1881) was a
British Prime Minister,
parliamentarian,
Conservative statesman and literary
figure. He served in government for three decades, twice as
Prime Minister.
A teenage convert to
Anglicanism,
he was nonetheless the country's first and thus far only Prime
Minister of Jewish heritage. He played an instrumental role in the
creation of the modern
Conservative Party after the
Corn Laws schism of 1846.
Although a major figure in the
protectionist wing of the Conservative Party
after 1844, Disraeli's relations with the other leading figures in
the party, particularly
Lord Derby, the
overall leader, were often strained. Not until the 1860s would
Derby and Disraeli be on easy terms, and the latter's succession of
the former assured. From 1852 onwards, Disraeli's career would also
be marked by his often intense rivalry with
William Gladstone, who eventually rose to
become leader of the
Liberal
Party. In this feud, Disraeli was aided by his warm friendship
with
Queen Victoria,
who came to detest Gladstone during the latter's first premiership
in the 1870s.
In 1876 Disraeli was raised to the peerage as the Earl of Beaconsfield, capping nearly
four decades in the House of Commons
.
Before and during his political career, Disraeli was well-known as
a literary and social figure, although his novels are not generally
regarded as a part of the Victorian literary
canon. He mainly wrote romances, of which
Sybil and
Vivian Grey are perhaps the best-known
today. He is exceptional among British Prime Ministers for having
gained equal social and political renown. He was twice successful
as the
Glasgow University
Conservative Association's candidate for
Rector of the
University, holding the post for two full terms between 1871
and 1877.
Early life
Disraeli's
biographers believe he was descended from Italian
Sephardic Jews. He claimed Spanish ancestry, possibly referring to the
ultimate origin of his family heritage in Spain
prior to the
expulsion of Jews in 1492, after
which many Jews emigrated temporarily to northern Italy before
moving to the Netherlands and then England.He was the second
child and eldest son of
Isaac
D'Israeli, a literary critic and historian, and Maria Basevi.
Benjamin changed the spelling in the 1820s by dropping the
apostrophe. His siblings included Sarah (1802–1859), Naphtali
(1807), Ralph (1809–1898), and James (1813–1868).
Benjamin at first
attended a small school, the Reverend John Potticary's school
at Blackheath
. His father had Benjamin baptised in 1817 following a dispute with their
synagogue
. The elder D'Israeli was content to remain
outside organized religion.
From 1817, Benjamin attended Higham Hall, in Walthamstow
. His younger brothers, in contrast, attended
the superior Winchester
College
.
His father groomed him for a career in law, and Disraeli was
articled to a
solicitor in 1821.
In 1824,
Disraeli toured Belgium
and the
Rhine
Valley
with his father and later wrote that it was while
travelling on the Rhine
that he
decided to abandon the law: "I determined when descending those
magical waters that I would not be a lawyer." On his return
to England he speculated on the stock exchange on various South
American mining companies. The recognition of the new South
American republics on the recommendation of
George Canning had led to a considerable
boom, encouraged by various promoters. In this connection, Disraeli
became involved with the financier
J. D.
Powles, one such booster. In the
course of 1825, Disraeli wrote three anonymous pamphlets for
Powles, promoting the companies.
That same year Disraeli's financial activities brought him into
contact with the publisher
John Murray who was also
involved in the South American mines. Accordingly, they attempted
to bring out a newspaper,
The Representative,
to promote both the cause of the mines and those politicians who
supported the mines, specifically George Canning. The paper was a
failure, in part because the mining "bubble" burst in late 1825,
which ruined Powles and Disraeli. Also, according to Disraeli's
biographer,
Lord Blake,
the paper was "atrociously edited", and would have failed
regardless. Disraeli's debts incurred from this debacle would haunt
him for the rest of his life.
Before his entrance into parliament, Disraeli was involved with
several women, most notably Lady Henrietta Sykes (the wife of Sir
Francis Sykes, 3rd Bt), who served as the model for
Henrietta
Temple. It was Henrietta who introduced Disraeli to
Lord Lyndhurst, with whom
she later became romantically involved. As Lord Blake observed:
"The true relationship between the three cannot be determined with
certainty ... there can be no doubt that the affair
[figurative usage] damaged Disraeli and that it made its
contribution, along with many other episodes, to the understandable
aura of distrust which hung around his name for so many
years."
In 1839 he settled his private life by marrying
Mary Anne Lewis,
the rich widow of
Wyndham
Lewis, Disraeli's erstwhile colleague at Maidstone. Mary Lewis
was 12 years his senior, and their union was seen as being based on
financial interests, but they came to cherish one another.
caption
Literary career
Disraeli turned towards literature after his financial disaster,
motivated in part by a desperate need for money, and brought out
his first novel,
Vivian Grey,
in 1826. Disraeli's biographers agree that
Vivian Grey was
a thinly-veiled re-telling of the affair of
The
Representative, and it proved very popular on its release,
although it also caused much offence within the
Tory literary world when Disraeli's authorship was
discovered. The book, initially anonymous, was purportedly written
by a "man of fashion" – someone who moved in high society.
Disraeli, then just twenty-three, did not move in high society, and
the numerous
solecisms present in
Vivian Grey made this painfully obvious. Reviewers were
sharply critical on these grounds of both the author and the book.
Furthermore, John Murray believed that Disraeli had caricatured him
and abused his confidence–an accusation denied at the time, and by
the official biography, although subsequent biographers (notably
Blake) have sided with Murray.
caption
After producing a
Vindication of the
English Constitution, and some political pamphlets,
Disraeli followed up
Vivian Grey with a series of novels,
The Young Duke (1831),
Contarini Fleming (1832),
Alroy (1833),
Venetia and
Henrietta Temple (1837).
During the same period he had also written
The Revolutionary Epick and
three
burlesques,
Ixion,
The Infernal Marriage, and
Popanilla. Of these only
Henrietta Temple (based on his affair with
Henrietta Sykes, wife of
Sir Francis William Sykes, 3rd Bt) was a true
success.
During the 1840s Disraeli wrote three political novels collectively
known as "the Trilogy"–
Sybil,
Coningsby, and
Tancred.
Disraeli's relationships with other male writers of his period were
strained or non-existent. After the disaster of
The
Representative,
John Gibson
Lockhart became a bitter enemy and the two never reconciled.
Disraeli's preference for female company prevented the development
of contact with those who were otherwise not alienated by his
opinions, comportment or background. One contemporary who tried to
bridge the gap,
William
Makepeace Thackeray, established a tentative cordial
relationship in the late 1840s only to see everything collapse when
Disraeli took offence at a burlesque of him which Thackeray penned
for
Punch. Disraeli took revenge in
Endymion
(published in 1880), when he caricatured Thackeray as "St.
Barbe".
Critic
William Kuhn argued much of
Disraeli's fiction can be read as "the memoirs he never wrote",
revealing the inner life of a politician for whom the norms of
Victorian public life appeared to represent a social straitjacket –
particularly with regard to his allegedly "ambiguous
sexuality."
Parliament
caption
caption
Disraeli
had been considering a political career as early as 1830, before he
departed England for the Mediterranean
. His first real efforts, however, did not
come until 1832, during the great crisis over the
Reform Bill, when he contributed to an
anti-
Whig pamphlet edited by
John Wilson Croker and published
by Murray entitled
England and France: or a cure for
Ministerial Gallomania. The choice of a Tory publication was
regarded as odd by Disraeli's friends and relatives, who thought
him more of a
Radical. Indeed,
Disraeli had objected to Murray about Croker inserting "high Tory"
sentiment, writing that "it is quite impossible that anything
adverse to the general measure of Reform can issue from my pen."
Further,
at the time Gallomania was published, Disraeli was in fact
electioneering in High
Wycombe
in the Radical interest. Disraeli's politics
at the time were influenced both by his rebellious streak and by
his desire to make his mark. In the early 1830s the
Tories and the interests
they represented appeared to be a lost cause. The other great
party, the Whigs, was anathema to Disraeli: "Toryism is worn out
& I cannot condescend to be a Whig."
Though he
initially stood for election, unsuccessfully, as a Radical,
Disraeli was a Tory by the time he won a seat
in the House of
Commons in 1837 representing the constituency of Maidstone.
Although a Conservative, Disraeli was sympathetic to some of the
demands of the
Chartists and argued for an
alliance between the landed aristocracy and the working class
against the increasing power of the merchants and new
industrialists in the middle class, helping to found the
Young England group in 1842 to promote the
view that the landed interests should use their power to protect
the poor from exploitation by middle-class businessmen. During the
twenty years between the
Corn Laws and the
Second Reform Bill Disraeli would seek a Tory-Radical alliance, to
little avail. Prior to the 1867 Reform Bill the working class did
not possess the vote and therefore had little tangible political
power. Although Disraeli forged a personal friendship with
John Bright, a Lancashire manufacturer and
leading Radical, Disraeli was unable to convince Bright to
sacrifice principle for political gain. After one such attempt,
Bright noted in his diary that Disraeli "seems unable to comprehend
the morality of our political course."
Protection
Prime Minister
Sir Robert Peel passed over Disraeli
when putting together his
government in 1841 and Disraeli, hurt,
gradually became a sharp critic of Peel's government, often
deliberately adopting positions contrary to those of his nominal
chief. The best known of these cases was the
Maynooth grant in 1845 and the repeal of the
Corn Laws in 1846. The end of 1845 and the first months of 1846
were dominated by a battle in parliament between the free traders
and the protectionists over the repeal of the Corn Laws, with the
latter rallying around Disraeli and
Lord George Bentinck. An alliance of
pro free-trade Conservatives (the "Peelites"), Radicals, and Whigs
carried repeal, and the Conservative Party split: the
Peelites moved towards the Whigs, while a "new"
Conservative Party formed around the protectionists, led by
Disraeli, Bentinck, and
Lord Stanley (later
Lord Derby).
This split had profound implications for Disraeli's political
career: almost every Conservative politician with official
experience followed Peel, leaving the rump bereft of leadership. As
one biographer wrote, "[Disraeli] found himself almost the only
figure on his side capable of putting up the oratorical display
essential for a parliamentary leader." Looking on from the House of
Lords, the
Duke of
Argyll wrote that Disraeli "was like a
subaltern in a great battle where every superior
officer was killed or wounded." If the remainder of the
Conservative Party could muster the electoral support necessary to
form a government, then Disraeli was now guaranteed high office.
However, he would take office with a group of men who possessed
little or no official experience, who had rarely felt moved to
speak in the House of Commons before, and who, as a group, remained
hostile to Disraeli on a personal level, his assault on the Corn
Laws notwithstanding.
Bentinck and the leadership
caption
In 1847 a small political crisis occurred which removed Bentinck
from the leadership and highlighted Disraeli's differences with his
own party. In the
preceding general
election,
Lionel de
Rothschild had been returned for the
City of London.
Ever since Catholic Emancipation, members of parliament were
required to swear the oath "on the true faith of a Christian."
Rothschild, an unconverted Jew, could not do so and therefore could
not take his seat.
Lord
John Russell, the Whig leader who had succeeded Peel as Prime
Minister and like Rothschild a member for the City of London,
introduced a
Jewish
Disabilities Bill to amend the oath and permit Jews to enter
Parliament.
Disraeli spoke in favour of the measure, arguing that Christianity
was "completed Judaism," and asking of the House of Commons "Where
is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?" While
Disraeli did not argue that the Jews did the Christians a favour by
killing
Christ, as he had in
Tancred and would in
Lord George Bentinck, his
speech was badly received by his own party, which along with the
Anglican establishment was hostile to the bill.
Samuel Wilberforce,
Bishop of Oxford and a friend of
Disraeli's, spoke strongly against the measure and implied that
Russell was paying off the Jews for "helping" elect him. Every
member of the future protectionist cabinet then in parliament
(except Disraeli) voted against the measure. One member who was
not, Lord John Manners, stood against Rothschild when the latter
re-submitted himself for election in 1849. Bentinck, then still
Conservative leader in the Commons, joined Disraeli in speaking and
voting for the bill, although his own speech was a standard one of
toleration.
In the aftermath of the debate Bentinck resigned the leadership and
feuded with Stanley, leader in the Lords and overall leader, who
had opposed the measure and directed the party whips—in the
Commons—to oppose the measure as well. Bentinck was succeeded by
Lord Granby;
Disraeli's own speech, thought by many of his own party to be
blasphemous, ruled him out for the time being.
Even as these
intrigues played out, Disraeli was working with the Bentinck family
to secure the necessary financing to purchase Hughenden
Manor
, in Buckinghamshire. This purchase
allowed him to stand for the county, which was "essential" if one
was to lead the Conservative Party at the time. He and
Mary Anne
alternated between Hughenden and several homes in London for the
remainder of their marriage. These negotiations were complicated by
the sudden death of Lord George on 21 September 1848, but Disraeli
obtained a loan of £25,000 (equivalent to about £ as of ) from Lord
George's brothers
Lord Henry
Bentinck and
Lord
Titchfield.
Within a month Granby resigned the leadership in the commons,
feeling himself inadequate to the post, and the party functioned
without an actual leader in the commons for the remainder of the
parliamentary session. At the start of the next session, affairs
were handled by a triumvirate of Granby, Disraeli, and
John Charles Herries–indicative of the
tension between Disraeli and the rest of the party, who needed his
talents but mistrusted the man. This confused arrangement ended
with Granby's resignation in 1851; Disraeli effectively ignored the
two men regardless.
Office
First Derby government
The Earl of Derby
Prime Minister 1852, 1858–59, 1866–68
The first opportunity for the protectionist Tories under Disraeli
and Stanley to take office came in 1851, when
Lord John Russell's government was defeated in the House
of Commons over the
Ecclesiastical Titles Act
1851. Disraeli was to have been
Home Secretary,
with Stanley (becoming the
Earl of Derby later that year)
as Prime Minister. Other possible ministers included
Sir Robert Inglis,
Henry Goulburn,
John Charles Herries, and
Lord Ellenborough. The
Peelites, however, refused to serve under
Stanley or with Disraeli so long as the question of
free trade remained unsettled, and attempts to
form a purely protectionist government failed. Derby supposedly
remarked at the time, "Pshaw! These are not names which I can put
before the Queen!"
Russell resumed office, but resigned again in early 1852 when a
combination of the protectionists and
Lord Palmerston
defeated him on a Militia Bill. This time
Lord Derby (as he
had become) took office, and to general surprise appointed Disraeli
Chancellor of the
Exchequer. Disraeli had offered to stand aside as leader of the
House of Commons in favour of Palmerston, but the latter
declined.
The primary responsibility of a mid-Victorian chancellor was to
produce a Budget for the coming fiscal year. Disraeli proposed to
reduce taxes on
malt and
tea
(
indirect taxation); additional
revenue would come from an increase in the
house tax. More controversially, Disraeli also
proposed to alter the workings of the
income
tax (
direct taxation) by
"differentiating"–i.e., different rates would be levied on
different types of income. The establishment of the income tax on a
permanent basis had been the subject of much inter-party discussion
since the fall of Peel's ministry, but no consensus had been
reached, and Disraeli was criticised for mixing up details over the
different "schedules" of income.
Disraeli's proposal to extend the tax to
Ireland
gained him further enemies, and he was also
hampered by an unexpected increase in defence expenditure, which
was forced on him by Derby and Sir John Pakington
(Secretary
of State for War and the Colonies) (leading to his celebrated
remark to John Bright about the "damned
defences"). This, combined with bad timing and perceived
inexperience led to the failure of the Budget and consequently the
fall of the government in December of that year.
Gladstone's final speech on
the failed Budget marked the beginning of over twenty years of
mutual parliamentary hostility, as well as the end of Gladstone's
formal association with the Conservative Party. No Conservative
reconciliation remained possible so long as Disraeli remained
leader in the House of Commons.
Opposition
With the fall of the government, Disraeli and the Conservatives
returned to the opposition benches. Derby's successor as Prime
Minister was the Peelite
Lord Aberdeen,
whose ministry was composed of both Peelites and Whigs. Disraeli
himself was succeeded as chancellor by Gladstone.
Second Derby government
The Viscount Palmerston
Prime Minister 1855–58, 1859–65
Lord
Palmerston's
government collapsed in 1858 amid
public fallout over the
Orsini affair
and Derby took office at the head of a purely 'Conservative'
administration. He again offered a place to Gladstone, who
declined. Disraeli remained leader of the House of Commons and
returned to the Exchequer. As in 1852 Derby's was a
minority government, dependent on the
division of its opponents for survival. The principal measure of
the 1858 session would be a bill to re-organise governance of
India, the
Indian Mutiny
having exposed the inadequacy of dual control. The first attempt at
legislation was drafted by the
President of the Board of
Control,
Lord
Ellenborough, who had previously served as
Governor-General of India
(1841–44). The bill, however, was riddled with complexities and had
to be withdrawn. Soon after, Ellenborough was forced to resign over
an entirely separate matter involving the current Governor-General,
Lord
Canning.
Faced with a vacancy, Disraeli and Derby tried yet again to bring
Gladstone into the government. Disraeli wrote a personal letter to
Gladstone, asking him to place the good of the party above personal
animosity: "Every man performs his office, and there is a Power,
greater than ourselves, that disposes of all this…" In responding
to Disraeli Gladstone denied that personal feelings played any role
in his decision then and previously to accept office, while
acknowledging that there were differences between him and Derby
"broader than you may have supposed." Gladstone also hinted at the
strength of his own faith, and the role it played in his public
life, when he addressed Disraeli's most personal and private
appeal:
With Gladstone's refusal Derby and Disraeli looked elsewhere and
settled on Disraeli's old friend
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who became
Secretary of State
for the Colonies; Derby's son
Lord Stanley, succeeded
Ellenborough at the Board of Control. Stanley, with Disraeli's
assistance, proposed and guided through the house the India Act,
under which the subcontinent would be governed for sixty years. The
East India Company and its Governor-General were replaced by a
viceroy and the Indian Council,
while at Westminster the
Board of
Control was abolished and its functions assumed by the newly
created India Office, under the
Secretary of State for
India.
The 1867 Reform Bill
After engineering the defeat of a Liberal Reform Bill introduced by
Gladstone in 1866, Disraeli and Derby introduced their own measure
in 1867.
William Ewart Gladstone
Four-time Prime Minister
was primarily a political strategy designed to give the
Conservative party control of the reform process and the subsequent
long-term benefits in the Commons, similar to those derived by the
Whigs after their 1832 Reform Act. It was thought that if the
Conservatives were able to secure this piece of legislation, then
the newly enfranchised electorate may return their gratitude to the
Tories in the form of a Conservative vote at the next general
election. As a result, this would give the Conservatives a greater
chance of forming a majority government. After so many years in the
'stagnant backwaters' of British politics, this seemed most
appealing.
The Reform Act
1867 extended the franchise by 938,427 – an increase of 88% –
by giving the vote to male householders and male lodgers paying at
least 10 pounds for rooms and eliminating rotten boroughs with fewer than 10,000
inhabitants, and granting constituencies to fifteen unrepresented
towns, and extra representation in parliament to larger towns such
as Liverpool and Manchester, which had previously been
under-represented in Parliament
. This act was unpopular with the right wing
of the Conservative Party, most notably
Lord Cranborne
(later the Marquess of Salisbury), who resigned from the government
and spoke against the bill, accusing Disraeli of "a political
betrayal which has no parallel in our Parliamentary annals."
Cranborne, however, was unable to lead a rebellion similar to that
which Disraeli had led against Peel twenty years earlier.
Prime Minister
First government
The Marquess of
Salisbury
Three-time Prime Minister
Derby's health had been declining for some time and he finally
resigned as Prime Minister in late February 1868; he would live for
twenty months. Disraeli's efforts over the past two years had
dispelled, for the time being, any doubts about him succeeding
Derby as leader of the Conservative Party and therefore Prime
Minister. As Disraeli remarked, "I have climbed to the top of the
greasy pole."
However, the Conservatives were still a minority in the House of
Commons, and the passage of the Reform Bill required the calling of
new election once the new voting register had been compiled.
Disraeli's term as Prime Minister would therefore be fairly short,
unless the Conservatives won the general election. He made only two
major changes in the cabinet: he replaced
Lord Chelmsford as
Lord Chancellor with
Lord Cairns, and brought in
George Ward Hunt as
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Disraeli and Chelmsford had never got along particularly well, and
Cairns, in Disraeli's view, was a far stronger minister.
Disraeli's first premiership was dominated by the heated debate
over the
established Church of Ireland.
Although Ireland was overwhelmingly Roman
Catholic, the Protestant Church
remained the established church and was funded by direct
taxation. An initial attempt by Disraeli to negotiate
with Cardinal Manning
the establishment of a Roman Catholic university in Dublin
foundered in
March when Gladstone moved
resolutions to disestablish the Irish Church altogether. The
proposal divided the Conservative Party while reuniting the
Liberals under Gladstone's
leadership. While Disraeli's government survived until the
December general
election, the initiative had passed to the Liberals, who were
returned to power with a majority of 170.
Second government
After six years in opposition, Disraeli and the Conservative Party
won the
election
of 1874, giving the party its first absolute
majority in the House of Commons since
the 1840s. Under the stewardship of
R. A. Cross, the
Home Secretary, Disraeli's government
introduced various reforms, including the
Artisan's
and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875, the
Public Health Act 1875, the Sale of
Food and Drugs Act (1875), and the Education Act (1876). His
government also introduced a new
Factory
Act meant to protect workers, the
Conspiracy and
Protection of Property Act 1875 to allow peaceful picketing,
and the Employers and Workmen Act (1875) to enable workers to sue
employers in the civil courts if they broke legal contracts. As a
result of these social reforms the
Liberal-Labour MP Alexander Macdonald
told his constituents in 1879, "The Conservative party have done
more for the working classes in five years than the Liberals have
in fifty."
Imperialism
Disraeli was, according to some interpretations, a supporter of the
expansion and preservation of the
British
Empire in the
Middle East and
Central Asia. In spite of the
objections of his own cabinet and without Parliament's consent, he
obtained a short-term loan from
Lionel de Rothschild in order to
purchase 44% of the shares of the
Suez Canal Company. Before this action,
though, he had for the most part opted to continue the Whig policy
of limited expansion, preferring to maintain the then-current
borders as opposed to promoting expansion.
Disraeli and Gladstone clashed over Britain's Balkan policy.
Disraeli saw the situation as a matter of British imperial and
strategic interests, keeping to
Palmerston's policy of
supporting the Ottoman Empire against Russian expansion. According
to Blake, Disraeli believed in upholding Britain's greatness
through a tough, "no nonsense" foreign policy that put Britain's
interests above the "moral law" that advocated emancipation of
small nations. Gladstone, however, saw the issue in moral terms,
for Bulgarian Christians had been massacred by the Turks and
Gladstone therefore believed it was immoral to support the Ottoman
Empire. Blake further argued that Disraeli's imperialism
"decisively orientated the Conservative party for many years to
come, and the tradition which he started was probably a bigger
electoral asset in winning working-class support during the last
quarter of the century than anything else".
A leading proponent of
the Great
Game, Disraeli introduced the
Royal Titles Act 1876, which created
Queen Victoria
Empress of India,
putting her at the same level as the Russian Tsar.
In his private
correspondence with the Queen, he proposed "to clear Central Asia of Muscovites and drive them into
the Caspian
". In order to contain Russia's influence, he
launched an invasion of Afghanistan
and signed the Cyprus
Convention with Turkey, whereby this strategically placed
island was handed over to Britain.
Disraeli
scored another diplomatic success at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, in preventing
Bulgaria from gaining full independence, limiting the growing
influence of Russia
in the
Balkans and breaking up the League of the Three
Emperors. However, difficulties in South Africa
(epitomised by the defeat of the British Army at the Battle of
Isandlwana
), as well as Afghanistan, weakened his government
and led to his party's defeat in the 1880 election.
Title and death
Disraeli was elevated to the House of Lords in 1876 when
Queen Victoria made him
Earl of Beaconsfield and
Viscount
Hughenden.
In the
general
election of 1880 Disraeli's Conservatives were defeated by
Gladstone's Liberals, in large part owing to the uneven course of
the
Second Anglo-Afghan War.
The Irish Home Rule vote in England contributed to his party's
defeat. Disraeli became ill soon after and died in April
1881.
He is
buried in a vault beneath St Michael's Church in the grounds of his
home Hughenden
Manor, accessed from the churchyard. Against the
outside wall of the church is a memorial erected in his honour by
Queen Victoria. His
literary
executor, and for all intents and purposes his heir, was his
private secretary,
Lord
Rowton.
Disraeli's Judaism
Although born of
Jewish parents, Disraeli was
baptised in the Christian faith at the age of thirteen, and
remained an observant
Anglican for the
rest of his life. At the same time, he was ethnically Jewish and
believed the two positions to be compatible, as well as seeing no
conflict of interest in using British power to support Jewish
interests (such as supporting the tolerant Ottoman Empire above the
anti-semitic Tsarist Empire). Adam Kirsch, in his biography of
Disraeli, states that his Jewishness was "both the greatest
obstacle to his ambition and its greatest engine." Much of the
criticism of his policies was couched in
anti-Semitic terms. He was depicted in
political cartoons with a big nose and curly black hair, called
"
Shylock" and "abominable Jew," and
portrayed in the act of ritually murdering the infant
Britannia.
Disraeli's governments
Works by Disraeli
Line drawing of Disraeli
Fiction
Non-fiction
References
Bibliography
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of
Beaconsfield
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