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Articles
English-Speaking Peoples (12): Gladstone and Disraeli
History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Vol. 4, Book 12
From September 2022 to January 2023, Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn and Hugh Hewitt discussed Churchill’s History in the Hillsdale Dialogues podcast. Following each discussion, Hillsdale students and fellows offered corresponding articles on the topic covered. This installment is on Gladstone and Disraeli. Readers will note that our writers often focus on aspects of the books which the discussants do not. Such is the depth of Churchill’s History. Every reader may take what they prize most from this vast mine of political wisdom and understanding.
Page references (parentheses) are to Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 4, The Great Democracies (New York: Dodd Mead, 1958).
The Personal Duel that Revolutionized Britain
Mid-19th century British politics, Churchill writes, was dominated by “a personal duel on a grand scale” (283). The nation had industrialized, modernized and emerged as world power. Two great Parliamentarians—the Liberal William Gladstone and the Conservative Benjamin Disraeli—rose to lead the country from 1868 to 1885.
Churchill believes the rivalry between Gladstone and Disraeli transformed the British political system. Together they ushered in an age of electoral, economic and imperial reform. Their charismatic rivalry captured the hearts and minds of a growing electorate:
The political differences between them were no wider than is usual in a two-party system, but what gave the conflict its edge and produced a deep-rooted antagonism was their utter dissimilarity in character and temperament.” (283)
Disraeli’s elegant and aristocratic presence during parliamentary debates starkly contrasted with Gladstone’s bombastic, emotional speeches. “Posterity will do justice to that unprincipled maniac Gladstone,” Disraeli wrote privately. “Extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisy, and superstition; and with one commanding characteristic—whether preaching, praying, speechifying, or scribbling—never a gentleman!” (283)
Gladstone had equally choice words for his opponent. Disraeli, he said, “demoralized public opinion, bargained with diseased appetites, stimulated passions, prejudices, and selfish desires, that they might maintain his influence” (283).
The First Gladstone Government (1868-1874)
Churchill describes Gladstone as a “careful and parsimonious administrator who had become a sound Liberal reformer” (284). A gifted orator with the spirit of “a preacher,” he roused great “moral indignation” in himself and his audience (284). He staunchly believed in a conscientious foreign policy based on moral law. This would eventually lead to the fracture of his party in 1886 over the question of Irish Home Rule.
Gladstone came to power with a decisive electoral mandate to reform British institutions. His government aggressively promoted individualism and laissez-faire while wrenching political control from the landed interests of the 18th century. Meritocratic reform was the order of the day in the Civil Service, the army, the universities and the judiciary. Churchill notes that
freedom was the keynote, laisseiz-faire the method; no undue extension of Government authority was needed; and the middle class at last acquired a share in the political sphere equal to their economic power.” (286).
After 1867, when the Representation of the People Act expanded voting to most males. Gladstonian Liberals turned to the education of the new working-class voters. They launched a national network of primary schools to teach all British citizens the basics of reading and writing.
Liberal reforms
In the Civil Service, the Liberals destroyed the patronage system by instituting a competitive exam emphasizing the intellectual merit of applicants. Oxford and Cambridge universities abolished religious tests, opening the doors to non-Anglicans: Catholics, Jews, atheists and agnostics. In the courts, they standardized appeal procedures nationwide and established a single supreme court. They extended civilian control over the army command structure and introduced an Enlistment Act to bolster the number of reserve soldiers.
While initially popular, Gladstone’s reforms sparked a mass outcry from the entrenched interests of Church and State. Disraeli quickly mobilized on this opportunity: “Her Majesty’s new Ministers proceeded in their career like a body of men under the influence of some deleterious drug,” he decried. “Not satiated with the spoliation and anarchy in Ireland, they began to attack every institution and every interest, every class and calling in the country” (289).
By 1874, popular opinion united against Gladstone’s Liberal agenda, costing him the election. Churchill nevertheless believes that his reforms were substantial. Gladstone’s first government, he writes, “stands high in British history” (290).
Disraeli to the fore
Benjamin Disraeli became the man to lead the Conservative Party out of its exile from power. The Tories had sat more or less in opposition for nearly half a century, except for a brief spell in 1841-46. When Disraeli came to power, he had served as leader of the Conservative Party for 25 years and was well over 70 years old. He was not, however, devoted to entrenched interests. Recognizing the shifting tides of the new era, he turned his party to appeal to the new, working-class voters. Churchill observes that
[Disraeli] saw clearly that although many of the new electors were attracted by the ideas of tradition, continuity, and ordered social progress such feelings would never ripen into electoral advantage under the inert conservatism of his own back-benchers (291).
The Tories attacked the Gladstonian Liberals on social reform and the Empire. Gladstone had scant regard for the Empire, but was passionate about the political rights of the working class. By contrast, oddly, he cared little for their material wants. Disraeli’s government sought to deliver on these promises.
“The first consideration of the people of a Minister should be the health of the People,” Disraeli proclaimed (291). His government bolstered the power of trade unions, improved public housing, and regulated public sanitation.
Yet Churchill believes Disraeli’s social reforms would not have been possible without Gladstone’s institutional revolution. Disraeli persuaded Tories that they could benefit by providing the electorate with better health and housing, and the ability to negotiate better wages.
Disraeli and the Empire
In vast contrast to Gladstone was Disraeli’s interest in an interdependent British empire. “Self-government, in my opinion, when it was conceded, ought to have been conceded as part of a great policy of Imperial consolidation,” Disraeli said of the colonies (292). He saw an Empire linked by close economic, political, and defense relations. In 1875, his government invested in massive colonial infrastructure projects such as the Suez Canal.
Even though the canal had been completed six years earlier, Disraeli purchased a majority share for £4 million, securing Britain’s route to India and bringing long-lasting consequences. “The route to India was safeguarded, a possible threat to British naval supremacy was removed,” Churchill explains. And “—of fateful importance of the future—Britain was inexorably drawn into Egyptian politics” (293).
Disraeli’s premiership made the Empire the centerpiece of British prestige. Churchill wrote that Disraeli’s “oriental, almost mystical, approach to Empire” transfixed the public and gave his policies extraordinary power (294). Queen Victoria’s proclamation as Empress of India bolstered the vision of the nation, its military, and its customs.
Balkan troubles
In 1876, a diplomatic crisis erupted in the Balkans. Christian sectarians “united in their detestation of the Turk” rebelled against the Ottoman Empire, seeking to join Russia (294). The British, allied with the Turks, resisted Russian influence through the Balkans and into the Mediterranean through Constantinople. Churchill called it “the most difficult and dangerous situation for Great Britain since the Napoleonic wars” (294). Disraeli met this crisis head-on. Ultimately, it led to his finest hour.
The rebellion broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the first shots of the Great War would later take place, Disraeli sent a fleet to the Dardanelles to emphasize British support for the Turks. But news of Turkish atrocities and the use of torture in Bulgaria aroused public opposition.
Disraeli’s failure to denounce these actions roused more public anger, especially from Gladstone. His pamphlet, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. railed against Disraeli and the Turks: “There is not a criminal in a European jail, there is not a cannibal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not arise and overboil at the recital of that which has been done…. No government ever has so sinned; none has proved itself so incorrigible in sin or–which is the same–so impotent for reformation” (295).
Public opinion shifted in 1877, after Russia declared war on the Turks. Gladstone’s criticisms of Disraeli’s government were now regarded as pro-Russian. In January 1878, as the Czar’s armies approached Constantinople, Churchill observes that “public opinion reached fever-point” (297).
Triumph then tragedy
The 1878 Treaty of San Stefano cemented Russian control over the Balkans. Now the great powers of Europe seemed headed to an inevitable collision course. The Austrian foreign minister derided the Treaty as an “orthodox Slavic sermon” (297).
Disraeli and his foreign secretary, Lord Salisbury, summoned the Great Powers to a Congress of Berlin to settle affairs peaceably. Disraeli so dominated proceedings as to eliminate Balkan rivalries for more than 30 years. Russia agreed to cede control of the Balkans in exchange for Romanian Bessarabia. Austria-Hungary occupied and administered Bosnia and Herzegovina. Britain received Cyprus in exchange for guaranteeing Turkish territory in Asia. The Congress of Berlin secured Europe’s peace. Disraeli declared that it had brought Britain “peace with honor”—not the first time the world would hear that phrase.
Alas peace was not universal (298). Disastrous British losses in South Africa and Afghanistan spurred widespread outcry. Gladstone seized on these, denouncing Disraeli’s foreign policy as “narrow, restless, blustering, and self-assertive” (298). Britain, he argued, had selfishly imposed her rule on people who wanted freedom. Going forward, Britain should pursue a moral foreign policy focused on widespread self-government.
Disraeli’s exhausted government now had little popular support remaining. In his final years as Prime Minister, Disraeli oversaw an economic depression that wreaked havoc on industry and agriculture. With popular support evaporated, in March 1880, the people voted overwhelmingly to return Gladstone’s Liberals to power.
“A new kind of politics”
The 1867 Representation Act revolutionized politics in Britain by expanding suffrage to all males. This, Churchill writes, “killed the 18th century regime” (300). But to win votes, a party needed an effective program to persuade people to vote, and an organization to ensure turnout. “The emergence of a mass electorate called for a new kind of politics,” Churchill writes. “Sheer numbers rendered the old techniques ineffective in the large cities” (300)
The Conservative Party was first to catch on to the demands of the new system, creating their Central Office to oversee local party chapters. Liberals, however, were slower to adapt. Churchill faults Gladstone, because “the great demagogue was bored by the ordinary everyday business of party.” Liberal political machines slowly adopted similar policies and formed the National Liberal Federation. But the decentralized Liberal movement empowered radical elements “to make a bid for control,” which led the Liberals’ fracture in 1886 (301).
Although Gladstone and Disraeli remained bitter rivals, they radically transformed the British political system through their reforms and statesmanship. Gladstone’s oratory captured the hearts of the people. Disraeli’s gift for presentation revived the Conservative Party as a serious force. “Elections gradually became a judgment on what the Government of the day had accomplished,” Churchill writes, “and an assessment of the promises for the future made by the two parties” (302).
By examining these two great statesmen, Churchill reminds us that even the most bitter political rivalries can induce significant change if calibrated to a nation’s interest. Politics is a contest where people choose the best candidate for the job. We could take these lessons to heart and seek prudence and guidance in the crises of our own day.
The author
Mr. Hypes is a Winston Churchill Fellow and a member of the Class of 2024, studying Politics and Journalism. He serves as a Political Correspondent for the Hillsdale Collegian and as Vice-President of Hillsdale College’s Alexander Hamilton Society
You are missing a companion article for “English-Speaking Peoples (8)” on the First British Empire (the American colonies). Are there any plans to publish one?
Also, my understanding is that the Hillsdale Dialogues is proceeding on to Churchill’s The River War. Will you publish companion articles for that as well?
I have really enjoyed this series. Thank you.