In 1825 the novel-reading public of England was thrown into not a little excitement by the appearance of a curious but brilliant work of imagination entitled “Vivian Grey.” This piece of literary pyrotechny was rapidly followed by “The Young Duke,” “Henrietta Temple,” “Contarini Fleming,” “Alroy,” and other curious compounds of fiction and politics. The name of the author did not at first appear; but it soon came to be known that the series was the product of a student of law, not yet twenty-five years of age, and the son of Isaac Disraeli, the author of the “Curiosities of Literature.” This young novelist was described by the society journals of the day as a man who frequented Gore House, and not only poured out upon society there torrents of remarkable talk on literary and political affairs, but made himself amusingly conspicuous by his decorations of gaudy waistcoats and gold chains. It came soon to be universally known in London society that this eccentric genius, though educated in private under his father’s care, had been a great reader of literature and history, and had come to have very definite notions in regard to almost every question under the sun.

Flushed with the success of his literary experiences, young Disraeli travelled extensively in Europe and the East, and then returned in 1831, resolved to secure a seat in Parliament. In his first efforts he was not successful; but in 1837, the year of Queen Victoria’s accession, the electors of Maidstone gave him a seat, and accordingly he entered the House of Commons in the thirty-third year of his age.

His first speech was generally regarded as a singular, even a ridiculous, failure. Those who depend for their impression on its words as they appear in Hansard or in Lord Beaconsfield’s selected speeches, will hardly perceive in its fanciful flights the reasons for the outbursts of laughter and jeers with which it was greeted and finally brought to an end. It must have been the gaudiness of the speaker’s dress, and the violent and theatrical manner of his speech, quite as much as the irrelevancy of what he said, that threw the House into roars of laughter, and led them to suppress the speaker altogether. He did not, however, take his seat without thundering out the prophecy—which appeared at the time quite as much like a threat—that the time would come when they would hear him. It was long before he secured the ear of the House. Between 1840 and 1845 he was largely occupied with literary works, and during that period he published “Coningsby,” “Sybil,” and “Tancred,” a trio of really remarkable political novels, designed to present a picture of the forces at work in the nation and of the way in which they should be dealt with by Parliament. The conversations of Sidonia in “Coningsby” give a clear and probably correct notion of Disraeli’s political opinions. He advanced with great emphasis the doctrine that the Tory party was the party of the people, and that the welfare of the lower classes was only to be secured by the prevalence of Tory principles. Holding these views he attached himself firmly to the party led by Sir Robert Peel; and it was not until 1846, when the leader announced his determination to bring in a bill for the modification of the Corn Laws, that Disraeli deserted him. The eccentric young member was an ardent Protectionist. In the course of the ten years that had elapsed since his first sad experience he had become a master of argumentative fence, and in the years that followed he developed such extraordinary abilities in his assaults upon the government that he was universally recognized as a consummate master of parliamentary invective and the most powerful orator of the Opposition. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was followed by a succession of poor harvests and by great suffering. In a series of speeches extending over the years from 1846 to 1852, Disraeli, with a skill and an eloquence that raised him to the front rank of British orators, attributed this suffering to the financial and economic policy of the government. These repeated and well-directed blows finally broke the power of the ministry, and when, in 1852, the Liberals went out of office, the Tories came in with Lord Derby as Prime-Minister and Mr. Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

This position was held by Disraeli through each of Derby’s three administrations; and on the resignation of that nobleman in February of 1868 the Chancellor of the Exchequer was raised to the post of Prime-Minister. This, however, he was obliged to resign before the end of the year; but in 1873, when Mr. Gladstone’s Government was defeated on the Irish Education Bill, the position was again tendered him. The circumstances of the situation, however, did not encourage him to accept. The Liberal ministry had been defeated not by the Conservatives alone, but by a combination with the Home Rulers, a group of some sixty Irish members who were likely to vote with the Liberals on all other questions. The offer, therefore, was declined; but when in the following year Mr. Gladstone decided to test the relative strength of the parties by a dissolution and an appeal to the country, the Conservatives were returned in triumphant majority, and Mr. Disraeli, in February, 1874, was called a second time to the head of the government. This position he continued to hold till the election of 1880, when, under the rigorous assaults of Gladstone and his followers, the Conservative policy was rejected by the country. Meanwhile, in August of 1876, Disraeli had been raised to the peerage with the title of Earl of Beaconsfield, and in July of 1878 had been invested with the Order of the Garter. With the downfall of his ministry in 1880, Lord Beaconsfield’s political career came to an end, though he continued to inspire the Opposition to the policy of his opponents till the time of his death in 1881.

Throughout Disraeli’s political career, or at least ever after the very first years of it, he was a staunch advocate of the old Tory principles advocated by Lord Bolingbroke and Lord Shelburne. In “Coningsby” and cropping out here and there in his speeches we find constant evidences of his belief that the welfare of the common people depends upon the union of the upper and the lower classes under the guidance of the Conservative party. He held that the triumph of the Whigs was the triumph of the middle class in opposition to the interests of the lower, and that the inevitable results of a triumph of Whig principles must be the creation of irreconcilable differences between classes that ought to be cordially united. These views were elaborated in his “Life of Lord George Bentinck,” in his “Defence of the English Constitution,” and to some extent in his speeches on the Reform Bill of 1867.

Two portions of Lord Beaconsfield’s career were very violently criticised. The first was his course in regard to the reform of 1867. Immediately after Lord Palmerston’s death in 1865, and the accession of Earl Russell’s ministry, it became evident that the popular demand could only be satisfied with a reform of the franchise. A bill was accordingly introduced with the design of further extending the right of suffrage in the manner of the great measure of 1832. The bill was powerfully advocated by Mr. Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House, and was opposed with equal vigor by Mr. Disraeli. On a motion to amend, the government was defeated, and Russell and Gladstone going out of power, Derby and Disraeli came in. As to what would be done, the public were not long left in doubt. On the 18th of March, 1867. Mr. Disraeli came forward with a measure of reform far more sweeping in its nature than that which he had in the previous administration so vigorously and successfully opposed. The extension of suffrage was to be made on a new principle, or at least a principle which appeared to be new, though in fact it had been advocated in Disraeli’s early writings. In his speech introducing the measure he called attention to the fact that no less than five times since 1832 attempts had been made to place the right of suffrage on a firm basis, but that all of these had failed. He declared that they had failed because they were mere expedients, whereas the question could only be settled by the adoption of a clearly defined principle. Hitherto the right to vote had depended upon income; it ought to depend, he declared, upon permanency of interest. He therefore proposed the substitution of the principle of household suffrage in the place of suffrage founded upon the payment of a fixed rate. The measure was looked upon with consternation by the Liberals, and was most strenuously opposed by Gladstone and his followers; but it was advocated in a succession of speeches of so much power and skill by Disraeli that no opposition could prevent its final passage. But the author of the measure, always more or less distrusted, was henceforth regarded as a political adventurer who had stolen into the camp of his enemy and run off with the spoils.

The foreign policy of Disraeli was equally obnoxious to his opponents. In one respect he was the lineal successor of Pitt, Canning, and Palmerston. Though he differed with many of the views held by those great foreign ministers, and did not shrink from criticising them with great severity, he was always in favor of a vigorous assertion of the rights and interests of Great Britain. This, in the opinion of his opponents, descended into a meddlesome interference with the affairs of other nations. In Afghanistan, in Abyssinia, in South Africa, and especially in the Eastern Mediterranean, his policy was thought to be aggressive, and provoked the most violent opposition of the Liberal party. By the treaty of San Stefano, concluded in 1878 between Russia and Turkey at the close of the war between these powers, Turkey was reduced almost to a cipher in the hands of Russia. In the opinion of Lord Beaconsfield this solution imperilled the interests of Great Britain in the Mediterranean. Russia was accordingly required by the English Government to submit the treaty to a congress of European powers. This at first Russia refused to do, whereupon the Prime-Minister moved an address to the Queen asking her to call out the Reserves. This was done, and was immediately followed by the still more vigorous step of bringing up to Malta a division of the Indian army. Russia at once began to lower her pretensions, and finally agreed that the treaty should be submitted to a European Congress. In June of 1878 Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury went as English Plenipotentiaries to the Congress at Berlin called to consider the whole question. The result was an important modification of the Treaty of San Stefano and a practical restoration of the independence of the Turkish empire. On the return of the Ambassadors, bringing back, as Beaconsfield said, “peace with honor,” they were received with an ovation which has not often had a parallel in English history. Three years later, Mr. Gladstone, in paying a tribute to his deceased rival, singled out his reception in the House of Lords as the culminating point of his greatness in the eyes of all those who regarded his policy with admiration; and applied to the Berlin triumph the well-known words of Virgil: