The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs Disraeli

by Richard Aldous

On 11 June Disraeli wrote to the senior Tory backbencher, Sir William Miles, who only days before had taken him aside to express concern at the level of dissent in the ranks. Disraeli’s answer to this criticism was a masterpiece of self-justification, mock wounded pride and political gamesmanship. He reminded Miles he had taken on the leadership after the death of Lord George Bentinck at great financial sacrifice to restore the ‘shattered remnants of the country party’. Personal pride had been set aside in the many attempts to bring the Peelites back into the fold, including offers ‘of a flattering nature … made to Mr Gladstone’. Disraeli had returned the Conservatives to office ‘in order to save the party from political annihilation’ despite the inevitability that those efforts must conclude in failure. This restored the fortunes of the party while leaving him ‘to bear the brunt of disaster’ when defeat came. Criticism and ridicule from political opponents was only to be expected, but from those on the same side this was intolerable behaviour. The letter was a heartfelt if calculated rebuke to his party. ‘So long as they were in distress, I have borne without a murmur the neglect, the desertion, the personal insults, that I have experienced,’ he protested. ‘But the Tories are no longer in distress – they have abundance of friends; and, with respect to the privacy of their feelings towards me, they chalk the walls in the market-place with my opprobrium.’ And so to the knoc...