The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs Disraeli

by Richard Aldous

While Gladstone skulked at Hawarden, Disraeli basked in the warm afterglow of his parliamentary triumph. Following recuperation at Hughenden he made one of his rare forays to Scotland (where the Tories found their ‘bitterest and most insulting foes’). There he addressed a great banquet of Tory grandees to set out in confident, ebullient terms what would soon become his defining creed of ‘one-nation’ Conservatism. ‘In a progressive country change is constant,’ he declared, ‘and the great question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines. The one is a national system; the other is, to give it an epithet, a noble epithet – which it may perhaps deserve – a philosophic system … Now my Lords and Gentlemen, I have always considered that the Tory party was the national party of England … It is formed of all classes from the highest to the most homely, and it upholds a series of institutions that are in theory, and ought to be in practice, an embodiment of the national requirements and the security of the national rights.’