" DISRAELI "
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Would you allow me to supplement, chiefly from the last work written by an avowed .Tory panegyrist, what is, I believe, the true version of Disraeli's politics?
" Talk not to me of Dukes ! -Dukes can be made ! " was one of his sayings (Buckle, ii, 514 ; ed. 1929). " Tory Radicalism " was another of his coined phrases. When Palmerston was shocked in 1864 at Gladstone's proposal .of universal suffrage, it was from Disraeli that Gladstone took the hint (Buckle, i, 1317 ; ii, 136) ! Long. before this, namely, by 1848, he had thrown out a hint of woman's suffrage (Buckle, i, 915 ; ii, 400, 651). He began his career, as he says, in tune with neither of the " aristocratic parties in this country," but,
when " obliged as member of this House to join a party I joined that party with which I believed the People sympathise " (Buckle,i, 769). At the same time he avowed that " the wider the suffrage the more powerful .would be the natural aristocracy " (Buckle, i, 329). And in 1867 he brought about such an increased electorate by bestowing the franchise on over a million more people that Lord Salisbury quite naturally called it the Conservative Surrender. But it was fully in tune with Disraeli's Socialism from the first. For, according to Coningsby, not only is " Property a brother to Labour," but " the working classes " are the " real creators of wealth." No wonder Palmerston described him to Guizot as " un Democrate reconvert de la peau d'un Conservative" (Buckle, i, 1605). To me it is most curious how Disraeli ever prevailed over the prejudices of Lord Derby, who hated him from the start and suspected him to the finish. However, he managed to get Derby to write to the Press (his own paper) an unsigned letter to the effect that " It was the duty of statesmen . . . to bring within the pale of the Constitution every one whose admission cannot be proved dangerous " (Buckle, i. 1317).
Thus it was that he managed to get Lord Derby in 1867 to " dish the Whigs." But, as Melbourne truly said of Peel, " it was a d—d dishonest act." I will only add that I have quoted Mr. Buckle's biography as a proof of its honesty and that the Lives of Disraeli, by D. L. Murray (Berm, 1927), pp. 205, 225, and E. T. Raymond (Hodder and Stoughton), p. 258, seem to me to complete the proof of your correspondent's contention that were he living to-day Disraeli could have joined the Labour Party.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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