DISRAELI, BENJAMIN.   Term Paper ID:22008 Click to get this paper

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Paper Abstract: Life, career & political impact of late 19th Cent. English Prime Minister. Paper Introduction: Benjamin Disraeli served as the Prime Minister of England in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880. He was also a novelist of some note in his time, though his works have been all but forgotten in this century. He was also known as the Earl of Beaconsfield and the Viscount of Hughenden. He was a member of the Conservative Party and provided the party with a policy of Tory democracy and imperialism. He was of Italian-Jewish descent. When Disraeli was a boy, his father quarreled with the synagogue of Bevis Marks, and this led to the decision in 1817 for the children to be baptized as Christians. Until 1848, Jews were excluded from Parliament, for members had to take an oath of office "on the faith of a true Christian" (Blake 341), and had his father not made the decision to baptize his children, Disraeli's political career could never have started as it did. Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. New York: Twayne, 1968.Maurois, André. But within his limitations he grasped and expressed the essential situation of his times with a boldness beyond that of much greater novelists (Allen 178).From his earliest years Disraeli expressed ambition, brilliance, self-assurance, and egotism, and he was always certain that he would one daybecome Prime Minister. His strength lay in his specialized knowledge; it would be almost true to say he had to become a politician before he could become a novelist. Robert Peel was the Conservative leader, and he encouraged Disraeliin the beginning. He realized that he had to attach himself to one of the political partiesand then made a rather eccentric interpretation of Toryism. Thepolitician and the novelist differed in some respects. Indeed, Disraeli was snubbed by theparty several times in subsequent months. He was alsoknown as the Earl of Beaconsfield and the Viscount of Hughenden. Appleton, 1928.Pearson, Hesketh. . They believed in monarchy as a principle, not a mere instrument. He convincedparliament to give Queen Victoria the new title of Empress of India. Gladstone was moralistic andserious, and he believed that Disraeli was too glib and shallow. During this time, he clashed with WilliamGladstone, the leader of the Liberal party. Disraeli's speeches made thegroup too prominent for the comfort of the government. He was also writinga book in which he hopes to show that Toryism was not a phrase but a fact.He finally decided to put these ideas into the form of a novel, andConigsby appeared in 1844, establishing its author permanently as a seriousand successful novelist (Pearson 91-93). Works CitedAllen, Walter. The marriage didmature into a relationship of real affection, and Disraeli was devastatedwhen his wife died in 1872 (Blake 342). New York: Stein and Day, 1982.Levine, Richard A. Another of the undertakings on Disraeli's watch was the expansion ofthe British Empire, which grew so large that by the end of the century itwas boasted that the sun never sets on the British Empire. Detroit: Gale, 1994.Bradford, Sarah. . The boyattended small private schools, including a Unitarian school. In that year the combinationof the Irish famine and the arguments of Richard Cobden convinced Peel torepeal the protective duties on foreign imported grain known as the CornLaws. For one thing, thepolitician always had to live in a world of politics and statecraft and hadto deal with expediency and compromise. In time, hebecame a great speaker who commanded attention. . He wrote novels,a biography, a play, poems, short stories, essays, and politicalcommentary. The British Museum wasnearby, and young Disraeli visited it often. This marriage has been seen as calculating and ambitious, making itsimilar to most of Disraeli's actions as he undertook his campaign toachieve the position of Prime Minister. Disraeli sympathized withthe workers in British factories in his novel Sybil published in 1845.Disraeli found that Britain had become two nations, one a nation of therich and the other a nation of the poor, with little intercourse betweenthe two. Hebought the Egyptian share of the Suez Canal in 1875, setting the stage forBritain to take complete control of the waterway. Disraeli was convinced that he would rise in party politics only ifthe current Conservative leadership fell from power, and he insisted thatagriculture must always take precedence over manufacturers. Disraeli. New York: Doubleday, 1955.Blake, Robert. In his non-political life, though,Disraeli was able to drop the statesman's pose and to develop his moreessential ideas. Benjamin Disraeli served as the Prime Minister of England in 1868 andagain from 1874 to 188 . He was an independentradical and stood for and lost High Wycombe twice in 1832 and once in 1835. They were dissatisfied with the Toryism of prerogative and inaction, regarding Pitt and Canning as their models. Disraeli consolidated this oppositionin a series of brilliant speeches (Blake 343). Individual man's relationships to his church, class, and government were coming under a new scrutiny (Levine 16-17).Disraeli's literary career was both prolific and diverse. Dizzy. He was of Italian-Jewish descent. Virginia Grey caused a sensation because it contained a numberof flimsily disguised portraits of real members of fashionable society(Levine 23). He conceded that England was rapidly industrializing by themiddle of the century, and he also worked to broaden the electoral base ofthe Conservatives. Benjamin Disraeli. The English Novel. Disraelibecame known as a fop and regularly appeared at fashionable parties, wherehe was a popular figure. He didnot appreciate Disraeli's playful and often sarcastic mode of speaking.The rivalry was apparent as early as 1865 when Gladstone's Liberalsintroduced a bill to expand the electorate to include all middle-classmales. They had developed a common point of view: They were romantic in spirit and opposed to the utilitarianism of the time with its worship of wealth, its imagination stultified by a love of machines. WhenDisraeli was a boy, his father quarreled with the synagogue of Bevis Marks,and this led to the decision in 1817 for the children to be baptized asChristians. An important political group developed early in Disraeli's politicalcareer, and at first he watched them as an outsider, considering thestrength of their movement and his own advantage in becoming part of it.This was made up of a small number of young men who were quite vocal. When Disraeli died in1881, he left behind a transformed and modernized Conservative Party and amuch expanded British Empire with a more global outlook than had been thecase in the era preceding his. He tried to establish a new daily newspaper namedthe Representative, and this brought him financial losses. He was disappointed after this when moremiddle-class voters did not support his party, but still he used his officeto convince the British Parliament to pass legislation regulating factoriesand workshops and expanding the rights of workers to form labor unions.Queen Victoria assisted in many of these endeavors, and she far preferredDisraeli to Gladstone as Prime Minister (Blake 343-344). This is when Disraeli joined with the YoungEngland group and offered them inspiration. He established his socialposition by marrying Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, a widow with a life interest in aLondon house and an income of 4, pounds per year (Maurois 1 5-143). Disraeli discovered that this would be his issue, and he used it torally Young England against Peel with a large percentage of the publicsupporting this position, especially the country squires who formed thebackbone of the Conservative Party. Disraeli was mortified and became more and more critical of theConservatives and Peel. Disraeli as a novelist was an extension of Disraeli the politician.Disraeli was a satirist and a political novelist: It is important, therefore, to recognize at the outset that Disraeli was both a practicing politician and an imaginative writer and that his political ideas and literary efforts are of a piece. He was also a novelist of some note in his time,though his works have been all but forgotten in this century. They considered that the church should be independent of state control. the marriage made it possible forhim to purchase a large estate and to play the role of country gentleman,and he himself conceded that it was not a love match. The real opportunity forDisraeli came with the Irish problem of 1845. When the bill was rejected, Disraeli introduced a very similar billin the Electoral Reform Bill of 1867, and he became a hero in his party bypassing it with Conservative support, declaring then that the Conservativeswere the true party of reform. Until 1848, Jews were excluded from Parliament, for membershad to take an oath of office "on the faith of a true Christian" (Blake341), and had his father not made the decision to baptize his children,Disraeli's political career could never have started as it did. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1951.----------------------- 1 Disraeli's beginning in politics was in 1831 when he sought a seat inBuckinghamshire, near where his family had settled. Theyhad been returned to Parliament at a recent election in the Tory interest,but they seemed to hold strange views on English history. Once he had decided this course, he workedconsciously and methodically toward this end. New York: D. The key was to convince voters that the Conservative Party was no backward, obstructionist group, opposing all change, but was instead the party of social concern and careful, thoughtful change (Blake 343). "Benjamin Disraeli." In Historic World Leaders, 2, Europe A-K, Ann Commire (Ed.). and wished to restore the throne to its ancient authority. Disraeli and his cohortscould not stop the repeal of the Corn Laws because this was supported bythe Whigs as well, but the rebels were able to put Peel in the minority onanother issue and forced him to resign in 1846: "The Conservative Partywas irrevocably split and would be out of power for a generation" (Bradford158). It was common in the England of the time for Victorian Englishmen towork simultaneously in several fields, and there were numerousopportunities for such diversification: The nineteenth century in England was, for the most part, not a calm age; it was an age of anxiety, an age of flux. He was amember of the Conservative Party and provided the party with a policy ofTory democracy and imperialism. There areconflicting stories about what sort of student he was. His fatherpressured him to become a lawyer, so Disraeli accepted his first job as aclerk in a law firm when he was 17 years old, and he deliberately attracteda good deal of notice in that job by wearing outlandish clothing. The group, knownas the Young England Movement, consisted of George Smythe, Lord JohnManners, and Alexander Baillie Cochrane, all of whom had been at Eton andCambridge together. He gained aminor literary reputation with the publication of his novel Vivian Grey in1826, and it was the story of a clever but ambitious young man who tries torise in society but finds only unhappiness as a result (Blake 342). In this novel, Disraeli gave hints of his plans to undercut theLiberals, who portrayed themselves as the party of reform but who would nothelp the workers form labor unions: If Conservatives extended the franchise to all middle-class males, and passed laws allowing workers to form labor unions, Disraeli believed that his Party would certainly benefit in future elections. Disraeli. Many of his fellow Conservatives were surprised thatDisraeli proposed courting the working class. The group aroused a good deal of hostility, and Disraeliwas certainly aware of this fact. He was shouted down because of his elaborate metaphors, affectedmannerisms, and foppish dress, but he would not be silenced. He could express his ideals through the imaginative worldof his characters (Levine 26-27). They disliked the middle class; had great sympathy with the laborers, whose natural leaders and protectors they declared the Tories to be; and saw no reason why Merry England should not be revived by a harmonious relationship between peers and people (Pearson 91).Within a year, Disraeli was accepted as the chief of the group, and Smytheeven said that they should be called the "Diz-Union." The group attackedPeel's Irish policy and asked a number of impertinent questions about hisforeign policy. The fact that he was born aJew would handicap him in his public life, and his original religion wasalways considered a political liability by both friends and enemies. He wassuccessful for the first time in 1837 at Maidstone in Kent as theConservative candidate, but his maiden speech in the House of Commons was afailure. Disraeli alsorealized that there was no future in the party if it represented only thenobility. He preferred to spend histime among the books in his father's library, though, and later wouldremember that he liked to "play" at being a member of Parliament. Traditional institutions--religious, social, and political--were challenged from every corner. Disraeli was appointed to the Cabinet as chancellor of the exchequerin 1851, and by the late 186 s he was Prime Minster, first in 1868 andlater from 1874 to 188 . Disraeli's family was financially comfortable, and after aninheritance the family moved into a large house in the Bloomsbury sectionof London, where many lawyers and financiers lived. However, when Peel became the Prime Minister in 1841with a Conservative election sweep, Disraeli was not given an office in theCabinet. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.