The Royal Titles Bill (1876) proved to be contentious because it raised fraught issues of royal prerogative, constitutional legality, political perspective, parliamentary strategy, journalistic practice, and public opinion. Disraeli insisted that Queen Victoria could choose the supplementary title, empress of India, while Gladstone and his supporters, by means of substitute motions, adjournments, and postponement of decisive divisions, attempted to thwart what he feared were Disraeli's mysterious and dangerous intentions. The acrimonious debates in the house of commons also reflected differences of opinion about historical and immediate contexts - most notably the legacy of the 1858 proclamation of the Government of India Act, and the effects of the government's secret purchase of the khedive of Egypt's shares in the Suez Canal company in November 1875. The government's increased majorities in committee and at third reading indicated that Gladstone's tenacious opposition to the Bill did not have the support of all Liberal MPs.

Past and Present:Young England and Industrial Medievalism Robert O’Kell (bio) Benjamin disraeli’s Vindication of the English Constitution in a Letter to a Noble Lord (1835) was a defence of what was called “the mixed Constitution” (Vindication passim), comprising the three limited estates of the realm: the Commons, the Lords Temporal, and the Lords Spiritual, each with its own duties and powers. Much of the Vindication was based on ideas that Disraeli had found in three works of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke: A Dissertation upon Parties (1733–34), A Letter on the Spirit of Patriotism (1736), and The Idea of a Patriot King (1738). From reading these works, in particular On the Spirit of Patriotism, which was addressed to the youthful Lord Cornbury, Disraeli came to believe that a revived idealism amongst the country’s young aristocrats was the best hope for the moral reformation of both the people and the government that was so desperately needed. Once it became clear that Disraeli would not be appointed to the Cabinet of Sir Robert Peel’s Conservative Government in 1841, he was in a mood of some desperation, feeling, as he wrote on 25 February 1842 to his wife, Mary Anne, “humiliated,” “solitary,” and “utterly isolated” (Benjamin Disraeli Letters 4 [no. 1217]: 17–18). But, on the strength of an impressive speech, attacking Lord Palmerston’s handling of the Foreign Office, Disraeli soon found himself “with[ou]t effort the leader of a party—chiefly of the youth, & new members,” as he explained to Mary Anne on 11 March 1842 (Letters 4 [no. 1229]: 31). That group was the embryo of Young England, a partie carrée composed also of George Smythe, Lord John Manners, and Alexander Baillie-Cochrane, who looked upon Disraeli as their spiritual and intellectual leader. They all shared a nostalgic perspective on the Tory Party, the Church, the monarchy, and the general progress of recent political events that was the antithesis of the liberal utilitarian spirit of the time. The bond that brought Young England’s foursome together was their patriotism that derived from their revulsion at the battle of warring factions that early nineteenth-century society seemed to have become and from their desire to restore what they conceived to be an ancient social harmony. Disraeli’s earlier identification with Bolingbroke and the Opposition Circle politics of the early eighteenth century now became transformed into a conscious adoption on Young England’s part of the role that Bolingbroke had urged Lord Cornbury and his circle of young aristocrats to play in the reform of the Tory Party and the country. Inherent in this posture was the idea that the Conservative Party in the hands of Sir Robert Peel and his moderate policy was unequal to the task of addressing the nation’s most pressing problems. It was in Paris, while Disraeli was there during the House of Commons fall recess of 1842, that the parliamentary identity of the Young England [End Page 9] movement took shape. Both Smythe and Baillie-Cochrane were also there, and the letters they wrote to Manners in London provide a “fascinating commentary” upon the role that Disraeli was beginning to envision for them all (Blake 174). Disraeli’s letters to his sister, Sarah, are full of reports of social encounters with dukes, duchesses, princes, counts, ambassadors, and influential politicians. In this heady atmosphere, and with a sense of recent parliamentary triumph, Disraeli began to imagine the possibilities of obtaining real political power. Something of the precise nature of the fantasy can be gauged from Smythe’s letter to Manners, dated 19 October 1842: “Most private. Dizzy has much more parliamentary power than I had any notion of. The two Hodgsons are his, and Quinton Dick. He has a great hold on Walter and ‘The Times.’ Henry Hope (who will come in soon) is entirely in his hands. He was in Paris, and I had an opportunity of judging” (Whibley 1: 143). Although the members of Young England did for the next few years continue to act as a ginger group in the House of Commons, with frequent criticisms of Peel’s Ministry, Disraeli’s grand plans did...

William Gladstone: New Studies and Perspectives, edited by Roland Quinault, Roger Swift and Ruth Clayton Windscheffel. Farnham and Burlington, Ashgate, 2012. xvii, 350 pp. $144.95 US (cloth). This volume contains papers from a conference held at Chester in 2009 to commemorate bicentenary of Gladstone's birth. A number of essays will interest not only specialists focused on Gladstone's life and political career, but also those with a wider curiosity about both public and private determinants of nineteenth-century British political culture. The shift represented here from a primarily political focus in earlier studies on Gladstone to an interest in greater variety of roles in life of nation (p. xvi) is announced in David Bebbington's Foreword and Ruth Clayton Windscheffel's Introduction. The book is then divided into six parts: Reputations, Images, Personal Questions, Gladstone as an Official, Ethics and Internationalism, and Epilogue. Some of essays are broad in their scope and implications, while others are much more limited and narrowly focused. Examples of former would be Frank Turner's investigation of complexities of Gladstone's Liberalism, which sees him as a political, but not a cultural radical, and Roland Quinault's exploration of ambivalences and inconsistencies of Gladstone's attitudes to war, in which he points out that, though Gladstone's policies of financial retrenchment and reform were incompatible with war expenditures, he nevertheless found reasons for pursuing armed conflicts supported by notions of divine retribution, duty, and honour. The psychological understanding of Gladstone's character and wealth of illustration that underlie both of these essays make them persuasive and compelling. Other essays in volume take on more specific topics, often with equally acute insight. For example, Richard Gaunt reassesses long-standing debate about Gladstone's relationship to Sir Robert Peel and question of whether it was patriotism or power that shaped their respective visions of providential destiny. In turn Chris Wigley looks at Gladstone's involvement with Labour, arguing that his greatest contribution to Liberal Party came not with his efforts at financial reform, free-trade, or Ireland, but rather through widening of franchise that brought the moral strength of a good portion of working people into political life (p. 57). Among best pieces of this specific nature is Richard Huzzey's investigation of Gladstone's attitude to suppression of slave trade, in which tensions of cruiser debate of 1850 reflect Gladstone's complex position, caught as he was between his interest in protecting West-Indies sugar trade and new direction of Peelite politics in context of strong abolitionist sentiments. Huzzey's discussion of economic aspect of Gladstone's moral arguments finds a good complement in Alan Warren's analysis of Gladstone's concern to limit role of Treasury in responding to problems of Ireland between 1853 and 1866. Warren points out that, as Chancellor of Exchequer for most of these years, Gladstone seemed more interested in tax policy and fiscal restraint in relation to Ireland than in reflecting on root causes of country's distress and what Government might do to relieve it. But by 1866, Warren argues, Gladstone was beginning to understand more clearly how various Irish issues were interconnected, and how difficult were opportunities for reform in matters of Church, education, and land. Geography is also focus of C. Brad Faught's discussion of Gladstone's ideas and actions while serving as Lord High Commissioner to Ionian Islands in late 1850s. Faught sees this mission as a rehearsal of imperial and international themes that would come to dominate three of Gladstone's four ministries. In this regard, Gladstone's failure to make any headway in sorting out Ionians' Greek nationalism seems less significant than his views on Britain's moral responsibilities that would inform his response to Bulgarian atrocities seventeen years later. …

Reviewed by: Disraeli's Disciple: The Scandalous Life of George Smythe, and: Benjamin Disraeli: The Novel as Political Discourse Robert O'Kell (bio) Disraeli's Disciple: The Scandalous Life of George Smythe, by Mary S. Millar; pp. xvi + 380. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2006, $75.00, £48.00. Benjamin Disraeli: The Novel as Political Discourse, by Michael Flavin; pp. viii + 221. Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2005, £50.00, £16.95 paper, $69.50, $29.95 paper. Mary Millar's well-researched biography of George Sydney Smythe is a splendid example of what can be accomplished with intelligence, sympathy, and perseverance. The result is all the more remarkable because Benjamin Disraeli's letters to Smythe were either lost or destroyed after the latter's death, and this missing half of their correspondence would constitute half of the evidence for the discipleship upon which the work is centered. Not daunted, Millar makes good use of every other possible source, including, of course, Disraeli's novels, which contain a number of characters modeled upon Smythe's complex personality and unconventional behaviour. In the first of the Young England novels, the eponymous hero, Coningsby, captures the essence of the aristocratic idealism of Smythe's early years at Cambridge and as the member of parliament for Canterbury after 1837. The wily and compulsively conspiratorial Fakredeen in Tancred (1847) reflects in part Smythe's fondness for political intrigue and the feckless betrayals of the "double game" (195ff.) that increasingly defined his friendship with Disraeli after he accepted the position of Under Secretary of the Foreign Office in Sir Robert Peel's government in 1846. And in Endymion (1880) Waldershare retrospectively embodies the very considerable charm that Smythe exerted on virtually everyone he met in his short life. The scandals to which Millar's title alludes were mostly sexual ones, and they stretched over the whole course of Smythe's adult life. After an intense friendship with Frederick Faber during the Cambridge years—that seemed on Faber's part, at least, to have homoerotic overtones—Smythe, at twenty-one, lost himself for a number of years in a very public, adulterous infatuation with Lady Tankerville, the earl's wife, who was fifty-eight when Smythe met her. From this he went on to dozens of other "distractions" and seductions, some deliberately rakish, others ostensibly in pursuit of matrimony, but all of them complicated by his consumptive ill-health, his large debts, and his neglect of his political duties. Smythe's father, the sixth Viscount Strangford, kept hoping that his handsome son's wit and charm would lead him not only to a brilliant political success, but also to an advantageous marriage that would rescue the family's precarious finances. Whether from a foreboding consciousness of his fate or merely a perverse diffidence, Smythe mostly resisted such suggestions. His entirely futile and pathetically half-hearted pursuit of Angela Burdett Coutts across Europe in 1844 is a case in point. He much preferred the attractions of a pretty face and sparkling wit, and on several occasions, such as the ten-day elopement with the vivacious Lady Dorothy Walpole in 1846, he entangled himself to the extent of creating public outrage at his immorality. Among the most interesting parts of this biography is the chapter that describes Smythe's career as a journalist. Even after the parting of their ways in 1846, he continued to supply Disraeli with material for speeches but more importantly became the first aristocrat to accept a regular salary from a newspaper when he went to work in February 1848 as an editorial writer for the temporarily Conservative Morning Chronicle. The timing was fortuitous, for Smythe's knowledge of foreign affairs made him the [End Page 157] perfect person to write on events in France. He was soon on the spot in Paris as the riots escalated and King Louis Philippe was forced to abdicate. His insightful articles and graphic eyewitness reports of the mobs in the streets—obtained at great personal risk—were the most authentic accounts available to English readers. For the next several years Smythe turned to writing about domestic politics and became adept at verbal "assassinations." The...

Reviewed by: Benjamin Disraeli Letters, Volume 7: 1857–1859 Robert O'Kell (bio) Benjamin Disraeli Letters, Volume 7: 1857–1859, edited by M. G. Wiebe, Mary S. Millar, Ann P. Robson, and Ellen L. Hawman; pp. lxvi + 578. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2004, Can $190.00, $190.00, £96.00. Historians of the nineteenth century and all those interested in Victorian politics may well find the seventh volume of the Disraeli Letters the most fascinating yet. It contains 555 letters to 110 correspondents during the years 1857 to 1859, and identifies as well 219 additional letters from the same period that have not yet been found, but whose existence can be inferred. The letters printed in this volume, the majority of which are previously unpublished in whole or in part, constitute a major addition to our knowledge of Disraeli's political career. There are also 115 newly discovered letters from earlier years that are printed in an appendix, including fuller-than-previous versions of nineteen letters to his sister, Sarah, and nine new ones to Lady Londonderry. In the three years covered by the body of this volume, Disraeli is a mature and seasoned politician, very much at the tactical centre of the Conservative party's struggles in the House of Commons, first in opposition during such important debates as those on divorce and the Indian Mutiny, and then as a minority government seeking an alternative to the East India Company's powers of governance and attempting a measure of further parliamentary reform at home. Although Lord Derby was the Prime Minister, the day-to- day burden of the government's existence fell chiefly on Disraeli in the Commons. It is thus not surprising that the letters in this volume, especially those to Derby, Lord Stanley, and Disraeli's Conservative colleagues in and out of the cabinet, reflect the considerable stresses and strains of planning policy and executing the strategies of debate. Through it all Disraeli emerges as a man of more tact than is generally acknowledged, and as a politician who, whatever the conservative impulses of the moment while fighting for legislative majorities in a hostile House, always understood that he and his colleagues were caught in the midst of larger social, cultural, and political transformations. [End Page 117] It is instructive to see here the anticipations of Disraeli's later policies on reform and foreign affairs. These often reflect a pragmatic yet idealistic wisdom about the Conservatives' need to be progressive in an age of political and cultural movement. Among the most interesting of these letters are the ones that reveal the impact of new technologies of travel and communication, particularly the increased speed of the railways and the effects of telegraphic messages. The best illustrations of Disraeli's skilful management of the Conservative cause at this time are his letters to and about Lord Stanley and Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Stanley was a most reluctant and skittish member of his father's cabinet and it required the utmost in tact and encouragement in communicating with Stanley himself, Lord Derby, and the Queen to keep him on side. As Disraeli well knew, Stanley's allegiance was the key to avoiding other defections from the party. Moreover, Stanley had the capacity for mischief, such as, for example, the letters (signed "M. P.") he had sent to the press in late 1853 and early 1854 criticizing Prince Albert (6: 201, 310-11). Almost as challenging for Disraeli was the task of persuading Lytton to stay in the cabinet and stand for reelection in 1858. Lytton and Disraeli were old friends from their silver-fork novel days, but the former's matrimonial difficulties left him vulnerable to threats of blackmail from his hysterical wife and to some very questionable medical and legal advice about what to do in response. Under the stress of trying to cope with the situation, which included his wife's public denunciations of him during the 1858 election campaign, Lytton became convinced that he was dying, and Disraeli had the delicate task of supporting his colleague while talking him out of this delusion. Perhaps the most frustrating task that fell to Disraeli in this period...