Chapter 5: II. Young England

 

Item 55
Lord John Manners
Letter to Disraeli from Lord John Manners, 24 Oct. 1844
Dep. Hughenden 106/1, fols. 10r-11r

Lord John Manners, later 7th Duke of Rutland (1818-1906), regarded by Disraeli as a future Prime Minister, risked the wrath of his father by allying with Disraeli, though he stopped short of total defiance. Smythe's best friend at Cambridge, he was the model for Lord Henry Sidney in Coningsby. Disinclined to attend a proposed public meeting in Birmingham - 'at Christmas time one ought to be at home, and really we have had enough of public meetings for one winter' - he reports in this October 1844 letter (fol. 10v) on the response of the gentry to their movement. Henry Lyster had criticised Disraeli's speech at Shrewsbury (Disraeli's constituency, 1841-7) without hearing it. Manners, with his interest in factory reform and allotments, moves on to compare English and Irish peasants and their holdings and the views of Sir Edwin Chadwick (1800-90), the great sanitary reformer.