Chapter 7: Tumultuous times, 1846-9

Item 69
'The Fall of Caesar - not that I have loved Caesar less'
Coloured print by 'HB', published by Thomas Maclean, London, 18 July 1846
John Johnson Political Cartoons 6 (257)

A shocked Caesar/Peel is ambushed by his critics: Bentinck, Cobden, O'Connell, Lord John Russell, Morpeth, Palmerston, Shiel and a sword-wielding Disraeli. A graphic illustration of events prefigured in Disraeli's correspondence with Young England (and encouraged by Bentinck, shown here with a dagger), but it is Disraeli's opportunism which is remembered. Lord Derby would later explain it to Queen Victoria as the trait of a man who had to make his own way.