Chapter 7: Tumultuous times, 1846-9

 

Item 73
Biographical tool
Extract from Lord George Bentinck: a political biography, revised, 3rd edition (London, 1852)
2288 e.1337, pp. 332-3

Disraeli's partnership with Bentinck ended when Bentinck resigned as leader of the Protectionists in December 1847 and died, unexpectedly, in 1848. Bentinck had supported Lord Granby as his successor. Hostility towards Disraeli within the Protectionist leadership (including Lord Stanley and the party whips) further blocked his succession, which after a hiatus passed to Lord Stanley (after the death of his father, in 1851, known as Lord Derby), who sat in the House of Lords. Derby, like Bentinck, overcame his dislike and distrust of Disraeli.

In the Bentinck biography Disraeli set out his version of events using the opportunity to modify Derby's stand on protection, making it easier for the party to abandon it. He was also moved to devote a whole chapter to 'The Jewish Question', sandwiching it - rather oddly - between that on the panic of 1847 and Bentinck's accession to the leadership, and emphasising the significance of the Jewish inspiration to Christianity and Europe's artistic development. The figure described on this page is more an amalgam of Bentinck and Disraeli than pure Bentinck.