Victorian Britain 695(1804—1881) became the leader of the Conservatives and Gladstone’s
great rival. A Jew who had been baptized into the Anglican Church, Dis
raeli seemed an unlikely leader of a party dominated by landed wealth. But
he was an energetic, skilled politician and an impressive orator who had
the good sense to realize that further Conservative attempts to revive eco
nomic protectionism were doomed. Unlike Gladstone, Disraeli got along
famously with the queen, whom he flattered on every possible occasion.
Victoria depended upon Disraeli for advice much as she had on Albert. (As
Disraeli lay dying, the queen wrote to ask if she might visit the Conserva
tive leader. “It is better not,” Disraeli replied. “She’d only ask me to take a
message to Albert.”)
The Reform Bill of 1867Since 1832, the majority of British subjects had regarded further political
reform as a certainty. A growing number of middle-class voters, hoping to
end disproportionate aristocratic influence in British political life, supported
some expansion of suffrage. Workers wanted universal male suffrage. As
for Queen Victoria, she insisted that she “cannot and will not be the queen
of a democratic monarchy.” John Bright (1811-1889), who represented
Manchester and then Birmingham in the House of Commons, campaigned
for electoral reform. In 1866, the National Reform Union, whose member
ship was overwhelmingly middle class, and the Reform League, which
many craftsmen joined, allied with Bright’s parliamentary radicals. Their
goal was household suffrage, that is, the right of the adult male head of
family to vote.
Gladstone, typically, was convinced that political reform was not only
expedient but also moral. “You cannot fight against the future,” the Liberal
leader taunted Conservatives in Parliament. “Time is on our side. The great
social forces... are against you.” But he wanted to let down the electoral
drawbridge only long enough to let in artisans and skilled workers, the
“aristocracy of labor,” but not all males.
Conservatives feared that the enfranchisement of more people would
add to the ranks of the Liberals and eventually lead to subsequent legisla
tion that might weaken the political influence of wealthy landowners. The
Liberal government proposed a bill to reduce the minimum amount of tax
one had to pay to be eligible to vote both in the countryside and in towns,
where the rate would be set lower. The proposed reform would still exclude
ordinary workers and other poor people. However, the House of Lords
rejected the bill because a majority of members opposed any change.
Disraeli, who had predicted that “pillage, incendiarism, and massacre”
would follow universal male suffrage in Britain, now believed that electoral
reform that maintained some exclusions was not only inevitable but that
his Conservative Party could benefit from it. Disraeli took a “leap in the
dark,” proposing that the vote be given to each head of a household and