ABSTRACT
As early as June 1878, Count Minister had no doubt that Salisbury would become prime minister and the most influential personality in his country. This was less clear to others. The Queen bestowed the Garter on him after Berlin, and had wanted to give it to him beforehand, in April 1878, so great was her relief and gratitude when he decisively rejected the isolationism of his predecessor at the Foreign Office.1 Rumour had it that he was ambitious to succeed Beaconsfield; and his wife was certainly ambitious for him, as ever.2 He had rivals in Cairns, the lord chancellor, a formidable figure in cabinet and the Lords, and Northcote, chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the Commons since Disraeli took his peerage in 1876. Cairns, a deeply evangelical Ulsterman, lacked a following in the lower House despite being a partisan Tory. An old Peelite, Northcote was a competent administrator and parliamentarian whose reliability and experience of the House was held to offset a cross-bench outlook. Although he was the dead man’s preferred successor, Salisbury would have been a controversial choice to lead the party in opposition on Beaconsfield’s demise in 1881. Estranged from some of his warmest supporters in the past, notably Carnarvon and Bath, who supposed him to have surrendered to Beaconsfield over the Eastern question, Salisbury was regarded with considerable distrust by many peers and MPs. They remembered his rebelliousness, and felt obscurely that his conservatism was not quite what they expected in a leader: too cerebral for Tories by temperament and tradition.3 Their distrust was compounded by the attitude of some more thoughtful Liberals towards him. The latter perceived that the Cyprus Convention, which their side subjected to intense criticism, concealed Salisbury’s determination to maintain peace and his unchanging aversion to the Turk. “I do not think”, wrote Lord Selborne of Salisbury’s conduct in 1878, “his policy was altered by Lord Derby’s resignation, so far at least as to the difference between a pacific and a warlike purpose was concerned. I believe he had always a pacific settlement and more or less of benefit to the Christian subjects of the Porte in view”. He had,
surmised this sympathetic opponent, spoken and acted as he did “to bring round…his chief, and the noisy section of the party, by humouring them up to the brink of war, in order that they might be satisfied, in the end, by the display without the thing…”.4
