ABSTRACT
The Conservative party is the oldest political party in Britain still engaged in public life and it has continuously memorialised its past. In the general election of 1874 the Conservatives, under Benjamin Disraeli’s leadership, secured a Commons majority, winning 350 seats. In broad electoral terms, it also showed the early and mid-Victorian Conservative party to be an essentially English and Welsh party. The function of the Conservative party in parliament was to seek to place a Conservative ministry in power and maintain its authority to govern. As a result, at every general election from 1837 to 1857 the Conservatives returned the majority of MPs for the English constituencies; English MPs in total making up 82% of the House of Commons. While the nature and function of Conservatism as a party was shaped by the constitutional changes, the character of Conservativism as a body of attitudes, principles and values from the 1830s to the 1870s also took shape.
