ABSTRACT
The 15th Earl of Derby succeeded his father (the Conservative prime minister and party leader) to the title in October 1869. During the 1850s and 1860s, as Lord Stanley, he was a rising star of the party, though recognised as an untypical Conservative in his views. High-minded, earnest, and conscientious, he had little patience for what he saw as the rural fatuousness of the Tory squirearchy. An admirer of Disraeli in his youth, he had welcomed the abandonment of Protection in 1852. The liberality of his views disturbed some Conservative backbenchers. They came to see him as a closet Liberal who was only a Conservative out of filial loyalty, suspicions aggravated by his reclusive shy manner, partly enforced by ill health. His mother described him as ‘a sort of political monk’ (Angus Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister: Achievement, 1851–1869, (Oxford, 2008), p. 261). Nevertheless, as early as 1853, some prominent Conservatives were pointing to the young Stanley as a possible replacement for Disraeli as party leader in the Commons. In October 1855, he declined an invitation from Palmerston to join his cabinet. The same year he hosted a large meeting of Mechanics Institutions at Knowsley, the Derby family seat, declaring his enthusiastic support for educational reform and all measures conducive to the moral and intellectual welfare of the people.
First as Colonial Secretary and then President of the Board of Control in his father’s 1858–1859 government, Stanley strengthened his reputation for businesslike capability. In June 1859, Disraeli suggested to Derby that, if they wished Whigs and moderate Liberals to merge with the Conservatives, then Stanley was the only politician who could achieve it. The Liberal chief whip, in private conversation with Stanley, floated the possibility of such a fusion in February 1861. Russell, in November 1865, invited Stanley to join his cabinet. Rejection of the offer caused Stanley no regret.
In July 1866, Derby appointed Stanley Foreign Secretary. Stanley strictly adhered to the foreign policy declared by his father as prime minister. Entanglements in European conflicts were to be avoided and there would be no engagement in diplomatic threats or menace, the internal affairs of other nations being matters in which Britain should not meddle. During the war between Prussia and Austria in July 1866 and following the Prussian victory at Sadowa, Stanley abstained from diplomatic interference.
In the Amphitheatre near Lime Street, in Liverpool, Derby (as Stanley had become) spoke to an audience of about 3,000, made up of members of the Liverpool Working Men’s Conservative Association on 9 January 1872. His carefully considered speech lasted about 75 minutes and ranged over a variety of topics. He advised against the Conservatives taking office without an assured majority, but pointed out the influence Conservatives might exercise in the Commons, given the divided state of the Liberal party. In his diary, Derby noted that after his speech he was weary, but well satisfied.
