ABSTRACT
In April 1872, Disraeli gave a major speech in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, marked by a great NUCCA parade. In June, he delivered a second major speech to a NUCCA audience at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham. Disraeli rarely made public speeches to mass audiences. His Manchester and Crystal Palace speeches, however, strengthened his hold on the party leadership. In January 1872 a group of leading Conservatives had gathered at Lord Exeter’s Burghley estate to discuss Disraeli’s deficiencies as party leader. The Commons chief whip stated that Disraeli’s replacement by Derby (who was not present) would gain the Conservatives 40 or 50 MPs. Orchestrated by Gorst and drawing on the resources of the NUCCA, Disraeli’s speeches at Manchester and the Crystal Palace were the spirited response to such private sedition. They were powerful demonstrations of Disraeli’s call upon Conservative feeling in the constituencies. They resurrected Disraeli’s authoritative claim to the leadership of the party.
At Manchester, Disraeli spoke for over three hours. The Conservatives, he declared, were a great national party, in contrast to the cosmopolitanism of the Liberals. The Conservatives were committed to maintaining the constitution of the country and to the need for health legislation. This culminated in Disraeli’s description of the Liberal cabinet, formed on the principle of violence and under the influence of some deleterious drug, as a range of exhausted volcanoes. Delivered without notes and with Disraeli fortifying himself with white brandy, the over three-hour speech was a remarkable oratorical feat. On leaving Manchester, the horses drawing Disraeli’s carriage were unhitched and a crowd pulled it to the railway station, where a celebratory crowd mobbed Disraeli and his wife.
A large meeting of the NUCCA was held at the Westminster Palace Hotel on 24 June. In the evening, the delegates dined at the Crystal Palace. Disraeli’s shorter Crystal Palace speech presented the same themes he had elaborated at Manchester. The Tory party, unless it was a national party, was nothing and the Tory party had three great objects. The first was to maintain the institutions of the country. The House of Lords had all the virtues required of a Senate. It possessed independence, great local influence, and a public sense of duty no theory could supply. Able to defy both despots and the mob, the peerage were a class whose patriotism sprang from its intimate connection with the soil of the nation. The established Church was a national profession of faith combined with the enjoyment of private judgement in all matters spiritual. The second great object of the party was to uphold the Empire. Disraelian swagger invested the British Empire with the durability of classical Rome and the adventurism of Carthage. The third great object of the party was to elevate the condition of the people. Disraeli’s rhetorical alchemy transformed the base metal of social reform into the gold of party triumph. The immediate future, he predicted, presented a fundamental contest between national and cosmopolitan principles – a choice between the patriotism of Conservatism and the alien abstract ideals of Liberalism. The advanced guard of Liberalism had openly announced itself Republican. The cause of Conservativism was the commitment to England as a great Imperial country commanding the respect of the world.
