ABSTRACT
The Life of Lord George Bentinck is in a sense the most serious of Benjamin Disraeli’s works. It was composed at a time when he had abandoned fiction for the more sternly engrossing pursuit of politics. But, while Disraeli saw even the arch-enemy through the softening mist of imagination, Lord George, as he drew him, seems to have stepped straight out of the pages of fiction. This chapter aims to set forth the part which Lord George Bentinck played in the drama of the Corn Laws, and Disraeli has performed the delicate and difficult task of writing contemporary history with the quick humour and shrewd observation one expects of him. For Lord George Bentinck could not have achieved what he did without the aid of his loyal and generous supporter. Never has there appeared in the House of Commons a more brilliant debater, a severer critic of inefficient policies, than Disraeli.
