Victorian People: A Reassessment of Persons and Themes, 1851-67

by Asa Briggs

This text looks at the people, ideas and events between the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Second Reform Act of 1867. From "John Arthur Roebuck and the Crimean War", and "Samuel Smiles and the Gospel of Work" to "Thomas Hughes and the Public Schools" and "Benjanmin Disraeli and the Leap in the Dark", Asa Briggs provides an assessment of Victorian achievements; and in doing so conjures up an enviable picture of the progress and independence of the last century.

"For expounding this theme, this interaction of event and personality, Mr. Briggs is abundantly and happily endowed. He is always readable, often amusing, never facetious. He is widely read and widely interested. He has a sound historic judgment, and an unfailing sense for what is significant in the historic sequence and what is merely topical. . . . Above all, he is in sympathy with the age of which he is writing."— Times Literary Supplement

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Victorian, Biography, British Literature, 19th Century, Society

324 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Asa Briggs, Baron Briggs was an English historian, best known for his studies on the Victorian era. In particular, his trilogy, Victorian People, Victorian Cities, and Victorian Things made a lasting mark on how historians view the nineteenth century. He was made a life peer in 1976.

Reviews

[William · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was one of my college texts, but I didn't start reading it until 16 years after I left school. While the book is reasonably entertaining, the author assumes some things about his audience that might not be true. They might not, for example, be familiar with Victorian British politics, literature, and society; they might not, as well, know both French and Latin in addition to English. And so he assumes that they do not want either footnotes or a bibliography. In all cases he is wrong.

[Antonio · Rating 2 out of 5]

Victorian People by Asa Briggs When I was told that I would be doing a book review on a piece of work by a historian that covered some sort of history between 1500 to 1900, I was positive that I wanted to read about the Victorian People. I have always had an interest in British society in the 19th century, especially during the mid-Victorian era between 1850 and 1870. Some of my favorite writers were greatly influenced by the Victorian culture such as Charles Dickens, Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle. So, when I was looking for a book to read I asked the librarian what kind of books does the library have on 19th century British society, the librarian gave me a section according to the library of congress call sign and I went hunting. I stumbled upon this treasure Victorian People: A reassessment of persons and themes 1851-67 by Asa Briggs, I was delighted that one could find something that could fit my desires perfectly.
To give the basic idea of Victorian People it is quite easy and can be explained in a couple of sentences. The book was written by Briggs to give a lens to specific people and the events they have caused or shaped in British history. The people are from either the middle or gentry class and held some sort of powerful position or had some kind of influence on society that lead the British into the late 19th century and on to the 20th century. Most of these people are not household names to the common person let alone the common American.
The book is split up into eleven chapters, eight of which read about specific British peoples. The first and last chapters are the introduction and epilogue are assessments of what one will be reading in the books and a basic review of what was read in the book. The second chapter was not a person either, It was a on a specific event that starts the book of in 1851 the Great Exhibition in Britain.
The second chapter named The Crystal Palace and the Men of 1851 is named so for the crystal palace which was a large glass and steel structure that was built for this exhibition. The exhibition itself was an event held by the Western nations to bring together cultural, industrial, commercial and agricultural ideas, like the world’s faire of the 20th century.
The rest of the chapters as I said previously deal with politicians, union leaders and authors who all have shaped the British empire of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These people include the Liberal and Unitarian John Arthur Roebuck who was a parliament member from the Bath, The fourth chapter deals with two social commentators of British society the first being Anthony Trollope who was a novelist who focused mainly on the politics and society of Baretshire county in England and the other writer was Walter Bagehot who was a journalist and Essayist on Victorian literature, society and economics these two men are some of the best known Victorian writers in Britain. Chapter five deals with Samuel Smiles who wrote self-help and thrift which were books about how one could better themselves in Victorian society. Thomas Hughes was the writer of Tom Brown’s school days which is a quasi autobiographical work about the Rugby public school, chapter seven Robert Applegarth was a trade unionist who formed the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Jointers which became the model for many British unions, John Bright was one of the leaders of for social reform on allowing the common man the right to vote, Robert Lowe was the leading opposition for Reform for the common vote and finally Benjamin Disraeli who was Prime minister in 1868 and 1876 to 1880
Before I read this book I have never heard of any of these British figures. Afterwards though I was deeply interested in all of the different personalities, my favorite of all these figures would be Samuel Smiles. Samuel Smiles chapter is called Samuel Smiles and the Gospel of Work. When I first saw the name of the chapter I thought of the American Andrew Carnegie who made up the idea of the Gospel of Wealth so I did have prejudgments going into the chapter. The reason I liked Smile so much was that he believed in the idea if you work hard and better yourself by educating yourself and working to become a gentleman by giving up vices such as alcoholism and pride one could become a better person. By doing the instructions that Smiles would have wrote about in Self-help and Thrift one could get a better job and maybe reach a higher income to become a voting subject in Britain.
Another reason why enjoyed Smiles so much was probably because of how well the chapter was written compare to most of the other chapters in the book. The chapter on Smiles wrote a little a bit about Smiles the person, then on what he wrote, then on how he influenced Britain and finally on how he connects with all the other personalities in the book. The only other chapter that follows this format is the chapter on Thomas Hughes. These two chapters are the best in the book to my opinion and if they were all written this way it would have been much better.
A chapter that truly did not need a personality in it was the chapter called John Arthur Roebuck and the Crimean War. Roebuck was such a minor part of this chapter and should have maybe received his own chapter at the end with Bright, Lowe and Disraeli, As if he truly deserved that. The chapter should have just been about how important the Crimean war had been to the Victorian people. Nine tenths of the chapter I feel was about how the people of England were upset about a losing battle in the Crimean war. This chapter did enlighten me about what the Crimean war was about and was an important part of Victorian society. Apparently much of parliament and the people of England were upset about how much money was being spent fighting the Ottoman empire and the Russians in the black sea.
The last four chapters of this books should have been smashed together to form one chapter but I am happy that it wasn’t for organizational reasons. The last four chapters were purely about the political reasons on why the common may should have the right to vote in British parliament and forming a new British constitution. Bright being a man for reform to bring in a more democratic system, Lowe wanted to keep the voting open to only the gentry and the middle class and Disraeli supported the reform but in a slower pace. Disraeli and Bright got what they wanted but it was weak and needed more reform by politicians in later years.
The chapter on Lowe reminded me much of Edmund Burke of the 18th century. Lowe must have followed much of his views according to Burke. Lowe who lived in Australia and was in a position of power there saw how the working and common class had no idea on what was good for the British empire and used these philosophies and past experiences when he was a member of parliament in Britain.
The organization and length of this book was very pleasing to me. It was only about three hundred pages of information and was split up into short chapters of around 25-35 each. Every chapter showed a about two pictures usually being political cartoons with the people of the chapter involved or a photograph or stencil of the person themselves.
The book itself other than the two chapters that I mentioned earlier (Smiles and Hughes) were very dry and had way too much information for one chapter. This book was clearly not made for the hobby historian who wanted to know more about Victorian society. First of all they mention different acts and laws that are not explained at all or if very lightly and not until later in the book. The best example of this being the corn laws, these were laws made in Britain to allow a greater import of corn into Britain by loosening the tariff on corn. This information was not explained in the book but was mentioned several times throughout the work. Another complaint would be that one would need to know a bunch about the different political parties and how Parliament and the county system ran in Britain before going into this book. When I first read this book I knew that in modern Britain the major two parties are the Labor party and the Conservative party. Well during the Victorian era parties could be formed quite easily and would often work together in coalitions to combat a common political foe. The Tories, reform and conservative party were spoken of the most. Apparently the reform party is what the liberal party became and the Tories party became the new conservative party and the conservative party split up into the other parties. My biggest complaint though would be that there was no foot notes or end notes, this book needed these two tools and they were not there. For the common reader no one would understand this unless you did your research.
One of the best parts of this book is how I mentioned earlier the organization. The organization of this book was set nicely because one is reading each chapter on an individual event or person but they all coexisted and blended well together. Even though the chapters were different they flowed together pretty nicely. This did on the other hand give some problem, personalities such as Disraeli who was very important at this time and is mentioned many times throughout the work. so just like a mystery novel it seemed like everything didn’t wrap up until the end of the book. One could say this is for better or for worse. I would argue the Briggs did this to set up an investigation rather than just pure documentation.
Along with some of the works written by the Victorian people themselves such as Thrift by Samuel Smiles and Tom Browns school days by Thomas Hughes I also plan on reading some of Asa Briggs other works such as Victorian cities and Victorian things, but first I will read some more introductory level works on the Victorian era. It seems to be able to understand the Victorian society one must understand much about Parliament and free trade in the 19th century. I was very glad to read this book but I must do further research to continue to read the other books in the series that were mentioned previously.
All together I would not recommend this book to a person who wants to have a light read and learn nice little fun facts about the Victorian people; this book was clearly made for a scholastic setting and not a read for the hobby historian. I did enjoy this book though it had nice insight on the different personalities of this time and gave me a few other books that I may want to read in the future. So my final statement is that if you are into Victorian era British politics and you have read other works on the subject, this is perfect for you. But if this is your first book on the subject I suggest you look for something else.

[Liam Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of biographical essays. Though a pelican book, a book written for, or appropriate for, a general reader, I found it a difficult book to read. Many simple facts are presumed known and the impact of certain historical events are not always given with the contextual significance spelled out. The book also presumes knowledge of a number of terms specific to parliamentary workings, and takes license to drop a few untranslated quotations in French (though the latter was more understandable for the time it was written). In spite all of this, the biographical approach made for a vivid reading experience, and the conclusions that Briggs makes are thought provoking. Briggs brings a sympathetic eye to the most cliched victorian traits which are typically referred to with condescension or shame.

In the introduction he justifies his choice of well-known figures to structure his book on "Victorian People," highlighting the quality of Victorian self-reflection (in spite of the cliches of hypocrisy):

The people I have chosen are not unknown "men in the street" or forgotten personalities; they are men who made a distinctive contribution to the character of their times. Some of them were the best critics of their own age or chroniclers of its history; others were makers of social and cultural values or persuasive advocates of them; a third group were reformers who wished to speed up the processes of change. p.18

Introducing the later chapter on Samuel Smiles and the popularity of his "self help" book and its wide appeal, Briggs concludes that a significant reason for its success was due to the upward-looking nature of the common english family in the Victorian age. The spirit of the common, urban man was often disposed to venerate the virtues of the bourgeois and aristocratic rulers, being influenced by the seeming ease of transition and equality of discourse between both factors; equally educated, equally intelligent, and equally powerful. Perhaps only a generation seperating them, depsite the stereotypes that one occasionally indulged of the other. The belief in progress not only at a national or intellectual level, but for the upward mobility, and self-improvement through imitation of one's "betters":

There was a forth reason why England did not become a business society, perhaps the most interesting reason of all. The businessmen themselves showed only a limited interest in the values by which they had risen. Many of them were deferential rather than rebellious, snobbish rather than independent, and usually tempered by what Gladstone described as "a sneaking kindness for a Lord". The moment quietly arrived in private histories when a new family became an old one and when its members basked in the branches of family trees and forgot that there had been ladders to climb on the way. Self-help was a more convenient philosophy for first than for second generations. If it was not easy for a successful businessman to become a "gentleman" in his own lifetime, he could have reasonable hopes that his children, educated in the new public schools and marrying sons or daughters of the gentry, would eventually become "ladies" and "gentlemen." p.19-20

On the chapter on the political struggles during the Crimean war, it is interesting to notice how absurdly highbrow-seeming today the common catcalls of parliament seem:

Russell, whose erratic course had precipitated a crisis in 1854, was even more erratic in 1855. He spoke in Vienna as a peacemaker and in London as a warmonger, and, when it became clear that he preferred his Vienna performance to that on his own soil, he was totally discredited:

I went like a fairy plenipotentiary
To the town of Vienna, to settle the war,
But they'll not believe me then, they vow I've deceived them,
And call me the friend of the great Russian Tsar.

The Tories took the lead in moving a vote of censure on his conduct and, when Palmerston told them in defence of his old rival that "they were making much ado about nothing," Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton replied pertinently that "Much Ado came after The Comedy of Errors." p.79

In a chapter on the bourgeois radical Roebuck, "David to the 4th Earl of Aberdeen's Goliath" during the scandals of resources for British soldiers in the Crimean, Briggs draws attention to an interesting moment in which outdated and inefficient administration procedures appeared as the culprit, in opposition to any scapegoat in the form of any one individual's failure of judgement:

It soon became clear that Aberdeen and his ministers, including Newcastle, had been unjustly blamed for offences of which they were innocent; the causes of administrative confusion lay buried in the whole structure of government, not in the incompetence of particular people. "I felt corruption round about me," wrote Roebuck, "but I could not lay my hand upon it." p.84

Briggs presses on with this point, depicting a minor epiphany within government that would have important influence in the following generation of institution-building: the focus of parliament on the reform of systems. This cued a clash of heads between artistocratic power, from which stock the positions of bureaucracy were de facto filled, and the increasingly confident management strategies of borgeous power, who wanted a chance to apply their ideas to the aparatus of the state:

There were many members of Parliament who sympathized with the demand for administrative reform as businessmen rather than as politicians. Samuel Laing, for instance, constrasted private concerns, where merit was the mainspring, with government offices, where merit passed unnoticed. The reason why the system was wrong was the mediocrity of the people who were managing it. [... Henry] Drummond, who had supported the setting-up of Roebuck's select committee, was [...] outspokenly independent in his views. He asked whether it was true that the middle classes were better or more "pure" administrators than the aristocracy. They had not even succeeded in draining the great cities in which they lived.

See what a precious mess they have made at Manchester. Filled as that town was with Radicals and philosophers, they could not drain it. And yet there was hardly a town in the kingdom which could be more easily drained; for it stands upon two hills and any man of ordinary common sense would have at once said, "Cut a ditch from the top to the bottom and so drain it."

Drummond added that the cry for administrative reform was a delusive cry and that the dream of replacing all those who had ever been concerned in the government of a country by ship-brokers, stockbrokers, and railway directors could only lead to disaster. p.87

Briggs looks at the political snobbery of the victorians through the writings of Bagehot, essayist, and Trollope, novelist. Instead of framing it as a reaction to fears, he presents it as a principled belief in quality, excellence, and democracy. Briggs allows for the interpretation that these beliefs were inspired by a simple distain and dislike of uneducated manners and culture, and gives quotations which display the full forcefulness of self-aggrandizement, but gives equal time to the ways in which the men presented themselves, and defended their views with articulate reasoning:

Both Bagehot and Trollope recognized that the peculiar characteristics of the English constitution in the middle years of the century depended upon a social as well as a political balance. [...]Deference and dignity were safeguards of parliamentary government in a society in which "primitive barbarism lay as a recognized basis to acquired civilization." [...] Deference and dignity were more than safeguards of social peace and political tranquillity; they were necessary conditions. [Bagehot:]

A deferential community, even though its lowest classes are not intelligent, is far more suited to a cabinet government than any other kind of democratic country, because it is more suited to political excellence. The highest classes can rule in it; and the highest classes must, as such, have more political ability than the lower classes... A country of respectful poor, though far less happy than where there are no poor to be respectful, is nevertheless far more fitted to the best government. You can use the best classes of the respectful country; you can only use the worst where every man thinks he is as good as every other.

The qualification "though far less happy" provides the key to the social philosophy of Bagehot; whereas the Utilitarian Jeremy Bentham had taken "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" as the unchallengeable aim of government, Bagehot considered happiness neither as a precondition nor as a prior objective of "the best government." The "best government" was that based on discussion; it was most effectively managed not by the many but by "a select few," men who had enjoyed "a life of leisure, a long culture, a varied experience, an existence by which the judgement is incessantly exercised and by which it may be incessantly improved." p.99-101

Both Bagehot, the essayist, and Trollope, the novelist, stressed the simple contrast between the many and the few, the elite and the mob. At one end of the scale were the "coarse, dull, contracted multitude," who existed chiefly to serve and minister to the middle ranks of society and the upper classes. Trollope's poor have a language of their own - a very stilted language - but little independent life; in so far as they have aspirations of their own, they make themselves ridiculous, as does Mr Bunce in Phineas Finn: Bagehot believed that "the character of the poor is an unfit topic for continuous art" and attacked Dickens's poor people because they were "poor talkers and poor livers, and in all ways poor people to read about... Mean manners and mean vices are unfit for prolonged delineation; the everyday pressure of narrow necessities is too petty a pain and too anxious a reality to be dwelt upon." p.102

The chapter on Samuel Smiles was perhaps the most interesting to me. A man of no naive view of class relations, and no snob like Bagehot or Trollope, his book exhorted individuals to focus on improving themselves, but also for the chasms between selfishly minded classes to open up and to embrace meritocratic values. His philosophy, borne from experience with all manner of peoples, was both a personal guide and a societal doctrine, and one that is perhaps due for serious re-consideration:

[Samuel Smiles] was an active participant in Radical politics in the hungry forties, advocating an extension of the suffrage, the repeal of the Corn Laws, and improved education of the working classes. These political experiences left their mark on the rest of his life and provide the background of his later social philosophy. Unlike Alger or most of the other "success" writers, he turned to self-help and thrift only when he saw the inadequacy of collective striving in an atmosphere of ignorance and poverty. Although he said little of politics in the later years of his life and had no sympathy with socialism or even with organic consitutional reform, he had known politics from the inside and had found political formulas inadequate. He had seen the artisans of Leeds - and even the Leeds manufacturers - "groping after some grand principle which they thought would lead them to fresh life, and liberty and happiness," but they were groping in the dark, and the flickers of light, like Owenite socialism, were merely will-o-the-wisps. p. 128

[to Smiles,] the working class was identified with "all toilers of hand and brain." Humble they might be, bu t they were the real makers of the future; from the start they had the advantage over the aristocracy that they tended to produce great inventors rather than great soldiers, a far more useful result despite the appeal of military service. It was with great approval that Smiles quoted the words of his friend Arthur Helps, the civil servant, who taught him the advantages of using shorthand: "Deduct all that men of the humbler classes have done for England in the way of inventions only, and see where she would have been but for them." [...]

Above all, he advocated a greater sympathy among classes. "Want of sympathy pervades all classes - the poor, the working, the middle, and the upper classes. There are many social gaps between them, which cannot yet be crossed." An increase in sympathy could not come about by charity - by giving money, blankets, coals, and such like to the poor"; it could not come about only by increased working-class independence and by mutual understanding of common interests. "Thus only can the breath of society be sweetened and purified." p.140-141

On a chapter on the public school, Briggs focusses on what was me a surprising consideration. Though they excluded far more than they embraced in pure numbers, in their time they represented a levelling influence that many conservatives were uneasy about:

The second way in which the public school was of central importance was in its mixing of representatives of old families with the sons of the new middle classes. The social amalgam cemented old and new ruling groups, which had previously remained apart. The working classes were for the most part excluded from the schools as they still are in the twentieth century, but the great social divide of the 1840s between landlords and businessmen was bridged. The public school, consequently, provided for the gradual fusion of classes and their drawing upon a common store of values. "There was nowhere in the country so complete an absence or servility to mere rank, position, or riches," wrote Charles Dickens; while Matthew Arnold, the son of Dr Arnold of Rugby, told Arminius with pride, in one of the letters in Friendship's Garland, that:

it is only in England that this beneficial salutary intermixture of classes takes place. Look at the bottle-merchant's son, and the Plantagenet being brought up side by side. None of your absurd separations and seventy-two quarterings here. Very likely young Bottles will end by being a lord himself.

[...however] the obvious limitations of such an idea were clearly apparent before the end of the century, when middle and upper classes were cementing a new conservative alliance against labour, but in the middle years of the century its limitations mattered little when cmpared with its immediate efficacy. p.153-4

The intellectually high-achieving generations that this form of schooling produced were high-minded, and recognized one another. Those most high-achieving, that later became politicians, such as the brilliant but dour Robert Lowe, fused their political beliefs with the platonic ideal of the "aristocracy of intellect":

John Bright guided the forces of change in English politics, and the Reform Bill of 1867 was his greatest triumph. Robert Lowe gave strength to the forces of resistance, and to him the Reform Bill was a national disaster. Lowe's resistance did not spring from naked self-interest or blind prejudice. Although he was member of Parliament for a pocket borough, Calne, not even his worst enemies claimed that his opposition to reform was based merely on a desire to protect that which was his own or that which was his patron's. There was less self-interest in Lowe's approach to politics than there was in that of Bright. He attacked reform not as a Whig apologist defending an order, but as an intellectual pleading for government by the educated against the government by the masses. The only aristocracy he recognized was the aristocracy of intellect; mere lineage was unimportant. "All knowledge," he once said, "except heraldry, has some use." In 1866 and 1867 it was reason, not passion or personal property, which persuaded him that "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" could not be secured by an extension of the suffrage to the working clases.

Lowe established an ascendancy in the House of Commons during the debates of those years befcause he asked one bold question which was in the back of many members' minds: "Is England to continue as a monarchy in which the aristocratic and democratic elements of the nation have ever harmoniously blended? or is it, in spite of all experience, to adopt a lower form of civilization?" p.241

In attacking Disraeli, Lowe was angrier than he had been in attacking Gladstone. He claimed that the Conservatives were knaves and traitors as well as fools. "We have inaugurated a new era in English politics this session," he told the members of Parliament in 1867, "and depend upon it, the new fashion will henceforth be the rule and not the exception. This session we have had not what we before possessed - a party of attack, and a party of resistance. We have, instead, two parties of competition, who, like Cleon and the sausage-seller in Aristophanes, are both bidding for the support of Demos." p.247

The final proof of this form of progression of equality - perhaps small in absolute numbers of individuals, but then perhaps hugely significant historically speaking - was the dandy jew, Disraeli, whose charm and intellect won strong support and credentials for leadership in spite of constant suspicion and radical reinvention of the conservative ethos: that this was possible only 2 generations after the [i]Catholic[/i] Emancipation Act shows what a levelling force the public schools were:

His age was to educate "his party", and the first lesson he taught was that the party could not hold together on the principle of stubborn resistance against the spirit of the age. Change was the order of the day. [...] Conservatism could survive only if it considered something more than conservation. The historic past was alive, but it was also dead. After the second Reform Bill of 1867 had been attacked by both the Whig Edinburgh Review and the Tory Quarterly Review, the two great organs of traditional English politics, Disraeli compared them to two old-fashioned rival posting-houses. They had each described his policy as dangerous, revolutionary and precipitate. So, said he, "you may behold the ostler ast the Blue Lion and the chambermaid at the King's Arms, though bitter rivals in the bygone epoch of coaches and post-horses, making up their quarrels and condoling together in the street over their common enemy the railroad." p.273

One of the brilliant satirical magazines of the period, the Tomahawk, coupled the names of Bright and Disraeli in an imaginery letter from Bright to Disraeli written after the bill had passed the Commons: "We have had a very hard struggle to carry our Bill," Bright is made to say, "and as it left the Commons, spite of one or two blemishes, it promised to effect our object by transferring power from the hands of those who may be clever enough to see through us, to the hands of those who are sure to take us at our own valuation." Other writers saw Disraeli merely as the putative father of the bill, Bright as the real one. "This offspring is a stolen child," exclaimed Bernal Osborne, one of the political wits of 1867. "The right hon. gentleman has stolen it, and then, as the School for Scandal has it, he has treated it as the gipsies do stolen children - he has disfigured it to make it pass for his own. But the real author of this Bill is... the Member for Birmingham." p.274

[Jacob Hiserman · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Benjamin Disraeli and the Leap in the Dark,” In Victorian People: A Reassessment of Persons and Themes, 1851-67 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1955), 264-295.

In the tenth chapter of Victorian People, Briggs expounds upon what Lord Derby called the “leap in the dark”: Benjamin Disraeli’s constant concession to Liberals that moved the Conservative Party to pass a very broad Reform Bill in 1867. Historiographically, the Lord Briggs belongs to the traditionalist school of Disraeli scholarship. He consistently argues Disraeli demonstrated a blatant opportunism toward the Reform Bill of 1867, eschewing principle at every turn. This is the stance P.R. Ghosh strenuously objected to in his 1984 evaluation of the financial arm of Disraelian conservatism we discussed two weeks ago.

The focus of this chapter is on Disraeli and the Reform Bill of 1867, as Briggs calls it Disraeli’s largest historical contribution. Yet, Briggs first gives a bit of a biography of Disraeli, calling his Toryism “one of imaginative opportunism” and telling of his Unitarian private school education, wealthy Jewish upbringing, and his political traits of dexterity, intelligence, and a “creative imagination.” Then, he delves into the parliamentary debate and process of the Reform Bill of 1867. Briggs tells of Disraeli’s flip in introducing a large and broad Reform bill instead of the smaller one his party desired--a blatant example of his opportunism (272). This led to a stronger government since the three rigid backbench Tories resigned from his cabinet, leaving it more unified. Next, Briggs attests to Disraeli’s unbroken continuity in ideas about reform, looking at his speeches from the 1850s-1867. He ascertains Disraeli always sought all-encompassing reform bill that upheld the peerage and his only inconsistency remained his opposition to Gladstone’s 1866 reform bill on party grounds. Finally, Disraeli’s melding of calculation, imagination, and instinct led him to a friendship with the Radical John Bright and a more democratic Reform Bill. He displayed his political genius when he divided the Liberal party against Gladstone on the issues of rate-compounding and personal rating. Moreover, Disraeli brilliantly shifted Conservative Party support for Liberal or Radical amendments to the Reform Bill, among them the lowering of residential qualification and the elimination of compound and personal ratings in boroughs. This illuminates Disraeli’s main goal-- total political victory for a minority Conservative government--even at the expense of an overtly democratic Reform Bill he did not personally agree with (285).

Twice in the chapter, Briggs defends Conservative support for the Reform Bill under Disraeli’s guidance. This occurred in four ways: external interest group pressure, a Conservative yearning for closure on parliamentary reform, reform for its own sake, and Disraeli’s threat of party dissolution and primacy of strategy over principle. Ultimately, Briggs casts Disraeli as a clever, imaginative, and optimistic Conservative leader solidifying the party as the herald of England’s bright future.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the Great Exhibition to the second Reform Act as seen through a selection of well-known (and less well-known) movers and shakers. I found this a decent read from viewpoint of interested historian and student of nineteenth century politics, and as just as one who is generally interested in ’stuff’. I hope “William” wasn’t too put off by finding a book that had stuff in that he didn’t already know and guess that he knows a little more now.

I miss Asa Briggs. I don’t think there is a current popular historian who occupies the space that was left empty when Mr Briggs left us. And it is always nice to engage with somebody from Keighley without fearing a fight.

[Jude Brigley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have always been intrigued by the Victorians and this book gives a great insight into some of the most important people of the time.

[Nico Macdonald]

Owned by Francis Pugh.