Disraeli Statesman or Charlatan?

Abstract

That Disraeli should have become Prime Minister at all is one of the more surprising contradictions of the Victorian Age. Prejudice against Jews was still strong enough to prevent until 1858 the admission to Parliament of those who followed the Jewish faith, and though this did not affect Disraeli himself, since he had been given Christian baptism at the age of thirteen, he still had to contend with a certain amount of anti-Semitic feeling, especially during the early years of his political career. Nor had his education followed the stereotyped pattern of his great contemporaries. He went neither to a public school nor to a university. Until the age of fifteen he attended a private school where he showed an independence of mind and a flair for acting, both of which qualities earned him the resentment of his headmaster. The more valuable part of his early education then followed at home where he made full use of the extensive library of his bookish father.