Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
By frustrating Lord Beaconsfield's design of going to war on behalf of Turkey, he saved England from the indelible disgrace of a second and more gratuitous Crimea. But it was not only in Eastern Europe that his saving influence was felt.
And his grandfather, who smirked from another coroneted frame behind him, had been a great leader in the Liberal party under Gladstone, Lord Liverpool, the grand old man who stole Beaconsfield's thunder to guard the Suez Canal, that road to India which he, like another Moses, had made for their proud legions through the Red Sea.
Lord Beaconsfield's last years were tormented by a bronchial asthma of gouty origin, against which he fought with tenacious and uncomplaining courage. The last six weeks of his life, described all too graphically by Dr. Kidd in an article in the Nineteenth Century, were a hand-to-hand struggle with death.
Throughout all the campaign, as the time for the general election was approaching, only one question was submitted to the electors, "Do you approve or condemn Lord Beaconsfield's system of foreign policy?"
It was reluctant that is to say, it seemed rather forced upon us by the teaching of events than the work of our own minds. Each session marked a further stage in it; and I therefore propose to examine its progress session by session. Session of 1880. The General Election of 1880 turned mainly on the foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government. Few Liberal candidates said much about Ireland.
This worthy soul narrates with artless candour that towards the end of Lord Beaconsfield's second Administration he had the honour of dining with the great man, whose political follower he was, at the Premier's official residence in Downing Street. When he arrived he found his host looking ghastly ill, and apparently incapable of speech.
Lord Beaconsfield's portrait of him was disfigured, and indeed made ridiculous, by the gilding, or rather the tinsel, with which his essentially alien taste bedizened it; but, apart from such exaggerations, there were elements in it of unmistakable likeness, and the entertainment to which I am now referring was, apart from its peculiar sequel, like a page of Lothair translating itself into actual life.
He reminded his listeners of Lord Beaconsfield's famous saying, and chuckled over the unfortunate woman, "plain as a pike-staff," who had become his benefactress, in consequence of a discreet allusion to the "power of beauty" and a well-placed sigh. "The woman must have been a fool!" said Joseph Fleming. "By no means; she was of brilliant intellect.
The unpopularity of the Liberal government, which culminated in its defeat in 1873, was now, in 1879, being shifted to their Conservative opponents, whose term of office was fast drawing to a close. "Mr. Gladstone's resolute and splendid hostility to Lord Beaconsfield's whole system of foreign policy restored him to his paramount place among English politicians.
The people had applauded the "imperial policy," "the jingoism" of Lord Beaconsfield's administration during the past two or three years, but they were not so appreciative when they found it so costly a policy to themselves. The depression in business also had its effect upon the country.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking