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Disraeli Offers Editorial Advice as the Crimean War Looms
Disraeli Offers Editorial Advice as the Crimean War Looms
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Disraeli Benjamin

Disraeli Offers Editorial Advice as the Crimean War Looms

 

“The Eastern question is very grave.”

 

This fascinating brief letter by Benjamin Disraeli, a key leader in the House of Commons, deals with several issues regarding The Press newspaper he had established to espouse his views but also reveals his concern over the “Eastern question,” which soon devolved into the Crimean War.

 

BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Autograph Letter Initialed, to Samuel Lucas, June 3, 1853. 1 p., 4.5" x 7.25".  Expected folds; paper clip residue at top and tear at bottom, neither affecting text.

 

Complete Transcript

                                                                        June 3, 1853

My dr Sir,

            I send what I promised & also a short mem: on finance. I understand that the public feeling is that our articles have a general tendency to be too long.

            I leave you to do what you like about Oxford.

            The Eastern question is very grave.

                                                                        Yrs

                                                                        D

 

Historical Background

Early in 1853, Disraeli worked to establish a weekly newspaper that would raise the level of Conservative journalism and propagate his own Tory Democratic ideas. He initially considered Daniel O. Maddyn, who had served on the Morning Chronicle, for editor, but settled on Samuel Lucas, who had for many years been a well-known writer for The Times. In March 1853, Lucas began collecting his staff under Disraeli’s inspiration. The first issue of The Press appeared on May 7, 1853. It was published every Saturday morning, and was both a newspaper and a review. It included a short report of Parliamentary proceedings, common news items, leading articles on home and foreign politics, and critical essays on literature and the arts.

 

Disraeli’s half-column article on finance appeared in the June 4 issue of The Press, and attacked Gladstone’s policy on stock converstion: “that insane step was accounted for by the monomania of Mr. Gladstone, which is always to out-herod Mr. Disraeli in everything.”

 

It was common for the new Chancellor of the University of Oxford to request that the Honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law (D.C.L.) be conferred upon a list of “eminent men.” Edward Smith-Stanley, Earl of Derby (1799-1869) served briefly three times as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1852, 1858-1859, 1866-1868). From 1852 to 1869, he also served as Chancellor of the University of Oxford. For his installation, Derby submitted a list of 31 candidates for the D.C.L. degree, including that of Benjamin Disraeli, and the degrees were conferred in public on June 7, 1853. The Press reported extensively on the Oxford Commemoration in its June 11 issue.

 

The “Eastern question” was the competition among European powers over the weakening Ottoman Empire, and specifically access to Christian holy places in Jerusalem. France asserted the rights of Roman Catholics within the Ottoman Empire, while Russia filled a parallel role as protector of the Orthodox within the Ottoman Empire. Although British, Russian, and French negotiators resolved the holy places issue to their mutual satisfaction, the Porte rejected the Russian ultimatum of May 5, and weeks later, Russian forces crossed the River Pruth into the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, controlled by the Ottoman Empire. The British responded by sending a fleet to the Black Sea, and the stage was set for the Crimean War (1853-1856), which pitted the Ottoman Empire, the French Empire, the British Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia against the Russian Empire.

 

 

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) was born in London into a Sephardic Jewish Italian mercantile family. His father had his four children baptized into the Church of England in 1817, which opened the possibility of a political career. Disraeli was brought up as an Anglican, “the blank page between the Old Testament and the New,” as he described himself. He first stood for election in 1832 as a Radical, but lost. In 1835, after running as a Tory and again losing, he began writing for the Tory Party. In 1837, he won a seat in the House of Commons, his campaign funded in part by his writing of novels. He married widow Mary Anne Lewis (1792-1872) in 1839, who was wealthy and a dozen years his senior. Disraeli hoped to forge a paternalistic alliance between Tories and Radicals, and while he developed a personal relationship with radical John Bright, he was unsuccessful in establishing an alliance. During the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, Disraeli led the protectionists who battled repeal. In the late 1840s, Disraeli purchased Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire. Disraeli served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons under the Earl of Derby as Prime Minister in 1852, from 1858 to 1859, and again from 1866 to 1868. He served as Prime Minister in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880, succeeded each time by Liberal Party leader William Gladstone. Disraeli maintained a close relationship with Queen Victoria, and in 1876, she appointed him as Earl of Beaconsfield. He published his last completed novel shortly before he died at the age of 76.

 

Samuel Lucas (1811-1865) was born into a Quaker family. In 1839, he married Margaret Bright (1818-1890), a younger sister of reformer John Bright (1811-1889). From 1845 to 1850, Lucas lived in Manchester, where he had an interest in a cotton mill and supported public schools. He and his wife were abolitionists and reformers who fought for the industrial middle class by participating in the Anti-Corn Law League, founded in 1838 by Richard Cobden and John Bright. They represented what Benjamin Disraeli called the “Manchester School” of economics that advocated a free market with only minimal government regulation. Back in London, Lucas served for one year as the inaugural editor of The Press (1853-1858), a weekly newspaper begun by Disraeli. Six years later, Lucas became the editor of the Morning Star (1856-1869), an abolitionist newspaper begun by Cobden and Bright in 1856 that was the only national British newspaper to support the Union side in the American Civil War. In 1859, Lucas also became the editor of the newly established Once A Week literary magazine (1859-1880).

 

 

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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