fell short. People did not
take his word for a thing as they would have taken the word of the
Duke of Wellington, or Lord Althorp, or Lord Derby, or Lord Russell,
or even of that not very rigid moralist, Lord Palmerston. Instances of
his lapses were not wanting as late as 1877. His behaviour toward Sir
Robert Peel, whom he plied with every dart of sarcasm, after having
shortly before lavished praises on him, and sought office under him,
has often been commented on.[7] Disraeli was himself (as those who
knew him have often stated) accustomed to justify it by observing that
he was then an insignificant personage, to whom it was supremely
important to attract public notice and make a political position; that
the opportunity of attacking the powerful Prime Minister, at a moment
when their altered attitude towards the Corn Laws had exposed the
Ministry to the suspicions of their own party, was too good to be
lost; and that he was therefore obliged to assail Peel, though he had
himself no particular attachment to the Corn Laws, and believed Peel
to have been a _bona-fide_ convert. It was therefore no personal
resentment against one who had slighted him, but merely the exigencies
of his own career, that drove him to this course, whose fortunate
result proved the soundness of his calculations.

This defence will not surprise any one who is familiar with Disraeli's
earlier novels. These stories are as far as possible from being
immoral; that is to say, there is nothing in them unbecoming or
corrupting. Friendship, patriotism, love, are all recognised as
powerful and worthy motives of conduct. That which is wanting is the
sense of right and wrong. His personages have for certain purposes the
conventional sense of honour, though seldom a fine sense, but they do
not ask whether such and such a course is conformable to principle.
They move in a world which is polished, agreeable, dignified, averse
to baseness and vulgarity, but in which conscience and religion
scarcely seem to exist. The men live for pleasure or fame, the women
for pleasure or love.

Some allowance must, of course, be made for the circumstances of
Disraeli's position and early training. He was brought up neither a
Jew nor a Christian. The elder people who took him by the hand when he
entered life, people like Samuel Rogers and Lady Blessington, were not
the people to give lessons in morality. Lord Lyndhurst, the first of
his powerful political friends, and the man