Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (book recommendations website TXT) 📕
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Benjamin Disraeli was a remarkable historical figure. Born into a Jewish family, he converted to Anglican Christianity as a child. He is now almost certainly most famous for his political career. Becoming a member of the British Parliament at the age of 33, he initially rose to prominence within the Conservative (“Tory”) party because of his clashes with the then Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. Rising to lead the Conservative Party, Disraeli became Prime Minister for a short period in 1868, and then for an extended period between 1874 and 1880. He became friendly with Queen Victoria and was appointed Earl of Beaconsfield by her in 1876.
However, Disraeli was much more than a politician. He wrote both political treatises and no less than seventeen novels during his lifetime, of which Sybil, or The Two Nations is now among the best regarded. The “Two Nations” of the subtitle refer to the divisions in Britain between the rich and the poor, each of whom might as well be living in a different country from the other. In the novel, Disraeli highlights the terrible living conditions of the poor and the shocking injustices of how they were treated by most employers and land-owners. He contrasts this with the frivolous, pampered lifestyles of the aristocracy. He covers the rise of the Chartist movement, which was demanding universal manhood suffrage—the right for all adult men to vote, regardless of whether they owned property—and other reforms to enable working men a voice in the government of the country. (Female suffrage was to come much later). The upheavals of the time led to the development of the People’s Charter and a massive petition with millions of signatures being presented to Parliament. However the Parliament of the time refused to even consider the petition, triggering violent protests in Birmingham and elsewhere. All of this is well covered and explained in the novel.
Sybil is rather disjointed in structure as it ranges over these different topics, but the main plot revolves around Egremont, the younger son of a nobleman, who encounters some of the leaders of the workers’ movement and in particular Walter Gerard, one of the most respected of these leaders, whom Egremont befriends while concealing his real name and social position. During visits to Gerard under an assumed name, Egremont falls for the beautiful and saintly Sybil, Gerard’s daughter, but she rejects him when his true identity is exposed. Sybil subsequently undergoes many difficult trials as the people’s movement develops and comes into conflict with the authorities.
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- Author: Benjamin Disraeli
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“They are always ready for a riot at Birmingham,” said a Warwickshire peer. “Trade is very bad there and they suffer a good deal. But I should think it would not go farther.”
“I am told,” said the grey-headed gentleman, “that business is getting slack in all the districts.”
“It might be better,” said Mr. Egerton, “but they have got work.” Here several gentlemen entered, enquiring whether the evening papers were in and what was the news from Birmingham.
“I am told,” said one of them, “that the police were regularly smashed.”
“Is it true that the military were really beat off?”
“Quite untrue: the fact is there were no proper preparations; the town was taken by surprise, the magistrates lost their heads; the people were masters of the place; and when the police did act, they were met by a triumphant populace, who two hours before would have fled before them. They say they have burnt down above forty houses.”
“It is a bad thing—this beating the police,” said the grey-headed gentleman.
“But what is the present state of affairs?” enquired Mr. Berners. “Are the rioters put down?”
“Not in the least,” said Mr. Egerton, “as I hear. They are encamped in the Bull Ring amid smoking ruins, and breathe nothing but havoc.”
“Well, I voted for taking the National Petition into consideration,” said Mr. Berners. “It could do us no harm, and would have kept things quiet.”
“So did every fellow on our side,” said Mr. Egerton, “who was not in office or about to be. Well, Heaven knows what may come next. The Charter may some day be as popular in this club as the Reform Act.”
“The oddest thing in that debate,” said Mr. Berners, “was Egremont’s move.”
“I saw Marney last night at Lady St. Julians,” said Mr. Egerton, “and congratulated him on his brother’s speech. He looked daggers, and grinned like a ghoul.”
“It was a very remarkable speech—that of Egremont,” said the grey-headed gentleman. “I wonder what he wants.”
“I think he must be going to turn radical,” said the Warwickshire peer.
“Why the whole speech was against radicalism,” said Mr. Egerton.
“Ah, then he is going to turn Whig, I suppose.”
“He is ultra anti-Whig,” said Egerton.
“Then what the deuce is he?” said Mr. Berners.
“Not a conservative certainly, for Lady St. Julians does nothing but abuse him.”
“I suppose he is crotchetty,” suggested the Warwickshire noble.
“That speech of Egremont was the most really democratic speech that I ever read,” said the grey-headed gentleman. “How was it listened to?”
“Oh capitally,” said Mr. Egerton. “He has very seldom spoken before and always slightly though well. He was listened to with mute attention; never was a better house. I should say made a great impression, though no one knew exactly what he was after.”
“What does he mean by obtaining the results of the charter without the intervention of its machinery?” enquired Lord Loraine, a mild, middle-aged, lounging, languid man, who passed his life in crossing from Brookes’ to Boodle’s and from Boodle’s to Brookes’, and testing the comparative intelligence of these two celebrated bodies; himself gifted with no ordinary abilities cultivated with no ordinary care, but the victim of sauntering, his sultana queen, as it was, according to Lord Halifax, of the second Charles Stuart.
“He spoke throughout in an esoteric vein,” said the grey-headed gentleman, “and I apprehend was not very sure of his audience; but I took him to mean, indeed it was the gist of the speech, that if you wished for a time to retain your political power, you could only effect your purpose by securing for the people greater social felicity.”
“Well, that is sheer radicalism,” said the Warwickshire peer, “pretending that the people can be better off than they are, is radicalism and nothing else.”
“I fear, if that be radicalism,” said Lord Loraine, “we must all take a leaf out of the same book. Sloane was saying at Boodle’s just now that he looked forward to the winter in his country with horror.”
“And they have no manufactures there,” said Mr. Egerton.
“Sloane was always a croaker,” said the Warwickshire peer. “He always said the New Poor Law would not act, and there is no part of the country where it works so well as his own.”
“They say at Boodle’s there is to be an increase to the army,” said Lord Loraine, “ten thousand men immediately; decided on by the cabinet this afternoon.”
“It could hardly have leaked out by this time,” said the grey-headed gentleman. “The cabinet were sitting less than an hour ago.”
“They have been up a good hour,” said Lord Loraine, “quite long enough for their decisions to be known in St. James’s Street. In the good old times, George Farnley used always to walk from Downing Street to this place the moment the council was up and tell us everything.”
“Ah! those were the good old gentleman-like times,” said Mr. Berners, “when members of Parliament had nobody to please and ministers of State nothing to do.”
The riots of Birmingham occurred two months after the events that closed our last volume. That period, as far as the obvious movements of the chartists were concerned, had been passed in preparations for the presentation and discussion of the National Petition, which the parliamentary embroilments of the spring of that year had hitherto procrastinated and prevented. The petition was ultimately carried down to Westminster on a triumphal car accompanied by all the delegates of the Convention in solemn procession. It was necessary to construct a machine in order to introduce the huge bulk of parchment signed by a million and a half of persons, into the House of Commons, and thus supported, its vast form remained on the floor of the House during the discussion. The House after a debate which was not deemed by the people commensurate with the importance of the occasion, decided on rejecting the prayer of the Petition, and from that moment the party in the Convention who advocated a recourse to physical force in order
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