SALISBURY'S JOURNALISM

The third Marquis of Salisbury led the Conservative party for twenty-one years (the first four in tandem with Sir Stafford Northcote), and was prime minister for nearly fourteen of them. He was arguably ‘the most formidable intellectual figure that the Conservative party has ever produced’. He was also one of the dominant European, indeed world, statesmen of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, hardly inferior in stature even to Bismarck. Yet, compared to men like Peel or Disraeli, he has not occupied the place in the Conservative hall of fame or received the attention from historians that might seem to be his due.

The failure to bulk more largely in party hagiography is perhaps not difficult to understand. Though the Conservative party enjoyed what was in many ways its heyday under Salisbury's leadership, it is hard to say that his role was crucial to its success, or that he gave to it any distinctive impulsion or policy that can be accounted fundamental in its development. Both Peel and Disraeli can be seen, with varying degrees of accuracy, as having played a vital part in the making of the modern party by fostering its adaptation to the political consequences of economic and social change, as crystallised in the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867.