Mar 21, 2019 - Sale 2502

Sale 2502 - Lot 58

Price Realized: $ 688
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
"IN HIS ADVERSITY I WAS [PEEL'S] SUPPORTER; . . . I WILL NOT BE HIS SLAVE" DISRAELI, BENJAMIN. Autograph Letter Signed, "D.," to Thomas John Ouseley ("My dear Sir"), expressing anxiety that his remarks the previous night would appear in the London press, suggesting that a revision is necessary, including that there be no impression of hostility toward Prime Minister Robert Peel and that the order of his remarks be changed, and requesting that certain phrases be quoted exactly. 8 pages, 8vo, written on two folded sheets; faint scattered staining, horizontal folds. Shrewsbury, 29 August 1844

Additional Details

"All I said last night . . . was . . . so entirely & utterly unstudied that as there is, I hear, a chance of some of it appearing in the London Press, it will require the . . . revising eye of criticism, & being a literary man, I feel confident you will fulfill all I can desire. Be careful there is no expression of mine indicating any feeling of personal hostility or general bitterness ag'st Sir R.P. I used none & they w[oul]d mar the effect of the position I have assumed &c.
"In . . . my speech against him on the Sugar duties, I omitted to state in order the remarkable tone of Sir R.P.'s address to the house & especially his party, when he called on them to rescind their former vote . . . wh[ich] in fact called me up. I described all this last night in the recapitulation wh[ich] immediately followed, but not exactly in the right place . . . .
"Insert in the proper place the following passage because it contains the germ of a political truth & sh[oul]d be accurate & precise 'The Condition of England Question of wh[ich] they now heard so much was shortly this: one half of the population of the country was overworked, & the other half underpaid. Hence the fearful diminution of the term of human life in Lancashire; hence the fires of Suffolk; the two causes producing the same result; the degradation of the species.'
"Remember the end 'In his adversity I was his supporter; in his prosperity, I will not be his slave.' . . ."
Published in Benjamin Disraeli: Letters, ed. Wiebe, Conacher, Matthews and Millar, IV (U of Toronto, 1989): No. 1372.