Benjamin Disraeli's tenure as prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland began when Queen Victoria first invited him to form a government in 1864.

In February 1868 the Prime Minister, The Earl of Derby, received medical advice which told him that he could not fully recover from his illness whilst Premier.

[2] The Parliamentary Elections Act 1868 transferred the power to try to punish electoral irregularities from the partisan Committee of the House of Commons to the impartial tribunal of judges.

The judges objected to these new responsibilities imposed on them but their opposition was overcome and electoral irregularities were then tried in a legal tribunal rather than a committee of party politicians.

He went on to say that Napier's troops "had to scale a mountain fortress, of which the intrinsic strength was such that it may be fairly said it would have been impregnable to the whole world had it been defended by the man by whom it was assailed".

[7] The beginning of Disraeli's second premiership coincided with a growing demand for the Ritualistic controversy in the Church of England to be settled by legislation.

The High Church party took up the right of a Bishop to uncontrolled rule in his diocese and the Lords dropped their insistence on the appeal to the Archbishop of the Province.

[12] Disraeli wanted the measure passed to let the world know that Britain would hold onto India: "It is only by the amplification of titles that you can often touch and satisfy the imagination of nations; and that is an element which Governments must not despise".

This government, chiefly under the influence of the Home Secretary Richard Cross and with the encouragement of Disraeli, addressed "the condition of the people" through major reforms in three areas: housing, savings and labour relations.

This act allowed friendly societies considerable self-management "but insured the adoption of sound rules, effective audit, and rates of payment sufficient to maintain solvency.

[23] In 1875, the Khedive of Egypt had gone bankrupt and needed to sell shares in the Suez Canal (of whose traffic four-fifths was British) to gain money.

European governments were highly impressed, and saw it as evidence that Britain had finally abandoned her passivity and was embarking upon a "spirited foreign policy".

[26] Some historians[27] have argued that ownership of the canal marked a new policy, that of an extended British commitment in Egypt, together with ensuring the imperial lifeline to India and Australia would not be controlled by France.

[28] The "Eastern Question" was how the major powers would deal with the military and economic decline of the Ottoman Empire, especially in the face of Russian efforts to break it up and seize the best parts, such as the Straits.

Gladstone and the Liberals were rallying public support by denouncing Turkish atrocities against Christian communities in the Balkans, most notably in Bulgaria in 1876.

[36] However, when Russia recovered from these setbacks and advanced into Adrianople, Disraeli's government (on 23 January 1878) ordered the Mediterranean fleet of the Royal Navy into the Dardanelles to Constantinople and Parliament voted to raise £6m for military purposes.

[37] When it was rumoured a week later that the Russians were in Constantinople the government sent part of the fleet to the city "for the protection of life and property" and Parliament assented to the £6m without debate.

[37] In response the Russians advanced their army and an outbreak of war fever occurred in Britain and a popular music hall song gave rise to the word "jingoism" to describe bellicose patriotism.

[37] However, when the Russians and the Ottomans signed the Treaty of San Stefano on 3 March, Disraeli's government viewed it as unacceptable due to its Pan-Slavism.

On 27 March Disraeli got the Cabinet's assent to call up the reserves and send to the Mediterranean a large number of Indian soldiers.

Salisbury's Circular Note convinced Bismarck to a conference which could discuss the treaty and the Congress of Berlin met from 13 June to 13 July 1878.

After arriving at Downing Street, Disraeli appeared at the window and declared that they had brought back from Berlin "Peace with Honour".

[44] Disraeli then asked who would enter an insane convention: English gentlemen "honoured by the favour of their Sovereign and the confidence of their fellow-subjects" or "a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself?

[47]Disraeli's preoccupation with foreign affairs and his long neglect of domestic issues cost him his prime ministership in the election in 1880.

Historian Paul Smith paraphrases the rhetorical tone which focused on attacking "Beaconsfieldism" as a: Sinister system of policy, which not merely involved the country in immoral, vainglorious and expensive external adventures, inimical to peace and to the rights of small peoples, but aimed at nothing less than the subversion of parliamentary government in favour of some simulacrum of the oriental despotism its creator was alleged to admire.

Besides issues of foreign policy, even more important thing Conservatives were unable to effectively defend their economic record on the home front.

The 1870s coincided with a long term global depression caused by the collapse of the worldwide railway boom of the 1870s which previously had been so profitable to Britain.

The party in power, of course, got the blame, and Liberals repeatedly emphasized the growing budget deficit as a measure of bad stewardship.