Benjamin Disraeli

However landlords did not adjust the rents they were charging for land rented to farmers for growing wheat or "corn". The establishment of the income tax on a permanent basis had been the subject of much inter-party discussion since the fall of Peel's ministry in June 1846. The government's principal measure for the 1858 session involved re-organising the governance of India the Indian Mutiny having exposed the inadequacy of dual control.

Disraeli fascinated and divided contemporary opinion; he was seen by many including some members of his own party as an adventurer and a charlatan and by others as a far-sighted and patriotic statesman. Disraeli invented the political novel of which Sybil and Vivian Grey are perhaps the best-known today. Disraeli's career from 1852 onwards was also marked by an intense rivalry with William Ewart Gladstone who eventually rose to become leader of the Liberal Party.