The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans.

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.