# Disraeli's angels acquire a Fall

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH09.P017](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH09.P017/#char=762,836): "Benjamin Disraeli was right when he said he was on the side of the angels."

The remembered declaration opposed the alternatives of ape and angel. The contemporary *Punch* cartoon caption, reproduced in Charles L. Graves's *Mr. Punch's History of Modern England*, vol. II (1921), p. 215, quotes Disraeli's Oxford speech of 25 November 1864: ‘Is man an ape or an angel?’ and ‘I am on the side of the angels.’ Chesterton preserves the allegiance while changing its moral meaning: angelic status does not exclude rebellion against God. His ‘fallen angels’ introduce a third possibility that ruins the reassuring binary. [The reproduced caption](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45003/45003-h/45003-h.htm#Page_215) is a witness to the phrase's contemporary circulation, rather than a complete transcript of the speech.

The cartoon already treated Disraeli's angelic appearance as politically suspect, showing him dressing for an Oxford masked ball. That offers a useful comparison with Chesterton's refusal to equate spiritual appearance and goodness; it does not establish that Chesterton borrowed from the cartoon. Nor does verification of the famous phrase verify his much larger charge that Disraeli served arrogance and imperial domination. That is Chesterton's political judgment, deployed here to make refined evil more alarming than mere appetite.

## Sources

- [Charles L. Graves, Mr. Punch's History of Modern England, vol. II (1921), reproducing the Punch cartoon caption](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45003/45003-h/45003-h.htm#Page_215), General Social Life, pp. 214–215; Dressing for an Oxford Bal Masqué, caption attributing the speech to 25 November 1864

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