Appendix

[pg 632]AppendixBudget Of 1860Page26Sir William Heathcote wrote to Mr. Gladstone, May 4, 1861:—I understood you in your rebukes of Lewis in 1857, to be aiming not only at a change of his plan of finance in that particular year, but (if that were impossible, or at least could not be carried), at a resumption as early as circumstances would allow, of what you thought the proper line of action which he insisted on suspending. Income-tax and war duties on tea and sugar were and would continue to be, as I understood, the primary claimants for reduction of taxation, in your judgment.... The very vehemence of your convictions and expressions onbothoccasions perplexes me.Mr. Gladstone replied the same day:—... You think, 1. That I bound myself to the reduction of the tea and sugar duties as a policy for future occasions, and not merely for the issue then raised. 2. That in like manner I was bound to the reduction and abolition of the income-tax. 3. That even if there arose in the system of our expenditure a great change, involving an increase of ten or fifteen millions of money over 1853, I was still in consistency bound to hold over the first chance of reduction for income-tax, tea and sugar. 4. That consequently until these duties were remitted I could not propose to prosecute any commercial reforms involving, as nearly all of them do, a sacrifice of revenue for a time. 5. It is because I have departed from these positions by proposing a multitude of reductions and abolitions of duty, other than the three mentioned, and partly or wholly in preference to them, that you have lost confidence in my judgment on these matters (a confidence to which I do not pretend that I had ever any claim).If I have interpreted you aright, and I hope you will tell me whether I have done so or not, this is all to me exceedingly curious; such are the differences in the opinions of men formed from their different points of view. Now I will give you mine. To give effect to the pledge of honour, by which I became bound in 1853, I made a desperate effort in 1857, with all the zeal of which I was capable, and with all the passion to which I am liable. It was my opinion that the course then taken would be decisive as to the operations in 1860, for the income-tax never can be got rid of[pg 633]except by prospective finance, reaching over several years, and liable to impediment and disturbance accordingly. I therefore protested against the whole scale of expenditure then proposed; as well as against particular kinds of expenditure to which I might refer. I likewise protested against the provision for that expenditure which the government of the day proposed. First, because the expenditure itself was excessive, in my view. Secondly, because in the mode of that provision I thought the remission of income-tax was large out of all proportion to the remission on indirect taxes; and this disproportion I regarded as highly dangerous. I determined to let no political prejudice stand in my way, and to test to the best of my very feeble power the opinion of parliament with respect to tea and sugar. I stated that if the opinion of parliament were against me I should not factiously prolong the contest but should withdraw from it. Not only was the opinion of parliament against me, but it so happened that the opinion of the country was immediately afterwards taken by a dissolution on that and on other kindred questions. The country affirmed the policy of Lord Palmerston, and the policy of a materially increased expenditure, by an overwhelming majority. I had misjudged public opinion; they had read it aright. After the dissolution of 1857, Sir George Lewis, who had previously raised the tea and sugar duties for one year, proposed to raise them for two more. I immediately followed in debate, and thanked him warmly for doing it. All this of course I can prove. I said, we are going to have more expenditure, we must therefore have more taxation.As I have gone thus far with my history, I will conclude it. Notwithstanding what had happened, I did not absolutely abandon at that time the hope that we might still reach in 1860 a state which might enable us to abolish the income-tax. I had a faint expectation of more economy under another government. When Lord Derby's administration came in in 1858, they professed to reduce expenditure by £800,000, and to contemplate further reductions. I expressed my satisfaction, and gave them the extreme of support that I could. But I then clearly pointed out that, even with the scale of expenditure they then proposed, we could not abolish the income-tax in 1860. In a few months, their reductions vanished into air. In 1859 came the famous“reconstruction.”I took office in June, and found a scale of expenditure going on in the treasury far more prodigal and wanton than I had ever charged upon Lord Palmerston's first government. I found also that when the estimates had been completed, I believe entirely ontheirbasis, there was a probable deficiency of four or five millions for a year of which nearly one-third had passed. And the expenditure was I think nearly seventy millions, or some fourteen millions more than in 1853. This was not the act only of the government. The opposition halloed them on; and the country, seized with a peculiar panic, was in a humour even more lavish than the opposition.[pg 634]My view was, and I stated it, that we ought to provide for this expenditure in a due proportion between direct and indirect taxes. I showed that this proportion had not been observed; that we had continued to levy large amounts of war tax on tea and sugar, and had returned to the scale of 1853 for income. I proposed to provide the necessary sums chiefly by an increase of income-tax. But neither then (in July 1859), nor for nearly two and a half years before, had I ever (to my knowledge) presumed to speak of any one as bound to abolish the income-tax or to remit the additional duties on tea and sugar.I fully expect fromyouthe admission that as to these measures I could not in the altered circumstances be bound absolutely to the remissions. But you say I was bound to give them a preference over all other remissions. Nowhere I believe can one word to this effect be extracted from any speech of mine. I found in 1860 that all the reforming legislation, which had achieved such vast results, had been suspended for seven years. We were then raising by duties doomed in 1853, from twelve to thirteen millions. It would in my opinion have been no less than monstrous on my part to recognise the preferences you claim for these particular duties. All of them indeed would have been reliefs, even the income-tax which is I think proved to be the least relief of any. But, though reliefs, they were hardly reforms; and experience had shown us that reforms were in fact double and treble reliefs. I may be wrong, but it is my opinion and I found it on experience, that the prospect of the removal of the three collectively (income, tea extra, and sugar extra) being in any case very remote, it is less remote with than without the reforming measures of the last and (I hope I may add) of the present year. Had the expenditure of 1853 been resumed, there would notwithstanding the Russian war have been, in my opinion, room for all these three things. 1. Abolition of income-tax by or near 1860; 2. remission of increases on tea and sugar within the same time; 3. the prosecution of the commercial reforms.It may be said that having set my face against an excess of expenditure I ought to have considered that a holy war, and not to have receded. Although I place public economy somewhat higher as a matter of duty than many might do, I do not think it would have been right, I do think it would have been foolish and presumptuous in me to have gone beyond these two things: first, making an effort to the utmost of my power at the critical moment (as I took it to be), and secondly, on being defeated to watch for opportunities thereafter. Since it should be remembered I do not recommend or desire sweeping and sudden reductions.The chief errors that I see myself to have committed are these. In 1853 when I took the unusual course of estimating our income for seven years, and assuming that our expenditure would either continue as it was, or only move onwards gradually and gently, I ought no doubt to have pointed out explicitly, that a great disturbance and increase of our expenditure would baffle my[pg 635]reckonings. Again in 1857 the temper of the public mind had undergone a change which I failed to discern; and I attacked the government and the chancellor of the exchequer of that day for doing what the country desired though I did not. I name these as specific errors, over and above the general one of excess of heat.The budget of last year I cannot admit to have been an error. People say it should have been smaller. My belief is that if it had been a smaller boat it would not have lived in such a sea. I speak of the period of the session before the China war became certain. When it did so, we were in a great strait about the paper duty. We felt the obligation incurred by the vote on the second reading, and we construed it according to the established usage. We took the more arduous, but I think the more honourable course for a government to pursue. Had we abandoned the bill, I know not how we could have looked in the face those who had acted and invested on the faith of an unbroken practice. I admit that political motives greatly concurred to recommend the budget of last year. It was a budget of peace, and peace wanted it. The budget of this year followed from the budget of last, given the other circumstances. At the same time I can understand how the claim of tea could be set up, but not well after the occurrences of last year how it could be supported.This is a long egotistical story. But when you consider that it contains my whole story (exceptpièces justificatives) in answer to so many speeches in both Houses and elsewhere, for never to this hour have I opened my lips in personal defence, you will understand why I might be garrulous....Notwithstanding the mild doctrine I have held about expenditure I admit it may be said I ought not to have joined a government which had such extended views in that direction, even though they were the views of the nation. Much may be said on this. I may, however, remark that when the government was formed I did not fully conceive the extent to which we should proceed.The Cabinet. 1860Page36Mr. Gladstone's memorandum on the currents of opinion in the cabinet of 1860 concludes as follows:—1. The most Italian members of the cabinet have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, W.E.G., Gibson, Argyll. The least Italian: Lewis, Wood, Grey, Herbert, Villiers (especially).2. In foreign policy generally the most combative have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, the chancellor. The least combative: Duke of Somerset, Duke of Argyll, Granville, Gibson, Herbert, Lewis, Grey, W.E.G., Wood, the same in feeling but not active.[pg 636]3. In defences and expenditure, the most alarmed, or most martial (as the case may be), have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, S. Herbert, followed by Duke of Somerset, the chancellor, Granville, Cardwell. Inclined the other way: Gibson, W.E.G., Lewis, Grey, Duke of Argyll (Elgin, I think).4. In finance some are for movement, some stationary or retrograde so as to be ready for immediate war. Yet here we are not divided simply as combative or anti-combative. The onward men in finance are: Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, Granville, Argyll, Gibson, W.E.G., and, I think, the chancellor. The stationary men are, first and foremost: Sir George Lewis, Sir C. Wood; next to these, Lord Palmerston, Cardwell, and, I think, Villiers, Herbert.5. On reform I must distinguish between (a) extension of the franchise and (b) redistribution of seats. In the first the more liberal men are: Lord John Russell, Duke of Somerset, Duke of Newcastle, Duke of Argyll, Gibson, W.E.G. The fearful or opposed are: Lord Palmerston, C. Villiers, S. Herbert. In the second, for small disfranchisement were, I think, all the first except Newcastle. For larger disfranchisement: Newcastle, Villiers, and Lord Palmerston, I think not greatly averse. In fact, I think that larger disfranchisement of places may have been favoured by him, 1. as a substitute for enlargement of the franchise, which he chiefly dreads; 2. as perhaps an obstacle to the framing of a measure.6. In church matters Herbert, Newcastle, and I are the most conservative and the most church-like; with a sympathy from Argyll. But, as I said, there is no struggle here: patronage, the sore subject, not being a cabinet affair.Session Of 1860Page47Extract from a Letter to the Duke of Argyll.Penmaen., September 3, 1860.—The session has been one to make all of us thoughtful, and me perhaps most of all. It is indeed much before my mind, but my head has not ceased to whirl, so that I cannot get a clear view of what Seward would call my position. Two things I know, one is that it produced the greatest pleasures and the greatest pains I have ever known in politics; the other that 1 have had to take various decisions and perform acts that could neither be satisfactory to others, nor from the doubt attaching to one side or the other of the alternative, even to myself. To have been the occasion of the blow to the House of Commons, or as I call it the“gigantic innovation,”will be a grief to me as long as I live; if by wildness and rashness I have been its cause, it will be a much greater grief. Of that I am not[pg 637]yet able to judge. On the whole when I think of the cabinet, I always go back to Jacob and Esau fighting in their mother's womb; only here there have been many Jacobs and Esaus, by which I do not mean the sixteen members of the cabinet, but the many and very unhandy causes of division. Perhaps I should find it easiest in the work of confession to own my neighbour's faults,i.e.to dwell upon those strange sins of foreign policy which have happily for the most part been nipped in the bud almostà l'unanimité(yet with what exceptions!); but avoiding that task, I will make my own confession. I cannot justify the finance of the year as a whole.... As to the amount of the final demand [for the China war], what it really demonstrates isoneamong the follies and dangers of our high-handed policy, our want of control over proceedings at the other end of the world. But the weak point is the fortification plan; I do not now speak of its own merits or demerits, but I speak of it in relation to the budget.... It is a vile precedent to give away money by remission, and borrow to supply the void; and in the full andchiefresponsibility for having established this precedent I am involved, not by the budget of February but by the consent of July to the scheme which involved the borrowing. No doubt there are palliating circumstances; and lastly the grievous difficulty of choice between mischievous [illegible] and mischievous resignation. Still I must say, it is in retrospect, as the people and parliament have a right to judge it, a bad and unworkmanlike business, and under a skilful analysis of it in the House of Commons (which there is no one opposite fit to make, except it be Northcote, who perhaps scruples it) I should wince. All these things and others more inward than these, make sore places in the mind; but on the other hand, that I may close with a gleam of sunshine like that which is now casting its shadow on my paper from Penmaenmawr after a rough morning, I am thankful in the highest degree to have had a share in resisting the alarmist mania of the day by means of the French treaty, to which, if we escape collision, I think the escape will have been mainly due; and likewise in one at least negative service to the great Italian cause, which is not Italian merely but European.Mr. Pitt's War FinancePage59Mr. Gladstone to Herbert GladstoneMarch 10, 1876.—Mr. Pitt's position in the Revolutionary war was, I think, a false one. To keep out of that war demanded from the people of this country an extraordinary degree of self-control, and this degree of it they did not possess. The consequence of our going into it was to give an intensity and vitality to the struggle, which but for the tenacity of English character it would not have possessed. Mr. Pitt did not show the great genius in war which he possessed as a peace minister. Until the epoch[pg 638]of the Peninsula our military performances were small and poor, and the method of subsidy was unsatisfactory and ineffective. The effect of borrowing money in three per cents. was to load us with a very heavy capital of national debt. I think at one time we only got £46, or some such amount, for the £100. It must, however, be taken into view that a perpetual annuity of £3, redeemable upon paying £100, broughtmorethan 3/4 of what a perpetual annuity of £4, similarly redeemable, would have brought; or than 3/5 of what a £5 annuity, similarly redeemable, would have brought. It is not easy to strike the balance. Mr. Newmarch, a living economist of some authority, I believe, thinks Mr. Pitt was right. I do not think the case is so clear against him as todetractfrom his great reputation. But were I in the unhappy position of having to call for a large loan, I should be disposed to ask for the tender in more than one form,e.g., to ask for a tender in three per cents, pure and simple, and an alternative in 4 or 5 per cents., with that rate of interest guaranteed for a certain number of years. Sir Robert Walpole had not to contend with like difficulties, and I think his administration should be compared with theearly yearsof Pitt's, in which way of judging he would come off second, though a man of cool and sagacious judgment, while morally he stood low.French Commercial Treaty. 1860Page66Mr. Gladstone at Leeds, October 8, 1881:—I, for my part, look with the deepest interest upon the share that I had in concluding—I will not say so much in concluding, but in conducting on this side of the water, and within the walls of parliament as well as in administration—the proceedings which led to the memorable French treaty of 1860. It is quite true that that treaty did not produce the whole of the benefits that some too sanguine anticipations may possibly have expected from it, that it did not produce a universal smash of protective duties, as I wish it had, throughout the civilised world. But it did something. It enormously increased the trade between this country and France. It effectually checked and traversed in the year 1860 tendencies of a very different kind towards needless alarms and panics, and tendencies towards convulsions and confusion in Europe. There was no more powerful instrument for confining and controlling those wayward and angry spirits at that particular crisis, than the commercial treaty with France. It produced no inconsiderable effect for a number of years upon the legislation of various European countries, which tended less decisively than we could have desired, but still intelligibly and beneficially, in the direction of freedom of trade.[pg 639]Lord AberdeenPage87Mr. Gladstone to Sir Arthur Gordon (Lord Stanmore)Downing Street, April 21, 1861.—My dear Arthur,—When, within a few days after your father's death, I referred in conversation with you to one or two points in his character, it was from the impulse of the moment, and without any idea of making my words matter of record. Months have now passed since you asked me to put on paper the substance of what I said. The delay has been partly, perhaps mainly, owing to the pressure of other demands upon my time and thoughts. But it has also been due to this, that an instinct similar to that which made me speak, has made me shrink from writing. It is enough in conversation to give the most partial and hasty touches, provided they be not in the main untrue. Those same touches when clothed in a form of greater assumption have but a meagre and unsatisfactory appearance, and may do even positive injustice. Most of all in the case of a character which was not only of rare quality, but which was so remarkable for the fineness of its lights and shadows. But you have a right to my recollections such as they are, and I will not withhold them.I may first refer to the earliest occasion on which I saw him; for it illustrates a point not unimportant in his history. On an evening in the month of January 1835, during what is called the short government of Sir Robert Peel, I was sent for by Sir Robert Peel, and received from him the offer, which I accepted, of the under-secretaryship of the colonies. From him I went on to your father, who was then secretary of state in that department, and who was thus to be, in official home-talk, my master. Without any apprehension of hurting you, I may confess, that I went in fear and trembling. [Then follows the passage already quoted in vol. i. p. 124.] I was only, I think, for about ten weeks his under-secretary. But as some men hate those whom they have injured, so others love those whom they have obliged; and his friendship continued warm and unintermitting for the subsequent twenty-six years of his life.Some of his many great qualities adorned him in common with several, or even with many, other contemporary statesmen: such as clearness of view, strength of the deliberative faculty, strong sense of duty, deep devotion to the crown, and the most thorough and uncompromising loyalty to his friends and colleagues. In this loyalty of intention many, I think, are not only praiseworthy but perfect. But the loyalty of intention was in him so assisted by other and distinctive qualities, as to give it a peculiar efficacy; and any one associated with Lord Aberdeen might always rest assured that he was safe in his hands. When our law did not allow prisoners the benefit of counsel, it was commonly said that the judge was counsel for the prisoner. Lord Aberdeen was always[pg 640]counsel for the absent. Doubtless he had pondered much upon the law,“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”It had entered profoundly into his being, and formed a large part of it. He was strong in his self-respect, but his respect for others, not for this man or that but for other men as men, was much more conspicuous. Rarely indeed have I heard him utter a word censuring opponents, or concerning those who actually were or had been friends, that could have given pain. If and when it was done, it was done so to speak judicially, upon full and reluctant conviction and with visible regret.If I have said that he had much in common with other distinguished men who were like him statesmen by profession, it has been by way of preface to what I have now to say; namely, that what has ever struck me in his character as a whole, was its distinctiveness. There were several mental virtues that he possessed in a degree very peculiar; there were, I think, one or two in which he stood almost alone. I am not in myself well qualified for handling a subject like this, and also my life has been too hurried to give me the most favourable opportunities. Still I must try to explain my meaning. I will name then the following characteristics, one and all of which were more prominent in him than in any public man I ever knew: mental calmness; the absence (if for want of better words I may describe it by a negative) of all egoism; the love of exact justice; a thorough tolerance of spirit; and last and most of all an entire absence of suspicion.There was something very remarkable in the combination of these qualities, as well as in their separate possession. Most men who might be happy enough to have one half his love of justice, would be so tossed with storms of indignation at injustice as to lose the balance of their judgment. But he had or seemed to have all the benefits, all the ennobling force of strong emotion, with a complete exemption from its dangers. His mind seemed to move in an atmosphere of chartered tranquillity, which allowed him the view of every object, however blinding to others, in its true position and proportion.It has always appeared to me that the love of justice is one of the rarest among all good qualities, I mean the love of it with full and commanding strength. I should almost dare to say there are five generous men to one just man. The beauty of justice is the beauty of simple form; the beauty of generosity is heightened with colour and every accessory. The passions will often ally themselves with generosity, but they always tend to divert from justice. The man who strongly loves justice must love it for its own sake, and such a love makes of itself a character of a simple grandeur to which it is hard to find an equal.Next to Lord Aberdeen, I think Sir Robert Peel was the most just of the just men I have had the happiness to know. During the years from 1841 to 1846, when they were respectively foreign secretary and prime minister, as I was at the board of[pg 641]trade for much of the time, I had occasion to watch the two in the conduct of several negotiations that involved commercial interests, such as that on the Stade Dues and that on the project of a commercial treaty with Portugal. Now and then Sir Robert Peel would show some degree of unconscious regard to the mere flesh and blood, if I may so speak, of Englishmen; Lord Aberdeen was invariably for putting the most liberal construction upon both the conduct and the claims of the other negotiating state.There is perhaps no position in this country, in which the love of justice that I have ascribed in such extraordinary measure to your father, can be so severely tested, as that very position of foreign minister, with which his name is so closely associated. Nowhere is a man so constantly and in such myriad forms tempted to partiality; nowhere can he do more for justice; but nowhere is it more clear that all human force is inadequate for its end. A nation is rarely just to other nations. Perhaps it is never truly just, though sometimes (like individuals) what may be called more than just. There can be no difficulty in any country, least of all this, in finding foreign ministers able and willing to assert the fair and reasonable claims of their countrymen with courage and with firmness. The difficulty is quite of another kind; it is to find the foreign minister, first, who will himself view those claims in the dry light both of reason and of prudence; secondly, and a far harder task, who will have the courage to hazard, and if need be to sacrifice himself in keeping the mind of his countrymen down to such claims as are strictly fair and reasonable. Lord Aberdeen was most happy in being secretary of state for foreign affairs in the time and in the political company of two such men as the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. He was also happy in the general prevalence of a spirit of great sobriety in the country, which was singularly free under the government of Sir Robert Peel, from the opposite but sometimes associated extremes of wantonness and fear. I am glad to think that his administration of his department earned a decided public approval. So just a man will, I think, rarely attain in that department to the same measure of popularity, while a less just man might easily obtain one far greater.To fall short of perfect candour would deprive all I have said of the little value it can possess, as that little value is all summed up in its sincerity. On one subject to which my mind has been directed for the last twelve or fourteen years, I had the misfortune to differ from your father. I mean the state of Italy and its relation to Austria in particular. I will not pretend to say that his view of the case of Italy appeared to me to harmonize with his general mode of estimating human action and political affairs. It seemed to me as if, called in early youth to deal with a particular combination of questions which were truly gigantic, his mind had received from their weight and force at an impressible period, a fixed form in relation to them, while it ever remained open and elastic in a peculiar degree upon all others. But my mode of[pg 642]solution for what appeared to me an anomaly is immaterial. I thankfully record that the Italian question was almost the only one within my recollection, quite the only one of practical importance, on which during the twenty-six years I have named, I was unable to accept his judgment. I bear witness with yet greater pleasure that, when I returned from Naples in 1851 deeply impressed with the horrible system that I had witnessed, his opinions on Italian politics did not prevent his readily undertaking to read the statement I had drawn, nor his using, when he had read it, more strong words on the subject, which came from lips like his with such peculiar force. As readily did he undertake to invoke the aid of the court of Vienna; to which, if I remember right, he transmitted the statement in manuscript.Though I feel that I cannot by any effort do justice to what I have termed his finely-shaded character, I also feel that I might be drawn onwards to great length on the subject. I must resist the impulse, but I cannot stop without saying a word on the quality which I regard as beyond all others his own, I mean the absence from his nature of all tendency to suspicion. Those who have read his state papers, and have admired their penetrating force and comprehensive scope, will not misunderstand me when I say that he was, in this respect, a little child; not from defect of vision, but from thorough nobleness of nature.I do not think it was by effort and self-command that he rid himself of suspicion. In the simple and strong aim of the man to be good himself, it belonged to the very strength and simplicity of that aim, that he should also think others good. I recollect, and I dare say you better recollect, one of his sayings:“I have a habit of believing people.”To some these words may not seem to import a peculiarity. But as descriptive of him they indicate what of all the points of his character seemed to me most peculiar. I have known one man as free from suspicions as was Lord Aberdeen, but he was not a politician. I am far from thinking statesmen, or politicians, less honourable than other men, quite the reverse; but the habit of their life renders them suspicious. The vicissitudes of politics, the changes of position, the changes of alliance, the sharp transitions from co-operation to antagonism, the inevitable contact with revolting displays of self-seeking and self-love; more than all these perhaps, the constant habit of forecasting the future and shaping all its contingencies beforehand, which is eminently the merit and intellectual virtue of the politician, all these tend to make him, and commonly do make him, suspicious even of his best friend. This suspicion may be found to exist in conjunction with regard, with esteem, nay with affection. For it must be recollected that it is not usually a suspicion of moral delinquency, but at least as it dwells in the better and higher natures, of intellectual error only, in some of its numerous forms, or at most of speaking with a reserve that may be more or less or even wholly unconscious. None of these explanations are needed for Lord Aberdeen. He always took[pg 643]words in their direct and simple meaning, and assumed them to be the index of the mind; and its full index too, so that he did not speculate to learn what undiscovered residue might still remain in its dark places. This entire immunity from suspicion, which makes our minds in general like a haunted place, and the sense of the immunity that he conveyed to his friends in all his dealings with them, combined with the deep serenity of his mind, which ever seemed to beguile and allay by some kindly process of nature excitement in others, gave an indescribable charm to all intercourse with him in critical and difficult circumstances. Hence perhaps in great part, and not merely from his intellectual gifts, was derived the remarkable power he seemed to me to exercise in winning confidences without seeking to win them; and, on the whole, I believe that this quality, could we hold it as it was held in him, would save us from ten erroneous judgments for one into which it might lead. For the grand characteristic of suspicion after all, as of superstition, is to see things that are not.I turn now to another point: Lord Aberdeen was not demonstrative; I do not suppose he could have been an actor; he was unstudied in speech; and it is of interest to inquire what it was that gave such extraordinary force and impressiveness to his language. He did not deal in antithesis. His sayings were not sharpened with gall. In short, one might go on disclaiming for him all the accessories to which most men who are impressive owe their impressiveness. Yet I never knew any one who was so impressive in brief utterances conveying the sum of the matter....History has also caught and will hold firmly and well the honoured name of your father. There was no tarnish upon his reputation more than upon his character. He will be remembered in connection with great passages of European policy not only as a man of singularly searching, large, and calm intelligence, but yet more as the just man, the man that used only true weights and measures, and ever held even the balance of his ordered mind. It is no reproach to other statesmen of this or other periods, to say that scarcely any of them have had a celebrity so entirely unaided by a transitory glare. But if this be so, it implies that while they for the most part must relatively lose, he must relatively and greatly gain. If they have had stage-lights and he has had none, it is the hour when those lights are extinguished that will for the first time do that justice as between them which he was too noble, too far aloft in the tone of his mind, to desire to anticipate. All the qualities and parts in which he was great were those that are the very foundation-stones of our being; as foundation-stones they are deep, and as being deep they are withdrawn from view; but time is their witness and their friend, and in the final distribution of posthumous fame Lord Aberdeen has nothing to forfeit, he has only to receive.I see on perusing what I have written, that in the endeavour to set forth the virtues and great qualities of your father, I seem[pg 644]more or less to disparage other men, including even Sir Robert Peel whom he so much esteemed and loved. I had no such intention, and it is the fault of my hand, not of my will. He would not have claimed, he would not have wished nor borne, that others should claim for him superiority, or even parity in all points with all his contemporaries. But there was a certain region of character which was, so to speak, all his own; and there other men do seem more or less dwarfed beside him. In the combination of profound feeling with a calm of mind equally profound, of thorough penetration with the largest charity, of the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove, in the total suppression and exclusion of self from his reckonings and actions—in all this we may think him supreme, and yet have a broad array of good and noble qualities in which he may have shared variously with others. There are other secrets of his character and inner life into which I do not pretend to have penetrated. It always seemed to me that there was a treasure-house within him, which he kept closed against the eyes of men. He is gone. He has done well in his generation. May peace and light be with him, and may honour and blessing long attend his memory upon earth.—Believe me, my dear Arthur, affectionately yours,W. E. Gladstone.Cabinet Of 1868-1874Page255First lord of the treasury, W. E. Gladstone.Lord chancellor, Lord Hatherly (Page Wood).President of the council, Earl de Grey (created Marquis of Ripon, 1871).Lord privy seal, Earl of Kimberley.Chancellor of the exchequer, Robert Lowe.Home secretary, Henry Austin Bruce.Foreign secretary, Earl of Clarendon.Colonial secretary, Earl Granville.War secretary, Edward Cardwell.First lord of the admiralty, H. C. E. Childers.Indian secretary, Duke of Argyll.President of the board of trade, John Bright.Chief secretary for Ireland, Chichester Fortescue.Postmaster general, Marquis of Hartington.President of the poor law board, George J. Goschen.On Lord Clarendon's death in June 1870, Lord Granville became foreign secretary; Lord Kimberley, colonial secretary; Viscount Halifax (Sir C. Wood), lord privy seal; and Mr. Forster, vice-president of the privy council, entered the cabinet.On Mr. Bright's resignation in December 1870, Mr. Chichester Fortescue became president of the board of trade; Lord Hartington succeeded him as chief secretary for Ireland; Mr. Monsell was appointed postmaster general without a seat in the cabinet.[pg 645]On Mr. Childers's resignation in March 1871, Mr. Goschen became first lord of the admiralty, and Mr. James Stansfeld president of the poor law board.In August 1872 Mr. Childers rejoined the cabinet, succeeding Lord Dufferin as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. In October Sir Roundell Palmer (created Lord Selborne) became lord chancellor on the retirement of Lord Hatherley.In August 1873 Lord Ripon and Mr. Childers retired, Mr. Gladstone became chancellor of the exchequer as well as first lord; Mr. Bright rejoined the cabinet as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster; Mr. Lowe became home secretary and Mr. Bruce (created Lord Aberdare) president of the council.Irish Church BillPage276Mr. Gladstone to the QueenJuly 21, 1869.—Mr. Gladstone presents his humble duty to your Majesty and reports that the cabinet met at 11 this day, and considered with anxious care its position and duty in regard to the Irish Church bill. The vote and declaration of the House of Lords last night were regarded as fatal if persisted in; and the cabinet deemed it impossible to meet proceedings of such a character with any tender of further concessions. The cabinet, however, considered at much length a variety of courses; as (1) To announce at once that they could no longer, after the vote and announcement of last night, be responsible for further proceedings in connection with the bill, but that they would leave it to the majority of the House of Lords to take such steps as it might think proper; (2) To go through the whole of the amendments of the bill [i.e.in the House of Lords], and then if they were adversely carried to declare and proceed as above; (3) To go through not the whole of the amendments but the endowment amendments, and to conclude that when these had been adversely decided, they could (as before) assume no further responsibility, but must leave the matter to the majority to consider; (4) To send the bill back to the House of Commons with the declaration that it would not be accepted there, and with the intention of simply moving the House to adhere to its amendments as last adjusted.Your Majesty has already been apprized by Mr. Gladstone's telegram in cipher of this afternoon, that (under the influence of a strong desire to exhibit patience, and to leave open every opportunity for reconsideration), the third of these courses had been adopted; although there was no doubt that the House of Commons was fully prepared to approve and sustain the first. Lord Granville deemed it just possible that the peers might be prepared to give way before another return of the bill from the House of Commons; and the question therefore was left open whether, if evidence to this effect should appear, the government should then fall in with[pg 646]that course of proceeding. Although the government have felt it to be impossible to make biddings in the face of the opposition, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been apprised, in strict confidence, of the nature and extent of the concession, which for the sake of peace they would be prepared to recommend. Sir R. Palmer is also substantially aware of it, and has expressed his opinion that on such terms the opposition ought to be ready to conclude the matter.Board And Voluntary SchoolsPage310Mr. Gladstone to M. BrightAug. 21, 1873.—An appeal to me was made to introduce board schools into Hawarden on account of my share in the Education Act. I stated the two views held by different supporters of the Act, respectively on the question of board schools and voluntary schools. For myself, I said, not in education only butin all things including education, I prefer voluntary to legal machinery, when the thing can be well done either way. But this question is not to be decided by a general preference or a general formula. Parliament has referred it to the choice of the local communities. They should decide according to the facts of the case before them. What are the facts in Hawarden? Four-fifths are already provided for; were it only one-fifth or were it two-fifths the case for the board (I said) would be overwhelming. But besides the four-fifths, arrangements are already made for a further provision in a voluntary school. Nothing remains to be done except to build threeinfantschools. The voluntary schools will be governed by a committee, including the churchwardens, and having a majority of laymen. The machinery of a board is of necessity cumbrous, and the method costly in comparison. I hold that we ought not to set up this machinery, in order to create three infant schools, where all the other wants of some 2000 people are already provided for.Views On A Classical EducationPage312Mr. Gladstone to Lord LytteltonPenmaenmawr, Aug. 29, 1861.—-Thanks for the brief notice which you recently took of the Public Schools Commission. I was heartily glad to hear that you had formed a drastic set of questions. I take the deepest interest in the object of the commission, and I have full confidence in its members and organs; and at all times I shall be very glad to hear what you are doing. Meantime I cannot help giving you, to be taken for what it is worth, the sum of my own thoughts upon the subject.... Thelowutilitarian argument in matter of education, for giving it what is termed a practical direction, is so plausible that I think we may[pg 647]on the whole be thankful that the instincts of the country have resisted what in argument it has been ill able to confute. We still hold by the classical training as the basis of a liberal education; parents dispose of their children in early youth accordingly; but if they were asked why they did so, it is probable they would give lamentably weak or unworthy reasons for it, such for example as that the public schools and universities open the way to desirable acquaintance and what is termed“good society.”Your commission will not I presume be able to pass by this question, but will have to look it in the face; and to proceed either upon a distinct affirmative, or a substantial negative, of the proposition that the classical training is the proper basis of a liberal education. I hope you will hold by affirmation and reject negation.But the reason why I trouble you upon the subject is this, that I think the friends of this principle have usually rather blinked the discussion, and have been content with making terms of compromise by way of buying off the adversary, which might be in themselves reasonable unless they were taken as mere instalments of a transaction intended in the long run to swallow up the principle itself. What I feel is that the relation of pure science, natural science, modern languages, modern history, and the rest of the old classical training ought to be founded on a principle and ought not to be treated simply as importunate creditors, that take a shilling in the £ to-day, because they hope to get another shilling to-morrow, and in the meantime have a recognition of their title. This recognition of title is just what I would refuse. I deny their right to a parallel or equal position; their true position is auxiliary, and as auxiliary it ought to be limited and restrained without scruple, as a regard to the paramount matter of education may dictate.But why after all is the classical training paramount? Is it because we find it established? because it improves memory or taste, or gives precision, or develops the faculty of speech? All these are but partial and fragmentary statements, so many narrow glimpses of a great and comprehensive truth. That truth I take to be that the modern European civilisation from the middle age downwards is the compound of two great factors, the Christian religion for the spirit of man, and the Greek, and in a secondary degree the Roman discipline for his mind and intellect. St. Paul is the apostle of the Gentiles, and is in his own person a symbol of this great wedding—the place, for example, of Aristotle and Plato in Christian education is not arbitrary nor in principle mutable. The materials of what we call classical training were prepared, and we have a right to say were advisedly prepared, in order that it might become not a mere adjunct but (in mathematical phrase) the complement of Christianity in its application to the culture of the human being formed both for this world and for the world to come.If this principle be true it is broad and high and clear enough, and supplies a key to all questions connected with the relation[pg 648]between the classical training of our youth and all other branches of their secular education. It must of course be kept within its proper place, and duly limited as to things and persons. It can only apply in full to that small proportion of the youth of any country, who are to become in the fullest sense educated men. It involves no extravagant or inconvenient assumptions respecting those who are to be educated for trades and professions in which the necessities of specific training must limit general culture. It leaves open every question turning upon individual aptitudes and inaptitudes and by no means requires that boys without a capacity for imbibing any of the spirit of classical culture are still to be mechanically plied with the instruments of it after their unfitness has become manifest. But it lays down the rule of education for those who have no internal and no external disqualification; and that rule, becoming a fixed and central point in the system, becomes also the point around which all others may be grouped.Mr. Gladstone to Sir S. NorthcoteNov. 12, 1861.—The letter I wrote to Lyttelton about the classical education suggested topics, which as you justly perceive are altogether esoteric. They have never to my knowledge been carefully worked out, and I think they well deserve it; but clearly your report is not the place. I will not say you are not prudent in suggesting that you should not even give an opinion upon the great question: What is the true place of the old classical learning in the human culture of the nineteenth century? I am far from venturing to say the contrary. But one thing I do think, namely, that it is desirable that, as far as may be, the members of the commission should have some answer to that question in their minds, and should write their report with reference to it. For centuries, through the lifetime of our great schools this classical culture has been made thelapis angularisof all secular culture of the highest class. Was this right or was it wrong, aye or no? I think it much to be desired that the commission should, if they will, proceed upon the affirmative or negative of that proposition, and should also make their choice for the former. This would be a long note to their report; but it need not be distinctly and separately heard in it. Such is my notion. As to particulars I have little to say that is worth hearing; but I think these three things. First, that we give much too little scope for deviation from what I think the normal standard to other and useful branches, when it has become evident that the normal standard is inapplicable; just as was the case in Oxford before the reform of the examinations, or let me rather say the new statutes. Secondly, I am extremely jealous of any invasion of modern languages which is to displace classical culture, or any portion of it in minds capable of following that walk. (I take it that among the usual modern tongues Italian has by far the greatest capacity for strict study and scholarship; whereas it is the one least in[pg 649]favour and the whole method of dealing with them is quite alien to strict study.) Lastly, I confess I grieve over the ignorance of natural history which I feel in myself and believe to exist in others. At some time, in some way, much more of all this ought to be brought in, but clearly it would serve in a great degree as recreation, and need not thrust aside whatever hard work boys are capable of doing.Position Of The Commander-In-Chief In ParliamentPage362Mr. Gladstone to the QueenJuly 8, 1871.—Mr. Gladstone believes that according to precedent the commander-in-chief, when a peer, has not shrunk from giving his opinion on measures submitted to the House of Lords. In 1847, the government of that day introduced the Short Service bill, of which on the merits it is believed that the Duke of Wellington, then commander-in-chief, did not approve. Indeed he expressed in debate on April 26th, 1847, his doubts whether the measure would produce the advantages which were anticipated from it; nevertheless, while having no political connection with the government, he spoke and voted in a division for the bill. It is probable, as the numbers were only 108 to 94, that his speech and vote alone carried the bill. Your Majesty will not fail to bear in mind that until 1855, there was always a very high military authority who was in political connection with the government, namely, the master of the ordnance. Indeed, unless Mr. Gladstone's recollection deceives him, Lord Beresford was required by the Duke of Wellington in 1829, as master of the ordnance, to support the Roman Catholic Relief bill. And it is still regretted by many that ministries have not since comprehended any such officer. All question, however, as to the political support of a ministry by the military chiefs of the army is now at an end.A Soldier At The War OfficePage363Mr. Gladstone to Mr. CardwellJan. 5, 1871.—It was a great advantage before 1854, that there was always a considerable soldier either in the cabinet or at least at the head of an important military department, and politically associated with the government. This we lost by the crude and ill-advised reconstructions of '55. But you, following in this point a wise initiative of your predecessor, have endeavoured to bring the appointment of Sir H. Storks into a position which makes it probably the best substitute for the former plan that can be had at present. The demand that a soldier shall be appointed at the present time would hold gooda fortiorifor all[pg 650]periods of greater emergency. I know not where that principle has been admitted in our military administration. If we have committed gross errors, it has been owing to an excess much more than to a defect of professional influence and counsel. In my opinion the qualities of a good administrator and statesman go to make a good war minister, especially at this juncture, far more than those of a good soldier. Show me the soldier who has those equally with you, and then let him take your place as S.S. But not till then. You were chosen for your office, not because you would do tolerably for easy times, and then could walk out, but because you were the best man the party could supply for the post. The reproaches aimed at you now are merely aimed at the government through you, and you are chosen to be the point of attack because the nation is sore on military matters in times of crisis, and the press which ought to check excitement, by most of its instruments ministers to its increase. You find yourself unable to suggest a successor; and I have seen no plan that would not weaken the government instead of strengthening it. You see what eulogies have been passed on Bright, now he is gone. You would rise in the market with many after resigning, to depreciate those who remain behind; but as I have said, you would not be allowed to have had a legitimate cause of going, and as far as my observation goes, retirements are quite as critically judged as acceptances of office, perhaps more so. What is really to be desired, is that we should get Storks into parliament if possible.Mr. Gladstone's Financial Legacy, 1869Page372Mr. Gladstone to Mr. LoweHawarden, Jan. 9, 1869.—I have referred to my list of remnants; and I will begin with those that I tried in parliament and failed in: 1. Collection of taxes by Queen's officers instead of local officers. 2. Taxation of charities. 3. Bill for restraining, with a view to ultimately abolishing, the circulation of the notes of private banks. 4. Plan for bringing the chancery and other judicial accounts under the control of parliament. Here I had a commission (on chancery accounts) but did not dare to go farther.The following are subjects which I was not able to take in hand:—1. Abolition of the remaining duty upon corn; an exceeding strong case. 2. I should be much disposed to abolish the tea licences as greatly restrictive of the consumption of a dutiable and useful commodity. I modified them; but am not sure that this was enough. The B.I.R. could throw light on this subject. 3. The probate duty calls, I fear, loudly for change; but I wanted either time or courage to take it in hand. 4. The remaining[pg 651]conveyance duties, apart from railways, I always considered as marked for extinction. On this subject Mr. Ayrton has rather decided antecedents. 5. The fire insurance duty is sure to be further assailed. Though not as bad (relatively to other taxes) as is supposed, it is bad enough to be very hard to defend in an adverse House; and this is one of the questions on which it is not likely that the opposition will help to see fair play. The promises that liberal reduction will lead to recovery of anything like the old or previous revenue have always been confidently pressed by irresponsible men, and are in my opinion illusory. The tax is a tax on property: and, as we have too few of these rather than too many, what would seem desirable is to commute it; leaving no more than a penny stamp on the policy. This might perhaps be done, if it were made part of a large budget. 6. The income-tax at 6d., I suppose, presents a forward claim. 7. The commutation of malt duty for beer duty must always, I presume, be spoken of with respect; but the working objections to it have thus far been found too hard to deal with.There is always room in detail for amendments of stamp duties, but the great case as among them is the probate. They are of a class which, without any legal knowledge, I found very hard to work through the House of Commons. I do not look upon the Act of 1844 as theendof legislation in currency; but this subject is a big one. Scotch and Irish notes would be hard to deal with until the English case is disposed of. I forget whether we have abolished the last of the restrictions on newspapers. If not, they deserve to be taken in hand, according to me. I have always wished to equalise the outgoings of the exchequer as much as possible over the several weeks of the year. Few incomes admit of this advantage in the same degree as the public income. It would make our“account”much more valuable to our bankers; therefore to us.These, I think, were the main matters which lay more or less in perspective before me. I must add that I am strongly in favour of paying off the national debt, not only by annual surpluses, but by terminable annuitiessold to the national debt commissioners for securities held by them against deposit monies. The opponents of this plan were Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Laing. I am satisfied that neither of them had taken the trouble, and it requires some trouble, to understand it. I admit them to be no mean authorities. Terminable annuities sold to others than yourself are quite another matter. I got into the law some power of this kind over post office savings bank monies to be exercised by the chancellor of the exchequer from time to time.This is all I need trouble you with, and I have endeavoured to keep clear of all idiosyncratic propositions as much as in me lies. Of course such a letter calls for no answer. As this legacy opinion to you takes the form of a donationinter vivosit will, I hope, escape duty.[pg 652]Prince Albert, 1854Page426Mr. Gladstone wrote an elaborate article in theMorning Chronicle(Jan. 16, 1854) warmly defending the court against attacks that had clouded the popularity of the Prince Consort. They came to little more than that the Prince attended meetings of the privy council; that he was present when the Queen gave an audience to a minister; that he thwarted ministerial counsels and gave them an un-English character; that in corresponding with relatives abroad he used English influence apart from the Queen's advisers. Mr. Gladstone had no great difficulty in showing how little this was worth, either as fact supported by evidence, or as principle supported by the fitness of things; and he put himself on the right ground.“We do not raise the question whether, if the minister thinks it right to communicate with the sovereign alone, he is not entitled to a private audience. But we unhesitatingly assert that if the Prince is present when the Queen confers with her advisers, and if his presence is found to be disadvantageous to the public interests, we are not left without a remedy; for the minister is as distinctly responsible for those interests in this as in any other matter, and he is bound on his responsibility to parliament, to decline compliance even with a personal wish of the sovereign when he believes that his assent would be injurious to the country.”Parliamentary CrisesPage451Extract from Mr. Gladstone's letter to the Queen, March 15, 1873There have been within that period [1830-1873] twelve of what may be properly called parliamentary crises involving the question of a change of government. In nine of the twelve cases (viz., those of 1830, 1835, 1841, 1846, 1852, 1858, 1859, 1866, and 1868), the party which had been in opposition was ready to take, and did take, office. In the other three it failed to do this (viz., in 1832, 1851, 1855), and the old ministry or a modification of it returned to power. But in each of these three cases the attempt of the opposition to form a government was not relinquished until after such efforts had been made by its leaders to carry the conviction to the world that all its available means of action were exhausted; and there is no instance on record during the whole period (or indeed so far as Mr. Gladstone remembers at an earlier date) in which a summary refusal given on the instant by the leader was tendered as sufficient to release the opposition from the obligations it had incurred. This is the more remarkable because in two of the three instances the opposition had not, in the same mode or degree as on Wednesday morning last, contributed by concerted action to bring about the crisis. On the 7th of May 1832 the opposition of the day carried in the House of Lords a motion which went only[pg 653]to alter the order of the opening (and doubtless very important) clauses of the Reform bill, but which the government of Lord Grey deemed fatal to the integrity of the measure. Their resignation was announced, and Lord Lyndhurst was summoned to advise King William iv. on the 9th of May. On the 12th the Duke of Wellington was called to take a share in the proceedings, the details of which are matters of history. It was only on the 15th that the Duke and Lord Lyndhurst found their resources at an end, when Lord Grey was again sent for, and on the 17th the Duke announced in the House of Lords his abandonment of the task he had strenuously endeavoured to fulfil. On the 20th February 1851 the government of Lord Russell was defeated in the House of Commons on Mr. Locke King's bill for the enlargement of the county franchise by a majority composed of its own supporters. Lord Derby, then Lord Stanley, being sent for by your Majesty on the 22nd, observed that there were at the time three parties in the House of Commons and that the ministry had never yet been defeated by his political friends. He therefore counselled your Majesty to ascertain whether the government of Lord Russell could not be strengthened by a partial reconstruction, and failing that measure he engaged to use his own best efforts to form an administration. That attempt at reconstruction (to which nothing similar is now in question) did fail, and Lord Derby was therefore summoned by your Majesty on the 25th, and at once applied himself, as is well known, to every measure which seemed to give him a hope of success in constructing a government. On the 27th he apprised your Majesty of his failure in these efforts; and on March 3rd the cabinet of Lord Russell returned to office. (This recital is founded on Lord Derby's statement in the House of Lords, Feb. 28, 1851.) On Jan. 29, 1855, the government of Lord Aberdeen was defeated in the House of Commons on a motion made by an independent member of their own party and supported by twenty-five of the liberal members present. Though this defeat resembles the one last named in that it cannot be said to be due to the concerted action of the opposition as a party, Lord Derby, being summoned by your Majesty on the 1st of Feb. proceeded to examine and ascertain in every quarter the means likely to be at his disposal for rendering assistance in the exigency, and it was not until Feb. 3 that he receded from his endeavours.Cabinet Of 1880-1885Page630First lord of the treasury, chancellor of the exchequer, W. E. Gladstone.Lord chancellor, Lord Selborne.President of the council, Earl Spencer.Lord privy seal, Duke of Argyll.Home secretary, Sir W. V. Harcourt.Foreign secretary, Earl Granville.[pg 654]Colonial secretary, Earl of Kimberley.War secretary, H. C. E. Childers.First lord of the admiralty, Earl of Northbrook.Indian secretary, Marquis of Hartington.President of the board of trade, Joseph Chamberlain.Chief secretary for Ireland, W. E. Forster.Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, John Bright.President of the local government board, J. G. Dodson.On the resignation of the Duke of Argyll, April 1881, Lord Carlingford (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) became lord privy seal.In May 1882, Earl Spencer became lord-lieutenant of Ireland. On Mr. Forster's resignation he was succeeded by Lord Frederick Cavendish, and then by Mr. G. O. Trevelyan, neither of whom had a seat in the cabinet.On the resignation of Mr. Bright in July 1882, Mr. Dodson became chancellor of the duchy, and Sir Charles Dilke president of the local government board.In December 1882, Mr. Gladstone resigned the chancellorship of the exchequer to Mr. Childers; Lord Hartington became war secretary; Lord Kimberley, Indian secretary, and Lord Derby colonial secretary.In March 1883, Lord Carlingford succeeded Earl Spencer as president of the council.In October 1884, Mr. Trevelyan succeeded Mr. Dodson as chancellor of the duchy (with the cabinet), Mr. Campbell-Bannerman becoming Irish secretary without a seat in the cabinet.In February 1885, Lord Rosebery, first commissioner of works, succeeded Lord Carlingford as lord privy seal (with the cabinet) [Lord Carlingford had also been president of the council from March 1883 in succession to Lord Spencer], and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, postmaster-general, entered the cabinet.[pg 655]

[pg 632]AppendixBudget Of 1860Page26Sir William Heathcote wrote to Mr. Gladstone, May 4, 1861:—I understood you in your rebukes of Lewis in 1857, to be aiming not only at a change of his plan of finance in that particular year, but (if that were impossible, or at least could not be carried), at a resumption as early as circumstances would allow, of what you thought the proper line of action which he insisted on suspending. Income-tax and war duties on tea and sugar were and would continue to be, as I understood, the primary claimants for reduction of taxation, in your judgment.... The very vehemence of your convictions and expressions onbothoccasions perplexes me.Mr. Gladstone replied the same day:—... You think, 1. That I bound myself to the reduction of the tea and sugar duties as a policy for future occasions, and not merely for the issue then raised. 2. That in like manner I was bound to the reduction and abolition of the income-tax. 3. That even if there arose in the system of our expenditure a great change, involving an increase of ten or fifteen millions of money over 1853, I was still in consistency bound to hold over the first chance of reduction for income-tax, tea and sugar. 4. That consequently until these duties were remitted I could not propose to prosecute any commercial reforms involving, as nearly all of them do, a sacrifice of revenue for a time. 5. It is because I have departed from these positions by proposing a multitude of reductions and abolitions of duty, other than the three mentioned, and partly or wholly in preference to them, that you have lost confidence in my judgment on these matters (a confidence to which I do not pretend that I had ever any claim).If I have interpreted you aright, and I hope you will tell me whether I have done so or not, this is all to me exceedingly curious; such are the differences in the opinions of men formed from their different points of view. Now I will give you mine. To give effect to the pledge of honour, by which I became bound in 1853, I made a desperate effort in 1857, with all the zeal of which I was capable, and with all the passion to which I am liable. It was my opinion that the course then taken would be decisive as to the operations in 1860, for the income-tax never can be got rid of[pg 633]except by prospective finance, reaching over several years, and liable to impediment and disturbance accordingly. I therefore protested against the whole scale of expenditure then proposed; as well as against particular kinds of expenditure to which I might refer. I likewise protested against the provision for that expenditure which the government of the day proposed. First, because the expenditure itself was excessive, in my view. Secondly, because in the mode of that provision I thought the remission of income-tax was large out of all proportion to the remission on indirect taxes; and this disproportion I regarded as highly dangerous. I determined to let no political prejudice stand in my way, and to test to the best of my very feeble power the opinion of parliament with respect to tea and sugar. I stated that if the opinion of parliament were against me I should not factiously prolong the contest but should withdraw from it. Not only was the opinion of parliament against me, but it so happened that the opinion of the country was immediately afterwards taken by a dissolution on that and on other kindred questions. The country affirmed the policy of Lord Palmerston, and the policy of a materially increased expenditure, by an overwhelming majority. I had misjudged public opinion; they had read it aright. After the dissolution of 1857, Sir George Lewis, who had previously raised the tea and sugar duties for one year, proposed to raise them for two more. I immediately followed in debate, and thanked him warmly for doing it. All this of course I can prove. I said, we are going to have more expenditure, we must therefore have more taxation.As I have gone thus far with my history, I will conclude it. Notwithstanding what had happened, I did not absolutely abandon at that time the hope that we might still reach in 1860 a state which might enable us to abolish the income-tax. I had a faint expectation of more economy under another government. When Lord Derby's administration came in in 1858, they professed to reduce expenditure by £800,000, and to contemplate further reductions. I expressed my satisfaction, and gave them the extreme of support that I could. But I then clearly pointed out that, even with the scale of expenditure they then proposed, we could not abolish the income-tax in 1860. In a few months, their reductions vanished into air. In 1859 came the famous“reconstruction.”I took office in June, and found a scale of expenditure going on in the treasury far more prodigal and wanton than I had ever charged upon Lord Palmerston's first government. I found also that when the estimates had been completed, I believe entirely ontheirbasis, there was a probable deficiency of four or five millions for a year of which nearly one-third had passed. And the expenditure was I think nearly seventy millions, or some fourteen millions more than in 1853. This was not the act only of the government. The opposition halloed them on; and the country, seized with a peculiar panic, was in a humour even more lavish than the opposition.[pg 634]My view was, and I stated it, that we ought to provide for this expenditure in a due proportion between direct and indirect taxes. I showed that this proportion had not been observed; that we had continued to levy large amounts of war tax on tea and sugar, and had returned to the scale of 1853 for income. I proposed to provide the necessary sums chiefly by an increase of income-tax. But neither then (in July 1859), nor for nearly two and a half years before, had I ever (to my knowledge) presumed to speak of any one as bound to abolish the income-tax or to remit the additional duties on tea and sugar.I fully expect fromyouthe admission that as to these measures I could not in the altered circumstances be bound absolutely to the remissions. But you say I was bound to give them a preference over all other remissions. Nowhere I believe can one word to this effect be extracted from any speech of mine. I found in 1860 that all the reforming legislation, which had achieved such vast results, had been suspended for seven years. We were then raising by duties doomed in 1853, from twelve to thirteen millions. It would in my opinion have been no less than monstrous on my part to recognise the preferences you claim for these particular duties. All of them indeed would have been reliefs, even the income-tax which is I think proved to be the least relief of any. But, though reliefs, they were hardly reforms; and experience had shown us that reforms were in fact double and treble reliefs. I may be wrong, but it is my opinion and I found it on experience, that the prospect of the removal of the three collectively (income, tea extra, and sugar extra) being in any case very remote, it is less remote with than without the reforming measures of the last and (I hope I may add) of the present year. Had the expenditure of 1853 been resumed, there would notwithstanding the Russian war have been, in my opinion, room for all these three things. 1. Abolition of income-tax by or near 1860; 2. remission of increases on tea and sugar within the same time; 3. the prosecution of the commercial reforms.It may be said that having set my face against an excess of expenditure I ought to have considered that a holy war, and not to have receded. Although I place public economy somewhat higher as a matter of duty than many might do, I do not think it would have been right, I do think it would have been foolish and presumptuous in me to have gone beyond these two things: first, making an effort to the utmost of my power at the critical moment (as I took it to be), and secondly, on being defeated to watch for opportunities thereafter. Since it should be remembered I do not recommend or desire sweeping and sudden reductions.The chief errors that I see myself to have committed are these. In 1853 when I took the unusual course of estimating our income for seven years, and assuming that our expenditure would either continue as it was, or only move onwards gradually and gently, I ought no doubt to have pointed out explicitly, that a great disturbance and increase of our expenditure would baffle my[pg 635]reckonings. Again in 1857 the temper of the public mind had undergone a change which I failed to discern; and I attacked the government and the chancellor of the exchequer of that day for doing what the country desired though I did not. I name these as specific errors, over and above the general one of excess of heat.The budget of last year I cannot admit to have been an error. People say it should have been smaller. My belief is that if it had been a smaller boat it would not have lived in such a sea. I speak of the period of the session before the China war became certain. When it did so, we were in a great strait about the paper duty. We felt the obligation incurred by the vote on the second reading, and we construed it according to the established usage. We took the more arduous, but I think the more honourable course for a government to pursue. Had we abandoned the bill, I know not how we could have looked in the face those who had acted and invested on the faith of an unbroken practice. I admit that political motives greatly concurred to recommend the budget of last year. It was a budget of peace, and peace wanted it. The budget of this year followed from the budget of last, given the other circumstances. At the same time I can understand how the claim of tea could be set up, but not well after the occurrences of last year how it could be supported.This is a long egotistical story. But when you consider that it contains my whole story (exceptpièces justificatives) in answer to so many speeches in both Houses and elsewhere, for never to this hour have I opened my lips in personal defence, you will understand why I might be garrulous....Notwithstanding the mild doctrine I have held about expenditure I admit it may be said I ought not to have joined a government which had such extended views in that direction, even though they were the views of the nation. Much may be said on this. I may, however, remark that when the government was formed I did not fully conceive the extent to which we should proceed.The Cabinet. 1860Page36Mr. Gladstone's memorandum on the currents of opinion in the cabinet of 1860 concludes as follows:—1. The most Italian members of the cabinet have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, W.E.G., Gibson, Argyll. The least Italian: Lewis, Wood, Grey, Herbert, Villiers (especially).2. In foreign policy generally the most combative have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, the chancellor. The least combative: Duke of Somerset, Duke of Argyll, Granville, Gibson, Herbert, Lewis, Grey, W.E.G., Wood, the same in feeling but not active.[pg 636]3. In defences and expenditure, the most alarmed, or most martial (as the case may be), have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, S. Herbert, followed by Duke of Somerset, the chancellor, Granville, Cardwell. Inclined the other way: Gibson, W.E.G., Lewis, Grey, Duke of Argyll (Elgin, I think).4. In finance some are for movement, some stationary or retrograde so as to be ready for immediate war. Yet here we are not divided simply as combative or anti-combative. The onward men in finance are: Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, Granville, Argyll, Gibson, W.E.G., and, I think, the chancellor. The stationary men are, first and foremost: Sir George Lewis, Sir C. Wood; next to these, Lord Palmerston, Cardwell, and, I think, Villiers, Herbert.5. On reform I must distinguish between (a) extension of the franchise and (b) redistribution of seats. In the first the more liberal men are: Lord John Russell, Duke of Somerset, Duke of Newcastle, Duke of Argyll, Gibson, W.E.G. The fearful or opposed are: Lord Palmerston, C. Villiers, S. Herbert. In the second, for small disfranchisement were, I think, all the first except Newcastle. For larger disfranchisement: Newcastle, Villiers, and Lord Palmerston, I think not greatly averse. In fact, I think that larger disfranchisement of places may have been favoured by him, 1. as a substitute for enlargement of the franchise, which he chiefly dreads; 2. as perhaps an obstacle to the framing of a measure.6. In church matters Herbert, Newcastle, and I are the most conservative and the most church-like; with a sympathy from Argyll. But, as I said, there is no struggle here: patronage, the sore subject, not being a cabinet affair.Session Of 1860Page47Extract from a Letter to the Duke of Argyll.Penmaen., September 3, 1860.—The session has been one to make all of us thoughtful, and me perhaps most of all. It is indeed much before my mind, but my head has not ceased to whirl, so that I cannot get a clear view of what Seward would call my position. Two things I know, one is that it produced the greatest pleasures and the greatest pains I have ever known in politics; the other that 1 have had to take various decisions and perform acts that could neither be satisfactory to others, nor from the doubt attaching to one side or the other of the alternative, even to myself. To have been the occasion of the blow to the House of Commons, or as I call it the“gigantic innovation,”will be a grief to me as long as I live; if by wildness and rashness I have been its cause, it will be a much greater grief. Of that I am not[pg 637]yet able to judge. On the whole when I think of the cabinet, I always go back to Jacob and Esau fighting in their mother's womb; only here there have been many Jacobs and Esaus, by which I do not mean the sixteen members of the cabinet, but the many and very unhandy causes of division. Perhaps I should find it easiest in the work of confession to own my neighbour's faults,i.e.to dwell upon those strange sins of foreign policy which have happily for the most part been nipped in the bud almostà l'unanimité(yet with what exceptions!); but avoiding that task, I will make my own confession. I cannot justify the finance of the year as a whole.... As to the amount of the final demand [for the China war], what it really demonstrates isoneamong the follies and dangers of our high-handed policy, our want of control over proceedings at the other end of the world. But the weak point is the fortification plan; I do not now speak of its own merits or demerits, but I speak of it in relation to the budget.... It is a vile precedent to give away money by remission, and borrow to supply the void; and in the full andchiefresponsibility for having established this precedent I am involved, not by the budget of February but by the consent of July to the scheme which involved the borrowing. No doubt there are palliating circumstances; and lastly the grievous difficulty of choice between mischievous [illegible] and mischievous resignation. Still I must say, it is in retrospect, as the people and parliament have a right to judge it, a bad and unworkmanlike business, and under a skilful analysis of it in the House of Commons (which there is no one opposite fit to make, except it be Northcote, who perhaps scruples it) I should wince. All these things and others more inward than these, make sore places in the mind; but on the other hand, that I may close with a gleam of sunshine like that which is now casting its shadow on my paper from Penmaenmawr after a rough morning, I am thankful in the highest degree to have had a share in resisting the alarmist mania of the day by means of the French treaty, to which, if we escape collision, I think the escape will have been mainly due; and likewise in one at least negative service to the great Italian cause, which is not Italian merely but European.Mr. Pitt's War FinancePage59Mr. Gladstone to Herbert GladstoneMarch 10, 1876.—Mr. Pitt's position in the Revolutionary war was, I think, a false one. To keep out of that war demanded from the people of this country an extraordinary degree of self-control, and this degree of it they did not possess. The consequence of our going into it was to give an intensity and vitality to the struggle, which but for the tenacity of English character it would not have possessed. Mr. Pitt did not show the great genius in war which he possessed as a peace minister. Until the epoch[pg 638]of the Peninsula our military performances were small and poor, and the method of subsidy was unsatisfactory and ineffective. The effect of borrowing money in three per cents. was to load us with a very heavy capital of national debt. I think at one time we only got £46, or some such amount, for the £100. It must, however, be taken into view that a perpetual annuity of £3, redeemable upon paying £100, broughtmorethan 3/4 of what a perpetual annuity of £4, similarly redeemable, would have brought; or than 3/5 of what a £5 annuity, similarly redeemable, would have brought. It is not easy to strike the balance. Mr. Newmarch, a living economist of some authority, I believe, thinks Mr. Pitt was right. I do not think the case is so clear against him as todetractfrom his great reputation. But were I in the unhappy position of having to call for a large loan, I should be disposed to ask for the tender in more than one form,e.g., to ask for a tender in three per cents, pure and simple, and an alternative in 4 or 5 per cents., with that rate of interest guaranteed for a certain number of years. Sir Robert Walpole had not to contend with like difficulties, and I think his administration should be compared with theearly yearsof Pitt's, in which way of judging he would come off second, though a man of cool and sagacious judgment, while morally he stood low.French Commercial Treaty. 1860Page66Mr. Gladstone at Leeds, October 8, 1881:—I, for my part, look with the deepest interest upon the share that I had in concluding—I will not say so much in concluding, but in conducting on this side of the water, and within the walls of parliament as well as in administration—the proceedings which led to the memorable French treaty of 1860. It is quite true that that treaty did not produce the whole of the benefits that some too sanguine anticipations may possibly have expected from it, that it did not produce a universal smash of protective duties, as I wish it had, throughout the civilised world. But it did something. It enormously increased the trade between this country and France. It effectually checked and traversed in the year 1860 tendencies of a very different kind towards needless alarms and panics, and tendencies towards convulsions and confusion in Europe. There was no more powerful instrument for confining and controlling those wayward and angry spirits at that particular crisis, than the commercial treaty with France. It produced no inconsiderable effect for a number of years upon the legislation of various European countries, which tended less decisively than we could have desired, but still intelligibly and beneficially, in the direction of freedom of trade.[pg 639]Lord AberdeenPage87Mr. Gladstone to Sir Arthur Gordon (Lord Stanmore)Downing Street, April 21, 1861.—My dear Arthur,—When, within a few days after your father's death, I referred in conversation with you to one or two points in his character, it was from the impulse of the moment, and without any idea of making my words matter of record. Months have now passed since you asked me to put on paper the substance of what I said. The delay has been partly, perhaps mainly, owing to the pressure of other demands upon my time and thoughts. But it has also been due to this, that an instinct similar to that which made me speak, has made me shrink from writing. It is enough in conversation to give the most partial and hasty touches, provided they be not in the main untrue. Those same touches when clothed in a form of greater assumption have but a meagre and unsatisfactory appearance, and may do even positive injustice. Most of all in the case of a character which was not only of rare quality, but which was so remarkable for the fineness of its lights and shadows. But you have a right to my recollections such as they are, and I will not withhold them.I may first refer to the earliest occasion on which I saw him; for it illustrates a point not unimportant in his history. On an evening in the month of January 1835, during what is called the short government of Sir Robert Peel, I was sent for by Sir Robert Peel, and received from him the offer, which I accepted, of the under-secretaryship of the colonies. From him I went on to your father, who was then secretary of state in that department, and who was thus to be, in official home-talk, my master. Without any apprehension of hurting you, I may confess, that I went in fear and trembling. [Then follows the passage already quoted in vol. i. p. 124.] I was only, I think, for about ten weeks his under-secretary. But as some men hate those whom they have injured, so others love those whom they have obliged; and his friendship continued warm and unintermitting for the subsequent twenty-six years of his life.Some of his many great qualities adorned him in common with several, or even with many, other contemporary statesmen: such as clearness of view, strength of the deliberative faculty, strong sense of duty, deep devotion to the crown, and the most thorough and uncompromising loyalty to his friends and colleagues. In this loyalty of intention many, I think, are not only praiseworthy but perfect. But the loyalty of intention was in him so assisted by other and distinctive qualities, as to give it a peculiar efficacy; and any one associated with Lord Aberdeen might always rest assured that he was safe in his hands. When our law did not allow prisoners the benefit of counsel, it was commonly said that the judge was counsel for the prisoner. Lord Aberdeen was always[pg 640]counsel for the absent. Doubtless he had pondered much upon the law,“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”It had entered profoundly into his being, and formed a large part of it. He was strong in his self-respect, but his respect for others, not for this man or that but for other men as men, was much more conspicuous. Rarely indeed have I heard him utter a word censuring opponents, or concerning those who actually were or had been friends, that could have given pain. If and when it was done, it was done so to speak judicially, upon full and reluctant conviction and with visible regret.If I have said that he had much in common with other distinguished men who were like him statesmen by profession, it has been by way of preface to what I have now to say; namely, that what has ever struck me in his character as a whole, was its distinctiveness. There were several mental virtues that he possessed in a degree very peculiar; there were, I think, one or two in which he stood almost alone. I am not in myself well qualified for handling a subject like this, and also my life has been too hurried to give me the most favourable opportunities. Still I must try to explain my meaning. I will name then the following characteristics, one and all of which were more prominent in him than in any public man I ever knew: mental calmness; the absence (if for want of better words I may describe it by a negative) of all egoism; the love of exact justice; a thorough tolerance of spirit; and last and most of all an entire absence of suspicion.There was something very remarkable in the combination of these qualities, as well as in their separate possession. Most men who might be happy enough to have one half his love of justice, would be so tossed with storms of indignation at injustice as to lose the balance of their judgment. But he had or seemed to have all the benefits, all the ennobling force of strong emotion, with a complete exemption from its dangers. His mind seemed to move in an atmosphere of chartered tranquillity, which allowed him the view of every object, however blinding to others, in its true position and proportion.It has always appeared to me that the love of justice is one of the rarest among all good qualities, I mean the love of it with full and commanding strength. I should almost dare to say there are five generous men to one just man. The beauty of justice is the beauty of simple form; the beauty of generosity is heightened with colour and every accessory. The passions will often ally themselves with generosity, but they always tend to divert from justice. The man who strongly loves justice must love it for its own sake, and such a love makes of itself a character of a simple grandeur to which it is hard to find an equal.Next to Lord Aberdeen, I think Sir Robert Peel was the most just of the just men I have had the happiness to know. During the years from 1841 to 1846, when they were respectively foreign secretary and prime minister, as I was at the board of[pg 641]trade for much of the time, I had occasion to watch the two in the conduct of several negotiations that involved commercial interests, such as that on the Stade Dues and that on the project of a commercial treaty with Portugal. Now and then Sir Robert Peel would show some degree of unconscious regard to the mere flesh and blood, if I may so speak, of Englishmen; Lord Aberdeen was invariably for putting the most liberal construction upon both the conduct and the claims of the other negotiating state.There is perhaps no position in this country, in which the love of justice that I have ascribed in such extraordinary measure to your father, can be so severely tested, as that very position of foreign minister, with which his name is so closely associated. Nowhere is a man so constantly and in such myriad forms tempted to partiality; nowhere can he do more for justice; but nowhere is it more clear that all human force is inadequate for its end. A nation is rarely just to other nations. Perhaps it is never truly just, though sometimes (like individuals) what may be called more than just. There can be no difficulty in any country, least of all this, in finding foreign ministers able and willing to assert the fair and reasonable claims of their countrymen with courage and with firmness. The difficulty is quite of another kind; it is to find the foreign minister, first, who will himself view those claims in the dry light both of reason and of prudence; secondly, and a far harder task, who will have the courage to hazard, and if need be to sacrifice himself in keeping the mind of his countrymen down to such claims as are strictly fair and reasonable. Lord Aberdeen was most happy in being secretary of state for foreign affairs in the time and in the political company of two such men as the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. He was also happy in the general prevalence of a spirit of great sobriety in the country, which was singularly free under the government of Sir Robert Peel, from the opposite but sometimes associated extremes of wantonness and fear. I am glad to think that his administration of his department earned a decided public approval. So just a man will, I think, rarely attain in that department to the same measure of popularity, while a less just man might easily obtain one far greater.To fall short of perfect candour would deprive all I have said of the little value it can possess, as that little value is all summed up in its sincerity. On one subject to which my mind has been directed for the last twelve or fourteen years, I had the misfortune to differ from your father. I mean the state of Italy and its relation to Austria in particular. I will not pretend to say that his view of the case of Italy appeared to me to harmonize with his general mode of estimating human action and political affairs. It seemed to me as if, called in early youth to deal with a particular combination of questions which were truly gigantic, his mind had received from their weight and force at an impressible period, a fixed form in relation to them, while it ever remained open and elastic in a peculiar degree upon all others. But my mode of[pg 642]solution for what appeared to me an anomaly is immaterial. I thankfully record that the Italian question was almost the only one within my recollection, quite the only one of practical importance, on which during the twenty-six years I have named, I was unable to accept his judgment. I bear witness with yet greater pleasure that, when I returned from Naples in 1851 deeply impressed with the horrible system that I had witnessed, his opinions on Italian politics did not prevent his readily undertaking to read the statement I had drawn, nor his using, when he had read it, more strong words on the subject, which came from lips like his with such peculiar force. As readily did he undertake to invoke the aid of the court of Vienna; to which, if I remember right, he transmitted the statement in manuscript.Though I feel that I cannot by any effort do justice to what I have termed his finely-shaded character, I also feel that I might be drawn onwards to great length on the subject. I must resist the impulse, but I cannot stop without saying a word on the quality which I regard as beyond all others his own, I mean the absence from his nature of all tendency to suspicion. Those who have read his state papers, and have admired their penetrating force and comprehensive scope, will not misunderstand me when I say that he was, in this respect, a little child; not from defect of vision, but from thorough nobleness of nature.I do not think it was by effort and self-command that he rid himself of suspicion. In the simple and strong aim of the man to be good himself, it belonged to the very strength and simplicity of that aim, that he should also think others good. I recollect, and I dare say you better recollect, one of his sayings:“I have a habit of believing people.”To some these words may not seem to import a peculiarity. But as descriptive of him they indicate what of all the points of his character seemed to me most peculiar. I have known one man as free from suspicions as was Lord Aberdeen, but he was not a politician. I am far from thinking statesmen, or politicians, less honourable than other men, quite the reverse; but the habit of their life renders them suspicious. The vicissitudes of politics, the changes of position, the changes of alliance, the sharp transitions from co-operation to antagonism, the inevitable contact with revolting displays of self-seeking and self-love; more than all these perhaps, the constant habit of forecasting the future and shaping all its contingencies beforehand, which is eminently the merit and intellectual virtue of the politician, all these tend to make him, and commonly do make him, suspicious even of his best friend. This suspicion may be found to exist in conjunction with regard, with esteem, nay with affection. For it must be recollected that it is not usually a suspicion of moral delinquency, but at least as it dwells in the better and higher natures, of intellectual error only, in some of its numerous forms, or at most of speaking with a reserve that may be more or less or even wholly unconscious. None of these explanations are needed for Lord Aberdeen. He always took[pg 643]words in their direct and simple meaning, and assumed them to be the index of the mind; and its full index too, so that he did not speculate to learn what undiscovered residue might still remain in its dark places. This entire immunity from suspicion, which makes our minds in general like a haunted place, and the sense of the immunity that he conveyed to his friends in all his dealings with them, combined with the deep serenity of his mind, which ever seemed to beguile and allay by some kindly process of nature excitement in others, gave an indescribable charm to all intercourse with him in critical and difficult circumstances. Hence perhaps in great part, and not merely from his intellectual gifts, was derived the remarkable power he seemed to me to exercise in winning confidences without seeking to win them; and, on the whole, I believe that this quality, could we hold it as it was held in him, would save us from ten erroneous judgments for one into which it might lead. For the grand characteristic of suspicion after all, as of superstition, is to see things that are not.I turn now to another point: Lord Aberdeen was not demonstrative; I do not suppose he could have been an actor; he was unstudied in speech; and it is of interest to inquire what it was that gave such extraordinary force and impressiveness to his language. He did not deal in antithesis. His sayings were not sharpened with gall. In short, one might go on disclaiming for him all the accessories to which most men who are impressive owe their impressiveness. Yet I never knew any one who was so impressive in brief utterances conveying the sum of the matter....History has also caught and will hold firmly and well the honoured name of your father. There was no tarnish upon his reputation more than upon his character. He will be remembered in connection with great passages of European policy not only as a man of singularly searching, large, and calm intelligence, but yet more as the just man, the man that used only true weights and measures, and ever held even the balance of his ordered mind. It is no reproach to other statesmen of this or other periods, to say that scarcely any of them have had a celebrity so entirely unaided by a transitory glare. But if this be so, it implies that while they for the most part must relatively lose, he must relatively and greatly gain. If they have had stage-lights and he has had none, it is the hour when those lights are extinguished that will for the first time do that justice as between them which he was too noble, too far aloft in the tone of his mind, to desire to anticipate. All the qualities and parts in which he was great were those that are the very foundation-stones of our being; as foundation-stones they are deep, and as being deep they are withdrawn from view; but time is their witness and their friend, and in the final distribution of posthumous fame Lord Aberdeen has nothing to forfeit, he has only to receive.I see on perusing what I have written, that in the endeavour to set forth the virtues and great qualities of your father, I seem[pg 644]more or less to disparage other men, including even Sir Robert Peel whom he so much esteemed and loved. I had no such intention, and it is the fault of my hand, not of my will. He would not have claimed, he would not have wished nor borne, that others should claim for him superiority, or even parity in all points with all his contemporaries. But there was a certain region of character which was, so to speak, all his own; and there other men do seem more or less dwarfed beside him. In the combination of profound feeling with a calm of mind equally profound, of thorough penetration with the largest charity, of the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove, in the total suppression and exclusion of self from his reckonings and actions—in all this we may think him supreme, and yet have a broad array of good and noble qualities in which he may have shared variously with others. There are other secrets of his character and inner life into which I do not pretend to have penetrated. It always seemed to me that there was a treasure-house within him, which he kept closed against the eyes of men. He is gone. He has done well in his generation. May peace and light be with him, and may honour and blessing long attend his memory upon earth.—Believe me, my dear Arthur, affectionately yours,W. E. Gladstone.Cabinet Of 1868-1874Page255First lord of the treasury, W. E. Gladstone.Lord chancellor, Lord Hatherly (Page Wood).President of the council, Earl de Grey (created Marquis of Ripon, 1871).Lord privy seal, Earl of Kimberley.Chancellor of the exchequer, Robert Lowe.Home secretary, Henry Austin Bruce.Foreign secretary, Earl of Clarendon.Colonial secretary, Earl Granville.War secretary, Edward Cardwell.First lord of the admiralty, H. C. E. Childers.Indian secretary, Duke of Argyll.President of the board of trade, John Bright.Chief secretary for Ireland, Chichester Fortescue.Postmaster general, Marquis of Hartington.President of the poor law board, George J. Goschen.On Lord Clarendon's death in June 1870, Lord Granville became foreign secretary; Lord Kimberley, colonial secretary; Viscount Halifax (Sir C. Wood), lord privy seal; and Mr. Forster, vice-president of the privy council, entered the cabinet.On Mr. Bright's resignation in December 1870, Mr. Chichester Fortescue became president of the board of trade; Lord Hartington succeeded him as chief secretary for Ireland; Mr. Monsell was appointed postmaster general without a seat in the cabinet.[pg 645]On Mr. Childers's resignation in March 1871, Mr. Goschen became first lord of the admiralty, and Mr. James Stansfeld president of the poor law board.In August 1872 Mr. Childers rejoined the cabinet, succeeding Lord Dufferin as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. In October Sir Roundell Palmer (created Lord Selborne) became lord chancellor on the retirement of Lord Hatherley.In August 1873 Lord Ripon and Mr. Childers retired, Mr. Gladstone became chancellor of the exchequer as well as first lord; Mr. Bright rejoined the cabinet as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster; Mr. Lowe became home secretary and Mr. Bruce (created Lord Aberdare) president of the council.Irish Church BillPage276Mr. Gladstone to the QueenJuly 21, 1869.—Mr. Gladstone presents his humble duty to your Majesty and reports that the cabinet met at 11 this day, and considered with anxious care its position and duty in regard to the Irish Church bill. The vote and declaration of the House of Lords last night were regarded as fatal if persisted in; and the cabinet deemed it impossible to meet proceedings of such a character with any tender of further concessions. The cabinet, however, considered at much length a variety of courses; as (1) To announce at once that they could no longer, after the vote and announcement of last night, be responsible for further proceedings in connection with the bill, but that they would leave it to the majority of the House of Lords to take such steps as it might think proper; (2) To go through the whole of the amendments of the bill [i.e.in the House of Lords], and then if they were adversely carried to declare and proceed as above; (3) To go through not the whole of the amendments but the endowment amendments, and to conclude that when these had been adversely decided, they could (as before) assume no further responsibility, but must leave the matter to the majority to consider; (4) To send the bill back to the House of Commons with the declaration that it would not be accepted there, and with the intention of simply moving the House to adhere to its amendments as last adjusted.Your Majesty has already been apprized by Mr. Gladstone's telegram in cipher of this afternoon, that (under the influence of a strong desire to exhibit patience, and to leave open every opportunity for reconsideration), the third of these courses had been adopted; although there was no doubt that the House of Commons was fully prepared to approve and sustain the first. Lord Granville deemed it just possible that the peers might be prepared to give way before another return of the bill from the House of Commons; and the question therefore was left open whether, if evidence to this effect should appear, the government should then fall in with[pg 646]that course of proceeding. Although the government have felt it to be impossible to make biddings in the face of the opposition, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been apprised, in strict confidence, of the nature and extent of the concession, which for the sake of peace they would be prepared to recommend. Sir R. Palmer is also substantially aware of it, and has expressed his opinion that on such terms the opposition ought to be ready to conclude the matter.Board And Voluntary SchoolsPage310Mr. Gladstone to M. BrightAug. 21, 1873.—An appeal to me was made to introduce board schools into Hawarden on account of my share in the Education Act. I stated the two views held by different supporters of the Act, respectively on the question of board schools and voluntary schools. For myself, I said, not in education only butin all things including education, I prefer voluntary to legal machinery, when the thing can be well done either way. But this question is not to be decided by a general preference or a general formula. Parliament has referred it to the choice of the local communities. They should decide according to the facts of the case before them. What are the facts in Hawarden? Four-fifths are already provided for; were it only one-fifth or were it two-fifths the case for the board (I said) would be overwhelming. But besides the four-fifths, arrangements are already made for a further provision in a voluntary school. Nothing remains to be done except to build threeinfantschools. The voluntary schools will be governed by a committee, including the churchwardens, and having a majority of laymen. The machinery of a board is of necessity cumbrous, and the method costly in comparison. I hold that we ought not to set up this machinery, in order to create three infant schools, where all the other wants of some 2000 people are already provided for.Views On A Classical EducationPage312Mr. Gladstone to Lord LytteltonPenmaenmawr, Aug. 29, 1861.—-Thanks for the brief notice which you recently took of the Public Schools Commission. I was heartily glad to hear that you had formed a drastic set of questions. I take the deepest interest in the object of the commission, and I have full confidence in its members and organs; and at all times I shall be very glad to hear what you are doing. Meantime I cannot help giving you, to be taken for what it is worth, the sum of my own thoughts upon the subject.... Thelowutilitarian argument in matter of education, for giving it what is termed a practical direction, is so plausible that I think we may[pg 647]on the whole be thankful that the instincts of the country have resisted what in argument it has been ill able to confute. We still hold by the classical training as the basis of a liberal education; parents dispose of their children in early youth accordingly; but if they were asked why they did so, it is probable they would give lamentably weak or unworthy reasons for it, such for example as that the public schools and universities open the way to desirable acquaintance and what is termed“good society.”Your commission will not I presume be able to pass by this question, but will have to look it in the face; and to proceed either upon a distinct affirmative, or a substantial negative, of the proposition that the classical training is the proper basis of a liberal education. I hope you will hold by affirmation and reject negation.But the reason why I trouble you upon the subject is this, that I think the friends of this principle have usually rather blinked the discussion, and have been content with making terms of compromise by way of buying off the adversary, which might be in themselves reasonable unless they were taken as mere instalments of a transaction intended in the long run to swallow up the principle itself. What I feel is that the relation of pure science, natural science, modern languages, modern history, and the rest of the old classical training ought to be founded on a principle and ought not to be treated simply as importunate creditors, that take a shilling in the £ to-day, because they hope to get another shilling to-morrow, and in the meantime have a recognition of their title. This recognition of title is just what I would refuse. I deny their right to a parallel or equal position; their true position is auxiliary, and as auxiliary it ought to be limited and restrained without scruple, as a regard to the paramount matter of education may dictate.But why after all is the classical training paramount? Is it because we find it established? because it improves memory or taste, or gives precision, or develops the faculty of speech? All these are but partial and fragmentary statements, so many narrow glimpses of a great and comprehensive truth. That truth I take to be that the modern European civilisation from the middle age downwards is the compound of two great factors, the Christian religion for the spirit of man, and the Greek, and in a secondary degree the Roman discipline for his mind and intellect. St. Paul is the apostle of the Gentiles, and is in his own person a symbol of this great wedding—the place, for example, of Aristotle and Plato in Christian education is not arbitrary nor in principle mutable. The materials of what we call classical training were prepared, and we have a right to say were advisedly prepared, in order that it might become not a mere adjunct but (in mathematical phrase) the complement of Christianity in its application to the culture of the human being formed both for this world and for the world to come.If this principle be true it is broad and high and clear enough, and supplies a key to all questions connected with the relation[pg 648]between the classical training of our youth and all other branches of their secular education. It must of course be kept within its proper place, and duly limited as to things and persons. It can only apply in full to that small proportion of the youth of any country, who are to become in the fullest sense educated men. It involves no extravagant or inconvenient assumptions respecting those who are to be educated for trades and professions in which the necessities of specific training must limit general culture. It leaves open every question turning upon individual aptitudes and inaptitudes and by no means requires that boys without a capacity for imbibing any of the spirit of classical culture are still to be mechanically plied with the instruments of it after their unfitness has become manifest. But it lays down the rule of education for those who have no internal and no external disqualification; and that rule, becoming a fixed and central point in the system, becomes also the point around which all others may be grouped.Mr. Gladstone to Sir S. NorthcoteNov. 12, 1861.—The letter I wrote to Lyttelton about the classical education suggested topics, which as you justly perceive are altogether esoteric. They have never to my knowledge been carefully worked out, and I think they well deserve it; but clearly your report is not the place. I will not say you are not prudent in suggesting that you should not even give an opinion upon the great question: What is the true place of the old classical learning in the human culture of the nineteenth century? I am far from venturing to say the contrary. But one thing I do think, namely, that it is desirable that, as far as may be, the members of the commission should have some answer to that question in their minds, and should write their report with reference to it. For centuries, through the lifetime of our great schools this classical culture has been made thelapis angularisof all secular culture of the highest class. Was this right or was it wrong, aye or no? I think it much to be desired that the commission should, if they will, proceed upon the affirmative or negative of that proposition, and should also make their choice for the former. This would be a long note to their report; but it need not be distinctly and separately heard in it. Such is my notion. As to particulars I have little to say that is worth hearing; but I think these three things. First, that we give much too little scope for deviation from what I think the normal standard to other and useful branches, when it has become evident that the normal standard is inapplicable; just as was the case in Oxford before the reform of the examinations, or let me rather say the new statutes. Secondly, I am extremely jealous of any invasion of modern languages which is to displace classical culture, or any portion of it in minds capable of following that walk. (I take it that among the usual modern tongues Italian has by far the greatest capacity for strict study and scholarship; whereas it is the one least in[pg 649]favour and the whole method of dealing with them is quite alien to strict study.) Lastly, I confess I grieve over the ignorance of natural history which I feel in myself and believe to exist in others. At some time, in some way, much more of all this ought to be brought in, but clearly it would serve in a great degree as recreation, and need not thrust aside whatever hard work boys are capable of doing.Position Of The Commander-In-Chief In ParliamentPage362Mr. Gladstone to the QueenJuly 8, 1871.—Mr. Gladstone believes that according to precedent the commander-in-chief, when a peer, has not shrunk from giving his opinion on measures submitted to the House of Lords. In 1847, the government of that day introduced the Short Service bill, of which on the merits it is believed that the Duke of Wellington, then commander-in-chief, did not approve. Indeed he expressed in debate on April 26th, 1847, his doubts whether the measure would produce the advantages which were anticipated from it; nevertheless, while having no political connection with the government, he spoke and voted in a division for the bill. It is probable, as the numbers were only 108 to 94, that his speech and vote alone carried the bill. Your Majesty will not fail to bear in mind that until 1855, there was always a very high military authority who was in political connection with the government, namely, the master of the ordnance. Indeed, unless Mr. Gladstone's recollection deceives him, Lord Beresford was required by the Duke of Wellington in 1829, as master of the ordnance, to support the Roman Catholic Relief bill. And it is still regretted by many that ministries have not since comprehended any such officer. All question, however, as to the political support of a ministry by the military chiefs of the army is now at an end.A Soldier At The War OfficePage363Mr. Gladstone to Mr. CardwellJan. 5, 1871.—It was a great advantage before 1854, that there was always a considerable soldier either in the cabinet or at least at the head of an important military department, and politically associated with the government. This we lost by the crude and ill-advised reconstructions of '55. But you, following in this point a wise initiative of your predecessor, have endeavoured to bring the appointment of Sir H. Storks into a position which makes it probably the best substitute for the former plan that can be had at present. The demand that a soldier shall be appointed at the present time would hold gooda fortiorifor all[pg 650]periods of greater emergency. I know not where that principle has been admitted in our military administration. If we have committed gross errors, it has been owing to an excess much more than to a defect of professional influence and counsel. In my opinion the qualities of a good administrator and statesman go to make a good war minister, especially at this juncture, far more than those of a good soldier. Show me the soldier who has those equally with you, and then let him take your place as S.S. But not till then. You were chosen for your office, not because you would do tolerably for easy times, and then could walk out, but because you were the best man the party could supply for the post. The reproaches aimed at you now are merely aimed at the government through you, and you are chosen to be the point of attack because the nation is sore on military matters in times of crisis, and the press which ought to check excitement, by most of its instruments ministers to its increase. You find yourself unable to suggest a successor; and I have seen no plan that would not weaken the government instead of strengthening it. You see what eulogies have been passed on Bright, now he is gone. You would rise in the market with many after resigning, to depreciate those who remain behind; but as I have said, you would not be allowed to have had a legitimate cause of going, and as far as my observation goes, retirements are quite as critically judged as acceptances of office, perhaps more so. What is really to be desired, is that we should get Storks into parliament if possible.Mr. Gladstone's Financial Legacy, 1869Page372Mr. Gladstone to Mr. LoweHawarden, Jan. 9, 1869.—I have referred to my list of remnants; and I will begin with those that I tried in parliament and failed in: 1. Collection of taxes by Queen's officers instead of local officers. 2. Taxation of charities. 3. Bill for restraining, with a view to ultimately abolishing, the circulation of the notes of private banks. 4. Plan for bringing the chancery and other judicial accounts under the control of parliament. Here I had a commission (on chancery accounts) but did not dare to go farther.The following are subjects which I was not able to take in hand:—1. Abolition of the remaining duty upon corn; an exceeding strong case. 2. I should be much disposed to abolish the tea licences as greatly restrictive of the consumption of a dutiable and useful commodity. I modified them; but am not sure that this was enough. The B.I.R. could throw light on this subject. 3. The probate duty calls, I fear, loudly for change; but I wanted either time or courage to take it in hand. 4. The remaining[pg 651]conveyance duties, apart from railways, I always considered as marked for extinction. On this subject Mr. Ayrton has rather decided antecedents. 5. The fire insurance duty is sure to be further assailed. Though not as bad (relatively to other taxes) as is supposed, it is bad enough to be very hard to defend in an adverse House; and this is one of the questions on which it is not likely that the opposition will help to see fair play. The promises that liberal reduction will lead to recovery of anything like the old or previous revenue have always been confidently pressed by irresponsible men, and are in my opinion illusory. The tax is a tax on property: and, as we have too few of these rather than too many, what would seem desirable is to commute it; leaving no more than a penny stamp on the policy. This might perhaps be done, if it were made part of a large budget. 6. The income-tax at 6d., I suppose, presents a forward claim. 7. The commutation of malt duty for beer duty must always, I presume, be spoken of with respect; but the working objections to it have thus far been found too hard to deal with.There is always room in detail for amendments of stamp duties, but the great case as among them is the probate. They are of a class which, without any legal knowledge, I found very hard to work through the House of Commons. I do not look upon the Act of 1844 as theendof legislation in currency; but this subject is a big one. Scotch and Irish notes would be hard to deal with until the English case is disposed of. I forget whether we have abolished the last of the restrictions on newspapers. If not, they deserve to be taken in hand, according to me. I have always wished to equalise the outgoings of the exchequer as much as possible over the several weeks of the year. Few incomes admit of this advantage in the same degree as the public income. It would make our“account”much more valuable to our bankers; therefore to us.These, I think, were the main matters which lay more or less in perspective before me. I must add that I am strongly in favour of paying off the national debt, not only by annual surpluses, but by terminable annuitiessold to the national debt commissioners for securities held by them against deposit monies. The opponents of this plan were Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Laing. I am satisfied that neither of them had taken the trouble, and it requires some trouble, to understand it. I admit them to be no mean authorities. Terminable annuities sold to others than yourself are quite another matter. I got into the law some power of this kind over post office savings bank monies to be exercised by the chancellor of the exchequer from time to time.This is all I need trouble you with, and I have endeavoured to keep clear of all idiosyncratic propositions as much as in me lies. Of course such a letter calls for no answer. As this legacy opinion to you takes the form of a donationinter vivosit will, I hope, escape duty.[pg 652]Prince Albert, 1854Page426Mr. Gladstone wrote an elaborate article in theMorning Chronicle(Jan. 16, 1854) warmly defending the court against attacks that had clouded the popularity of the Prince Consort. They came to little more than that the Prince attended meetings of the privy council; that he was present when the Queen gave an audience to a minister; that he thwarted ministerial counsels and gave them an un-English character; that in corresponding with relatives abroad he used English influence apart from the Queen's advisers. Mr. Gladstone had no great difficulty in showing how little this was worth, either as fact supported by evidence, or as principle supported by the fitness of things; and he put himself on the right ground.“We do not raise the question whether, if the minister thinks it right to communicate with the sovereign alone, he is not entitled to a private audience. But we unhesitatingly assert that if the Prince is present when the Queen confers with her advisers, and if his presence is found to be disadvantageous to the public interests, we are not left without a remedy; for the minister is as distinctly responsible for those interests in this as in any other matter, and he is bound on his responsibility to parliament, to decline compliance even with a personal wish of the sovereign when he believes that his assent would be injurious to the country.”Parliamentary CrisesPage451Extract from Mr. Gladstone's letter to the Queen, March 15, 1873There have been within that period [1830-1873] twelve of what may be properly called parliamentary crises involving the question of a change of government. In nine of the twelve cases (viz., those of 1830, 1835, 1841, 1846, 1852, 1858, 1859, 1866, and 1868), the party which had been in opposition was ready to take, and did take, office. In the other three it failed to do this (viz., in 1832, 1851, 1855), and the old ministry or a modification of it returned to power. But in each of these three cases the attempt of the opposition to form a government was not relinquished until after such efforts had been made by its leaders to carry the conviction to the world that all its available means of action were exhausted; and there is no instance on record during the whole period (or indeed so far as Mr. Gladstone remembers at an earlier date) in which a summary refusal given on the instant by the leader was tendered as sufficient to release the opposition from the obligations it had incurred. This is the more remarkable because in two of the three instances the opposition had not, in the same mode or degree as on Wednesday morning last, contributed by concerted action to bring about the crisis. On the 7th of May 1832 the opposition of the day carried in the House of Lords a motion which went only[pg 653]to alter the order of the opening (and doubtless very important) clauses of the Reform bill, but which the government of Lord Grey deemed fatal to the integrity of the measure. Their resignation was announced, and Lord Lyndhurst was summoned to advise King William iv. on the 9th of May. On the 12th the Duke of Wellington was called to take a share in the proceedings, the details of which are matters of history. It was only on the 15th that the Duke and Lord Lyndhurst found their resources at an end, when Lord Grey was again sent for, and on the 17th the Duke announced in the House of Lords his abandonment of the task he had strenuously endeavoured to fulfil. On the 20th February 1851 the government of Lord Russell was defeated in the House of Commons on Mr. Locke King's bill for the enlargement of the county franchise by a majority composed of its own supporters. Lord Derby, then Lord Stanley, being sent for by your Majesty on the 22nd, observed that there were at the time three parties in the House of Commons and that the ministry had never yet been defeated by his political friends. He therefore counselled your Majesty to ascertain whether the government of Lord Russell could not be strengthened by a partial reconstruction, and failing that measure he engaged to use his own best efforts to form an administration. That attempt at reconstruction (to which nothing similar is now in question) did fail, and Lord Derby was therefore summoned by your Majesty on the 25th, and at once applied himself, as is well known, to every measure which seemed to give him a hope of success in constructing a government. On the 27th he apprised your Majesty of his failure in these efforts; and on March 3rd the cabinet of Lord Russell returned to office. (This recital is founded on Lord Derby's statement in the House of Lords, Feb. 28, 1851.) On Jan. 29, 1855, the government of Lord Aberdeen was defeated in the House of Commons on a motion made by an independent member of their own party and supported by twenty-five of the liberal members present. Though this defeat resembles the one last named in that it cannot be said to be due to the concerted action of the opposition as a party, Lord Derby, being summoned by your Majesty on the 1st of Feb. proceeded to examine and ascertain in every quarter the means likely to be at his disposal for rendering assistance in the exigency, and it was not until Feb. 3 that he receded from his endeavours.Cabinet Of 1880-1885Page630First lord of the treasury, chancellor of the exchequer, W. E. Gladstone.Lord chancellor, Lord Selborne.President of the council, Earl Spencer.Lord privy seal, Duke of Argyll.Home secretary, Sir W. V. Harcourt.Foreign secretary, Earl Granville.[pg 654]Colonial secretary, Earl of Kimberley.War secretary, H. C. E. Childers.First lord of the admiralty, Earl of Northbrook.Indian secretary, Marquis of Hartington.President of the board of trade, Joseph Chamberlain.Chief secretary for Ireland, W. E. Forster.Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, John Bright.President of the local government board, J. G. Dodson.On the resignation of the Duke of Argyll, April 1881, Lord Carlingford (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) became lord privy seal.In May 1882, Earl Spencer became lord-lieutenant of Ireland. On Mr. Forster's resignation he was succeeded by Lord Frederick Cavendish, and then by Mr. G. O. Trevelyan, neither of whom had a seat in the cabinet.On the resignation of Mr. Bright in July 1882, Mr. Dodson became chancellor of the duchy, and Sir Charles Dilke president of the local government board.In December 1882, Mr. Gladstone resigned the chancellorship of the exchequer to Mr. Childers; Lord Hartington became war secretary; Lord Kimberley, Indian secretary, and Lord Derby colonial secretary.In March 1883, Lord Carlingford succeeded Earl Spencer as president of the council.In October 1884, Mr. Trevelyan succeeded Mr. Dodson as chancellor of the duchy (with the cabinet), Mr. Campbell-Bannerman becoming Irish secretary without a seat in the cabinet.In February 1885, Lord Rosebery, first commissioner of works, succeeded Lord Carlingford as lord privy seal (with the cabinet) [Lord Carlingford had also been president of the council from March 1883 in succession to Lord Spencer], and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, postmaster-general, entered the cabinet.[pg 655]

AppendixBudget Of 1860Page26Sir William Heathcote wrote to Mr. Gladstone, May 4, 1861:—I understood you in your rebukes of Lewis in 1857, to be aiming not only at a change of his plan of finance in that particular year, but (if that were impossible, or at least could not be carried), at a resumption as early as circumstances would allow, of what you thought the proper line of action which he insisted on suspending. Income-tax and war duties on tea and sugar were and would continue to be, as I understood, the primary claimants for reduction of taxation, in your judgment.... The very vehemence of your convictions and expressions onbothoccasions perplexes me.Mr. Gladstone replied the same day:—... You think, 1. That I bound myself to the reduction of the tea and sugar duties as a policy for future occasions, and not merely for the issue then raised. 2. That in like manner I was bound to the reduction and abolition of the income-tax. 3. That even if there arose in the system of our expenditure a great change, involving an increase of ten or fifteen millions of money over 1853, I was still in consistency bound to hold over the first chance of reduction for income-tax, tea and sugar. 4. That consequently until these duties were remitted I could not propose to prosecute any commercial reforms involving, as nearly all of them do, a sacrifice of revenue for a time. 5. It is because I have departed from these positions by proposing a multitude of reductions and abolitions of duty, other than the three mentioned, and partly or wholly in preference to them, that you have lost confidence in my judgment on these matters (a confidence to which I do not pretend that I had ever any claim).If I have interpreted you aright, and I hope you will tell me whether I have done so or not, this is all to me exceedingly curious; such are the differences in the opinions of men formed from their different points of view. Now I will give you mine. To give effect to the pledge of honour, by which I became bound in 1853, I made a desperate effort in 1857, with all the zeal of which I was capable, and with all the passion to which I am liable. It was my opinion that the course then taken would be decisive as to the operations in 1860, for the income-tax never can be got rid of[pg 633]except by prospective finance, reaching over several years, and liable to impediment and disturbance accordingly. I therefore protested against the whole scale of expenditure then proposed; as well as against particular kinds of expenditure to which I might refer. I likewise protested against the provision for that expenditure which the government of the day proposed. First, because the expenditure itself was excessive, in my view. Secondly, because in the mode of that provision I thought the remission of income-tax was large out of all proportion to the remission on indirect taxes; and this disproportion I regarded as highly dangerous. I determined to let no political prejudice stand in my way, and to test to the best of my very feeble power the opinion of parliament with respect to tea and sugar. I stated that if the opinion of parliament were against me I should not factiously prolong the contest but should withdraw from it. Not only was the opinion of parliament against me, but it so happened that the opinion of the country was immediately afterwards taken by a dissolution on that and on other kindred questions. The country affirmed the policy of Lord Palmerston, and the policy of a materially increased expenditure, by an overwhelming majority. I had misjudged public opinion; they had read it aright. After the dissolution of 1857, Sir George Lewis, who had previously raised the tea and sugar duties for one year, proposed to raise them for two more. I immediately followed in debate, and thanked him warmly for doing it. All this of course I can prove. I said, we are going to have more expenditure, we must therefore have more taxation.As I have gone thus far with my history, I will conclude it. Notwithstanding what had happened, I did not absolutely abandon at that time the hope that we might still reach in 1860 a state which might enable us to abolish the income-tax. I had a faint expectation of more economy under another government. When Lord Derby's administration came in in 1858, they professed to reduce expenditure by £800,000, and to contemplate further reductions. I expressed my satisfaction, and gave them the extreme of support that I could. But I then clearly pointed out that, even with the scale of expenditure they then proposed, we could not abolish the income-tax in 1860. In a few months, their reductions vanished into air. In 1859 came the famous“reconstruction.”I took office in June, and found a scale of expenditure going on in the treasury far more prodigal and wanton than I had ever charged upon Lord Palmerston's first government. I found also that when the estimates had been completed, I believe entirely ontheirbasis, there was a probable deficiency of four or five millions for a year of which nearly one-third had passed. And the expenditure was I think nearly seventy millions, or some fourteen millions more than in 1853. This was not the act only of the government. The opposition halloed them on; and the country, seized with a peculiar panic, was in a humour even more lavish than the opposition.[pg 634]My view was, and I stated it, that we ought to provide for this expenditure in a due proportion between direct and indirect taxes. I showed that this proportion had not been observed; that we had continued to levy large amounts of war tax on tea and sugar, and had returned to the scale of 1853 for income. I proposed to provide the necessary sums chiefly by an increase of income-tax. But neither then (in July 1859), nor for nearly two and a half years before, had I ever (to my knowledge) presumed to speak of any one as bound to abolish the income-tax or to remit the additional duties on tea and sugar.I fully expect fromyouthe admission that as to these measures I could not in the altered circumstances be bound absolutely to the remissions. But you say I was bound to give them a preference over all other remissions. Nowhere I believe can one word to this effect be extracted from any speech of mine. I found in 1860 that all the reforming legislation, which had achieved such vast results, had been suspended for seven years. We were then raising by duties doomed in 1853, from twelve to thirteen millions. It would in my opinion have been no less than monstrous on my part to recognise the preferences you claim for these particular duties. All of them indeed would have been reliefs, even the income-tax which is I think proved to be the least relief of any. But, though reliefs, they were hardly reforms; and experience had shown us that reforms were in fact double and treble reliefs. I may be wrong, but it is my opinion and I found it on experience, that the prospect of the removal of the three collectively (income, tea extra, and sugar extra) being in any case very remote, it is less remote with than without the reforming measures of the last and (I hope I may add) of the present year. Had the expenditure of 1853 been resumed, there would notwithstanding the Russian war have been, in my opinion, room for all these three things. 1. Abolition of income-tax by or near 1860; 2. remission of increases on tea and sugar within the same time; 3. the prosecution of the commercial reforms.It may be said that having set my face against an excess of expenditure I ought to have considered that a holy war, and not to have receded. Although I place public economy somewhat higher as a matter of duty than many might do, I do not think it would have been right, I do think it would have been foolish and presumptuous in me to have gone beyond these two things: first, making an effort to the utmost of my power at the critical moment (as I took it to be), and secondly, on being defeated to watch for opportunities thereafter. Since it should be remembered I do not recommend or desire sweeping and sudden reductions.The chief errors that I see myself to have committed are these. In 1853 when I took the unusual course of estimating our income for seven years, and assuming that our expenditure would either continue as it was, or only move onwards gradually and gently, I ought no doubt to have pointed out explicitly, that a great disturbance and increase of our expenditure would baffle my[pg 635]reckonings. Again in 1857 the temper of the public mind had undergone a change which I failed to discern; and I attacked the government and the chancellor of the exchequer of that day for doing what the country desired though I did not. I name these as specific errors, over and above the general one of excess of heat.The budget of last year I cannot admit to have been an error. People say it should have been smaller. My belief is that if it had been a smaller boat it would not have lived in such a sea. I speak of the period of the session before the China war became certain. When it did so, we were in a great strait about the paper duty. We felt the obligation incurred by the vote on the second reading, and we construed it according to the established usage. We took the more arduous, but I think the more honourable course for a government to pursue. Had we abandoned the bill, I know not how we could have looked in the face those who had acted and invested on the faith of an unbroken practice. I admit that political motives greatly concurred to recommend the budget of last year. It was a budget of peace, and peace wanted it. The budget of this year followed from the budget of last, given the other circumstances. At the same time I can understand how the claim of tea could be set up, but not well after the occurrences of last year how it could be supported.This is a long egotistical story. But when you consider that it contains my whole story (exceptpièces justificatives) in answer to so many speeches in both Houses and elsewhere, for never to this hour have I opened my lips in personal defence, you will understand why I might be garrulous....Notwithstanding the mild doctrine I have held about expenditure I admit it may be said I ought not to have joined a government which had such extended views in that direction, even though they were the views of the nation. Much may be said on this. I may, however, remark that when the government was formed I did not fully conceive the extent to which we should proceed.The Cabinet. 1860Page36Mr. Gladstone's memorandum on the currents of opinion in the cabinet of 1860 concludes as follows:—1. The most Italian members of the cabinet have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, W.E.G., Gibson, Argyll. The least Italian: Lewis, Wood, Grey, Herbert, Villiers (especially).2. In foreign policy generally the most combative have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, the chancellor. The least combative: Duke of Somerset, Duke of Argyll, Granville, Gibson, Herbert, Lewis, Grey, W.E.G., Wood, the same in feeling but not active.[pg 636]3. In defences and expenditure, the most alarmed, or most martial (as the case may be), have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, S. Herbert, followed by Duke of Somerset, the chancellor, Granville, Cardwell. Inclined the other way: Gibson, W.E.G., Lewis, Grey, Duke of Argyll (Elgin, I think).4. In finance some are for movement, some stationary or retrograde so as to be ready for immediate war. Yet here we are not divided simply as combative or anti-combative. The onward men in finance are: Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, Granville, Argyll, Gibson, W.E.G., and, I think, the chancellor. The stationary men are, first and foremost: Sir George Lewis, Sir C. Wood; next to these, Lord Palmerston, Cardwell, and, I think, Villiers, Herbert.5. On reform I must distinguish between (a) extension of the franchise and (b) redistribution of seats. In the first the more liberal men are: Lord John Russell, Duke of Somerset, Duke of Newcastle, Duke of Argyll, Gibson, W.E.G. The fearful or opposed are: Lord Palmerston, C. Villiers, S. Herbert. In the second, for small disfranchisement were, I think, all the first except Newcastle. For larger disfranchisement: Newcastle, Villiers, and Lord Palmerston, I think not greatly averse. In fact, I think that larger disfranchisement of places may have been favoured by him, 1. as a substitute for enlargement of the franchise, which he chiefly dreads; 2. as perhaps an obstacle to the framing of a measure.6. In church matters Herbert, Newcastle, and I are the most conservative and the most church-like; with a sympathy from Argyll. But, as I said, there is no struggle here: patronage, the sore subject, not being a cabinet affair.Session Of 1860Page47Extract from a Letter to the Duke of Argyll.Penmaen., September 3, 1860.—The session has been one to make all of us thoughtful, and me perhaps most of all. It is indeed much before my mind, but my head has not ceased to whirl, so that I cannot get a clear view of what Seward would call my position. Two things I know, one is that it produced the greatest pleasures and the greatest pains I have ever known in politics; the other that 1 have had to take various decisions and perform acts that could neither be satisfactory to others, nor from the doubt attaching to one side or the other of the alternative, even to myself. To have been the occasion of the blow to the House of Commons, or as I call it the“gigantic innovation,”will be a grief to me as long as I live; if by wildness and rashness I have been its cause, it will be a much greater grief. Of that I am not[pg 637]yet able to judge. On the whole when I think of the cabinet, I always go back to Jacob and Esau fighting in their mother's womb; only here there have been many Jacobs and Esaus, by which I do not mean the sixteen members of the cabinet, but the many and very unhandy causes of division. Perhaps I should find it easiest in the work of confession to own my neighbour's faults,i.e.to dwell upon those strange sins of foreign policy which have happily for the most part been nipped in the bud almostà l'unanimité(yet with what exceptions!); but avoiding that task, I will make my own confession. I cannot justify the finance of the year as a whole.... As to the amount of the final demand [for the China war], what it really demonstrates isoneamong the follies and dangers of our high-handed policy, our want of control over proceedings at the other end of the world. But the weak point is the fortification plan; I do not now speak of its own merits or demerits, but I speak of it in relation to the budget.... It is a vile precedent to give away money by remission, and borrow to supply the void; and in the full andchiefresponsibility for having established this precedent I am involved, not by the budget of February but by the consent of July to the scheme which involved the borrowing. No doubt there are palliating circumstances; and lastly the grievous difficulty of choice between mischievous [illegible] and mischievous resignation. Still I must say, it is in retrospect, as the people and parliament have a right to judge it, a bad and unworkmanlike business, and under a skilful analysis of it in the House of Commons (which there is no one opposite fit to make, except it be Northcote, who perhaps scruples it) I should wince. All these things and others more inward than these, make sore places in the mind; but on the other hand, that I may close with a gleam of sunshine like that which is now casting its shadow on my paper from Penmaenmawr after a rough morning, I am thankful in the highest degree to have had a share in resisting the alarmist mania of the day by means of the French treaty, to which, if we escape collision, I think the escape will have been mainly due; and likewise in one at least negative service to the great Italian cause, which is not Italian merely but European.Mr. Pitt's War FinancePage59Mr. Gladstone to Herbert GladstoneMarch 10, 1876.—Mr. Pitt's position in the Revolutionary war was, I think, a false one. To keep out of that war demanded from the people of this country an extraordinary degree of self-control, and this degree of it they did not possess. The consequence of our going into it was to give an intensity and vitality to the struggle, which but for the tenacity of English character it would not have possessed. Mr. Pitt did not show the great genius in war which he possessed as a peace minister. Until the epoch[pg 638]of the Peninsula our military performances were small and poor, and the method of subsidy was unsatisfactory and ineffective. The effect of borrowing money in three per cents. was to load us with a very heavy capital of national debt. I think at one time we only got £46, or some such amount, for the £100. It must, however, be taken into view that a perpetual annuity of £3, redeemable upon paying £100, broughtmorethan 3/4 of what a perpetual annuity of £4, similarly redeemable, would have brought; or than 3/5 of what a £5 annuity, similarly redeemable, would have brought. It is not easy to strike the balance. Mr. Newmarch, a living economist of some authority, I believe, thinks Mr. Pitt was right. I do not think the case is so clear against him as todetractfrom his great reputation. But were I in the unhappy position of having to call for a large loan, I should be disposed to ask for the tender in more than one form,e.g., to ask for a tender in three per cents, pure and simple, and an alternative in 4 or 5 per cents., with that rate of interest guaranteed for a certain number of years. Sir Robert Walpole had not to contend with like difficulties, and I think his administration should be compared with theearly yearsof Pitt's, in which way of judging he would come off second, though a man of cool and sagacious judgment, while morally he stood low.French Commercial Treaty. 1860Page66Mr. Gladstone at Leeds, October 8, 1881:—I, for my part, look with the deepest interest upon the share that I had in concluding—I will not say so much in concluding, but in conducting on this side of the water, and within the walls of parliament as well as in administration—the proceedings which led to the memorable French treaty of 1860. It is quite true that that treaty did not produce the whole of the benefits that some too sanguine anticipations may possibly have expected from it, that it did not produce a universal smash of protective duties, as I wish it had, throughout the civilised world. But it did something. It enormously increased the trade between this country and France. It effectually checked and traversed in the year 1860 tendencies of a very different kind towards needless alarms and panics, and tendencies towards convulsions and confusion in Europe. There was no more powerful instrument for confining and controlling those wayward and angry spirits at that particular crisis, than the commercial treaty with France. It produced no inconsiderable effect for a number of years upon the legislation of various European countries, which tended less decisively than we could have desired, but still intelligibly and beneficially, in the direction of freedom of trade.[pg 639]Lord AberdeenPage87Mr. Gladstone to Sir Arthur Gordon (Lord Stanmore)Downing Street, April 21, 1861.—My dear Arthur,—When, within a few days after your father's death, I referred in conversation with you to one or two points in his character, it was from the impulse of the moment, and without any idea of making my words matter of record. Months have now passed since you asked me to put on paper the substance of what I said. The delay has been partly, perhaps mainly, owing to the pressure of other demands upon my time and thoughts. But it has also been due to this, that an instinct similar to that which made me speak, has made me shrink from writing. It is enough in conversation to give the most partial and hasty touches, provided they be not in the main untrue. Those same touches when clothed in a form of greater assumption have but a meagre and unsatisfactory appearance, and may do even positive injustice. Most of all in the case of a character which was not only of rare quality, but which was so remarkable for the fineness of its lights and shadows. But you have a right to my recollections such as they are, and I will not withhold them.I may first refer to the earliest occasion on which I saw him; for it illustrates a point not unimportant in his history. On an evening in the month of January 1835, during what is called the short government of Sir Robert Peel, I was sent for by Sir Robert Peel, and received from him the offer, which I accepted, of the under-secretaryship of the colonies. From him I went on to your father, who was then secretary of state in that department, and who was thus to be, in official home-talk, my master. Without any apprehension of hurting you, I may confess, that I went in fear and trembling. [Then follows the passage already quoted in vol. i. p. 124.] I was only, I think, for about ten weeks his under-secretary. But as some men hate those whom they have injured, so others love those whom they have obliged; and his friendship continued warm and unintermitting for the subsequent twenty-six years of his life.Some of his many great qualities adorned him in common with several, or even with many, other contemporary statesmen: such as clearness of view, strength of the deliberative faculty, strong sense of duty, deep devotion to the crown, and the most thorough and uncompromising loyalty to his friends and colleagues. In this loyalty of intention many, I think, are not only praiseworthy but perfect. But the loyalty of intention was in him so assisted by other and distinctive qualities, as to give it a peculiar efficacy; and any one associated with Lord Aberdeen might always rest assured that he was safe in his hands. When our law did not allow prisoners the benefit of counsel, it was commonly said that the judge was counsel for the prisoner. Lord Aberdeen was always[pg 640]counsel for the absent. Doubtless he had pondered much upon the law,“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”It had entered profoundly into his being, and formed a large part of it. He was strong in his self-respect, but his respect for others, not for this man or that but for other men as men, was much more conspicuous. Rarely indeed have I heard him utter a word censuring opponents, or concerning those who actually were or had been friends, that could have given pain. If and when it was done, it was done so to speak judicially, upon full and reluctant conviction and with visible regret.If I have said that he had much in common with other distinguished men who were like him statesmen by profession, it has been by way of preface to what I have now to say; namely, that what has ever struck me in his character as a whole, was its distinctiveness. There were several mental virtues that he possessed in a degree very peculiar; there were, I think, one or two in which he stood almost alone. I am not in myself well qualified for handling a subject like this, and also my life has been too hurried to give me the most favourable opportunities. Still I must try to explain my meaning. I will name then the following characteristics, one and all of which were more prominent in him than in any public man I ever knew: mental calmness; the absence (if for want of better words I may describe it by a negative) of all egoism; the love of exact justice; a thorough tolerance of spirit; and last and most of all an entire absence of suspicion.There was something very remarkable in the combination of these qualities, as well as in their separate possession. Most men who might be happy enough to have one half his love of justice, would be so tossed with storms of indignation at injustice as to lose the balance of their judgment. But he had or seemed to have all the benefits, all the ennobling force of strong emotion, with a complete exemption from its dangers. His mind seemed to move in an atmosphere of chartered tranquillity, which allowed him the view of every object, however blinding to others, in its true position and proportion.It has always appeared to me that the love of justice is one of the rarest among all good qualities, I mean the love of it with full and commanding strength. I should almost dare to say there are five generous men to one just man. The beauty of justice is the beauty of simple form; the beauty of generosity is heightened with colour and every accessory. The passions will often ally themselves with generosity, but they always tend to divert from justice. The man who strongly loves justice must love it for its own sake, and such a love makes of itself a character of a simple grandeur to which it is hard to find an equal.Next to Lord Aberdeen, I think Sir Robert Peel was the most just of the just men I have had the happiness to know. During the years from 1841 to 1846, when they were respectively foreign secretary and prime minister, as I was at the board of[pg 641]trade for much of the time, I had occasion to watch the two in the conduct of several negotiations that involved commercial interests, such as that on the Stade Dues and that on the project of a commercial treaty with Portugal. Now and then Sir Robert Peel would show some degree of unconscious regard to the mere flesh and blood, if I may so speak, of Englishmen; Lord Aberdeen was invariably for putting the most liberal construction upon both the conduct and the claims of the other negotiating state.There is perhaps no position in this country, in which the love of justice that I have ascribed in such extraordinary measure to your father, can be so severely tested, as that very position of foreign minister, with which his name is so closely associated. Nowhere is a man so constantly and in such myriad forms tempted to partiality; nowhere can he do more for justice; but nowhere is it more clear that all human force is inadequate for its end. A nation is rarely just to other nations. Perhaps it is never truly just, though sometimes (like individuals) what may be called more than just. There can be no difficulty in any country, least of all this, in finding foreign ministers able and willing to assert the fair and reasonable claims of their countrymen with courage and with firmness. The difficulty is quite of another kind; it is to find the foreign minister, first, who will himself view those claims in the dry light both of reason and of prudence; secondly, and a far harder task, who will have the courage to hazard, and if need be to sacrifice himself in keeping the mind of his countrymen down to such claims as are strictly fair and reasonable. Lord Aberdeen was most happy in being secretary of state for foreign affairs in the time and in the political company of two such men as the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. He was also happy in the general prevalence of a spirit of great sobriety in the country, which was singularly free under the government of Sir Robert Peel, from the opposite but sometimes associated extremes of wantonness and fear. I am glad to think that his administration of his department earned a decided public approval. So just a man will, I think, rarely attain in that department to the same measure of popularity, while a less just man might easily obtain one far greater.To fall short of perfect candour would deprive all I have said of the little value it can possess, as that little value is all summed up in its sincerity. On one subject to which my mind has been directed for the last twelve or fourteen years, I had the misfortune to differ from your father. I mean the state of Italy and its relation to Austria in particular. I will not pretend to say that his view of the case of Italy appeared to me to harmonize with his general mode of estimating human action and political affairs. It seemed to me as if, called in early youth to deal with a particular combination of questions which were truly gigantic, his mind had received from their weight and force at an impressible period, a fixed form in relation to them, while it ever remained open and elastic in a peculiar degree upon all others. But my mode of[pg 642]solution for what appeared to me an anomaly is immaterial. I thankfully record that the Italian question was almost the only one within my recollection, quite the only one of practical importance, on which during the twenty-six years I have named, I was unable to accept his judgment. I bear witness with yet greater pleasure that, when I returned from Naples in 1851 deeply impressed with the horrible system that I had witnessed, his opinions on Italian politics did not prevent his readily undertaking to read the statement I had drawn, nor his using, when he had read it, more strong words on the subject, which came from lips like his with such peculiar force. As readily did he undertake to invoke the aid of the court of Vienna; to which, if I remember right, he transmitted the statement in manuscript.Though I feel that I cannot by any effort do justice to what I have termed his finely-shaded character, I also feel that I might be drawn onwards to great length on the subject. I must resist the impulse, but I cannot stop without saying a word on the quality which I regard as beyond all others his own, I mean the absence from his nature of all tendency to suspicion. Those who have read his state papers, and have admired their penetrating force and comprehensive scope, will not misunderstand me when I say that he was, in this respect, a little child; not from defect of vision, but from thorough nobleness of nature.I do not think it was by effort and self-command that he rid himself of suspicion. In the simple and strong aim of the man to be good himself, it belonged to the very strength and simplicity of that aim, that he should also think others good. I recollect, and I dare say you better recollect, one of his sayings:“I have a habit of believing people.”To some these words may not seem to import a peculiarity. But as descriptive of him they indicate what of all the points of his character seemed to me most peculiar. I have known one man as free from suspicions as was Lord Aberdeen, but he was not a politician. I am far from thinking statesmen, or politicians, less honourable than other men, quite the reverse; but the habit of their life renders them suspicious. The vicissitudes of politics, the changes of position, the changes of alliance, the sharp transitions from co-operation to antagonism, the inevitable contact with revolting displays of self-seeking and self-love; more than all these perhaps, the constant habit of forecasting the future and shaping all its contingencies beforehand, which is eminently the merit and intellectual virtue of the politician, all these tend to make him, and commonly do make him, suspicious even of his best friend. This suspicion may be found to exist in conjunction with regard, with esteem, nay with affection. For it must be recollected that it is not usually a suspicion of moral delinquency, but at least as it dwells in the better and higher natures, of intellectual error only, in some of its numerous forms, or at most of speaking with a reserve that may be more or less or even wholly unconscious. None of these explanations are needed for Lord Aberdeen. He always took[pg 643]words in their direct and simple meaning, and assumed them to be the index of the mind; and its full index too, so that he did not speculate to learn what undiscovered residue might still remain in its dark places. This entire immunity from suspicion, which makes our minds in general like a haunted place, and the sense of the immunity that he conveyed to his friends in all his dealings with them, combined with the deep serenity of his mind, which ever seemed to beguile and allay by some kindly process of nature excitement in others, gave an indescribable charm to all intercourse with him in critical and difficult circumstances. Hence perhaps in great part, and not merely from his intellectual gifts, was derived the remarkable power he seemed to me to exercise in winning confidences without seeking to win them; and, on the whole, I believe that this quality, could we hold it as it was held in him, would save us from ten erroneous judgments for one into which it might lead. For the grand characteristic of suspicion after all, as of superstition, is to see things that are not.I turn now to another point: Lord Aberdeen was not demonstrative; I do not suppose he could have been an actor; he was unstudied in speech; and it is of interest to inquire what it was that gave such extraordinary force and impressiveness to his language. He did not deal in antithesis. His sayings were not sharpened with gall. In short, one might go on disclaiming for him all the accessories to which most men who are impressive owe their impressiveness. Yet I never knew any one who was so impressive in brief utterances conveying the sum of the matter....History has also caught and will hold firmly and well the honoured name of your father. There was no tarnish upon his reputation more than upon his character. He will be remembered in connection with great passages of European policy not only as a man of singularly searching, large, and calm intelligence, but yet more as the just man, the man that used only true weights and measures, and ever held even the balance of his ordered mind. It is no reproach to other statesmen of this or other periods, to say that scarcely any of them have had a celebrity so entirely unaided by a transitory glare. But if this be so, it implies that while they for the most part must relatively lose, he must relatively and greatly gain. If they have had stage-lights and he has had none, it is the hour when those lights are extinguished that will for the first time do that justice as between them which he was too noble, too far aloft in the tone of his mind, to desire to anticipate. All the qualities and parts in which he was great were those that are the very foundation-stones of our being; as foundation-stones they are deep, and as being deep they are withdrawn from view; but time is their witness and their friend, and in the final distribution of posthumous fame Lord Aberdeen has nothing to forfeit, he has only to receive.I see on perusing what I have written, that in the endeavour to set forth the virtues and great qualities of your father, I seem[pg 644]more or less to disparage other men, including even Sir Robert Peel whom he so much esteemed and loved. I had no such intention, and it is the fault of my hand, not of my will. He would not have claimed, he would not have wished nor borne, that others should claim for him superiority, or even parity in all points with all his contemporaries. But there was a certain region of character which was, so to speak, all his own; and there other men do seem more or less dwarfed beside him. In the combination of profound feeling with a calm of mind equally profound, of thorough penetration with the largest charity, of the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove, in the total suppression and exclusion of self from his reckonings and actions—in all this we may think him supreme, and yet have a broad array of good and noble qualities in which he may have shared variously with others. There are other secrets of his character and inner life into which I do not pretend to have penetrated. It always seemed to me that there was a treasure-house within him, which he kept closed against the eyes of men. He is gone. He has done well in his generation. May peace and light be with him, and may honour and blessing long attend his memory upon earth.—Believe me, my dear Arthur, affectionately yours,W. E. Gladstone.Cabinet Of 1868-1874Page255First lord of the treasury, W. E. Gladstone.Lord chancellor, Lord Hatherly (Page Wood).President of the council, Earl de Grey (created Marquis of Ripon, 1871).Lord privy seal, Earl of Kimberley.Chancellor of the exchequer, Robert Lowe.Home secretary, Henry Austin Bruce.Foreign secretary, Earl of Clarendon.Colonial secretary, Earl Granville.War secretary, Edward Cardwell.First lord of the admiralty, H. C. E. Childers.Indian secretary, Duke of Argyll.President of the board of trade, John Bright.Chief secretary for Ireland, Chichester Fortescue.Postmaster general, Marquis of Hartington.President of the poor law board, George J. Goschen.On Lord Clarendon's death in June 1870, Lord Granville became foreign secretary; Lord Kimberley, colonial secretary; Viscount Halifax (Sir C. Wood), lord privy seal; and Mr. Forster, vice-president of the privy council, entered the cabinet.On Mr. Bright's resignation in December 1870, Mr. Chichester Fortescue became president of the board of trade; Lord Hartington succeeded him as chief secretary for Ireland; Mr. Monsell was appointed postmaster general without a seat in the cabinet.[pg 645]On Mr. Childers's resignation in March 1871, Mr. Goschen became first lord of the admiralty, and Mr. James Stansfeld president of the poor law board.In August 1872 Mr. Childers rejoined the cabinet, succeeding Lord Dufferin as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. In October Sir Roundell Palmer (created Lord Selborne) became lord chancellor on the retirement of Lord Hatherley.In August 1873 Lord Ripon and Mr. Childers retired, Mr. Gladstone became chancellor of the exchequer as well as first lord; Mr. Bright rejoined the cabinet as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster; Mr. Lowe became home secretary and Mr. Bruce (created Lord Aberdare) president of the council.Irish Church BillPage276Mr. Gladstone to the QueenJuly 21, 1869.—Mr. Gladstone presents his humble duty to your Majesty and reports that the cabinet met at 11 this day, and considered with anxious care its position and duty in regard to the Irish Church bill. The vote and declaration of the House of Lords last night were regarded as fatal if persisted in; and the cabinet deemed it impossible to meet proceedings of such a character with any tender of further concessions. The cabinet, however, considered at much length a variety of courses; as (1) To announce at once that they could no longer, after the vote and announcement of last night, be responsible for further proceedings in connection with the bill, but that they would leave it to the majority of the House of Lords to take such steps as it might think proper; (2) To go through the whole of the amendments of the bill [i.e.in the House of Lords], and then if they were adversely carried to declare and proceed as above; (3) To go through not the whole of the amendments but the endowment amendments, and to conclude that when these had been adversely decided, they could (as before) assume no further responsibility, but must leave the matter to the majority to consider; (4) To send the bill back to the House of Commons with the declaration that it would not be accepted there, and with the intention of simply moving the House to adhere to its amendments as last adjusted.Your Majesty has already been apprized by Mr. Gladstone's telegram in cipher of this afternoon, that (under the influence of a strong desire to exhibit patience, and to leave open every opportunity for reconsideration), the third of these courses had been adopted; although there was no doubt that the House of Commons was fully prepared to approve and sustain the first. Lord Granville deemed it just possible that the peers might be prepared to give way before another return of the bill from the House of Commons; and the question therefore was left open whether, if evidence to this effect should appear, the government should then fall in with[pg 646]that course of proceeding. Although the government have felt it to be impossible to make biddings in the face of the opposition, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been apprised, in strict confidence, of the nature and extent of the concession, which for the sake of peace they would be prepared to recommend. Sir R. Palmer is also substantially aware of it, and has expressed his opinion that on such terms the opposition ought to be ready to conclude the matter.Board And Voluntary SchoolsPage310Mr. Gladstone to M. BrightAug. 21, 1873.—An appeal to me was made to introduce board schools into Hawarden on account of my share in the Education Act. I stated the two views held by different supporters of the Act, respectively on the question of board schools and voluntary schools. For myself, I said, not in education only butin all things including education, I prefer voluntary to legal machinery, when the thing can be well done either way. But this question is not to be decided by a general preference or a general formula. Parliament has referred it to the choice of the local communities. They should decide according to the facts of the case before them. What are the facts in Hawarden? Four-fifths are already provided for; were it only one-fifth or were it two-fifths the case for the board (I said) would be overwhelming. But besides the four-fifths, arrangements are already made for a further provision in a voluntary school. Nothing remains to be done except to build threeinfantschools. The voluntary schools will be governed by a committee, including the churchwardens, and having a majority of laymen. The machinery of a board is of necessity cumbrous, and the method costly in comparison. I hold that we ought not to set up this machinery, in order to create three infant schools, where all the other wants of some 2000 people are already provided for.Views On A Classical EducationPage312Mr. Gladstone to Lord LytteltonPenmaenmawr, Aug. 29, 1861.—-Thanks for the brief notice which you recently took of the Public Schools Commission. I was heartily glad to hear that you had formed a drastic set of questions. I take the deepest interest in the object of the commission, and I have full confidence in its members and organs; and at all times I shall be very glad to hear what you are doing. Meantime I cannot help giving you, to be taken for what it is worth, the sum of my own thoughts upon the subject.... Thelowutilitarian argument in matter of education, for giving it what is termed a practical direction, is so plausible that I think we may[pg 647]on the whole be thankful that the instincts of the country have resisted what in argument it has been ill able to confute. We still hold by the classical training as the basis of a liberal education; parents dispose of their children in early youth accordingly; but if they were asked why they did so, it is probable they would give lamentably weak or unworthy reasons for it, such for example as that the public schools and universities open the way to desirable acquaintance and what is termed“good society.”Your commission will not I presume be able to pass by this question, but will have to look it in the face; and to proceed either upon a distinct affirmative, or a substantial negative, of the proposition that the classical training is the proper basis of a liberal education. I hope you will hold by affirmation and reject negation.But the reason why I trouble you upon the subject is this, that I think the friends of this principle have usually rather blinked the discussion, and have been content with making terms of compromise by way of buying off the adversary, which might be in themselves reasonable unless they were taken as mere instalments of a transaction intended in the long run to swallow up the principle itself. What I feel is that the relation of pure science, natural science, modern languages, modern history, and the rest of the old classical training ought to be founded on a principle and ought not to be treated simply as importunate creditors, that take a shilling in the £ to-day, because they hope to get another shilling to-morrow, and in the meantime have a recognition of their title. This recognition of title is just what I would refuse. I deny their right to a parallel or equal position; their true position is auxiliary, and as auxiliary it ought to be limited and restrained without scruple, as a regard to the paramount matter of education may dictate.But why after all is the classical training paramount? Is it because we find it established? because it improves memory or taste, or gives precision, or develops the faculty of speech? All these are but partial and fragmentary statements, so many narrow glimpses of a great and comprehensive truth. That truth I take to be that the modern European civilisation from the middle age downwards is the compound of two great factors, the Christian religion for the spirit of man, and the Greek, and in a secondary degree the Roman discipline for his mind and intellect. St. Paul is the apostle of the Gentiles, and is in his own person a symbol of this great wedding—the place, for example, of Aristotle and Plato in Christian education is not arbitrary nor in principle mutable. The materials of what we call classical training were prepared, and we have a right to say were advisedly prepared, in order that it might become not a mere adjunct but (in mathematical phrase) the complement of Christianity in its application to the culture of the human being formed both for this world and for the world to come.If this principle be true it is broad and high and clear enough, and supplies a key to all questions connected with the relation[pg 648]between the classical training of our youth and all other branches of their secular education. It must of course be kept within its proper place, and duly limited as to things and persons. It can only apply in full to that small proportion of the youth of any country, who are to become in the fullest sense educated men. It involves no extravagant or inconvenient assumptions respecting those who are to be educated for trades and professions in which the necessities of specific training must limit general culture. It leaves open every question turning upon individual aptitudes and inaptitudes and by no means requires that boys without a capacity for imbibing any of the spirit of classical culture are still to be mechanically plied with the instruments of it after their unfitness has become manifest. But it lays down the rule of education for those who have no internal and no external disqualification; and that rule, becoming a fixed and central point in the system, becomes also the point around which all others may be grouped.Mr. Gladstone to Sir S. NorthcoteNov. 12, 1861.—The letter I wrote to Lyttelton about the classical education suggested topics, which as you justly perceive are altogether esoteric. They have never to my knowledge been carefully worked out, and I think they well deserve it; but clearly your report is not the place. I will not say you are not prudent in suggesting that you should not even give an opinion upon the great question: What is the true place of the old classical learning in the human culture of the nineteenth century? I am far from venturing to say the contrary. But one thing I do think, namely, that it is desirable that, as far as may be, the members of the commission should have some answer to that question in their minds, and should write their report with reference to it. For centuries, through the lifetime of our great schools this classical culture has been made thelapis angularisof all secular culture of the highest class. Was this right or was it wrong, aye or no? I think it much to be desired that the commission should, if they will, proceed upon the affirmative or negative of that proposition, and should also make their choice for the former. This would be a long note to their report; but it need not be distinctly and separately heard in it. Such is my notion. As to particulars I have little to say that is worth hearing; but I think these three things. First, that we give much too little scope for deviation from what I think the normal standard to other and useful branches, when it has become evident that the normal standard is inapplicable; just as was the case in Oxford before the reform of the examinations, or let me rather say the new statutes. Secondly, I am extremely jealous of any invasion of modern languages which is to displace classical culture, or any portion of it in minds capable of following that walk. (I take it that among the usual modern tongues Italian has by far the greatest capacity for strict study and scholarship; whereas it is the one least in[pg 649]favour and the whole method of dealing with them is quite alien to strict study.) Lastly, I confess I grieve over the ignorance of natural history which I feel in myself and believe to exist in others. At some time, in some way, much more of all this ought to be brought in, but clearly it would serve in a great degree as recreation, and need not thrust aside whatever hard work boys are capable of doing.Position Of The Commander-In-Chief In ParliamentPage362Mr. Gladstone to the QueenJuly 8, 1871.—Mr. Gladstone believes that according to precedent the commander-in-chief, when a peer, has not shrunk from giving his opinion on measures submitted to the House of Lords. In 1847, the government of that day introduced the Short Service bill, of which on the merits it is believed that the Duke of Wellington, then commander-in-chief, did not approve. Indeed he expressed in debate on April 26th, 1847, his doubts whether the measure would produce the advantages which were anticipated from it; nevertheless, while having no political connection with the government, he spoke and voted in a division for the bill. It is probable, as the numbers were only 108 to 94, that his speech and vote alone carried the bill. Your Majesty will not fail to bear in mind that until 1855, there was always a very high military authority who was in political connection with the government, namely, the master of the ordnance. Indeed, unless Mr. Gladstone's recollection deceives him, Lord Beresford was required by the Duke of Wellington in 1829, as master of the ordnance, to support the Roman Catholic Relief bill. And it is still regretted by many that ministries have not since comprehended any such officer. All question, however, as to the political support of a ministry by the military chiefs of the army is now at an end.A Soldier At The War OfficePage363Mr. Gladstone to Mr. CardwellJan. 5, 1871.—It was a great advantage before 1854, that there was always a considerable soldier either in the cabinet or at least at the head of an important military department, and politically associated with the government. This we lost by the crude and ill-advised reconstructions of '55. But you, following in this point a wise initiative of your predecessor, have endeavoured to bring the appointment of Sir H. Storks into a position which makes it probably the best substitute for the former plan that can be had at present. The demand that a soldier shall be appointed at the present time would hold gooda fortiorifor all[pg 650]periods of greater emergency. I know not where that principle has been admitted in our military administration. If we have committed gross errors, it has been owing to an excess much more than to a defect of professional influence and counsel. In my opinion the qualities of a good administrator and statesman go to make a good war minister, especially at this juncture, far more than those of a good soldier. Show me the soldier who has those equally with you, and then let him take your place as S.S. But not till then. You were chosen for your office, not because you would do tolerably for easy times, and then could walk out, but because you were the best man the party could supply for the post. The reproaches aimed at you now are merely aimed at the government through you, and you are chosen to be the point of attack because the nation is sore on military matters in times of crisis, and the press which ought to check excitement, by most of its instruments ministers to its increase. You find yourself unable to suggest a successor; and I have seen no plan that would not weaken the government instead of strengthening it. You see what eulogies have been passed on Bright, now he is gone. You would rise in the market with many after resigning, to depreciate those who remain behind; but as I have said, you would not be allowed to have had a legitimate cause of going, and as far as my observation goes, retirements are quite as critically judged as acceptances of office, perhaps more so. What is really to be desired, is that we should get Storks into parliament if possible.Mr. Gladstone's Financial Legacy, 1869Page372Mr. Gladstone to Mr. LoweHawarden, Jan. 9, 1869.—I have referred to my list of remnants; and I will begin with those that I tried in parliament and failed in: 1. Collection of taxes by Queen's officers instead of local officers. 2. Taxation of charities. 3. Bill for restraining, with a view to ultimately abolishing, the circulation of the notes of private banks. 4. Plan for bringing the chancery and other judicial accounts under the control of parliament. Here I had a commission (on chancery accounts) but did not dare to go farther.The following are subjects which I was not able to take in hand:—1. Abolition of the remaining duty upon corn; an exceeding strong case. 2. I should be much disposed to abolish the tea licences as greatly restrictive of the consumption of a dutiable and useful commodity. I modified them; but am not sure that this was enough. The B.I.R. could throw light on this subject. 3. The probate duty calls, I fear, loudly for change; but I wanted either time or courage to take it in hand. 4. The remaining[pg 651]conveyance duties, apart from railways, I always considered as marked for extinction. On this subject Mr. Ayrton has rather decided antecedents. 5. The fire insurance duty is sure to be further assailed. Though not as bad (relatively to other taxes) as is supposed, it is bad enough to be very hard to defend in an adverse House; and this is one of the questions on which it is not likely that the opposition will help to see fair play. The promises that liberal reduction will lead to recovery of anything like the old or previous revenue have always been confidently pressed by irresponsible men, and are in my opinion illusory. The tax is a tax on property: and, as we have too few of these rather than too many, what would seem desirable is to commute it; leaving no more than a penny stamp on the policy. This might perhaps be done, if it were made part of a large budget. 6. The income-tax at 6d., I suppose, presents a forward claim. 7. The commutation of malt duty for beer duty must always, I presume, be spoken of with respect; but the working objections to it have thus far been found too hard to deal with.There is always room in detail for amendments of stamp duties, but the great case as among them is the probate. They are of a class which, without any legal knowledge, I found very hard to work through the House of Commons. I do not look upon the Act of 1844 as theendof legislation in currency; but this subject is a big one. Scotch and Irish notes would be hard to deal with until the English case is disposed of. I forget whether we have abolished the last of the restrictions on newspapers. If not, they deserve to be taken in hand, according to me. I have always wished to equalise the outgoings of the exchequer as much as possible over the several weeks of the year. Few incomes admit of this advantage in the same degree as the public income. It would make our“account”much more valuable to our bankers; therefore to us.These, I think, were the main matters which lay more or less in perspective before me. I must add that I am strongly in favour of paying off the national debt, not only by annual surpluses, but by terminable annuitiessold to the national debt commissioners for securities held by them against deposit monies. The opponents of this plan were Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Laing. I am satisfied that neither of them had taken the trouble, and it requires some trouble, to understand it. I admit them to be no mean authorities. Terminable annuities sold to others than yourself are quite another matter. I got into the law some power of this kind over post office savings bank monies to be exercised by the chancellor of the exchequer from time to time.This is all I need trouble you with, and I have endeavoured to keep clear of all idiosyncratic propositions as much as in me lies. Of course such a letter calls for no answer. As this legacy opinion to you takes the form of a donationinter vivosit will, I hope, escape duty.[pg 652]Prince Albert, 1854Page426Mr. Gladstone wrote an elaborate article in theMorning Chronicle(Jan. 16, 1854) warmly defending the court against attacks that had clouded the popularity of the Prince Consort. They came to little more than that the Prince attended meetings of the privy council; that he was present when the Queen gave an audience to a minister; that he thwarted ministerial counsels and gave them an un-English character; that in corresponding with relatives abroad he used English influence apart from the Queen's advisers. Mr. Gladstone had no great difficulty in showing how little this was worth, either as fact supported by evidence, or as principle supported by the fitness of things; and he put himself on the right ground.“We do not raise the question whether, if the minister thinks it right to communicate with the sovereign alone, he is not entitled to a private audience. But we unhesitatingly assert that if the Prince is present when the Queen confers with her advisers, and if his presence is found to be disadvantageous to the public interests, we are not left without a remedy; for the minister is as distinctly responsible for those interests in this as in any other matter, and he is bound on his responsibility to parliament, to decline compliance even with a personal wish of the sovereign when he believes that his assent would be injurious to the country.”Parliamentary CrisesPage451Extract from Mr. Gladstone's letter to the Queen, March 15, 1873There have been within that period [1830-1873] twelve of what may be properly called parliamentary crises involving the question of a change of government. In nine of the twelve cases (viz., those of 1830, 1835, 1841, 1846, 1852, 1858, 1859, 1866, and 1868), the party which had been in opposition was ready to take, and did take, office. In the other three it failed to do this (viz., in 1832, 1851, 1855), and the old ministry or a modification of it returned to power. But in each of these three cases the attempt of the opposition to form a government was not relinquished until after such efforts had been made by its leaders to carry the conviction to the world that all its available means of action were exhausted; and there is no instance on record during the whole period (or indeed so far as Mr. Gladstone remembers at an earlier date) in which a summary refusal given on the instant by the leader was tendered as sufficient to release the opposition from the obligations it had incurred. This is the more remarkable because in two of the three instances the opposition had not, in the same mode or degree as on Wednesday morning last, contributed by concerted action to bring about the crisis. On the 7th of May 1832 the opposition of the day carried in the House of Lords a motion which went only[pg 653]to alter the order of the opening (and doubtless very important) clauses of the Reform bill, but which the government of Lord Grey deemed fatal to the integrity of the measure. Their resignation was announced, and Lord Lyndhurst was summoned to advise King William iv. on the 9th of May. On the 12th the Duke of Wellington was called to take a share in the proceedings, the details of which are matters of history. It was only on the 15th that the Duke and Lord Lyndhurst found their resources at an end, when Lord Grey was again sent for, and on the 17th the Duke announced in the House of Lords his abandonment of the task he had strenuously endeavoured to fulfil. On the 20th February 1851 the government of Lord Russell was defeated in the House of Commons on Mr. Locke King's bill for the enlargement of the county franchise by a majority composed of its own supporters. Lord Derby, then Lord Stanley, being sent for by your Majesty on the 22nd, observed that there were at the time three parties in the House of Commons and that the ministry had never yet been defeated by his political friends. He therefore counselled your Majesty to ascertain whether the government of Lord Russell could not be strengthened by a partial reconstruction, and failing that measure he engaged to use his own best efforts to form an administration. That attempt at reconstruction (to which nothing similar is now in question) did fail, and Lord Derby was therefore summoned by your Majesty on the 25th, and at once applied himself, as is well known, to every measure which seemed to give him a hope of success in constructing a government. On the 27th he apprised your Majesty of his failure in these efforts; and on March 3rd the cabinet of Lord Russell returned to office. (This recital is founded on Lord Derby's statement in the House of Lords, Feb. 28, 1851.) On Jan. 29, 1855, the government of Lord Aberdeen was defeated in the House of Commons on a motion made by an independent member of their own party and supported by twenty-five of the liberal members present. Though this defeat resembles the one last named in that it cannot be said to be due to the concerted action of the opposition as a party, Lord Derby, being summoned by your Majesty on the 1st of Feb. proceeded to examine and ascertain in every quarter the means likely to be at his disposal for rendering assistance in the exigency, and it was not until Feb. 3 that he receded from his endeavours.Cabinet Of 1880-1885Page630First lord of the treasury, chancellor of the exchequer, W. E. Gladstone.Lord chancellor, Lord Selborne.President of the council, Earl Spencer.Lord privy seal, Duke of Argyll.Home secretary, Sir W. V. Harcourt.Foreign secretary, Earl Granville.[pg 654]Colonial secretary, Earl of Kimberley.War secretary, H. C. E. Childers.First lord of the admiralty, Earl of Northbrook.Indian secretary, Marquis of Hartington.President of the board of trade, Joseph Chamberlain.Chief secretary for Ireland, W. E. Forster.Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, John Bright.President of the local government board, J. G. Dodson.On the resignation of the Duke of Argyll, April 1881, Lord Carlingford (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) became lord privy seal.In May 1882, Earl Spencer became lord-lieutenant of Ireland. On Mr. Forster's resignation he was succeeded by Lord Frederick Cavendish, and then by Mr. G. O. Trevelyan, neither of whom had a seat in the cabinet.On the resignation of Mr. Bright in July 1882, Mr. Dodson became chancellor of the duchy, and Sir Charles Dilke president of the local government board.In December 1882, Mr. Gladstone resigned the chancellorship of the exchequer to Mr. Childers; Lord Hartington became war secretary; Lord Kimberley, Indian secretary, and Lord Derby colonial secretary.In March 1883, Lord Carlingford succeeded Earl Spencer as president of the council.In October 1884, Mr. Trevelyan succeeded Mr. Dodson as chancellor of the duchy (with the cabinet), Mr. Campbell-Bannerman becoming Irish secretary without a seat in the cabinet.In February 1885, Lord Rosebery, first commissioner of works, succeeded Lord Carlingford as lord privy seal (with the cabinet) [Lord Carlingford had also been president of the council from March 1883 in succession to Lord Spencer], and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, postmaster-general, entered the cabinet.

Budget Of 1860Page26Sir William Heathcote wrote to Mr. Gladstone, May 4, 1861:—I understood you in your rebukes of Lewis in 1857, to be aiming not only at a change of his plan of finance in that particular year, but (if that were impossible, or at least could not be carried), at a resumption as early as circumstances would allow, of what you thought the proper line of action which he insisted on suspending. Income-tax and war duties on tea and sugar were and would continue to be, as I understood, the primary claimants for reduction of taxation, in your judgment.... The very vehemence of your convictions and expressions onbothoccasions perplexes me.Mr. Gladstone replied the same day:—... You think, 1. That I bound myself to the reduction of the tea and sugar duties as a policy for future occasions, and not merely for the issue then raised. 2. That in like manner I was bound to the reduction and abolition of the income-tax. 3. That even if there arose in the system of our expenditure a great change, involving an increase of ten or fifteen millions of money over 1853, I was still in consistency bound to hold over the first chance of reduction for income-tax, tea and sugar. 4. That consequently until these duties were remitted I could not propose to prosecute any commercial reforms involving, as nearly all of them do, a sacrifice of revenue for a time. 5. It is because I have departed from these positions by proposing a multitude of reductions and abolitions of duty, other than the three mentioned, and partly or wholly in preference to them, that you have lost confidence in my judgment on these matters (a confidence to which I do not pretend that I had ever any claim).If I have interpreted you aright, and I hope you will tell me whether I have done so or not, this is all to me exceedingly curious; such are the differences in the opinions of men formed from their different points of view. Now I will give you mine. To give effect to the pledge of honour, by which I became bound in 1853, I made a desperate effort in 1857, with all the zeal of which I was capable, and with all the passion to which I am liable. It was my opinion that the course then taken would be decisive as to the operations in 1860, for the income-tax never can be got rid of[pg 633]except by prospective finance, reaching over several years, and liable to impediment and disturbance accordingly. I therefore protested against the whole scale of expenditure then proposed; as well as against particular kinds of expenditure to which I might refer. I likewise protested against the provision for that expenditure which the government of the day proposed. First, because the expenditure itself was excessive, in my view. Secondly, because in the mode of that provision I thought the remission of income-tax was large out of all proportion to the remission on indirect taxes; and this disproportion I regarded as highly dangerous. I determined to let no political prejudice stand in my way, and to test to the best of my very feeble power the opinion of parliament with respect to tea and sugar. I stated that if the opinion of parliament were against me I should not factiously prolong the contest but should withdraw from it. Not only was the opinion of parliament against me, but it so happened that the opinion of the country was immediately afterwards taken by a dissolution on that and on other kindred questions. The country affirmed the policy of Lord Palmerston, and the policy of a materially increased expenditure, by an overwhelming majority. I had misjudged public opinion; they had read it aright. After the dissolution of 1857, Sir George Lewis, who had previously raised the tea and sugar duties for one year, proposed to raise them for two more. I immediately followed in debate, and thanked him warmly for doing it. All this of course I can prove. I said, we are going to have more expenditure, we must therefore have more taxation.As I have gone thus far with my history, I will conclude it. Notwithstanding what had happened, I did not absolutely abandon at that time the hope that we might still reach in 1860 a state which might enable us to abolish the income-tax. I had a faint expectation of more economy under another government. When Lord Derby's administration came in in 1858, they professed to reduce expenditure by £800,000, and to contemplate further reductions. I expressed my satisfaction, and gave them the extreme of support that I could. But I then clearly pointed out that, even with the scale of expenditure they then proposed, we could not abolish the income-tax in 1860. In a few months, their reductions vanished into air. In 1859 came the famous“reconstruction.”I took office in June, and found a scale of expenditure going on in the treasury far more prodigal and wanton than I had ever charged upon Lord Palmerston's first government. I found also that when the estimates had been completed, I believe entirely ontheirbasis, there was a probable deficiency of four or five millions for a year of which nearly one-third had passed. And the expenditure was I think nearly seventy millions, or some fourteen millions more than in 1853. This was not the act only of the government. The opposition halloed them on; and the country, seized with a peculiar panic, was in a humour even more lavish than the opposition.[pg 634]My view was, and I stated it, that we ought to provide for this expenditure in a due proportion between direct and indirect taxes. I showed that this proportion had not been observed; that we had continued to levy large amounts of war tax on tea and sugar, and had returned to the scale of 1853 for income. I proposed to provide the necessary sums chiefly by an increase of income-tax. But neither then (in July 1859), nor for nearly two and a half years before, had I ever (to my knowledge) presumed to speak of any one as bound to abolish the income-tax or to remit the additional duties on tea and sugar.I fully expect fromyouthe admission that as to these measures I could not in the altered circumstances be bound absolutely to the remissions. But you say I was bound to give them a preference over all other remissions. Nowhere I believe can one word to this effect be extracted from any speech of mine. I found in 1860 that all the reforming legislation, which had achieved such vast results, had been suspended for seven years. We were then raising by duties doomed in 1853, from twelve to thirteen millions. It would in my opinion have been no less than monstrous on my part to recognise the preferences you claim for these particular duties. All of them indeed would have been reliefs, even the income-tax which is I think proved to be the least relief of any. But, though reliefs, they were hardly reforms; and experience had shown us that reforms were in fact double and treble reliefs. I may be wrong, but it is my opinion and I found it on experience, that the prospect of the removal of the three collectively (income, tea extra, and sugar extra) being in any case very remote, it is less remote with than without the reforming measures of the last and (I hope I may add) of the present year. Had the expenditure of 1853 been resumed, there would notwithstanding the Russian war have been, in my opinion, room for all these three things. 1. Abolition of income-tax by or near 1860; 2. remission of increases on tea and sugar within the same time; 3. the prosecution of the commercial reforms.It may be said that having set my face against an excess of expenditure I ought to have considered that a holy war, and not to have receded. Although I place public economy somewhat higher as a matter of duty than many might do, I do not think it would have been right, I do think it would have been foolish and presumptuous in me to have gone beyond these two things: first, making an effort to the utmost of my power at the critical moment (as I took it to be), and secondly, on being defeated to watch for opportunities thereafter. Since it should be remembered I do not recommend or desire sweeping and sudden reductions.The chief errors that I see myself to have committed are these. In 1853 when I took the unusual course of estimating our income for seven years, and assuming that our expenditure would either continue as it was, or only move onwards gradually and gently, I ought no doubt to have pointed out explicitly, that a great disturbance and increase of our expenditure would baffle my[pg 635]reckonings. Again in 1857 the temper of the public mind had undergone a change which I failed to discern; and I attacked the government and the chancellor of the exchequer of that day for doing what the country desired though I did not. I name these as specific errors, over and above the general one of excess of heat.The budget of last year I cannot admit to have been an error. People say it should have been smaller. My belief is that if it had been a smaller boat it would not have lived in such a sea. I speak of the period of the session before the China war became certain. When it did so, we were in a great strait about the paper duty. We felt the obligation incurred by the vote on the second reading, and we construed it according to the established usage. We took the more arduous, but I think the more honourable course for a government to pursue. Had we abandoned the bill, I know not how we could have looked in the face those who had acted and invested on the faith of an unbroken practice. I admit that political motives greatly concurred to recommend the budget of last year. It was a budget of peace, and peace wanted it. The budget of this year followed from the budget of last, given the other circumstances. At the same time I can understand how the claim of tea could be set up, but not well after the occurrences of last year how it could be supported.This is a long egotistical story. But when you consider that it contains my whole story (exceptpièces justificatives) in answer to so many speeches in both Houses and elsewhere, for never to this hour have I opened my lips in personal defence, you will understand why I might be garrulous....Notwithstanding the mild doctrine I have held about expenditure I admit it may be said I ought not to have joined a government which had such extended views in that direction, even though they were the views of the nation. Much may be said on this. I may, however, remark that when the government was formed I did not fully conceive the extent to which we should proceed.

Page26

Sir William Heathcote wrote to Mr. Gladstone, May 4, 1861:—

I understood you in your rebukes of Lewis in 1857, to be aiming not only at a change of his plan of finance in that particular year, but (if that were impossible, or at least could not be carried), at a resumption as early as circumstances would allow, of what you thought the proper line of action which he insisted on suspending. Income-tax and war duties on tea and sugar were and would continue to be, as I understood, the primary claimants for reduction of taxation, in your judgment.... The very vehemence of your convictions and expressions onbothoccasions perplexes me.

Mr. Gladstone replied the same day:—

... You think, 1. That I bound myself to the reduction of the tea and sugar duties as a policy for future occasions, and not merely for the issue then raised. 2. That in like manner I was bound to the reduction and abolition of the income-tax. 3. That even if there arose in the system of our expenditure a great change, involving an increase of ten or fifteen millions of money over 1853, I was still in consistency bound to hold over the first chance of reduction for income-tax, tea and sugar. 4. That consequently until these duties were remitted I could not propose to prosecute any commercial reforms involving, as nearly all of them do, a sacrifice of revenue for a time. 5. It is because I have departed from these positions by proposing a multitude of reductions and abolitions of duty, other than the three mentioned, and partly or wholly in preference to them, that you have lost confidence in my judgment on these matters (a confidence to which I do not pretend that I had ever any claim).

If I have interpreted you aright, and I hope you will tell me whether I have done so or not, this is all to me exceedingly curious; such are the differences in the opinions of men formed from their different points of view. Now I will give you mine. To give effect to the pledge of honour, by which I became bound in 1853, I made a desperate effort in 1857, with all the zeal of which I was capable, and with all the passion to which I am liable. It was my opinion that the course then taken would be decisive as to the operations in 1860, for the income-tax never can be got rid of[pg 633]except by prospective finance, reaching over several years, and liable to impediment and disturbance accordingly. I therefore protested against the whole scale of expenditure then proposed; as well as against particular kinds of expenditure to which I might refer. I likewise protested against the provision for that expenditure which the government of the day proposed. First, because the expenditure itself was excessive, in my view. Secondly, because in the mode of that provision I thought the remission of income-tax was large out of all proportion to the remission on indirect taxes; and this disproportion I regarded as highly dangerous. I determined to let no political prejudice stand in my way, and to test to the best of my very feeble power the opinion of parliament with respect to tea and sugar. I stated that if the opinion of parliament were against me I should not factiously prolong the contest but should withdraw from it. Not only was the opinion of parliament against me, but it so happened that the opinion of the country was immediately afterwards taken by a dissolution on that and on other kindred questions. The country affirmed the policy of Lord Palmerston, and the policy of a materially increased expenditure, by an overwhelming majority. I had misjudged public opinion; they had read it aright. After the dissolution of 1857, Sir George Lewis, who had previously raised the tea and sugar duties for one year, proposed to raise them for two more. I immediately followed in debate, and thanked him warmly for doing it. All this of course I can prove. I said, we are going to have more expenditure, we must therefore have more taxation.

As I have gone thus far with my history, I will conclude it. Notwithstanding what had happened, I did not absolutely abandon at that time the hope that we might still reach in 1860 a state which might enable us to abolish the income-tax. I had a faint expectation of more economy under another government. When Lord Derby's administration came in in 1858, they professed to reduce expenditure by £800,000, and to contemplate further reductions. I expressed my satisfaction, and gave them the extreme of support that I could. But I then clearly pointed out that, even with the scale of expenditure they then proposed, we could not abolish the income-tax in 1860. In a few months, their reductions vanished into air. In 1859 came the famous“reconstruction.”I took office in June, and found a scale of expenditure going on in the treasury far more prodigal and wanton than I had ever charged upon Lord Palmerston's first government. I found also that when the estimates had been completed, I believe entirely ontheirbasis, there was a probable deficiency of four or five millions for a year of which nearly one-third had passed. And the expenditure was I think nearly seventy millions, or some fourteen millions more than in 1853. This was not the act only of the government. The opposition halloed them on; and the country, seized with a peculiar panic, was in a humour even more lavish than the opposition.

My view was, and I stated it, that we ought to provide for this expenditure in a due proportion between direct and indirect taxes. I showed that this proportion had not been observed; that we had continued to levy large amounts of war tax on tea and sugar, and had returned to the scale of 1853 for income. I proposed to provide the necessary sums chiefly by an increase of income-tax. But neither then (in July 1859), nor for nearly two and a half years before, had I ever (to my knowledge) presumed to speak of any one as bound to abolish the income-tax or to remit the additional duties on tea and sugar.

I fully expect fromyouthe admission that as to these measures I could not in the altered circumstances be bound absolutely to the remissions. But you say I was bound to give them a preference over all other remissions. Nowhere I believe can one word to this effect be extracted from any speech of mine. I found in 1860 that all the reforming legislation, which had achieved such vast results, had been suspended for seven years. We were then raising by duties doomed in 1853, from twelve to thirteen millions. It would in my opinion have been no less than monstrous on my part to recognise the preferences you claim for these particular duties. All of them indeed would have been reliefs, even the income-tax which is I think proved to be the least relief of any. But, though reliefs, they were hardly reforms; and experience had shown us that reforms were in fact double and treble reliefs. I may be wrong, but it is my opinion and I found it on experience, that the prospect of the removal of the three collectively (income, tea extra, and sugar extra) being in any case very remote, it is less remote with than without the reforming measures of the last and (I hope I may add) of the present year. Had the expenditure of 1853 been resumed, there would notwithstanding the Russian war have been, in my opinion, room for all these three things. 1. Abolition of income-tax by or near 1860; 2. remission of increases on tea and sugar within the same time; 3. the prosecution of the commercial reforms.

It may be said that having set my face against an excess of expenditure I ought to have considered that a holy war, and not to have receded. Although I place public economy somewhat higher as a matter of duty than many might do, I do not think it would have been right, I do think it would have been foolish and presumptuous in me to have gone beyond these two things: first, making an effort to the utmost of my power at the critical moment (as I took it to be), and secondly, on being defeated to watch for opportunities thereafter. Since it should be remembered I do not recommend or desire sweeping and sudden reductions.

The chief errors that I see myself to have committed are these. In 1853 when I took the unusual course of estimating our income for seven years, and assuming that our expenditure would either continue as it was, or only move onwards gradually and gently, I ought no doubt to have pointed out explicitly, that a great disturbance and increase of our expenditure would baffle my[pg 635]reckonings. Again in 1857 the temper of the public mind had undergone a change which I failed to discern; and I attacked the government and the chancellor of the exchequer of that day for doing what the country desired though I did not. I name these as specific errors, over and above the general one of excess of heat.

The budget of last year I cannot admit to have been an error. People say it should have been smaller. My belief is that if it had been a smaller boat it would not have lived in such a sea. I speak of the period of the session before the China war became certain. When it did so, we were in a great strait about the paper duty. We felt the obligation incurred by the vote on the second reading, and we construed it according to the established usage. We took the more arduous, but I think the more honourable course for a government to pursue. Had we abandoned the bill, I know not how we could have looked in the face those who had acted and invested on the faith of an unbroken practice. I admit that political motives greatly concurred to recommend the budget of last year. It was a budget of peace, and peace wanted it. The budget of this year followed from the budget of last, given the other circumstances. At the same time I can understand how the claim of tea could be set up, but not well after the occurrences of last year how it could be supported.

This is a long egotistical story. But when you consider that it contains my whole story (exceptpièces justificatives) in answer to so many speeches in both Houses and elsewhere, for never to this hour have I opened my lips in personal defence, you will understand why I might be garrulous....

Notwithstanding the mild doctrine I have held about expenditure I admit it may be said I ought not to have joined a government which had such extended views in that direction, even though they were the views of the nation. Much may be said on this. I may, however, remark that when the government was formed I did not fully conceive the extent to which we should proceed.

The Cabinet. 1860Page36Mr. Gladstone's memorandum on the currents of opinion in the cabinet of 1860 concludes as follows:—1. The most Italian members of the cabinet have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, W.E.G., Gibson, Argyll. The least Italian: Lewis, Wood, Grey, Herbert, Villiers (especially).2. In foreign policy generally the most combative have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, the chancellor. The least combative: Duke of Somerset, Duke of Argyll, Granville, Gibson, Herbert, Lewis, Grey, W.E.G., Wood, the same in feeling but not active.[pg 636]3. In defences and expenditure, the most alarmed, or most martial (as the case may be), have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, S. Herbert, followed by Duke of Somerset, the chancellor, Granville, Cardwell. Inclined the other way: Gibson, W.E.G., Lewis, Grey, Duke of Argyll (Elgin, I think).4. In finance some are for movement, some stationary or retrograde so as to be ready for immediate war. Yet here we are not divided simply as combative or anti-combative. The onward men in finance are: Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, Granville, Argyll, Gibson, W.E.G., and, I think, the chancellor. The stationary men are, first and foremost: Sir George Lewis, Sir C. Wood; next to these, Lord Palmerston, Cardwell, and, I think, Villiers, Herbert.5. On reform I must distinguish between (a) extension of the franchise and (b) redistribution of seats. In the first the more liberal men are: Lord John Russell, Duke of Somerset, Duke of Newcastle, Duke of Argyll, Gibson, W.E.G. The fearful or opposed are: Lord Palmerston, C. Villiers, S. Herbert. In the second, for small disfranchisement were, I think, all the first except Newcastle. For larger disfranchisement: Newcastle, Villiers, and Lord Palmerston, I think not greatly averse. In fact, I think that larger disfranchisement of places may have been favoured by him, 1. as a substitute for enlargement of the franchise, which he chiefly dreads; 2. as perhaps an obstacle to the framing of a measure.6. In church matters Herbert, Newcastle, and I are the most conservative and the most church-like; with a sympathy from Argyll. But, as I said, there is no struggle here: patronage, the sore subject, not being a cabinet affair.

Page36

Mr. Gladstone's memorandum on the currents of opinion in the cabinet of 1860 concludes as follows:—

1. The most Italian members of the cabinet have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, W.E.G., Gibson, Argyll. The least Italian: Lewis, Wood, Grey, Herbert, Villiers (especially).

2. In foreign policy generally the most combative have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, the chancellor. The least combative: Duke of Somerset, Duke of Argyll, Granville, Gibson, Herbert, Lewis, Grey, W.E.G., Wood, the same in feeling but not active.

3. In defences and expenditure, the most alarmed, or most martial (as the case may be), have been: Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, S. Herbert, followed by Duke of Somerset, the chancellor, Granville, Cardwell. Inclined the other way: Gibson, W.E.G., Lewis, Grey, Duke of Argyll (Elgin, I think).

4. In finance some are for movement, some stationary or retrograde so as to be ready for immediate war. Yet here we are not divided simply as combative or anti-combative. The onward men in finance are: Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, Granville, Argyll, Gibson, W.E.G., and, I think, the chancellor. The stationary men are, first and foremost: Sir George Lewis, Sir C. Wood; next to these, Lord Palmerston, Cardwell, and, I think, Villiers, Herbert.

5. On reform I must distinguish between (a) extension of the franchise and (b) redistribution of seats. In the first the more liberal men are: Lord John Russell, Duke of Somerset, Duke of Newcastle, Duke of Argyll, Gibson, W.E.G. The fearful or opposed are: Lord Palmerston, C. Villiers, S. Herbert. In the second, for small disfranchisement were, I think, all the first except Newcastle. For larger disfranchisement: Newcastle, Villiers, and Lord Palmerston, I think not greatly averse. In fact, I think that larger disfranchisement of places may have been favoured by him, 1. as a substitute for enlargement of the franchise, which he chiefly dreads; 2. as perhaps an obstacle to the framing of a measure.

6. In church matters Herbert, Newcastle, and I are the most conservative and the most church-like; with a sympathy from Argyll. But, as I said, there is no struggle here: patronage, the sore subject, not being a cabinet affair.

Session Of 1860Page47Extract from a Letter to the Duke of Argyll.Penmaen., September 3, 1860.—The session has been one to make all of us thoughtful, and me perhaps most of all. It is indeed much before my mind, but my head has not ceased to whirl, so that I cannot get a clear view of what Seward would call my position. Two things I know, one is that it produced the greatest pleasures and the greatest pains I have ever known in politics; the other that 1 have had to take various decisions and perform acts that could neither be satisfactory to others, nor from the doubt attaching to one side or the other of the alternative, even to myself. To have been the occasion of the blow to the House of Commons, or as I call it the“gigantic innovation,”will be a grief to me as long as I live; if by wildness and rashness I have been its cause, it will be a much greater grief. Of that I am not[pg 637]yet able to judge. On the whole when I think of the cabinet, I always go back to Jacob and Esau fighting in their mother's womb; only here there have been many Jacobs and Esaus, by which I do not mean the sixteen members of the cabinet, but the many and very unhandy causes of division. Perhaps I should find it easiest in the work of confession to own my neighbour's faults,i.e.to dwell upon those strange sins of foreign policy which have happily for the most part been nipped in the bud almostà l'unanimité(yet with what exceptions!); but avoiding that task, I will make my own confession. I cannot justify the finance of the year as a whole.... As to the amount of the final demand [for the China war], what it really demonstrates isoneamong the follies and dangers of our high-handed policy, our want of control over proceedings at the other end of the world. But the weak point is the fortification plan; I do not now speak of its own merits or demerits, but I speak of it in relation to the budget.... It is a vile precedent to give away money by remission, and borrow to supply the void; and in the full andchiefresponsibility for having established this precedent I am involved, not by the budget of February but by the consent of July to the scheme which involved the borrowing. No doubt there are palliating circumstances; and lastly the grievous difficulty of choice between mischievous [illegible] and mischievous resignation. Still I must say, it is in retrospect, as the people and parliament have a right to judge it, a bad and unworkmanlike business, and under a skilful analysis of it in the House of Commons (which there is no one opposite fit to make, except it be Northcote, who perhaps scruples it) I should wince. All these things and others more inward than these, make sore places in the mind; but on the other hand, that I may close with a gleam of sunshine like that which is now casting its shadow on my paper from Penmaenmawr after a rough morning, I am thankful in the highest degree to have had a share in resisting the alarmist mania of the day by means of the French treaty, to which, if we escape collision, I think the escape will have been mainly due; and likewise in one at least negative service to the great Italian cause, which is not Italian merely but European.

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Extract from a Letter to the Duke of Argyll.

Penmaen., September 3, 1860.—The session has been one to make all of us thoughtful, and me perhaps most of all. It is indeed much before my mind, but my head has not ceased to whirl, so that I cannot get a clear view of what Seward would call my position. Two things I know, one is that it produced the greatest pleasures and the greatest pains I have ever known in politics; the other that 1 have had to take various decisions and perform acts that could neither be satisfactory to others, nor from the doubt attaching to one side or the other of the alternative, even to myself. To have been the occasion of the blow to the House of Commons, or as I call it the“gigantic innovation,”will be a grief to me as long as I live; if by wildness and rashness I have been its cause, it will be a much greater grief. Of that I am not[pg 637]yet able to judge. On the whole when I think of the cabinet, I always go back to Jacob and Esau fighting in their mother's womb; only here there have been many Jacobs and Esaus, by which I do not mean the sixteen members of the cabinet, but the many and very unhandy causes of division. Perhaps I should find it easiest in the work of confession to own my neighbour's faults,i.e.to dwell upon those strange sins of foreign policy which have happily for the most part been nipped in the bud almostà l'unanimité(yet with what exceptions!); but avoiding that task, I will make my own confession. I cannot justify the finance of the year as a whole.... As to the amount of the final demand [for the China war], what it really demonstrates isoneamong the follies and dangers of our high-handed policy, our want of control over proceedings at the other end of the world. But the weak point is the fortification plan; I do not now speak of its own merits or demerits, but I speak of it in relation to the budget.... It is a vile precedent to give away money by remission, and borrow to supply the void; and in the full andchiefresponsibility for having established this precedent I am involved, not by the budget of February but by the consent of July to the scheme which involved the borrowing. No doubt there are palliating circumstances; and lastly the grievous difficulty of choice between mischievous [illegible] and mischievous resignation. Still I must say, it is in retrospect, as the people and parliament have a right to judge it, a bad and unworkmanlike business, and under a skilful analysis of it in the House of Commons (which there is no one opposite fit to make, except it be Northcote, who perhaps scruples it) I should wince. All these things and others more inward than these, make sore places in the mind; but on the other hand, that I may close with a gleam of sunshine like that which is now casting its shadow on my paper from Penmaenmawr after a rough morning, I am thankful in the highest degree to have had a share in resisting the alarmist mania of the day by means of the French treaty, to which, if we escape collision, I think the escape will have been mainly due; and likewise in one at least negative service to the great Italian cause, which is not Italian merely but European.

Mr. Pitt's War FinancePage59Mr. Gladstone to Herbert GladstoneMarch 10, 1876.—Mr. Pitt's position in the Revolutionary war was, I think, a false one. To keep out of that war demanded from the people of this country an extraordinary degree of self-control, and this degree of it they did not possess. The consequence of our going into it was to give an intensity and vitality to the struggle, which but for the tenacity of English character it would not have possessed. Mr. Pitt did not show the great genius in war which he possessed as a peace minister. Until the epoch[pg 638]of the Peninsula our military performances were small and poor, and the method of subsidy was unsatisfactory and ineffective. The effect of borrowing money in three per cents. was to load us with a very heavy capital of national debt. I think at one time we only got £46, or some such amount, for the £100. It must, however, be taken into view that a perpetual annuity of £3, redeemable upon paying £100, broughtmorethan 3/4 of what a perpetual annuity of £4, similarly redeemable, would have brought; or than 3/5 of what a £5 annuity, similarly redeemable, would have brought. It is not easy to strike the balance. Mr. Newmarch, a living economist of some authority, I believe, thinks Mr. Pitt was right. I do not think the case is so clear against him as todetractfrom his great reputation. But were I in the unhappy position of having to call for a large loan, I should be disposed to ask for the tender in more than one form,e.g., to ask for a tender in three per cents, pure and simple, and an alternative in 4 or 5 per cents., with that rate of interest guaranteed for a certain number of years. Sir Robert Walpole had not to contend with like difficulties, and I think his administration should be compared with theearly yearsof Pitt's, in which way of judging he would come off second, though a man of cool and sagacious judgment, while morally he stood low.

Page59

Mr. Gladstone to Herbert Gladstone

March 10, 1876.—Mr. Pitt's position in the Revolutionary war was, I think, a false one. To keep out of that war demanded from the people of this country an extraordinary degree of self-control, and this degree of it they did not possess. The consequence of our going into it was to give an intensity and vitality to the struggle, which but for the tenacity of English character it would not have possessed. Mr. Pitt did not show the great genius in war which he possessed as a peace minister. Until the epoch[pg 638]of the Peninsula our military performances were small and poor, and the method of subsidy was unsatisfactory and ineffective. The effect of borrowing money in three per cents. was to load us with a very heavy capital of national debt. I think at one time we only got £46, or some such amount, for the £100. It must, however, be taken into view that a perpetual annuity of £3, redeemable upon paying £100, broughtmorethan 3/4 of what a perpetual annuity of £4, similarly redeemable, would have brought; or than 3/5 of what a £5 annuity, similarly redeemable, would have brought. It is not easy to strike the balance. Mr. Newmarch, a living economist of some authority, I believe, thinks Mr. Pitt was right. I do not think the case is so clear against him as todetractfrom his great reputation. But were I in the unhappy position of having to call for a large loan, I should be disposed to ask for the tender in more than one form,e.g., to ask for a tender in three per cents, pure and simple, and an alternative in 4 or 5 per cents., with that rate of interest guaranteed for a certain number of years. Sir Robert Walpole had not to contend with like difficulties, and I think his administration should be compared with theearly yearsof Pitt's, in which way of judging he would come off second, though a man of cool and sagacious judgment, while morally he stood low.

French Commercial Treaty. 1860Page66Mr. Gladstone at Leeds, October 8, 1881:—I, for my part, look with the deepest interest upon the share that I had in concluding—I will not say so much in concluding, but in conducting on this side of the water, and within the walls of parliament as well as in administration—the proceedings which led to the memorable French treaty of 1860. It is quite true that that treaty did not produce the whole of the benefits that some too sanguine anticipations may possibly have expected from it, that it did not produce a universal smash of protective duties, as I wish it had, throughout the civilised world. But it did something. It enormously increased the trade between this country and France. It effectually checked and traversed in the year 1860 tendencies of a very different kind towards needless alarms and panics, and tendencies towards convulsions and confusion in Europe. There was no more powerful instrument for confining and controlling those wayward and angry spirits at that particular crisis, than the commercial treaty with France. It produced no inconsiderable effect for a number of years upon the legislation of various European countries, which tended less decisively than we could have desired, but still intelligibly and beneficially, in the direction of freedom of trade.

Page66

Mr. Gladstone at Leeds, October 8, 1881:—

I, for my part, look with the deepest interest upon the share that I had in concluding—I will not say so much in concluding, but in conducting on this side of the water, and within the walls of parliament as well as in administration—the proceedings which led to the memorable French treaty of 1860. It is quite true that that treaty did not produce the whole of the benefits that some too sanguine anticipations may possibly have expected from it, that it did not produce a universal smash of protective duties, as I wish it had, throughout the civilised world. But it did something. It enormously increased the trade between this country and France. It effectually checked and traversed in the year 1860 tendencies of a very different kind towards needless alarms and panics, and tendencies towards convulsions and confusion in Europe. There was no more powerful instrument for confining and controlling those wayward and angry spirits at that particular crisis, than the commercial treaty with France. It produced no inconsiderable effect for a number of years upon the legislation of various European countries, which tended less decisively than we could have desired, but still intelligibly and beneficially, in the direction of freedom of trade.

Lord AberdeenPage87Mr. Gladstone to Sir Arthur Gordon (Lord Stanmore)Downing Street, April 21, 1861.—My dear Arthur,—When, within a few days after your father's death, I referred in conversation with you to one or two points in his character, it was from the impulse of the moment, and without any idea of making my words matter of record. Months have now passed since you asked me to put on paper the substance of what I said. The delay has been partly, perhaps mainly, owing to the pressure of other demands upon my time and thoughts. But it has also been due to this, that an instinct similar to that which made me speak, has made me shrink from writing. It is enough in conversation to give the most partial and hasty touches, provided they be not in the main untrue. Those same touches when clothed in a form of greater assumption have but a meagre and unsatisfactory appearance, and may do even positive injustice. Most of all in the case of a character which was not only of rare quality, but which was so remarkable for the fineness of its lights and shadows. But you have a right to my recollections such as they are, and I will not withhold them.I may first refer to the earliest occasion on which I saw him; for it illustrates a point not unimportant in his history. On an evening in the month of January 1835, during what is called the short government of Sir Robert Peel, I was sent for by Sir Robert Peel, and received from him the offer, which I accepted, of the under-secretaryship of the colonies. From him I went on to your father, who was then secretary of state in that department, and who was thus to be, in official home-talk, my master. Without any apprehension of hurting you, I may confess, that I went in fear and trembling. [Then follows the passage already quoted in vol. i. p. 124.] I was only, I think, for about ten weeks his under-secretary. But as some men hate those whom they have injured, so others love those whom they have obliged; and his friendship continued warm and unintermitting for the subsequent twenty-six years of his life.Some of his many great qualities adorned him in common with several, or even with many, other contemporary statesmen: such as clearness of view, strength of the deliberative faculty, strong sense of duty, deep devotion to the crown, and the most thorough and uncompromising loyalty to his friends and colleagues. In this loyalty of intention many, I think, are not only praiseworthy but perfect. But the loyalty of intention was in him so assisted by other and distinctive qualities, as to give it a peculiar efficacy; and any one associated with Lord Aberdeen might always rest assured that he was safe in his hands. When our law did not allow prisoners the benefit of counsel, it was commonly said that the judge was counsel for the prisoner. Lord Aberdeen was always[pg 640]counsel for the absent. Doubtless he had pondered much upon the law,“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”It had entered profoundly into his being, and formed a large part of it. He was strong in his self-respect, but his respect for others, not for this man or that but for other men as men, was much more conspicuous. Rarely indeed have I heard him utter a word censuring opponents, or concerning those who actually were or had been friends, that could have given pain. If and when it was done, it was done so to speak judicially, upon full and reluctant conviction and with visible regret.If I have said that he had much in common with other distinguished men who were like him statesmen by profession, it has been by way of preface to what I have now to say; namely, that what has ever struck me in his character as a whole, was its distinctiveness. There were several mental virtues that he possessed in a degree very peculiar; there were, I think, one or two in which he stood almost alone. I am not in myself well qualified for handling a subject like this, and also my life has been too hurried to give me the most favourable opportunities. Still I must try to explain my meaning. I will name then the following characteristics, one and all of which were more prominent in him than in any public man I ever knew: mental calmness; the absence (if for want of better words I may describe it by a negative) of all egoism; the love of exact justice; a thorough tolerance of spirit; and last and most of all an entire absence of suspicion.There was something very remarkable in the combination of these qualities, as well as in their separate possession. Most men who might be happy enough to have one half his love of justice, would be so tossed with storms of indignation at injustice as to lose the balance of their judgment. But he had or seemed to have all the benefits, all the ennobling force of strong emotion, with a complete exemption from its dangers. His mind seemed to move in an atmosphere of chartered tranquillity, which allowed him the view of every object, however blinding to others, in its true position and proportion.It has always appeared to me that the love of justice is one of the rarest among all good qualities, I mean the love of it with full and commanding strength. I should almost dare to say there are five generous men to one just man. The beauty of justice is the beauty of simple form; the beauty of generosity is heightened with colour and every accessory. The passions will often ally themselves with generosity, but they always tend to divert from justice. The man who strongly loves justice must love it for its own sake, and such a love makes of itself a character of a simple grandeur to which it is hard to find an equal.Next to Lord Aberdeen, I think Sir Robert Peel was the most just of the just men I have had the happiness to know. During the years from 1841 to 1846, when they were respectively foreign secretary and prime minister, as I was at the board of[pg 641]trade for much of the time, I had occasion to watch the two in the conduct of several negotiations that involved commercial interests, such as that on the Stade Dues and that on the project of a commercial treaty with Portugal. Now and then Sir Robert Peel would show some degree of unconscious regard to the mere flesh and blood, if I may so speak, of Englishmen; Lord Aberdeen was invariably for putting the most liberal construction upon both the conduct and the claims of the other negotiating state.There is perhaps no position in this country, in which the love of justice that I have ascribed in such extraordinary measure to your father, can be so severely tested, as that very position of foreign minister, with which his name is so closely associated. Nowhere is a man so constantly and in such myriad forms tempted to partiality; nowhere can he do more for justice; but nowhere is it more clear that all human force is inadequate for its end. A nation is rarely just to other nations. Perhaps it is never truly just, though sometimes (like individuals) what may be called more than just. There can be no difficulty in any country, least of all this, in finding foreign ministers able and willing to assert the fair and reasonable claims of their countrymen with courage and with firmness. The difficulty is quite of another kind; it is to find the foreign minister, first, who will himself view those claims in the dry light both of reason and of prudence; secondly, and a far harder task, who will have the courage to hazard, and if need be to sacrifice himself in keeping the mind of his countrymen down to such claims as are strictly fair and reasonable. Lord Aberdeen was most happy in being secretary of state for foreign affairs in the time and in the political company of two such men as the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. He was also happy in the general prevalence of a spirit of great sobriety in the country, which was singularly free under the government of Sir Robert Peel, from the opposite but sometimes associated extremes of wantonness and fear. I am glad to think that his administration of his department earned a decided public approval. So just a man will, I think, rarely attain in that department to the same measure of popularity, while a less just man might easily obtain one far greater.To fall short of perfect candour would deprive all I have said of the little value it can possess, as that little value is all summed up in its sincerity. On one subject to which my mind has been directed for the last twelve or fourteen years, I had the misfortune to differ from your father. I mean the state of Italy and its relation to Austria in particular. I will not pretend to say that his view of the case of Italy appeared to me to harmonize with his general mode of estimating human action and political affairs. It seemed to me as if, called in early youth to deal with a particular combination of questions which were truly gigantic, his mind had received from their weight and force at an impressible period, a fixed form in relation to them, while it ever remained open and elastic in a peculiar degree upon all others. But my mode of[pg 642]solution for what appeared to me an anomaly is immaterial. I thankfully record that the Italian question was almost the only one within my recollection, quite the only one of practical importance, on which during the twenty-six years I have named, I was unable to accept his judgment. I bear witness with yet greater pleasure that, when I returned from Naples in 1851 deeply impressed with the horrible system that I had witnessed, his opinions on Italian politics did not prevent his readily undertaking to read the statement I had drawn, nor his using, when he had read it, more strong words on the subject, which came from lips like his with such peculiar force. As readily did he undertake to invoke the aid of the court of Vienna; to which, if I remember right, he transmitted the statement in manuscript.Though I feel that I cannot by any effort do justice to what I have termed his finely-shaded character, I also feel that I might be drawn onwards to great length on the subject. I must resist the impulse, but I cannot stop without saying a word on the quality which I regard as beyond all others his own, I mean the absence from his nature of all tendency to suspicion. Those who have read his state papers, and have admired their penetrating force and comprehensive scope, will not misunderstand me when I say that he was, in this respect, a little child; not from defect of vision, but from thorough nobleness of nature.I do not think it was by effort and self-command that he rid himself of suspicion. In the simple and strong aim of the man to be good himself, it belonged to the very strength and simplicity of that aim, that he should also think others good. I recollect, and I dare say you better recollect, one of his sayings:“I have a habit of believing people.”To some these words may not seem to import a peculiarity. But as descriptive of him they indicate what of all the points of his character seemed to me most peculiar. I have known one man as free from suspicions as was Lord Aberdeen, but he was not a politician. I am far from thinking statesmen, or politicians, less honourable than other men, quite the reverse; but the habit of their life renders them suspicious. The vicissitudes of politics, the changes of position, the changes of alliance, the sharp transitions from co-operation to antagonism, the inevitable contact with revolting displays of self-seeking and self-love; more than all these perhaps, the constant habit of forecasting the future and shaping all its contingencies beforehand, which is eminently the merit and intellectual virtue of the politician, all these tend to make him, and commonly do make him, suspicious even of his best friend. This suspicion may be found to exist in conjunction with regard, with esteem, nay with affection. For it must be recollected that it is not usually a suspicion of moral delinquency, but at least as it dwells in the better and higher natures, of intellectual error only, in some of its numerous forms, or at most of speaking with a reserve that may be more or less or even wholly unconscious. None of these explanations are needed for Lord Aberdeen. He always took[pg 643]words in their direct and simple meaning, and assumed them to be the index of the mind; and its full index too, so that he did not speculate to learn what undiscovered residue might still remain in its dark places. This entire immunity from suspicion, which makes our minds in general like a haunted place, and the sense of the immunity that he conveyed to his friends in all his dealings with them, combined with the deep serenity of his mind, which ever seemed to beguile and allay by some kindly process of nature excitement in others, gave an indescribable charm to all intercourse with him in critical and difficult circumstances. Hence perhaps in great part, and not merely from his intellectual gifts, was derived the remarkable power he seemed to me to exercise in winning confidences without seeking to win them; and, on the whole, I believe that this quality, could we hold it as it was held in him, would save us from ten erroneous judgments for one into which it might lead. For the grand characteristic of suspicion after all, as of superstition, is to see things that are not.I turn now to another point: Lord Aberdeen was not demonstrative; I do not suppose he could have been an actor; he was unstudied in speech; and it is of interest to inquire what it was that gave such extraordinary force and impressiveness to his language. He did not deal in antithesis. His sayings were not sharpened with gall. In short, one might go on disclaiming for him all the accessories to which most men who are impressive owe their impressiveness. Yet I never knew any one who was so impressive in brief utterances conveying the sum of the matter....History has also caught and will hold firmly and well the honoured name of your father. There was no tarnish upon his reputation more than upon his character. He will be remembered in connection with great passages of European policy not only as a man of singularly searching, large, and calm intelligence, but yet more as the just man, the man that used only true weights and measures, and ever held even the balance of his ordered mind. It is no reproach to other statesmen of this or other periods, to say that scarcely any of them have had a celebrity so entirely unaided by a transitory glare. But if this be so, it implies that while they for the most part must relatively lose, he must relatively and greatly gain. If they have had stage-lights and he has had none, it is the hour when those lights are extinguished that will for the first time do that justice as between them which he was too noble, too far aloft in the tone of his mind, to desire to anticipate. All the qualities and parts in which he was great were those that are the very foundation-stones of our being; as foundation-stones they are deep, and as being deep they are withdrawn from view; but time is their witness and their friend, and in the final distribution of posthumous fame Lord Aberdeen has nothing to forfeit, he has only to receive.I see on perusing what I have written, that in the endeavour to set forth the virtues and great qualities of your father, I seem[pg 644]more or less to disparage other men, including even Sir Robert Peel whom he so much esteemed and loved. I had no such intention, and it is the fault of my hand, not of my will. He would not have claimed, he would not have wished nor borne, that others should claim for him superiority, or even parity in all points with all his contemporaries. But there was a certain region of character which was, so to speak, all his own; and there other men do seem more or less dwarfed beside him. In the combination of profound feeling with a calm of mind equally profound, of thorough penetration with the largest charity, of the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove, in the total suppression and exclusion of self from his reckonings and actions—in all this we may think him supreme, and yet have a broad array of good and noble qualities in which he may have shared variously with others. There are other secrets of his character and inner life into which I do not pretend to have penetrated. It always seemed to me that there was a treasure-house within him, which he kept closed against the eyes of men. He is gone. He has done well in his generation. May peace and light be with him, and may honour and blessing long attend his memory upon earth.—Believe me, my dear Arthur, affectionately yours,W. E. Gladstone.

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Mr. Gladstone to Sir Arthur Gordon (Lord Stanmore)

Downing Street, April 21, 1861.—My dear Arthur,—When, within a few days after your father's death, I referred in conversation with you to one or two points in his character, it was from the impulse of the moment, and without any idea of making my words matter of record. Months have now passed since you asked me to put on paper the substance of what I said. The delay has been partly, perhaps mainly, owing to the pressure of other demands upon my time and thoughts. But it has also been due to this, that an instinct similar to that which made me speak, has made me shrink from writing. It is enough in conversation to give the most partial and hasty touches, provided they be not in the main untrue. Those same touches when clothed in a form of greater assumption have but a meagre and unsatisfactory appearance, and may do even positive injustice. Most of all in the case of a character which was not only of rare quality, but which was so remarkable for the fineness of its lights and shadows. But you have a right to my recollections such as they are, and I will not withhold them.

I may first refer to the earliest occasion on which I saw him; for it illustrates a point not unimportant in his history. On an evening in the month of January 1835, during what is called the short government of Sir Robert Peel, I was sent for by Sir Robert Peel, and received from him the offer, which I accepted, of the under-secretaryship of the colonies. From him I went on to your father, who was then secretary of state in that department, and who was thus to be, in official home-talk, my master. Without any apprehension of hurting you, I may confess, that I went in fear and trembling. [Then follows the passage already quoted in vol. i. p. 124.] I was only, I think, for about ten weeks his under-secretary. But as some men hate those whom they have injured, so others love those whom they have obliged; and his friendship continued warm and unintermitting for the subsequent twenty-six years of his life.

Some of his many great qualities adorned him in common with several, or even with many, other contemporary statesmen: such as clearness of view, strength of the deliberative faculty, strong sense of duty, deep devotion to the crown, and the most thorough and uncompromising loyalty to his friends and colleagues. In this loyalty of intention many, I think, are not only praiseworthy but perfect. But the loyalty of intention was in him so assisted by other and distinctive qualities, as to give it a peculiar efficacy; and any one associated with Lord Aberdeen might always rest assured that he was safe in his hands. When our law did not allow prisoners the benefit of counsel, it was commonly said that the judge was counsel for the prisoner. Lord Aberdeen was always[pg 640]counsel for the absent. Doubtless he had pondered much upon the law,“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”It had entered profoundly into his being, and formed a large part of it. He was strong in his self-respect, but his respect for others, not for this man or that but for other men as men, was much more conspicuous. Rarely indeed have I heard him utter a word censuring opponents, or concerning those who actually were or had been friends, that could have given pain. If and when it was done, it was done so to speak judicially, upon full and reluctant conviction and with visible regret.

If I have said that he had much in common with other distinguished men who were like him statesmen by profession, it has been by way of preface to what I have now to say; namely, that what has ever struck me in his character as a whole, was its distinctiveness. There were several mental virtues that he possessed in a degree very peculiar; there were, I think, one or two in which he stood almost alone. I am not in myself well qualified for handling a subject like this, and also my life has been too hurried to give me the most favourable opportunities. Still I must try to explain my meaning. I will name then the following characteristics, one and all of which were more prominent in him than in any public man I ever knew: mental calmness; the absence (if for want of better words I may describe it by a negative) of all egoism; the love of exact justice; a thorough tolerance of spirit; and last and most of all an entire absence of suspicion.

There was something very remarkable in the combination of these qualities, as well as in their separate possession. Most men who might be happy enough to have one half his love of justice, would be so tossed with storms of indignation at injustice as to lose the balance of their judgment. But he had or seemed to have all the benefits, all the ennobling force of strong emotion, with a complete exemption from its dangers. His mind seemed to move in an atmosphere of chartered tranquillity, which allowed him the view of every object, however blinding to others, in its true position and proportion.

It has always appeared to me that the love of justice is one of the rarest among all good qualities, I mean the love of it with full and commanding strength. I should almost dare to say there are five generous men to one just man. The beauty of justice is the beauty of simple form; the beauty of generosity is heightened with colour and every accessory. The passions will often ally themselves with generosity, but they always tend to divert from justice. The man who strongly loves justice must love it for its own sake, and such a love makes of itself a character of a simple grandeur to which it is hard to find an equal.

Next to Lord Aberdeen, I think Sir Robert Peel was the most just of the just men I have had the happiness to know. During the years from 1841 to 1846, when they were respectively foreign secretary and prime minister, as I was at the board of[pg 641]trade for much of the time, I had occasion to watch the two in the conduct of several negotiations that involved commercial interests, such as that on the Stade Dues and that on the project of a commercial treaty with Portugal. Now and then Sir Robert Peel would show some degree of unconscious regard to the mere flesh and blood, if I may so speak, of Englishmen; Lord Aberdeen was invariably for putting the most liberal construction upon both the conduct and the claims of the other negotiating state.

There is perhaps no position in this country, in which the love of justice that I have ascribed in such extraordinary measure to your father, can be so severely tested, as that very position of foreign minister, with which his name is so closely associated. Nowhere is a man so constantly and in such myriad forms tempted to partiality; nowhere can he do more for justice; but nowhere is it more clear that all human force is inadequate for its end. A nation is rarely just to other nations. Perhaps it is never truly just, though sometimes (like individuals) what may be called more than just. There can be no difficulty in any country, least of all this, in finding foreign ministers able and willing to assert the fair and reasonable claims of their countrymen with courage and with firmness. The difficulty is quite of another kind; it is to find the foreign minister, first, who will himself view those claims in the dry light both of reason and of prudence; secondly, and a far harder task, who will have the courage to hazard, and if need be to sacrifice himself in keeping the mind of his countrymen down to such claims as are strictly fair and reasonable. Lord Aberdeen was most happy in being secretary of state for foreign affairs in the time and in the political company of two such men as the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. He was also happy in the general prevalence of a spirit of great sobriety in the country, which was singularly free under the government of Sir Robert Peel, from the opposite but sometimes associated extremes of wantonness and fear. I am glad to think that his administration of his department earned a decided public approval. So just a man will, I think, rarely attain in that department to the same measure of popularity, while a less just man might easily obtain one far greater.

To fall short of perfect candour would deprive all I have said of the little value it can possess, as that little value is all summed up in its sincerity. On one subject to which my mind has been directed for the last twelve or fourteen years, I had the misfortune to differ from your father. I mean the state of Italy and its relation to Austria in particular. I will not pretend to say that his view of the case of Italy appeared to me to harmonize with his general mode of estimating human action and political affairs. It seemed to me as if, called in early youth to deal with a particular combination of questions which were truly gigantic, his mind had received from their weight and force at an impressible period, a fixed form in relation to them, while it ever remained open and elastic in a peculiar degree upon all others. But my mode of[pg 642]solution for what appeared to me an anomaly is immaterial. I thankfully record that the Italian question was almost the only one within my recollection, quite the only one of practical importance, on which during the twenty-six years I have named, I was unable to accept his judgment. I bear witness with yet greater pleasure that, when I returned from Naples in 1851 deeply impressed with the horrible system that I had witnessed, his opinions on Italian politics did not prevent his readily undertaking to read the statement I had drawn, nor his using, when he had read it, more strong words on the subject, which came from lips like his with such peculiar force. As readily did he undertake to invoke the aid of the court of Vienna; to which, if I remember right, he transmitted the statement in manuscript.

Though I feel that I cannot by any effort do justice to what I have termed his finely-shaded character, I also feel that I might be drawn onwards to great length on the subject. I must resist the impulse, but I cannot stop without saying a word on the quality which I regard as beyond all others his own, I mean the absence from his nature of all tendency to suspicion. Those who have read his state papers, and have admired their penetrating force and comprehensive scope, will not misunderstand me when I say that he was, in this respect, a little child; not from defect of vision, but from thorough nobleness of nature.

I do not think it was by effort and self-command that he rid himself of suspicion. In the simple and strong aim of the man to be good himself, it belonged to the very strength and simplicity of that aim, that he should also think others good. I recollect, and I dare say you better recollect, one of his sayings:“I have a habit of believing people.”To some these words may not seem to import a peculiarity. But as descriptive of him they indicate what of all the points of his character seemed to me most peculiar. I have known one man as free from suspicions as was Lord Aberdeen, but he was not a politician. I am far from thinking statesmen, or politicians, less honourable than other men, quite the reverse; but the habit of their life renders them suspicious. The vicissitudes of politics, the changes of position, the changes of alliance, the sharp transitions from co-operation to antagonism, the inevitable contact with revolting displays of self-seeking and self-love; more than all these perhaps, the constant habit of forecasting the future and shaping all its contingencies beforehand, which is eminently the merit and intellectual virtue of the politician, all these tend to make him, and commonly do make him, suspicious even of his best friend. This suspicion may be found to exist in conjunction with regard, with esteem, nay with affection. For it must be recollected that it is not usually a suspicion of moral delinquency, but at least as it dwells in the better and higher natures, of intellectual error only, in some of its numerous forms, or at most of speaking with a reserve that may be more or less or even wholly unconscious. None of these explanations are needed for Lord Aberdeen. He always took[pg 643]words in their direct and simple meaning, and assumed them to be the index of the mind; and its full index too, so that he did not speculate to learn what undiscovered residue might still remain in its dark places. This entire immunity from suspicion, which makes our minds in general like a haunted place, and the sense of the immunity that he conveyed to his friends in all his dealings with them, combined with the deep serenity of his mind, which ever seemed to beguile and allay by some kindly process of nature excitement in others, gave an indescribable charm to all intercourse with him in critical and difficult circumstances. Hence perhaps in great part, and not merely from his intellectual gifts, was derived the remarkable power he seemed to me to exercise in winning confidences without seeking to win them; and, on the whole, I believe that this quality, could we hold it as it was held in him, would save us from ten erroneous judgments for one into which it might lead. For the grand characteristic of suspicion after all, as of superstition, is to see things that are not.

I turn now to another point: Lord Aberdeen was not demonstrative; I do not suppose he could have been an actor; he was unstudied in speech; and it is of interest to inquire what it was that gave such extraordinary force and impressiveness to his language. He did not deal in antithesis. His sayings were not sharpened with gall. In short, one might go on disclaiming for him all the accessories to which most men who are impressive owe their impressiveness. Yet I never knew any one who was so impressive in brief utterances conveying the sum of the matter....

History has also caught and will hold firmly and well the honoured name of your father. There was no tarnish upon his reputation more than upon his character. He will be remembered in connection with great passages of European policy not only as a man of singularly searching, large, and calm intelligence, but yet more as the just man, the man that used only true weights and measures, and ever held even the balance of his ordered mind. It is no reproach to other statesmen of this or other periods, to say that scarcely any of them have had a celebrity so entirely unaided by a transitory glare. But if this be so, it implies that while they for the most part must relatively lose, he must relatively and greatly gain. If they have had stage-lights and he has had none, it is the hour when those lights are extinguished that will for the first time do that justice as between them which he was too noble, too far aloft in the tone of his mind, to desire to anticipate. All the qualities and parts in which he was great were those that are the very foundation-stones of our being; as foundation-stones they are deep, and as being deep they are withdrawn from view; but time is their witness and their friend, and in the final distribution of posthumous fame Lord Aberdeen has nothing to forfeit, he has only to receive.

I see on perusing what I have written, that in the endeavour to set forth the virtues and great qualities of your father, I seem[pg 644]more or less to disparage other men, including even Sir Robert Peel whom he so much esteemed and loved. I had no such intention, and it is the fault of my hand, not of my will. He would not have claimed, he would not have wished nor borne, that others should claim for him superiority, or even parity in all points with all his contemporaries. But there was a certain region of character which was, so to speak, all his own; and there other men do seem more or less dwarfed beside him. In the combination of profound feeling with a calm of mind equally profound, of thorough penetration with the largest charity, of the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove, in the total suppression and exclusion of self from his reckonings and actions—in all this we may think him supreme, and yet have a broad array of good and noble qualities in which he may have shared variously with others. There are other secrets of his character and inner life into which I do not pretend to have penetrated. It always seemed to me that there was a treasure-house within him, which he kept closed against the eyes of men. He is gone. He has done well in his generation. May peace and light be with him, and may honour and blessing long attend his memory upon earth.—Believe me, my dear Arthur, affectionately yours,W. E. Gladstone.

Cabinet Of 1868-1874Page255First lord of the treasury, W. E. Gladstone.Lord chancellor, Lord Hatherly (Page Wood).President of the council, Earl de Grey (created Marquis of Ripon, 1871).Lord privy seal, Earl of Kimberley.Chancellor of the exchequer, Robert Lowe.Home secretary, Henry Austin Bruce.Foreign secretary, Earl of Clarendon.Colonial secretary, Earl Granville.War secretary, Edward Cardwell.First lord of the admiralty, H. C. E. Childers.Indian secretary, Duke of Argyll.President of the board of trade, John Bright.Chief secretary for Ireland, Chichester Fortescue.Postmaster general, Marquis of Hartington.President of the poor law board, George J. Goschen.On Lord Clarendon's death in June 1870, Lord Granville became foreign secretary; Lord Kimberley, colonial secretary; Viscount Halifax (Sir C. Wood), lord privy seal; and Mr. Forster, vice-president of the privy council, entered the cabinet.On Mr. Bright's resignation in December 1870, Mr. Chichester Fortescue became president of the board of trade; Lord Hartington succeeded him as chief secretary for Ireland; Mr. Monsell was appointed postmaster general without a seat in the cabinet.[pg 645]On Mr. Childers's resignation in March 1871, Mr. Goschen became first lord of the admiralty, and Mr. James Stansfeld president of the poor law board.In August 1872 Mr. Childers rejoined the cabinet, succeeding Lord Dufferin as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. In October Sir Roundell Palmer (created Lord Selborne) became lord chancellor on the retirement of Lord Hatherley.In August 1873 Lord Ripon and Mr. Childers retired, Mr. Gladstone became chancellor of the exchequer as well as first lord; Mr. Bright rejoined the cabinet as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster; Mr. Lowe became home secretary and Mr. Bruce (created Lord Aberdare) president of the council.

Page255

First lord of the treasury, W. E. Gladstone.Lord chancellor, Lord Hatherly (Page Wood).President of the council, Earl de Grey (created Marquis of Ripon, 1871).Lord privy seal, Earl of Kimberley.Chancellor of the exchequer, Robert Lowe.Home secretary, Henry Austin Bruce.Foreign secretary, Earl of Clarendon.Colonial secretary, Earl Granville.War secretary, Edward Cardwell.First lord of the admiralty, H. C. E. Childers.Indian secretary, Duke of Argyll.President of the board of trade, John Bright.Chief secretary for Ireland, Chichester Fortescue.Postmaster general, Marquis of Hartington.President of the poor law board, George J. Goschen.

First lord of the treasury, W. E. Gladstone.

Lord chancellor, Lord Hatherly (Page Wood).

President of the council, Earl de Grey (created Marquis of Ripon, 1871).

Lord privy seal, Earl of Kimberley.

Chancellor of the exchequer, Robert Lowe.

Home secretary, Henry Austin Bruce.

Foreign secretary, Earl of Clarendon.

Colonial secretary, Earl Granville.

War secretary, Edward Cardwell.

First lord of the admiralty, H. C. E. Childers.

Indian secretary, Duke of Argyll.

President of the board of trade, John Bright.

Chief secretary for Ireland, Chichester Fortescue.

Postmaster general, Marquis of Hartington.

President of the poor law board, George J. Goschen.

On Lord Clarendon's death in June 1870, Lord Granville became foreign secretary; Lord Kimberley, colonial secretary; Viscount Halifax (Sir C. Wood), lord privy seal; and Mr. Forster, vice-president of the privy council, entered the cabinet.

On Mr. Bright's resignation in December 1870, Mr. Chichester Fortescue became president of the board of trade; Lord Hartington succeeded him as chief secretary for Ireland; Mr. Monsell was appointed postmaster general without a seat in the cabinet.

On Mr. Childers's resignation in March 1871, Mr. Goschen became first lord of the admiralty, and Mr. James Stansfeld president of the poor law board.

In August 1872 Mr. Childers rejoined the cabinet, succeeding Lord Dufferin as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. In October Sir Roundell Palmer (created Lord Selborne) became lord chancellor on the retirement of Lord Hatherley.

In August 1873 Lord Ripon and Mr. Childers retired, Mr. Gladstone became chancellor of the exchequer as well as first lord; Mr. Bright rejoined the cabinet as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster; Mr. Lowe became home secretary and Mr. Bruce (created Lord Aberdare) president of the council.

Irish Church BillPage276Mr. Gladstone to the QueenJuly 21, 1869.—Mr. Gladstone presents his humble duty to your Majesty and reports that the cabinet met at 11 this day, and considered with anxious care its position and duty in regard to the Irish Church bill. The vote and declaration of the House of Lords last night were regarded as fatal if persisted in; and the cabinet deemed it impossible to meet proceedings of such a character with any tender of further concessions. The cabinet, however, considered at much length a variety of courses; as (1) To announce at once that they could no longer, after the vote and announcement of last night, be responsible for further proceedings in connection with the bill, but that they would leave it to the majority of the House of Lords to take such steps as it might think proper; (2) To go through the whole of the amendments of the bill [i.e.in the House of Lords], and then if they were adversely carried to declare and proceed as above; (3) To go through not the whole of the amendments but the endowment amendments, and to conclude that when these had been adversely decided, they could (as before) assume no further responsibility, but must leave the matter to the majority to consider; (4) To send the bill back to the House of Commons with the declaration that it would not be accepted there, and with the intention of simply moving the House to adhere to its amendments as last adjusted.Your Majesty has already been apprized by Mr. Gladstone's telegram in cipher of this afternoon, that (under the influence of a strong desire to exhibit patience, and to leave open every opportunity for reconsideration), the third of these courses had been adopted; although there was no doubt that the House of Commons was fully prepared to approve and sustain the first. Lord Granville deemed it just possible that the peers might be prepared to give way before another return of the bill from the House of Commons; and the question therefore was left open whether, if evidence to this effect should appear, the government should then fall in with[pg 646]that course of proceeding. Although the government have felt it to be impossible to make biddings in the face of the opposition, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been apprised, in strict confidence, of the nature and extent of the concession, which for the sake of peace they would be prepared to recommend. Sir R. Palmer is also substantially aware of it, and has expressed his opinion that on such terms the opposition ought to be ready to conclude the matter.

Page276

Mr. Gladstone to the Queen

July 21, 1869.—Mr. Gladstone presents his humble duty to your Majesty and reports that the cabinet met at 11 this day, and considered with anxious care its position and duty in regard to the Irish Church bill. The vote and declaration of the House of Lords last night were regarded as fatal if persisted in; and the cabinet deemed it impossible to meet proceedings of such a character with any tender of further concessions. The cabinet, however, considered at much length a variety of courses; as (1) To announce at once that they could no longer, after the vote and announcement of last night, be responsible for further proceedings in connection with the bill, but that they would leave it to the majority of the House of Lords to take such steps as it might think proper; (2) To go through the whole of the amendments of the bill [i.e.in the House of Lords], and then if they were adversely carried to declare and proceed as above; (3) To go through not the whole of the amendments but the endowment amendments, and to conclude that when these had been adversely decided, they could (as before) assume no further responsibility, but must leave the matter to the majority to consider; (4) To send the bill back to the House of Commons with the declaration that it would not be accepted there, and with the intention of simply moving the House to adhere to its amendments as last adjusted.

Your Majesty has already been apprized by Mr. Gladstone's telegram in cipher of this afternoon, that (under the influence of a strong desire to exhibit patience, and to leave open every opportunity for reconsideration), the third of these courses had been adopted; although there was no doubt that the House of Commons was fully prepared to approve and sustain the first. Lord Granville deemed it just possible that the peers might be prepared to give way before another return of the bill from the House of Commons; and the question therefore was left open whether, if evidence to this effect should appear, the government should then fall in with[pg 646]that course of proceeding. Although the government have felt it to be impossible to make biddings in the face of the opposition, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been apprised, in strict confidence, of the nature and extent of the concession, which for the sake of peace they would be prepared to recommend. Sir R. Palmer is also substantially aware of it, and has expressed his opinion that on such terms the opposition ought to be ready to conclude the matter.

Board And Voluntary SchoolsPage310Mr. Gladstone to M. BrightAug. 21, 1873.—An appeal to me was made to introduce board schools into Hawarden on account of my share in the Education Act. I stated the two views held by different supporters of the Act, respectively on the question of board schools and voluntary schools. For myself, I said, not in education only butin all things including education, I prefer voluntary to legal machinery, when the thing can be well done either way. But this question is not to be decided by a general preference or a general formula. Parliament has referred it to the choice of the local communities. They should decide according to the facts of the case before them. What are the facts in Hawarden? Four-fifths are already provided for; were it only one-fifth or were it two-fifths the case for the board (I said) would be overwhelming. But besides the four-fifths, arrangements are already made for a further provision in a voluntary school. Nothing remains to be done except to build threeinfantschools. The voluntary schools will be governed by a committee, including the churchwardens, and having a majority of laymen. The machinery of a board is of necessity cumbrous, and the method costly in comparison. I hold that we ought not to set up this machinery, in order to create three infant schools, where all the other wants of some 2000 people are already provided for.

Page310

Mr. Gladstone to M. Bright

Aug. 21, 1873.—An appeal to me was made to introduce board schools into Hawarden on account of my share in the Education Act. I stated the two views held by different supporters of the Act, respectively on the question of board schools and voluntary schools. For myself, I said, not in education only butin all things including education, I prefer voluntary to legal machinery, when the thing can be well done either way. But this question is not to be decided by a general preference or a general formula. Parliament has referred it to the choice of the local communities. They should decide according to the facts of the case before them. What are the facts in Hawarden? Four-fifths are already provided for; were it only one-fifth or were it two-fifths the case for the board (I said) would be overwhelming. But besides the four-fifths, arrangements are already made for a further provision in a voluntary school. Nothing remains to be done except to build threeinfantschools. The voluntary schools will be governed by a committee, including the churchwardens, and having a majority of laymen. The machinery of a board is of necessity cumbrous, and the method costly in comparison. I hold that we ought not to set up this machinery, in order to create three infant schools, where all the other wants of some 2000 people are already provided for.

Views On A Classical EducationPage312Mr. Gladstone to Lord LytteltonPenmaenmawr, Aug. 29, 1861.—-Thanks for the brief notice which you recently took of the Public Schools Commission. I was heartily glad to hear that you had formed a drastic set of questions. I take the deepest interest in the object of the commission, and I have full confidence in its members and organs; and at all times I shall be very glad to hear what you are doing. Meantime I cannot help giving you, to be taken for what it is worth, the sum of my own thoughts upon the subject.... Thelowutilitarian argument in matter of education, for giving it what is termed a practical direction, is so plausible that I think we may[pg 647]on the whole be thankful that the instincts of the country have resisted what in argument it has been ill able to confute. We still hold by the classical training as the basis of a liberal education; parents dispose of their children in early youth accordingly; but if they were asked why they did so, it is probable they would give lamentably weak or unworthy reasons for it, such for example as that the public schools and universities open the way to desirable acquaintance and what is termed“good society.”Your commission will not I presume be able to pass by this question, but will have to look it in the face; and to proceed either upon a distinct affirmative, or a substantial negative, of the proposition that the classical training is the proper basis of a liberal education. I hope you will hold by affirmation and reject negation.But the reason why I trouble you upon the subject is this, that I think the friends of this principle have usually rather blinked the discussion, and have been content with making terms of compromise by way of buying off the adversary, which might be in themselves reasonable unless they were taken as mere instalments of a transaction intended in the long run to swallow up the principle itself. What I feel is that the relation of pure science, natural science, modern languages, modern history, and the rest of the old classical training ought to be founded on a principle and ought not to be treated simply as importunate creditors, that take a shilling in the £ to-day, because they hope to get another shilling to-morrow, and in the meantime have a recognition of their title. This recognition of title is just what I would refuse. I deny their right to a parallel or equal position; their true position is auxiliary, and as auxiliary it ought to be limited and restrained without scruple, as a regard to the paramount matter of education may dictate.But why after all is the classical training paramount? Is it because we find it established? because it improves memory or taste, or gives precision, or develops the faculty of speech? All these are but partial and fragmentary statements, so many narrow glimpses of a great and comprehensive truth. That truth I take to be that the modern European civilisation from the middle age downwards is the compound of two great factors, the Christian religion for the spirit of man, and the Greek, and in a secondary degree the Roman discipline for his mind and intellect. St. Paul is the apostle of the Gentiles, and is in his own person a symbol of this great wedding—the place, for example, of Aristotle and Plato in Christian education is not arbitrary nor in principle mutable. The materials of what we call classical training were prepared, and we have a right to say were advisedly prepared, in order that it might become not a mere adjunct but (in mathematical phrase) the complement of Christianity in its application to the culture of the human being formed both for this world and for the world to come.If this principle be true it is broad and high and clear enough, and supplies a key to all questions connected with the relation[pg 648]between the classical training of our youth and all other branches of their secular education. It must of course be kept within its proper place, and duly limited as to things and persons. It can only apply in full to that small proportion of the youth of any country, who are to become in the fullest sense educated men. It involves no extravagant or inconvenient assumptions respecting those who are to be educated for trades and professions in which the necessities of specific training must limit general culture. It leaves open every question turning upon individual aptitudes and inaptitudes and by no means requires that boys without a capacity for imbibing any of the spirit of classical culture are still to be mechanically plied with the instruments of it after their unfitness has become manifest. But it lays down the rule of education for those who have no internal and no external disqualification; and that rule, becoming a fixed and central point in the system, becomes also the point around which all others may be grouped.Mr. Gladstone to Sir S. NorthcoteNov. 12, 1861.—The letter I wrote to Lyttelton about the classical education suggested topics, which as you justly perceive are altogether esoteric. They have never to my knowledge been carefully worked out, and I think they well deserve it; but clearly your report is not the place. I will not say you are not prudent in suggesting that you should not even give an opinion upon the great question: What is the true place of the old classical learning in the human culture of the nineteenth century? I am far from venturing to say the contrary. But one thing I do think, namely, that it is desirable that, as far as may be, the members of the commission should have some answer to that question in their minds, and should write their report with reference to it. For centuries, through the lifetime of our great schools this classical culture has been made thelapis angularisof all secular culture of the highest class. Was this right or was it wrong, aye or no? I think it much to be desired that the commission should, if they will, proceed upon the affirmative or negative of that proposition, and should also make their choice for the former. This would be a long note to their report; but it need not be distinctly and separately heard in it. Such is my notion. As to particulars I have little to say that is worth hearing; but I think these three things. First, that we give much too little scope for deviation from what I think the normal standard to other and useful branches, when it has become evident that the normal standard is inapplicable; just as was the case in Oxford before the reform of the examinations, or let me rather say the new statutes. Secondly, I am extremely jealous of any invasion of modern languages which is to displace classical culture, or any portion of it in minds capable of following that walk. (I take it that among the usual modern tongues Italian has by far the greatest capacity for strict study and scholarship; whereas it is the one least in[pg 649]favour and the whole method of dealing with them is quite alien to strict study.) Lastly, I confess I grieve over the ignorance of natural history which I feel in myself and believe to exist in others. At some time, in some way, much more of all this ought to be brought in, but clearly it would serve in a great degree as recreation, and need not thrust aside whatever hard work boys are capable of doing.

Page312

Mr. Gladstone to Lord Lyttelton

Penmaenmawr, Aug. 29, 1861.—-Thanks for the brief notice which you recently took of the Public Schools Commission. I was heartily glad to hear that you had formed a drastic set of questions. I take the deepest interest in the object of the commission, and I have full confidence in its members and organs; and at all times I shall be very glad to hear what you are doing. Meantime I cannot help giving you, to be taken for what it is worth, the sum of my own thoughts upon the subject.... Thelowutilitarian argument in matter of education, for giving it what is termed a practical direction, is so plausible that I think we may[pg 647]on the whole be thankful that the instincts of the country have resisted what in argument it has been ill able to confute. We still hold by the classical training as the basis of a liberal education; parents dispose of their children in early youth accordingly; but if they were asked why they did so, it is probable they would give lamentably weak or unworthy reasons for it, such for example as that the public schools and universities open the way to desirable acquaintance and what is termed“good society.”Your commission will not I presume be able to pass by this question, but will have to look it in the face; and to proceed either upon a distinct affirmative, or a substantial negative, of the proposition that the classical training is the proper basis of a liberal education. I hope you will hold by affirmation and reject negation.

But the reason why I trouble you upon the subject is this, that I think the friends of this principle have usually rather blinked the discussion, and have been content with making terms of compromise by way of buying off the adversary, which might be in themselves reasonable unless they were taken as mere instalments of a transaction intended in the long run to swallow up the principle itself. What I feel is that the relation of pure science, natural science, modern languages, modern history, and the rest of the old classical training ought to be founded on a principle and ought not to be treated simply as importunate creditors, that take a shilling in the £ to-day, because they hope to get another shilling to-morrow, and in the meantime have a recognition of their title. This recognition of title is just what I would refuse. I deny their right to a parallel or equal position; their true position is auxiliary, and as auxiliary it ought to be limited and restrained without scruple, as a regard to the paramount matter of education may dictate.

But why after all is the classical training paramount? Is it because we find it established? because it improves memory or taste, or gives precision, or develops the faculty of speech? All these are but partial and fragmentary statements, so many narrow glimpses of a great and comprehensive truth. That truth I take to be that the modern European civilisation from the middle age downwards is the compound of two great factors, the Christian religion for the spirit of man, and the Greek, and in a secondary degree the Roman discipline for his mind and intellect. St. Paul is the apostle of the Gentiles, and is in his own person a symbol of this great wedding—the place, for example, of Aristotle and Plato in Christian education is not arbitrary nor in principle mutable. The materials of what we call classical training were prepared, and we have a right to say were advisedly prepared, in order that it might become not a mere adjunct but (in mathematical phrase) the complement of Christianity in its application to the culture of the human being formed both for this world and for the world to come.

If this principle be true it is broad and high and clear enough, and supplies a key to all questions connected with the relation[pg 648]between the classical training of our youth and all other branches of their secular education. It must of course be kept within its proper place, and duly limited as to things and persons. It can only apply in full to that small proportion of the youth of any country, who are to become in the fullest sense educated men. It involves no extravagant or inconvenient assumptions respecting those who are to be educated for trades and professions in which the necessities of specific training must limit general culture. It leaves open every question turning upon individual aptitudes and inaptitudes and by no means requires that boys without a capacity for imbibing any of the spirit of classical culture are still to be mechanically plied with the instruments of it after their unfitness has become manifest. But it lays down the rule of education for those who have no internal and no external disqualification; and that rule, becoming a fixed and central point in the system, becomes also the point around which all others may be grouped.

Mr. Gladstone to Sir S. Northcote

Nov. 12, 1861.—The letter I wrote to Lyttelton about the classical education suggested topics, which as you justly perceive are altogether esoteric. They have never to my knowledge been carefully worked out, and I think they well deserve it; but clearly your report is not the place. I will not say you are not prudent in suggesting that you should not even give an opinion upon the great question: What is the true place of the old classical learning in the human culture of the nineteenth century? I am far from venturing to say the contrary. But one thing I do think, namely, that it is desirable that, as far as may be, the members of the commission should have some answer to that question in their minds, and should write their report with reference to it. For centuries, through the lifetime of our great schools this classical culture has been made thelapis angularisof all secular culture of the highest class. Was this right or was it wrong, aye or no? I think it much to be desired that the commission should, if they will, proceed upon the affirmative or negative of that proposition, and should also make their choice for the former. This would be a long note to their report; but it need not be distinctly and separately heard in it. Such is my notion. As to particulars I have little to say that is worth hearing; but I think these three things. First, that we give much too little scope for deviation from what I think the normal standard to other and useful branches, when it has become evident that the normal standard is inapplicable; just as was the case in Oxford before the reform of the examinations, or let me rather say the new statutes. Secondly, I am extremely jealous of any invasion of modern languages which is to displace classical culture, or any portion of it in minds capable of following that walk. (I take it that among the usual modern tongues Italian has by far the greatest capacity for strict study and scholarship; whereas it is the one least in[pg 649]favour and the whole method of dealing with them is quite alien to strict study.) Lastly, I confess I grieve over the ignorance of natural history which I feel in myself and believe to exist in others. At some time, in some way, much more of all this ought to be brought in, but clearly it would serve in a great degree as recreation, and need not thrust aside whatever hard work boys are capable of doing.

Position Of The Commander-In-Chief In ParliamentPage362Mr. Gladstone to the QueenJuly 8, 1871.—Mr. Gladstone believes that according to precedent the commander-in-chief, when a peer, has not shrunk from giving his opinion on measures submitted to the House of Lords. In 1847, the government of that day introduced the Short Service bill, of which on the merits it is believed that the Duke of Wellington, then commander-in-chief, did not approve. Indeed he expressed in debate on April 26th, 1847, his doubts whether the measure would produce the advantages which were anticipated from it; nevertheless, while having no political connection with the government, he spoke and voted in a division for the bill. It is probable, as the numbers were only 108 to 94, that his speech and vote alone carried the bill. Your Majesty will not fail to bear in mind that until 1855, there was always a very high military authority who was in political connection with the government, namely, the master of the ordnance. Indeed, unless Mr. Gladstone's recollection deceives him, Lord Beresford was required by the Duke of Wellington in 1829, as master of the ordnance, to support the Roman Catholic Relief bill. And it is still regretted by many that ministries have not since comprehended any such officer. All question, however, as to the political support of a ministry by the military chiefs of the army is now at an end.

Page362

Mr. Gladstone to the Queen

July 8, 1871.—Mr. Gladstone believes that according to precedent the commander-in-chief, when a peer, has not shrunk from giving his opinion on measures submitted to the House of Lords. In 1847, the government of that day introduced the Short Service bill, of which on the merits it is believed that the Duke of Wellington, then commander-in-chief, did not approve. Indeed he expressed in debate on April 26th, 1847, his doubts whether the measure would produce the advantages which were anticipated from it; nevertheless, while having no political connection with the government, he spoke and voted in a division for the bill. It is probable, as the numbers were only 108 to 94, that his speech and vote alone carried the bill. Your Majesty will not fail to bear in mind that until 1855, there was always a very high military authority who was in political connection with the government, namely, the master of the ordnance. Indeed, unless Mr. Gladstone's recollection deceives him, Lord Beresford was required by the Duke of Wellington in 1829, as master of the ordnance, to support the Roman Catholic Relief bill. And it is still regretted by many that ministries have not since comprehended any such officer. All question, however, as to the political support of a ministry by the military chiefs of the army is now at an end.

A Soldier At The War OfficePage363Mr. Gladstone to Mr. CardwellJan. 5, 1871.—It was a great advantage before 1854, that there was always a considerable soldier either in the cabinet or at least at the head of an important military department, and politically associated with the government. This we lost by the crude and ill-advised reconstructions of '55. But you, following in this point a wise initiative of your predecessor, have endeavoured to bring the appointment of Sir H. Storks into a position which makes it probably the best substitute for the former plan that can be had at present. The demand that a soldier shall be appointed at the present time would hold gooda fortiorifor all[pg 650]periods of greater emergency. I know not where that principle has been admitted in our military administration. If we have committed gross errors, it has been owing to an excess much more than to a defect of professional influence and counsel. In my opinion the qualities of a good administrator and statesman go to make a good war minister, especially at this juncture, far more than those of a good soldier. Show me the soldier who has those equally with you, and then let him take your place as S.S. But not till then. You were chosen for your office, not because you would do tolerably for easy times, and then could walk out, but because you were the best man the party could supply for the post. The reproaches aimed at you now are merely aimed at the government through you, and you are chosen to be the point of attack because the nation is sore on military matters in times of crisis, and the press which ought to check excitement, by most of its instruments ministers to its increase. You find yourself unable to suggest a successor; and I have seen no plan that would not weaken the government instead of strengthening it. You see what eulogies have been passed on Bright, now he is gone. You would rise in the market with many after resigning, to depreciate those who remain behind; but as I have said, you would not be allowed to have had a legitimate cause of going, and as far as my observation goes, retirements are quite as critically judged as acceptances of office, perhaps more so. What is really to be desired, is that we should get Storks into parliament if possible.

Page363

Mr. Gladstone to Mr. Cardwell

Jan. 5, 1871.—It was a great advantage before 1854, that there was always a considerable soldier either in the cabinet or at least at the head of an important military department, and politically associated with the government. This we lost by the crude and ill-advised reconstructions of '55. But you, following in this point a wise initiative of your predecessor, have endeavoured to bring the appointment of Sir H. Storks into a position which makes it probably the best substitute for the former plan that can be had at present. The demand that a soldier shall be appointed at the present time would hold gooda fortiorifor all[pg 650]periods of greater emergency. I know not where that principle has been admitted in our military administration. If we have committed gross errors, it has been owing to an excess much more than to a defect of professional influence and counsel. In my opinion the qualities of a good administrator and statesman go to make a good war minister, especially at this juncture, far more than those of a good soldier. Show me the soldier who has those equally with you, and then let him take your place as S.S. But not till then. You were chosen for your office, not because you would do tolerably for easy times, and then could walk out, but because you were the best man the party could supply for the post. The reproaches aimed at you now are merely aimed at the government through you, and you are chosen to be the point of attack because the nation is sore on military matters in times of crisis, and the press which ought to check excitement, by most of its instruments ministers to its increase. You find yourself unable to suggest a successor; and I have seen no plan that would not weaken the government instead of strengthening it. You see what eulogies have been passed on Bright, now he is gone. You would rise in the market with many after resigning, to depreciate those who remain behind; but as I have said, you would not be allowed to have had a legitimate cause of going, and as far as my observation goes, retirements are quite as critically judged as acceptances of office, perhaps more so. What is really to be desired, is that we should get Storks into parliament if possible.

Mr. Gladstone's Financial Legacy, 1869Page372Mr. Gladstone to Mr. LoweHawarden, Jan. 9, 1869.—I have referred to my list of remnants; and I will begin with those that I tried in parliament and failed in: 1. Collection of taxes by Queen's officers instead of local officers. 2. Taxation of charities. 3. Bill for restraining, with a view to ultimately abolishing, the circulation of the notes of private banks. 4. Plan for bringing the chancery and other judicial accounts under the control of parliament. Here I had a commission (on chancery accounts) but did not dare to go farther.The following are subjects which I was not able to take in hand:—1. Abolition of the remaining duty upon corn; an exceeding strong case. 2. I should be much disposed to abolish the tea licences as greatly restrictive of the consumption of a dutiable and useful commodity. I modified them; but am not sure that this was enough. The B.I.R. could throw light on this subject. 3. The probate duty calls, I fear, loudly for change; but I wanted either time or courage to take it in hand. 4. The remaining[pg 651]conveyance duties, apart from railways, I always considered as marked for extinction. On this subject Mr. Ayrton has rather decided antecedents. 5. The fire insurance duty is sure to be further assailed. Though not as bad (relatively to other taxes) as is supposed, it is bad enough to be very hard to defend in an adverse House; and this is one of the questions on which it is not likely that the opposition will help to see fair play. The promises that liberal reduction will lead to recovery of anything like the old or previous revenue have always been confidently pressed by irresponsible men, and are in my opinion illusory. The tax is a tax on property: and, as we have too few of these rather than too many, what would seem desirable is to commute it; leaving no more than a penny stamp on the policy. This might perhaps be done, if it were made part of a large budget. 6. The income-tax at 6d., I suppose, presents a forward claim. 7. The commutation of malt duty for beer duty must always, I presume, be spoken of with respect; but the working objections to it have thus far been found too hard to deal with.There is always room in detail for amendments of stamp duties, but the great case as among them is the probate. They are of a class which, without any legal knowledge, I found very hard to work through the House of Commons. I do not look upon the Act of 1844 as theendof legislation in currency; but this subject is a big one. Scotch and Irish notes would be hard to deal with until the English case is disposed of. I forget whether we have abolished the last of the restrictions on newspapers. If not, they deserve to be taken in hand, according to me. I have always wished to equalise the outgoings of the exchequer as much as possible over the several weeks of the year. Few incomes admit of this advantage in the same degree as the public income. It would make our“account”much more valuable to our bankers; therefore to us.These, I think, were the main matters which lay more or less in perspective before me. I must add that I am strongly in favour of paying off the national debt, not only by annual surpluses, but by terminable annuitiessold to the national debt commissioners for securities held by them against deposit monies. The opponents of this plan were Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Laing. I am satisfied that neither of them had taken the trouble, and it requires some trouble, to understand it. I admit them to be no mean authorities. Terminable annuities sold to others than yourself are quite another matter. I got into the law some power of this kind over post office savings bank monies to be exercised by the chancellor of the exchequer from time to time.This is all I need trouble you with, and I have endeavoured to keep clear of all idiosyncratic propositions as much as in me lies. Of course such a letter calls for no answer. As this legacy opinion to you takes the form of a donationinter vivosit will, I hope, escape duty.

Page372

Mr. Gladstone to Mr. Lowe

Hawarden, Jan. 9, 1869.—I have referred to my list of remnants; and I will begin with those that I tried in parliament and failed in: 1. Collection of taxes by Queen's officers instead of local officers. 2. Taxation of charities. 3. Bill for restraining, with a view to ultimately abolishing, the circulation of the notes of private banks. 4. Plan for bringing the chancery and other judicial accounts under the control of parliament. Here I had a commission (on chancery accounts) but did not dare to go farther.

The following are subjects which I was not able to take in hand:—

1. Abolition of the remaining duty upon corn; an exceeding strong case. 2. I should be much disposed to abolish the tea licences as greatly restrictive of the consumption of a dutiable and useful commodity. I modified them; but am not sure that this was enough. The B.I.R. could throw light on this subject. 3. The probate duty calls, I fear, loudly for change; but I wanted either time or courage to take it in hand. 4. The remaining[pg 651]conveyance duties, apart from railways, I always considered as marked for extinction. On this subject Mr. Ayrton has rather decided antecedents. 5. The fire insurance duty is sure to be further assailed. Though not as bad (relatively to other taxes) as is supposed, it is bad enough to be very hard to defend in an adverse House; and this is one of the questions on which it is not likely that the opposition will help to see fair play. The promises that liberal reduction will lead to recovery of anything like the old or previous revenue have always been confidently pressed by irresponsible men, and are in my opinion illusory. The tax is a tax on property: and, as we have too few of these rather than too many, what would seem desirable is to commute it; leaving no more than a penny stamp on the policy. This might perhaps be done, if it were made part of a large budget. 6. The income-tax at 6d., I suppose, presents a forward claim. 7. The commutation of malt duty for beer duty must always, I presume, be spoken of with respect; but the working objections to it have thus far been found too hard to deal with.

There is always room in detail for amendments of stamp duties, but the great case as among them is the probate. They are of a class which, without any legal knowledge, I found very hard to work through the House of Commons. I do not look upon the Act of 1844 as theendof legislation in currency; but this subject is a big one. Scotch and Irish notes would be hard to deal with until the English case is disposed of. I forget whether we have abolished the last of the restrictions on newspapers. If not, they deserve to be taken in hand, according to me. I have always wished to equalise the outgoings of the exchequer as much as possible over the several weeks of the year. Few incomes admit of this advantage in the same degree as the public income. It would make our“account”much more valuable to our bankers; therefore to us.

These, I think, were the main matters which lay more or less in perspective before me. I must add that I am strongly in favour of paying off the national debt, not only by annual surpluses, but by terminable annuitiessold to the national debt commissioners for securities held by them against deposit monies. The opponents of this plan were Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Laing. I am satisfied that neither of them had taken the trouble, and it requires some trouble, to understand it. I admit them to be no mean authorities. Terminable annuities sold to others than yourself are quite another matter. I got into the law some power of this kind over post office savings bank monies to be exercised by the chancellor of the exchequer from time to time.

This is all I need trouble you with, and I have endeavoured to keep clear of all idiosyncratic propositions as much as in me lies. Of course such a letter calls for no answer. As this legacy opinion to you takes the form of a donationinter vivosit will, I hope, escape duty.

Prince Albert, 1854Page426Mr. Gladstone wrote an elaborate article in theMorning Chronicle(Jan. 16, 1854) warmly defending the court against attacks that had clouded the popularity of the Prince Consort. They came to little more than that the Prince attended meetings of the privy council; that he was present when the Queen gave an audience to a minister; that he thwarted ministerial counsels and gave them an un-English character; that in corresponding with relatives abroad he used English influence apart from the Queen's advisers. Mr. Gladstone had no great difficulty in showing how little this was worth, either as fact supported by evidence, or as principle supported by the fitness of things; and he put himself on the right ground.“We do not raise the question whether, if the minister thinks it right to communicate with the sovereign alone, he is not entitled to a private audience. But we unhesitatingly assert that if the Prince is present when the Queen confers with her advisers, and if his presence is found to be disadvantageous to the public interests, we are not left without a remedy; for the minister is as distinctly responsible for those interests in this as in any other matter, and he is bound on his responsibility to parliament, to decline compliance even with a personal wish of the sovereign when he believes that his assent would be injurious to the country.”

Page426

Mr. Gladstone wrote an elaborate article in theMorning Chronicle(Jan. 16, 1854) warmly defending the court against attacks that had clouded the popularity of the Prince Consort. They came to little more than that the Prince attended meetings of the privy council; that he was present when the Queen gave an audience to a minister; that he thwarted ministerial counsels and gave them an un-English character; that in corresponding with relatives abroad he used English influence apart from the Queen's advisers. Mr. Gladstone had no great difficulty in showing how little this was worth, either as fact supported by evidence, or as principle supported by the fitness of things; and he put himself on the right ground.“We do not raise the question whether, if the minister thinks it right to communicate with the sovereign alone, he is not entitled to a private audience. But we unhesitatingly assert that if the Prince is present when the Queen confers with her advisers, and if his presence is found to be disadvantageous to the public interests, we are not left without a remedy; for the minister is as distinctly responsible for those interests in this as in any other matter, and he is bound on his responsibility to parliament, to decline compliance even with a personal wish of the sovereign when he believes that his assent would be injurious to the country.”

Parliamentary CrisesPage451Extract from Mr. Gladstone's letter to the Queen, March 15, 1873There have been within that period [1830-1873] twelve of what may be properly called parliamentary crises involving the question of a change of government. In nine of the twelve cases (viz., those of 1830, 1835, 1841, 1846, 1852, 1858, 1859, 1866, and 1868), the party which had been in opposition was ready to take, and did take, office. In the other three it failed to do this (viz., in 1832, 1851, 1855), and the old ministry or a modification of it returned to power. But in each of these three cases the attempt of the opposition to form a government was not relinquished until after such efforts had been made by its leaders to carry the conviction to the world that all its available means of action were exhausted; and there is no instance on record during the whole period (or indeed so far as Mr. Gladstone remembers at an earlier date) in which a summary refusal given on the instant by the leader was tendered as sufficient to release the opposition from the obligations it had incurred. This is the more remarkable because in two of the three instances the opposition had not, in the same mode or degree as on Wednesday morning last, contributed by concerted action to bring about the crisis. On the 7th of May 1832 the opposition of the day carried in the House of Lords a motion which went only[pg 653]to alter the order of the opening (and doubtless very important) clauses of the Reform bill, but which the government of Lord Grey deemed fatal to the integrity of the measure. Their resignation was announced, and Lord Lyndhurst was summoned to advise King William iv. on the 9th of May. On the 12th the Duke of Wellington was called to take a share in the proceedings, the details of which are matters of history. It was only on the 15th that the Duke and Lord Lyndhurst found their resources at an end, when Lord Grey was again sent for, and on the 17th the Duke announced in the House of Lords his abandonment of the task he had strenuously endeavoured to fulfil. On the 20th February 1851 the government of Lord Russell was defeated in the House of Commons on Mr. Locke King's bill for the enlargement of the county franchise by a majority composed of its own supporters. Lord Derby, then Lord Stanley, being sent for by your Majesty on the 22nd, observed that there were at the time three parties in the House of Commons and that the ministry had never yet been defeated by his political friends. He therefore counselled your Majesty to ascertain whether the government of Lord Russell could not be strengthened by a partial reconstruction, and failing that measure he engaged to use his own best efforts to form an administration. That attempt at reconstruction (to which nothing similar is now in question) did fail, and Lord Derby was therefore summoned by your Majesty on the 25th, and at once applied himself, as is well known, to every measure which seemed to give him a hope of success in constructing a government. On the 27th he apprised your Majesty of his failure in these efforts; and on March 3rd the cabinet of Lord Russell returned to office. (This recital is founded on Lord Derby's statement in the House of Lords, Feb. 28, 1851.) On Jan. 29, 1855, the government of Lord Aberdeen was defeated in the House of Commons on a motion made by an independent member of their own party and supported by twenty-five of the liberal members present. Though this defeat resembles the one last named in that it cannot be said to be due to the concerted action of the opposition as a party, Lord Derby, being summoned by your Majesty on the 1st of Feb. proceeded to examine and ascertain in every quarter the means likely to be at his disposal for rendering assistance in the exigency, and it was not until Feb. 3 that he receded from his endeavours.

Page451

Extract from Mr. Gladstone's letter to the Queen, March 15, 1873

There have been within that period [1830-1873] twelve of what may be properly called parliamentary crises involving the question of a change of government. In nine of the twelve cases (viz., those of 1830, 1835, 1841, 1846, 1852, 1858, 1859, 1866, and 1868), the party which had been in opposition was ready to take, and did take, office. In the other three it failed to do this (viz., in 1832, 1851, 1855), and the old ministry or a modification of it returned to power. But in each of these three cases the attempt of the opposition to form a government was not relinquished until after such efforts had been made by its leaders to carry the conviction to the world that all its available means of action were exhausted; and there is no instance on record during the whole period (or indeed so far as Mr. Gladstone remembers at an earlier date) in which a summary refusal given on the instant by the leader was tendered as sufficient to release the opposition from the obligations it had incurred. This is the more remarkable because in two of the three instances the opposition had not, in the same mode or degree as on Wednesday morning last, contributed by concerted action to bring about the crisis. On the 7th of May 1832 the opposition of the day carried in the House of Lords a motion which went only[pg 653]to alter the order of the opening (and doubtless very important) clauses of the Reform bill, but which the government of Lord Grey deemed fatal to the integrity of the measure. Their resignation was announced, and Lord Lyndhurst was summoned to advise King William iv. on the 9th of May. On the 12th the Duke of Wellington was called to take a share in the proceedings, the details of which are matters of history. It was only on the 15th that the Duke and Lord Lyndhurst found their resources at an end, when Lord Grey was again sent for, and on the 17th the Duke announced in the House of Lords his abandonment of the task he had strenuously endeavoured to fulfil. On the 20th February 1851 the government of Lord Russell was defeated in the House of Commons on Mr. Locke King's bill for the enlargement of the county franchise by a majority composed of its own supporters. Lord Derby, then Lord Stanley, being sent for by your Majesty on the 22nd, observed that there were at the time three parties in the House of Commons and that the ministry had never yet been defeated by his political friends. He therefore counselled your Majesty to ascertain whether the government of Lord Russell could not be strengthened by a partial reconstruction, and failing that measure he engaged to use his own best efforts to form an administration. That attempt at reconstruction (to which nothing similar is now in question) did fail, and Lord Derby was therefore summoned by your Majesty on the 25th, and at once applied himself, as is well known, to every measure which seemed to give him a hope of success in constructing a government. On the 27th he apprised your Majesty of his failure in these efforts; and on March 3rd the cabinet of Lord Russell returned to office. (This recital is founded on Lord Derby's statement in the House of Lords, Feb. 28, 1851.) On Jan. 29, 1855, the government of Lord Aberdeen was defeated in the House of Commons on a motion made by an independent member of their own party and supported by twenty-five of the liberal members present. Though this defeat resembles the one last named in that it cannot be said to be due to the concerted action of the opposition as a party, Lord Derby, being summoned by your Majesty on the 1st of Feb. proceeded to examine and ascertain in every quarter the means likely to be at his disposal for rendering assistance in the exigency, and it was not until Feb. 3 that he receded from his endeavours.

Cabinet Of 1880-1885Page630First lord of the treasury, chancellor of the exchequer, W. E. Gladstone.Lord chancellor, Lord Selborne.President of the council, Earl Spencer.Lord privy seal, Duke of Argyll.Home secretary, Sir W. V. Harcourt.Foreign secretary, Earl Granville.[pg 654]Colonial secretary, Earl of Kimberley.War secretary, H. C. E. Childers.First lord of the admiralty, Earl of Northbrook.Indian secretary, Marquis of Hartington.President of the board of trade, Joseph Chamberlain.Chief secretary for Ireland, W. E. Forster.Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, John Bright.President of the local government board, J. G. Dodson.On the resignation of the Duke of Argyll, April 1881, Lord Carlingford (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) became lord privy seal.In May 1882, Earl Spencer became lord-lieutenant of Ireland. On Mr. Forster's resignation he was succeeded by Lord Frederick Cavendish, and then by Mr. G. O. Trevelyan, neither of whom had a seat in the cabinet.On the resignation of Mr. Bright in July 1882, Mr. Dodson became chancellor of the duchy, and Sir Charles Dilke president of the local government board.In December 1882, Mr. Gladstone resigned the chancellorship of the exchequer to Mr. Childers; Lord Hartington became war secretary; Lord Kimberley, Indian secretary, and Lord Derby colonial secretary.In March 1883, Lord Carlingford succeeded Earl Spencer as president of the council.In October 1884, Mr. Trevelyan succeeded Mr. Dodson as chancellor of the duchy (with the cabinet), Mr. Campbell-Bannerman becoming Irish secretary without a seat in the cabinet.In February 1885, Lord Rosebery, first commissioner of works, succeeded Lord Carlingford as lord privy seal (with the cabinet) [Lord Carlingford had also been president of the council from March 1883 in succession to Lord Spencer], and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, postmaster-general, entered the cabinet.

Page630

First lord of the treasury, chancellor of the exchequer, W. E. Gladstone.Lord chancellor, Lord Selborne.President of the council, Earl Spencer.Lord privy seal, Duke of Argyll.Home secretary, Sir W. V. Harcourt.Foreign secretary, Earl Granville.[pg 654]Colonial secretary, Earl of Kimberley.War secretary, H. C. E. Childers.First lord of the admiralty, Earl of Northbrook.Indian secretary, Marquis of Hartington.President of the board of trade, Joseph Chamberlain.Chief secretary for Ireland, W. E. Forster.Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, John Bright.President of the local government board, J. G. Dodson.

First lord of the treasury, chancellor of the exchequer, W. E. Gladstone.

Lord chancellor, Lord Selborne.

President of the council, Earl Spencer.

Lord privy seal, Duke of Argyll.

Home secretary, Sir W. V. Harcourt.

Foreign secretary, Earl Granville.

Colonial secretary, Earl of Kimberley.

War secretary, H. C. E. Childers.

First lord of the admiralty, Earl of Northbrook.

Indian secretary, Marquis of Hartington.

President of the board of trade, Joseph Chamberlain.

Chief secretary for Ireland, W. E. Forster.

Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, John Bright.

President of the local government board, J. G. Dodson.

On the resignation of the Duke of Argyll, April 1881, Lord Carlingford (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) became lord privy seal.

In May 1882, Earl Spencer became lord-lieutenant of Ireland. On Mr. Forster's resignation he was succeeded by Lord Frederick Cavendish, and then by Mr. G. O. Trevelyan, neither of whom had a seat in the cabinet.

On the resignation of Mr. Bright in July 1882, Mr. Dodson became chancellor of the duchy, and Sir Charles Dilke president of the local government board.

In December 1882, Mr. Gladstone resigned the chancellorship of the exchequer to Mr. Childers; Lord Hartington became war secretary; Lord Kimberley, Indian secretary, and Lord Derby colonial secretary.

In March 1883, Lord Carlingford succeeded Earl Spencer as president of the council.

In October 1884, Mr. Trevelyan succeeded Mr. Dodson as chancellor of the duchy (with the cabinet), Mr. Campbell-Bannerman becoming Irish secretary without a seat in the cabinet.

In February 1885, Lord Rosebery, first commissioner of works, succeeded Lord Carlingford as lord privy seal (with the cabinet) [Lord Carlingford had also been president of the council from March 1883 in succession to Lord Spencer], and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, postmaster-general, entered the cabinet.

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