END OF PROTECTION

(1852)

It is not too much to ask that now at least, after so much waste of public time, after ministries overturned and parties disorganised, the question of free trade should be placed high and dry on the shore whither the tide of political party strife could no longer reach it. GLADSTONE.

The parliament was now dissolved (July 1) to decide a great question. The repeal of the corn law, the ultimate equalisation of the sugar duties, the repeal of the navigation laws, had been the three great free trade measures of the last half-dozen years, and the issue before the electors in 1852 was whether this policy was sound or unsound. Lord Derby might have faced it boldly by announcing a moderate protection for corn and for colonial sugar. Or he might have openly told the country that he had changed his mind, as Peel had changed his mind about the catholic question and about free trade, and as Mr. Disraeli was to change his mind upon franchise in 1867, and Mr. Gladstone upon the Irish church in 1868. Instead of this, all was equivocation. The Derbyite, as was well said, was protectionist in a county, neutral in a small town, free trader in a large one. He was for Maynooth in Ireland, and against it in Scotland. Mr. Disraeli did his best to mystify the agricultural elector by phrases about set-offs and compensations and relief of burdens, ‘seeming to loom in the future.’ He rang the changes on mysterious new principles of taxation, but what they were to be, he did not disclose. The great change since 1846 was that the working-class had become strenuous free traders. They had in earlier times never been really convinced when Cobden and Bright assured them that no fall in wages would follow the promised fall in the price of food. It was the experience of six years that convinced them. England alone had gone unhurt and unsinged through the fiery furnace of 1848, and nobody doubted that the stability of her institutions and the unity of her people were due to the repeal of bad laws, believed to raise the price of bread to the toilers in order to raise rents for territorial idlers.

AGAIN ELECTED FOR OXFORD

Long before the dissolution, it was certain that Mr. Gladstone would have to fight for his seat. His letter to the Scotch bishop , his vote for the Jews, his tenacity and vehemence in resisting the bill against the pope, the two last exhibitions in open defiance of solemn resolutions of the university convocation itself, had alienated some friends and inflamed all his enemies. Half a score of the Heads induced Dr. Marsham, the warden of Merton, to come out. In private qualities the warden was one of the most excellent of men, and the accident of his opposition to Mr. Gladstone is no reason why we should recall transient electioneering railleries against a forgotten worthy. The political addresses of his friends depict him. They applaud his sound and manly consistency of principle and his sober attachment to the reformed church of England, and they dwell with zest on the goodness of his heart. The issue, as they put it, was simple: ’At a time when the stability of the protestant succession, the authority of a protestant Queen, and even the Christianity of the national character, have been rudely assailed by Rome on one side, and on the other by democratic associations directed against the union of the Christian church with the British constitution at such a time, it becomes a protestant university, from which emanates a continuous stream of instruction on all ecclesiastical and Christian questions over the whole empire, to manifest the importance which it attaches to protestant truth, by the selection of a Protestant Representative.’ The teaching residents were, as always, decisively for Gladstone, and nearly all the fellows of Merton voted against their own warden. In one respect this was remarkable, for Mr. Gladstone had in 1850 (July 18) resisted the proposal for that commission of inquiry into the universities which the Oxford liberals had much at heart, and it would not have been surprising if they had held aloof from a candidate who had told the House of Commons that ’after all, science was but a small part of the business of education,’ a proposition that in one sense may be true, but applied to unreformed Oxford was the reverse of true. The non-residents were diligently and rather unscrupulously worked upon, and they made a formidable set of discordant elements. The evangelicals disliked Mr. Gladstone. The plain high-and-dry men distrusted him as what they called a sophist. Even some of the anglo-catholic men began to regard as a bad friend ’to the holy apostolic church of these realms, the author of the new theory of religious liberty’ in the Scotch letter. They reproachfully insisted that had he headed a party in the House of Commons defending the church, not upon latitudinarian theories of religious liberty, not upon vague hints of a disaffected movement of the non-juring sort, still less upon romanising principles, but on the principles of the constitution, royal supremacy included, then the church would have escaped the worst that had befallen her since 1846. The minister would never have dared to force Hampden into the seat of a bishop. The privy council would never have reversed the court of arches in the Gorham case. The claim of the clergy to meet in convocation would never have been refused. The committee of council would have treated education very differently. All came right in the end, however, and Mr. Gladstone was re-elected (July 14), receiving 260 votes fewer than Sir Robert Inglis, but 350 more than the warden of Merton. We have to remember that he was not returned as a liberal.

II

The leaders of the sections out of office, when the general election was over, at once fetched forth line and plummet to take their soundings. ‘The next few months,’ Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Aberdeen (Aug 20), ’are, I apprehend, the crisis of our fate, and will show whether we are equal or unequal to playing out with prudence, honour, and resolution the drama or trilogy that has been on the stage since 1841.’ He still regarded the situation as something like a reproduction of the position of the previous March. The precise number of the ministerialists could not be ascertained until tested by a motion in the House. They had gained rather more than was expected, and some put them as high as 320, others as low as 290. What was undoubted was that Lord Derby was left in a minority, and that the support of the Peelites might any hour turn it into a majority. Notwithstanding a loss or two in the recent elections, that party still numbered not far short of 40, and Mr. Gladstone was naturally desirous of retaining it in connection with himself. Most of the group were disposed rather to support a conservative government than not, unless such a government were to do, or propose, something open to strong and definite objection. At the same time what he described as the difficulty of keeping Peelism for ever so short a space upon its legs, was as obvious to him as to everybody else. ‘It will be an impossible parliament,’ Graham said to Mr. Gladstone (July 15), ’parties will be found too nicely balanced to render a new line of policy practicable without a fresh appeal to the electors.’ Before a fresh appeal to the electors took place, the impossible parliament had tumbled into a great war.

THE NEW PARLIAMENT

When the newly chosen members met in November, Mr. Disraeli told the House of Commons that ’there was no question in the minds of ministers with respect to the result of that election: there was no doubt that there was not only not a preponderating majority in favour of a change in the laws [free trade] passed in the last few years, or even of modifying them in any degree; but that on the contrary there was a decisive opinion on the part of the country that that settlement should not be disturbed.’ Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Aberdeen (July 30) that he thought the government absolutely chained to Mr. Disraeli’s next budget, and ’I, for one, am not prepared to accept him as a financial organ, or to be responsible for what he may propose in his present capacity.’ Each successive speech made by Mr. Disraeli at Aylesbury he found ‘more quackish in its flavour than its predecessor.’ Yet action on his own part was unavoidably hampered by Oxford. ’Were I either of opinion,’ he told Lord Aberdeen (Aug 5), ’that Lord John Russell ought to succeed Lord Derby, or prepared without any further development of the plans of the government to take my stand as one of the party opposed to them, the first step which, as a man of honour, I ought to adopt, should be to resign my seat.’ ‘I do not mean hereby,’ he adds in words that were soon to derive forcible significance from the march of events, ’that I am unconditionally committed against any alliance or fusion, but that any such alliance or fusion, to be lawful for me, must grow out of some failure of the government in carrying on public affairs, or a disapproval of its measures when they shall have been proposed.’ He still, in spite of all the misdeeds of ministers during the elections, could not think so ill of them as did Lord Aberdeen.

‘Protection and religious liberty,’ he wrote to Lord Aberdeen (Aug 5),’are the subjects on which my main complaints would turn; shuffling as to the former, trading on bigotry as to the latter. The shifting and shuffling that I complain of have been due partly to a miserably false position and the giddy prominence of inferior men; partly to the (surely not unexpected) unscrupulousness and second motives of Mr. Disraeli, at once the necessity of Lord Derby and his curse. I do not mean that this justifies what has been said and done; I only think it brings the case within the common limits of political misconduct. As for religious bigotry,’ he continues, ’I condemn the proceedings of the present government; yet much less strongly than the unheard-of course pursued by Lord John Russell in 1850-1, the person to whom I am now invited to transfer my confidence.’ Even on the superficial conversion of the Derbyites to free trade, Mr. Gladstone found a tu quoque against the whigs. ’It is, when strictly judged, an act of public immorality to form and lead an opposition on a certain plea, to succeed, and then in office to abandon it.... But in this view, the conduct of the present administration is the counterpart and copy of that of the whigs themselves in 1835, who ran Sir Robert Peel to ground upon the appropriation clause, worked it just while it suited them, and then cast it to the winds; to say nothing of their conduct on the Irish Assassination bill of 1846.’

This letter was forwarded by Aberdeen to Lord John Russell. Lord John had the peculiar temperament that is hard to agitate, but easy to nettle. So polemical a reading of former whig pranks nettled him considerably. Why, he asked, should he not say just as reasonably that Mr. Gladstone held up the whigs to odium in 1841 for stripping the farmer of adequate protection; worked the corn law of 1842 as long as it suited him; and then turned round and cast the corn law to the winds? If he gave credit to Mr. Gladstone for being sincere in 1841, 1842, and 1846, why should not Mr. Gladstone give the same credit to him? As to the principle of appropriation, he and Althorp had opposed four of their colleagues in the Grey cabinet; how could he concede to Peel what he had refused to them? As for the Irish bill on which he had turned Peel out, it was one of the worst of all coercion bills; Peel with 117 followers evidently could not carry on the government; and what sense could there have been in voting for a bad bill, in order to retain in office an impossible ministry? This smart apologia of Lord John’s was hardly even plausible, much less did it cover the ground. The charge against the whigs is not that they took up appropriation, but that having taken it up they dropped it for the sake of office. Nor was it a charge that they resisted an Irish coercion bill, but that having supported it on the first reading (’worst of all coercion bills’ as it was, even in the eyes of men who had passed the reckless act of 1833), they voted against it when they found that both Bentinck and the Manchester men were going to do the same, thus enabling them to turn Peel out.

CONFUSIONS OF PARTY

Sharp sallies into the past, however, did not ease the present. It was an extraordinary situation only to be described in negatives. A majority could not be found to beat the government upon a vote of want of confidence. Nobody knew who could take their places. Lord John Russell as head of a government was impossible, for his maladroit handling of papal aggression had alienated the Irish; his dealings with Palmerston had offended one powerful section of the English whigs; the Scottish whigs hated him as too much managed by the lights of the free church; and the radicals proscribed him as the chief of a patrician clique. Yet though he was impossible, he sometimes used language to the effect that for him to take any place save the first would be a personal degradation that would lower him to the level of Sidmouth or Goderich. Lord Palmerston represented the moderate centre of the liberal party. Even now he enjoyed a growing personal favour out of doors, not at all impaired by the bad terms on which he was known to be with the court, for the court was not at that date so popular an institution as it became by and by. Among other schemes of ingenious persons at this confused and broken time was a combination under Palmerston or Lansdowne of aristocratic whigs, a great contingent of Derbyites, and the Peelites; and before the elections it was true that Lord Derby had made overtures to these two eminent men. A Lansdowne combination lingered long in the mind of Lord Palmerston himself, who wished for the restoration of a whig government, but resented the idea of serving under its late head. Some dreamed that Palmerston and Disraeli might form a government on the basis of resistance to parliamentary reform. Strange rumours were even afloat that Mr. Gladstone’s communications with Palmerston before he left London at the election had been intimate and frequent. ‘I cannot make Gladstone out,’ said Lord Malmesbury, ’he seems to me a dark horse.’

In the closing days of the autumn (September 12) Graham interpreted some obscure language of Mr. Gladstone’s as meaning that if protection were renounced, as it might be, if Palmerston joined Derby and the government were reconstructed, and if Disraeli ceased to be leader, then his own relations with the government would be changed. Gladstone was so uneasy in his present position, so nice in the equipoise of his opinions that he wished to be, as he said, ’on the liberal side of the conservative party, rather than on the conservative side of the liberal party.’ A little earlier than this, Lord Aberdeen and Graham agreed in thinking (August) that ’Disraeli’s leadership was the great cause of Gladstone’s reluctance to have anything to do with the government; ... that even if this should be removed, it would not be very easy for him to enter into partnership with them.’ Mr. Gladstone himself now and always denied that the lead in the Commons or other personal question had anything to do with the balance of his opinions at the present and later moments. Those who know most of public life are best aware how great is the need in the case of public men for charitable construction of their motives and intent. Yet it would surely have been straining charity to the point of dishonour if, within two years of Peel’s death, any of those who had been attached to him as master and as friend, either Mr. Gladstone or anybody else, could have looked without reprobation and aversion on the idea of cabinet intimacy with the bitterest and least sincere of all Peel’s assailants.

III

OPENING SKIRMISHES

Mr. Gladstone repaired to London some weeks before the new session, and though he was not in a position to open direct relations with the government, he expressed to Lord Hardinge, with a view to its communication to Lord Derby, his strong opinion that the House of Commons would, and should, require from ministers a frank and explicit adoption of free trade through the address, and secondly, the immediate production of their financial measures. Lord Derby told Hardinge at Windsor that he thought that neither expectation was far wrong. When the Peelites met at Lord Aberdeen’s to discuss tactics, they were secretly dissatisfied with the paragraphs about free trade.

Mr. Disraeli had laid down at the election the sonorous maxim, that no statesman can disregard with impunity the genius of the epoch in which he lives. And he now after the election averred that the genius of the age was in favour of free exchange. Still it was pleasanter to swallow the dose with as little public observation as possible. ’What would have been said,’ cried Lord Derby in fervid remonstrance, ’if shortly after catholic emancipation and the reform bill had been admitted as settlements, their friends had come down and insisted not only that the Houses of parliament should consent to act on the new policy they had adopted, but should expressly recant their opinion in favour of the policy that had formerly prevailed? What would the friends of Sir R. Peel have said in 1835 if, when he assumed the government and when the new parliament assembled, he had been called upon to declare that the reform bill was wise, just, and necessary?’ The original free traders were not disposed to connive at Derbyite operations any more than were the whigs. Notice was at once given by Mr. Villiers of a motion virtually assailing the ministers, by asserting the doctrine of free trade in terms they could not adopt. ‘Now,’ says Mr. Gladstone, ’we came to a case in which the liberals did that which had been done by the government in the case of the Four Seats bill; that is to say, they raised an issue which placed us against them. Lord Palmerston moved the amendment which defeated the attack, but he did this at the express request of S. Herbert and mine, and we carried the amendment to him at his house. He did not recommend any particular plan of action, and he willingly acquiesced in and adopted ours.’ He said he would convey it to Disraeli, ‘with whom,’ he said, ’I have had communications from time to time.’

In the debate (Nov 26) upon the two rival amendments that of Mr. Villiers, which the ministers could not accept, and that of Palmerston, which they could Sidney Herbert paid off some old scores in a speech full of fire and jubilation; Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, was elaborately pacific. He earnestly deprecated the language of severity and exasperation, or anything that would tend to embitter party warfare. His illustrious leader Peel, he said, did indeed look for his revenge; but for what revenge did he look? Assuredly not for stinging speeches, assuredly not for motions made in favour of his policy, if they carried pain and degradation to the minds of honourable men. Were they not celebrating the obsequies of an obnoxious policy? Let them cherish no desire to trample on those who had fought manfully and been defeated fairly. Rather let them rejoice in the great public good that had been achieved; let them take courage from the attainment of that good, for the performance of their public duty in future. All this was inspired by the strong hope of conservative reunion. ’Nervous excitement kept me very wakeful after speaking,’ says Mr. Gladstone, ’the first time for many years.’ (Diary.)

Villiers’s motion was rejected by 336 to 256, the Peelites and Graham voting with ministers in the majority. The Peelite amendment in moderated terms, for which Palmerston stood sponsor, was then carried against the radicals by 468 to 53. For the moment the government was saved.

This evening, Mr. Gladstone writes on the next day, Nov 27, I went to Lady Derby’s evening party, where Lord Derby took me a little aside and said he must take the opportunity of thanking me for the tone of my speech last night, which he thought tended to place the discussion on its right footing. It was evident from his manner, and Lady Derby’s too, that they were highly pleased with the issue of it. I simply made my acknowledgments in terms of the common kind, upon which he went on to ask me what in my view was to happen next? The great object, he said, was to get rid of all personal questions, and to consider how all those men who were united in their general views of government might combine together to carry on with effect. For himself he felt both uncertain and indifferent; he might be able to carry on the government or he might not; but the question lay beyond that, by what combination or arrangement of a satisfactory nature, in the event of his displacement, the administration of public affairs could be conducted.

To this I replied, that it seemed to me that our situation (meaning that of Herbert, Goulburn, and others, with myself) in relation to his government remained much as it was in March and April last.... We have to expect your budget, and the production of that is the next step. He replied that he much desired to see whether there was a possibility of any rapprochement, and seemed to glance at personal considerations as likely perhaps to stand in the way [Disraeli, presumably]. I said in reply, that no doubt there were many difficulties of a personal nature to be faced in conceiving of any ministerial combination when we looked at the present House of Commons: many men of power and eminence, but great difficulties arising from various causes, present and past relations, incompatibilities, peculiar defects of character, or failure in bringing them into harmony. I said that, as to relations of parties, circumstances were often stronger than the human will; that we must wait for their guiding, and follow it.... He said, rather decidedly, that he assented to the truth of this doctrine. He added, ’I think Sidney said more last night than he intended, did he not?’ I answered, ’You mean as to one particular expression or sentence?’ He rejoined, ’Yes.’ I said, ’I have had no conversation with him on it, but I think it very probable that he grew warm and went beyond his intention at that point; at the same time, I think I ought to observe to you that I am confident that expression was occasioned by one particular preceding speech in the debate.’ He gave a significant assent, and seemed to express no surprise.

IV

MR. DISRAELI’S PROPOSALS

The respite for ministers was short. The long day of shadowy promises and delusive dreams was over; and the oracular expounder of mysteries was at last gripped by the hard realities of the taxes. Whigs and Peelites, men who had been at the exchequer and men who hoped to be, were all ready at last to stalk down their crafty quarry. Without delay Disraeli presented his budget (Dec 3). As a private member in opposition he had brought forward many financial proposals, but it now turned out that none of them was fit for real use. With a serene audacity that accounts for some of Mr. Gladstone’s repulsion, he told the House that he had greater subjects to consider ’than the triumph of obsolete opinions.’ His proposals dazzled for a day, and then were seen to be a scheme of illusory compensations and dislocated expedients. He took off half of the malt-tax and half of the hop duty, and in stages reduced the tea duty from two shillings and twopence to one shilling. More important, he broke up the old frame of the income-tax by a variation of its rates, and as for the house-tax, he doubled its rate and extended its area. In one of his fragmentary notes, Mr. Gladstone says:

Having run away from protection, as it was plain from the first they would do, they had little to offer the land, but that little their minority was ready to accept. It was a measure essentially bad to repeal half the malt duty. But the flagrantly vicious element in Disraeli’s budget was his proposal to reduce the income-tax on schedule D. to fivepence in the pound, leaving the other schedules at sevenpence. This was no compensation to the land; but, inasmuch as to exempt one is to tax another, it was a distinct addition to the burdens borne by the holders of visible property. It was on Disraeli’s part a most daring bid for the support of the liberal majority, for we all knew quite well that the current opinion of the whigs and liberals was in favour of this scheme; which, on the other hand, was disapproved by sound financiers. The authority of Pitt and Peel, and then my own study of the subject, made me believe that it was impracticable, and probably meant the disruption of the tax, with confusion in finance, as an immediate sequitur. What angered me was that Disraeli had never examined the question. And I afterwards found that he had not even made known his intentions to the board of inland revenue. The gravity of the question thus raised made me feel that the day was come to eject the government.

ATTACK ON THE BUDGET

It was upon the increase of the house-tax that the great battle was finally staked. Mr. Gladstone’s letters to his wife at Hawarden bring the rapid and excited scenes vividly before us.

6 Carlton Gardens, Dec 3, 1852. I write from H. of C. at 41/2 just expecting the budget. All seem to look for startling and dangerous proposals. You will read them in the papers of to-morrow, be they what they may. If there is anything outrageous, we may protest at once; but I do not expect any extended debate to-night.... The rush for places in the H. of C. is immense.

Monday, Dec 6. On Saturday, in the early part of the day, I had a return, perhaps caused by the damp relaxing weather, of the neuralgic pain in my face, and in the afternoon a long sitting at Lord Aberdeen’s about the budget, during which strange to say my pain disappeared, but which kept me past the ordinary post hour. These were the causes of your having no letter. The said budget will give rise to serious difficulties. It is plain enough that when its author announced something looming in the distance, he did not mean this plan but something more extensive. Even his reduced scheme, however, includes fundamental faults of principle which it is impossible to overlook or compound with. The first day of serious debate on it will be Friday next, and a vote will be taken either then or on Monday.

Dec 8. Be sure to read Lord Derby’s speech on Monday. His reference to the cause of his quarrel with Lord George Bentinck was most striking, and is interpreted as a rap at Disraeli. I have had a long sit with Lord Aberdeen to-day talking over possibilities. The government, I believe, talk confidently about the decision on the house-tax, but I should doubt whether they are right. Meantime I am convinced that Disraeli’s is the least conservative budget I have ever known.

Dec 14. I need hardly say the vision of going down to-morrow has been dissolved. It has been arranged that I am not to speak until the close of the debate; and it is considered almost certain to go on till Monday. Ministers have become much less confident, but I understand that some, I know not how many, of Lord John’s men are not to be relied on. Whether they win or not (I expect the latter, but my opinion is naught) they cannot carry this house-tax nor their budget. But the mischief of the proposals they have launched will not die with them.

Dec 15. I write in great haste. Though it is Wednesday, I have been down at the House almost all day to unravel a device of Disraeli’s about the manner in which the question is to be put, by which he means to catch votes; and I think after full consultation with Mahon and Wilson Patten, that this will be accomplished. The debate may close to-morrow night. I am sorry to say I have a long speech fermenting in me, and I feel as a loaf might in the oven. The government, it is thought, are likely to be beaten.

Dec 16. I have been engaged in the House till close on post time. Disraeli trying to wriggle out of the question, and get it put upon words without meaning, to enable more to vote as they please, i.e. his men or those favourably inclined to him. But he is beaten in this point, and we have now the right question before us. It is not now quite certain whether we shall divide to-night; I hope we may, for it is weary work sitting with a speech fermenting inside one.

Dec 18. I have never gone through so exciting a passage of parliamentary life. The intense efforts which we made to obtain, and the government to escape, a definite issue, were like a fox chase, and prepared us all for excitement. I came home at seven, dined, read for a quarter of an hour, and actually contrived (only think) to sleep in the fur cloak for another quarter of an hour; got back to the House at nine. Disraeli rose at 10.20 [Dec 16], and from that moment, of course, I was on tenterhooks, except when his superlative acting and brilliant oratory from time to time absorbed me and made me quite forget that I had to follow him. He spoke until one. His speech as a whole was grand; I think the most powerful I ever heard from him. At the same time it was disgraced by shameless personalities and otherwise; I had therefore to begin by attacking him for these. There was a question whether it would not be too late, but when I heard his personalities I felt there was no choice but to go on. My great object was to show the conservative party how their leader was hoodwinking and bewildering them, and this I have the happiness of believing that in some degree I effected; for while among some there was great heat and a disposition to interrupt me when they could, I could see in the faces and demeanour of others quite other feelings expressed. But it was a most difficult operation, and altogether it might have been better effected. The House has not I think been so much excited for years. The power of his speech, and the importance of the issue, combined with the lateness of the hour, which always operates, were the causes. My brain was strung very high, and has not yet quite got back to calm, but I slept well last night. On Thursday night [i.e. Friday morning] after two hours of sleep, I awoke, and remembered a gross omission I had made, which worked upon me so that I could not rest any more. And still, of course, the time is an anxious one, and I wake with the consciousness of it, but I am very well and really not unquiet. When I came home from the House, I thought it would be good for me to be mortified. Next morning I opened the Times, which I thought you would buy, and was mortified when I saw it did not contain my speech but a mangled abbreviation. Such is human nature, at least mine. But in the Times of to-day you will see a very curious article descriptive of the last scene of the debate. It has evidently been written by a man who must have seen what occurred, or been informed by those who did see. He by no means says too much in praise of Disraeli’s speech. I am told he is much stung by what I said. I am very sorry it fell to me to say it; God knows I have no wish to give him pain; and really with my deep sense of his gifts I would only pray they might be well used.

THE TWO ANTAGONISTS

The writer in the Times to whom the victorious orator here refers describes how, ’like two of Sir Walter Scott’s champions, these redoubtable antagonists gathered up all their force for the final struggle, and encountered each other in mid-career; how, rather equal than like, each side viewed the struggle of their chosen athletes, as if to prognosticate from the war of words the fortunes of two parties so nicely balanced and marshalled in apparently equal array. Mr. Disraeli’s speech,’ he says, ’was in every respect worthy of his oratorical reputation. The retorts were pointed and bitter, the hits telling, the sarcasm keen, the argument in many places cogent, in all ingenious, and in some convincing. The merits were counterbalanced by no less glaring defects of tone, temper, and feeling. In some passages invective was pushed to the limit of virulence, and in others, meant no doubt to relieve them by contrast, the coarser stimulants to laughter were very freely applied. Occasionally whole sentences were delivered with an artificial voice and a tone of studied and sardonic bitterness, peculiarly painful to the audience, and tending greatly to diminish the effect of this great intellectual and physical effort. The speech of Mr. Gladstone was in marked contrast. It was characterised throughout by the most earnest sincerity. It was pitched in a high tone of moral feeling now rising to indignation, now sinking to remonstrance which was sustained throughout without flagging and without effort. The language was less ambitious, less studied, but more natural and flowing than that of Mr. Disraeli; and though commencing in a tone of stern rebuke, it ended in words of almost pathetic expostulation.... That power of persuasion which seems entirely denied to his antagonist, Mr. Gladstone possesses to great perfection, and to judge by the countenances of his hearers, those powers were very successfully exerted. He had, besides, the immense advantage resulting from the tone of moral superiority which he assumed and successfully maintained, and which conciliated to him the goodwill of his audience in a degree never attained by the most brilliant sallies of his adversary, and when he concluded the House might well feel proud of him and of themselves.’

A violent thunderstorm raged during the debate, but the excited senators neither noticed the flashes of lightning nor heard a tremendous shock of thunder. A little before four o’clock in the morning (Dec 17), the division was taken, and ministers were beaten by nineteen (305 to 286). ‘There was an immense crowd,’ says Macaulay, ’a deafening cheer when Hayter took the right hand of the row of tellers, and a still louder cheer when the numbers were read.’

DEFEAT OF GOVERNMENT

A small incident occurred a few nights later to show that it was indeed high time to abate the passions of these six years and more. A politician of secondary rank had been accused of bribery at Derby, and a band of tory friends thought the moment opportune to give him a banquet at the Carlton. Mr. Gladstone in another room was harmlessly reading the paper. Presently in came the revellers, began to use insulting language, and finally vowed that he ought to be pitched headlong out of the window into the Reform. Mr. Gladstone made some courteous reply, but as the reporter truly says, courtesy to gentry in this humour was the casting of pearls before swine. Eventually they ordered candles in another room, and left him to himself. ‘You will perhaps,’ he wrote to his wife, ‘see an account of a row at the Carlton in which I have taken no harm.’ The affair indeed was trivial, but it illustrates a well-known and striking reflection of Cornewall Lewis upon the assault perpetrated on Sumner in the Senate at Washington by Brooks. ‘That outrage,’ he said, ’is no proof of brutal manners or low morality in Americans; it is the first blow in a civil war.... If Peel had proposed a law not only reducing rents, but annihilating them, instead of being attacked by a man of words like Disraeli, he would have been attacked with physical arguments by some man of blows.’

In point of numbers the stroke given to protection was not tremendous, but as the history of half a century has shown, it was adequate and sufficient, and Lord Derby at once resigned. He did not take his defeat well. ‘Strange to say,’ Mr. Gladstone wrote to his wife, ’Lord Derby has been making a most petulant and intemperate speech in the House of Lords on his resignation; such that Newcastle was obliged to rise after him and contradict the charge of combination; while nothing could be better in temper, feeling, and judgment than Disraeli’s farewell.’ Derby angrily divided the combination that had overthrown him into, first, various gradations of liberalism from ’high aristocratic and exclusive whigs down to the extremest radical theorists’; second, Irish ultramontanes; and lastly, a party of some thirty or thirty-five gentlemen ’of great personal worth, of great eminence and respectability, possessing considerable official experience and a large amount of talent who once professed, and I believe do still profess, conservative opinions.’

Mr. Disraeli, on the contrary, with infinite polish and grace asked pardon for the flying words of debate, and drew easy forgiveness from the member whom a few hours before he had mocked as ‘a weird sibyl’; the other member whom he would not say he greatly respected, but whom he greatly regarded; and the third member whom he bade learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and insolence is not invective. Lord John Russell congratulated him on the ability and the gallantry with which he had conducted the struggle, and so the curtain fell. The result, as the great newspaper put it with journalistic freedom, was ’not merely the victory of a battle, but of a war; not a reverse, but a conquest. The vanquished have no principles which they dare to assert, no leaders whom they can venture to trust.’