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The Grand Old Man

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At this session of Parliament Mr. Disraeli brought forward his second
budget in a five hour speech. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer
proposed to remit a portion of the taxes upon malt, tea, and sugar, but
to counterbalance these losses he also proposed to extend the income-tax
and house-tax. The debate, which was very personal, was prolonged
several days, and Mr. Disraeli, towards its close, bitterly attacked
several members, among them Sir James Graham, whom Mr. Gladstone not
only defended, but in so doing administered a scathing rebuke to the
Chancellor for his bitter invective and personal abuse. Mr. Gladstone's
speech at the close of Mr. Disraeli's presentation was crushing, and was
generally regarded as giving the death-blow to this financial scheme.

Mr. Gladstone told Mr. Disraeli that he was not entitled to charge with
insolence men of as high position and of as high character in the House
as himself, and when the cheers which had interrupted him had subsided,
concluded: "I must tell the right honorable gentleman that he is not
entitled to say to my right honorable friend, the member for Carlisle,
that he regards but does not respect him. And I must tell him that
whatever else he has learnt--and he has learnt much--he has not learnt
to keep within those limits of discretion, of moderation, and of
forbearance that ought to restrain the conduct and language of every
member in this House, the disregard of which, while it is an offence in
the meanest amongst us, is an offence of tenfold weight when committed
by the leader of the House of Commons."

The thrilling scene enacted in the House of Commons on that memorable
night is thus described: "In the following month the Chancellor of the
Exchequer produced his second budget. It was an ambitious and a skillful
attempt to reconcile conflicting interests, and to please all while
offending none. The government had come into office pledged to do
something for the relief of the agricultural interests. They redeemed
their pledge by reducing the duty on malt. This reduction created a
deficit; and they repaired the deficit by doubling the duty on inhabited
houses. Unluckily, the agricultural interests proved, as usual,
ungrateful to its benefactors, and made light of the reduction on malt;
while those who were to pay for it in double taxation were naturally
indignant. The voices of criticism, 'angry, loud, discordant voices,'
were heard simultaneously on every side. The debate waxed fast and
furious. In defending his hopeless proposals, Mr. Disraeli gave full
scope to his most characteristic gift; he pelted his opponents right and
left with sarcasms, taunts, and epigrams, and went as near personal
insult as the forms of Parliament permit. He sat down late at night, and
Mr. Gladstone rose in a crowded and excited House to deliver an
unpremeditated reply which has ever since been celebrated. Even the cold
and colorless pages of 'Hansard' show signs of the excitement under
which he labored, and of the tumultuous applause and dissent by which
his opening sentences were interrupted. 'The speech of the Chancellor of
the Exchequer,' he said, 'must be answered on the moment. It must be
tried by the laws of decency and propriety.'" He indignantly rebuked his
rival's language and demeanor. He reminded him of the discretion and
decorum due from every member, but pre-eminently due from the leader of
the House. He tore his financial scheme to ribbons. It was the beginning
of a duel which lasted till death removed one of the combatants from the
political arena. 'Those who had thought it impossible that any
impression could be made upon the House after the speech of Mr.
Disraeli had to acknowledge that a yet greater impression was produced
by the unprepared reply of Mr. Gladstone.' The House divided and the
government were left in a minority of nineteen. This happened in the
early morning of December 17, 1852. Within an hour of the division Lord
Derby wrote to the Queen a letter announcing his defeat and the
consequences which it must entail, and that evening at Osborne he placed
his formal resignation in her majesty's hands.

It is related as an evidence of the intense excitement, if not frenzy,
that prevailed at the time, that Mr. Gladstone met with indignity at his
Club. Greville, in his "Memoirs," says that, "twenty ruffians of the
Carleton Club" had given a dinner to Major Beresford, who had been
charged with bribery at the Derby election and had escaped with only a
censure, and that "after dinner, when they were drunk, they went up
stairs and finding Mr. Gladstone alone in the drawing-room, some of them
proposed to throw him out of the window. This they did not quite dare to
do, but contented themselves with giving some insulting message or order
to the waiter and then went away." Mr. Gladstone, however, remained a
member of the Club until he joined the Whig administration in 1859.

Mr. Gladstone's crushing _exposé_ of the blunders of Mr. Disraeli's
budget was almost ludicrous in its completeness, and it was universally
felt that the scheme could not survive his brilliant attack. The effect
that the merciless criticism of Disraeli's budget was not only the
discomfiture of Mr. Disraeli and the overthrow of the Russell
administration, but the elevation of Mr. Gladstone to the place vacated
by Chancellor Disraeli.

The Earl of Aberdeen became Prime Minister. The new government was a
coalition of Whigs and Peelites, with a representative of the Radicals
in the person of Sir William Molesworth. Mr. Gladstone, the Duke of
Newcastle, Sir James Graham and Mr. Sidney Herbert were the Peelites in
the Cabinet. Mr. Gladstone was chosen Chancellor of the Exchequer.

We may refer here to a letter of Mr. Gladstone, written Christmas, 1851,
in order to show his growing Liberalism. The letter was to Dr. Skinner,
Bishop of Aberdeen and Primus, on the positions and functions of the
laity in the Church. This letter is remarkable, because, as Dr. Charles
Wordsworth, Bishop of St. Andrew's, said at the time, "it contained the
germ of liberation and the political equality of all religions." The
Bishop published a controversial rejoinder, which drew from Dr.
Gaisford, Dean of Christ Church, these emphatic words: "You have proved
to my satisfaction that this gentleman is unfit to represent the
University," meaning the representation for Oxford in Parliament.

This feeling was growing, for when the Russell Ministry fell and it
became necessary for Mr. Gladstone, because he accepted a place in the
Cabinet, to appeal for re-election to his constituents at Oxford, he met
with much opposition, because of his Liberalism. Appealing to his
university to return him, and endorse his acceptance of office in the
new Ministry of the Earl of Aberdeen, Mr. Gladstone soon discovered that
he had made many enemies by his manifest tendencies toward
Liberal-Conservatism. He had given unmistakable evidence that he held
less firmly the old traditions of that unbending Toryism of which he was
once the most promising representative. Lord Derby, whom he had deposed,
had been elected Chancellor of the University to succeed the Duke of
Wellington, deceased. Consequently his return to the House was ardently
contested. His opponents looked around for a candidate of strong
Conservative principles. The Marquis of Chandos, who was first elected,
declined to run in opposition to Mr. Gladstone; but at length a suitable
opponent was found in Mr. Dudley Perceval, of Christ Church, son of the
Right Hon. Spencer Perceval, who was nominated January 4th.

Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, one of the twenty colleges of Oxford,
proposed Mr. Gladstone, and Archdeacon Denison, leader of the High
Church party, proposed Mr. Dudley Perceval. According to the custom at
university elections, neither candidate was present. It was objected to
Mr. Gladstone that he had voted improperly on ecclesiastical questions,
and had accepted office in "a hybrid ministry." The "Times" described
Mr. Perceval as "a very near relative of our old friend Mrs. Harris. To
remove any doubt on this point, let him be exhibited at Exeter Hall with
the documentary evidence of his name, existence and history; his
first-class, his defeat at Finsbury, his talents, his principles. If we
must go to Oxford to record our votes it would at least be something to
know that we were voting against a real man and not a mere name." The
"Morning Chronicle," on the other hand, affirmed that a section of the
Carleton Club were "making a tool of the Oxford Convocation for the
purpose of the meanest and smallest political rancor against Mr.
Gladstone."

Mr. Gladstone, who fought the battle on ecclesiastical lines, wrote,
after the nomination, to the chairman of his election committee,
as follows:

"Unless I had a full and clear conviction that the interests of the
Church, whether as relates to the legislative functions of Parliament,
or the impartial and wise recommendation of fit persons to her majesty
for high ecclesiastical offices, were at least as safe in the hands of
Lord Aberdeen as in those of Lord Derby (though I would on no account
disparage Lord Derby's personal sentiments towards the Church), I should
not have accepted office under Lord Aberdeen. As regards the second, if
it be thought that during twenty years of public life, or that during
the latter part of them, I have failed to give guarantees of attachment
to the interests of the Church--to such as so think I can offer neither
apology nor pledge. To those who think otherwise, I tender the assurance
that I have not by my recent assumption of office made any change
whatever in that particular, or in any principles relating to it."

Mr. Gladstone was again elected by a fair majority and returned to
Parliament. Seventy-four of the professors voted for Mr. Gladstone and
fifteen for Mr. Perceval.

When Parliament assembled the Earl of Aberdeen announced in the House of
Lords that the measures of the Government would be both Conservative and
Liberal,--at home to maintain Free Trade principles and to pursue the
commercial and financial system of the late Sir Robert Peel, and abroad
to secure the general peace of Europe without relaxing defensive
measures.

Mr. Gladstone had already proved himself to have a wonderful mastery of
figures, and the confused technicalities of finance. He did not
disappoint the hopes of his friends in regard to his fiscal abilities.
On the contrary, he speedily inaugurated a new and brilliant era in
finance. Previous to presenting his first budget, in 1853, Mr. Gladstone
brought forward a scheme for the reduction of the national debt, which
was approved by Radicals as well as Conservatives, and adopted by the
House. The scheme worked most successfully until the breaking out of the
Crimean war. During this very short period of two years the public debt
was reduced by more than $57,500,000.

In consequence of his general reputation and also of this brilliant
financial scheme, the first budget of Mr. Gladstone was waited for with
intense interest. His first budget was introduced April 18, 1853. It was
one of his greatest budgets, and for statesmanlike breadth of conception
it has never been surpassed. In bringing it forward Mr. Gladstone spoke
five hours, and during that length of time held the House spellbound.
The speech was delivered with the greatest ease, and was perspicuity
itself throughout. Even when dealing with the most abstruse financial
detail his language flowed on without interruption, and he never paused
for a word. "Here was an orator who could apply all the resources of a
burnished rhetoric to the elucidation of figures; who could make pippins
and cheese interesting and tea serious; who could sweep the widest
horizon of the financial future and yet stoop to bestow the minutest
attention on the microcosm of penny stamps and post-horses. The members
on the floor and ladies in the gallery of the House listened attentively
and showed no signs of weariness throughout." A contemporary awarded to
him the palm for unsurpassed fluency and choice of diction, and says:

"The impression produced upon the minds of the crowded and brilliant
assembly by Mr. Gladstone's evident mastery and grasp of the subject,
was, that England had at length found a skillful financier, upon whom
the mantle of Peel had descended. The cheering when the right honorable
gentleman sat down was of the most enthusiastic and prolonged character,
and his friends and colleagues hastened to tender him their warm
congratulations upon the distinguished success he had achieved in his
first budget."

The budget provided for the gradual reduction of the income tax to
expire in 1860; for an increase in the duty on spirits; for the
abolition of the soap duties; the reduction of the tax on cabs and
hackney coaches; the introduction of the penny receipt stamp and the
equalization of the assessed taxes on property. By these provisions it
was proposed to make life easier and cheaper for large and numerous
classes. The duty on 123 articles was abolished and the duty on 133
others reduced, the total relief amounting to $25,000,000. Mr. Gladstone
gave a clear exposition of the income tax, which he declared was never
intended to be permanent. It had been the last resort in times of
national danger, and he could not consent to retain it as a part of the
permanent and ordinary finances of the country. It was objectionable on
account of its unequal incidence, of the harassing investigation into
private affairs which it entailed and of the frauds to which it
inevitably led.

The value of the reduction in the necessities of life proposed by Mr.
Gladstone is seen from the following from a contemporary writer:

"The present budget, more than any other budget within our recollection,
is a cupboard budget; otherwise, a poor man's budget. With certain very
ugly features, the thing has altogether a good, hopeful aspect, together
with very fair proportions. It is not given to any Chancellor of the
Exchequer to make a budget fascinating as a fairy tale. Nevertheless,
there are visions of wealth and comfort in the present budget that
mightily recommend it to us. It seems to add color and fatness to the
poor man's beef; to give flavor and richness to the poor man's
plum-pudding. The budget is essentially a cupboard budget; and let the
name of Gladstone be, for the time at least, musical at the poor man's
fireside."

It unquestionably established Gladstone as the foremost financier of
his day. Greville, in his "Memoirs," says of him: "He spoke for five
hours; and by universal consent it was one of the grandest displays and
most able financial statements that ever was heard in the House of
Commons; a great scheme, boldly and skillfully and honestly devised,
disdaining popular clamor and pressure from without, and the execution
of its absolute perfection."

We reproduce some extracts from this important speech: "Depend upon it,
when you come to close quarters with this subject, when you come to
measure and test the respective relations of intelligence and labor and
property in all their myriad and complex forms, and when you come to
represent those relations in arithmetical results, you are undertaking
an operation of which I should say it was beyond the power of man to
conduct it with satisfaction, but which, at any rate, is an operation to
which you ought not constantly to recur; for if, as my noble friend once
said with universal applause, this country could not bear a revolution
once a year, I will venture to say that it cannot bear a reconstruction
of the income tax once a year.

"Whatever you do in regard to the income tax, you must be bold, you must
be intelligible, you must be decisive. You must not palter with it. If
you do, I have striven at least to point out as well as my feeble
powers will permit, the almost desecration I would say, certainly the
gross breach of duty to your country, of which you will be found guilty,
in thus putting to hazard one of the most potent and effective among all
its material resources. I believe it to be of vital importance, whether
you keep this tax or whether you part with it, that you should either
keep it or should leave it in a state in which it will be fit for
service on an emergency, and that it will be impossible to do if you
break up the basis of your income tax.

"If the Committee have followed me, they will understand that we found
ourselves on the principle that the income-tax ought to be marked as a
temporary measure; that the public feeling that relief should be given
to intelligence and skill as compared with property ought to be met, and
may be met with justice and with safety, in the manner we have pointed
out; that the income tax in its operation ought to be mitigated by every
rational means, compatible with its integrity; and, above all, that it
should be associated in the last term of its existence, as it was in the
first, with those remissions of indirect taxation which have so greatly
redoubled to the profit of this country and have set so admirable an
example--an example that has already in some quarters proved contagious
to the other nations of the earth, These are the principles on which we
stand, and these the figures. I have shown you that if you grant us the
taxes which we ask, to the moderate amount of £2,500,000 in the whole,
much less than that sum for the present year, you, or the Parliament
which may be in existence in 1860, will be in the condition, if it shall
so think fit, to part with the income tax."

Sir, I scarcely dare to look at the clock, shamefully reminding me, as
it must, how long, how shamelessly, I have trespassed on the time of the
committee. All I can say in apology is that I have endeavored to keep
closely to the topics which I had before me--

--immensum spatiis confecimus aequor,
Et jam tempus equum fumantia solvere colla.

"These are the proposals of the Government. They may be approved or they
may be condemned, but I have at least this full and undoubting
confidence, that it will on all hands be admitted that we have not
sought to evade the difficulties of our position; that we have not
concealed those difficulties, either from ourselves or from others; that
we have not attempted to counteract them by narrow or flimsy expedients;
that we have prepared plans which, if you will adopt them, will go some
way to close up many vexed financial questions--questions such as, if
not now settled, may be attended with public inconvenience, and even
with public danger, in future years and under less favorable
circumstances; that we have endeavored, in the plans we have now
submitted to you, to make the path of our successors in future years not
more arduous but more easy; and I may be permitted to add that, while we
have sought to do justice, by the changes we propose in taxation, to
intelligence and skill as compared with property--while we have sought
to do justice to the great laboring community of England by furthering
their relief from indirect taxation, we have not been guided by any
desire to put one class against another. We have felt we should best
maintain our own honor, that we should best meet the views of
Parliament, and best promote the interests of the country, by declining
to draw any invidious distinctions between class and class, by adapting
it to ourselves as a sacred aim to differ and distribute--burden if we
must, benefit if we may--with equal and impartial hand; and we have the
consolation of believing that by proposals such as these we contribute,
as far as in us lies, not only to develop the material resources of the
country, but to knit the hearts of the various classes of this great
nation yet more closely than heretofore to that throne and to those
institutions under which it is their happiness to live."

It is seldom that a venture of such magnitude as Mr. Gladstone's first
budget meets with universal success. But from the outset the plan was
received with universal favor. Besides the plaudits with which the
orator was greeted at the conclusion of his speech, his proposals were
received favorably by the whole nation. Being constructed upon Free
Trade principles, it was welcomed by the press and the country. It added
greatly, not only to the growing reputation of the new Chancellor of the
Exchequer as a financier, but also to his popularity.

The following anecdote of Mr. Gladstone is told by Walter Jerrold and is
appropriate as well as timely here:

"During Mr. Gladstone's first tenure of office as Chancellor of the
Exchequer, a curious adventure occurred to him in the London offices of
the late Mr. W. Lindsay, merchant, shipowner and M.P. There one day
entered a brusque and wealthy shipowner of Sunderland, inquiring for Mr.
Lindsay. As Mr. Lindsay was out, the visitor was requested to wait in an
adjacent room, where he found a person busily engaged in copying some
figures. The Sunderland shipowner paced the room several times and took
careful note of the writer's doings, and at length said to him, 'Thou
writes a bonny hand, thou dost.'

"'I am glad you think so,' was the reply.

"'Ah, thou dost. Thou makes thy figures weel. Thou'rt just the chap I
want.'

"'Indeed!' said the Londoner.

"'Yes, indeed,' said the Sunderland man. 'I'm a man of few words. Noo,
if thou'lt come over to canny ould Sunderland thou seest I'll give thee
a hundred and twenty pounds a year, and that's a plum thou dost not meet
with every day in thy life, I reckon. Noo then.'

"The Londoner replied that he was much obliged for the offer, and would
wait till Mr. Lindsay returned, whom he would consult upon the subject.
Accordingly, on the return of the latter, he was informed of the
shipowner's tempting offer.

"'Very well,' said Mr. Lindsay, 'I should be sorry to stand in your way.
One hundred and twenty pounds is more than I can afford to pay you in
the department in which you are at present placed. You will find my
friend a good and kind master, and, under the circumstances, the sooner
you know each other the better. Allow me, therefore, Mr.----, to
introduce you to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Chancellor of the
Exchequer.' The Sunderland shipowner was a little taken aback at first,
but he soon recovered his self-possession, and enjoyed the joke quite as
much as Mr. Gladstone did."




CHAPTER X


THE CRIMEAN WAR

The Crimean War, the great event with which the Aberdeen Cabinet was
associated, was a contest between Russia and Turkey, England and France.
A dispute which arose between Russia and Turkey as to the possession of
the Holy Places of Jerusalem was the precipitating cause. For a long
time the Greek and the Latin Churches had contended for the possession
of the Holy Land. Russia supported the claim of the Greek Church, and
France that of the Papal Church. The Czar claimed a Protectorate over
all the Greek subjects of the Porte. Russia sought to extend her
conquests south and to seize upon Turkey. France and England sustained
Turkey. Sardinia afterwards joined the Anglo-French alliance.

The people of England generally favored the war, and evinced much
enthusiasm at the prospect of it. Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone wished
England to stand aloof. The Peelite members of the cabinet were
generally less inclined to war than the Whigs. Lord Palmerston and Lord
John Russell favored England's support of Turkey. Some thought that
England could have averted the war by pursuing persistently either of
two courses: to inform Turkey that England would give her no aid; or to
warn Russia that if she went to war, England would fight for Turkey. But
with a ministry halting between two opinions, and the people demanding
it, England "drifted into war" with Russia.

July 2, 1853, the Russian troops crossed the Pruth and occupied the
Danubian Principalities which had been by treaty, in 1849, evacuated by
Turkey and Russia, and declared by both powers neutral territory between
them. London was startled, October 4, 1853, by a telegram announcing
that the Sultan had declared war against Russia. England and France
jointly sent an _ultimatum_ to the Czar, to which no answer was
returned. March 28, 1854, England declared war.

On the 12th of March, while great excitement prevailed and public
meetings were held throughout England, declaring for and against war,
Mr. Gladstone made an address on the occasion of the inauguration of the
statue of Sir Robert Peel, at Manchester. He spoke of the designs of
Russia, and described her as a power which threatened to override all
other powers, and as a source of danger to the peace of the world.
Against such designs, seen in Russia's attempt to overthrow the Ottoman
Empire, England had determined to set herself at whatever cost. War was
a calamity that the government did not desire to bring upon the country,
"a calamity which stained the face of nature with human gore, gave loose
rein to crime, and took bread from the people. No doubt negotiation is
repugnant to the national impatience at the sight of injustice and
oppression; it is beset with delay, intrigue, and chicane; but these are
not so horrible as war, if negotiation can be made to result in saving
this country from a calamity which deprives the nation of subsistence
and arrests the operations of industry. To attain that result ... Her
Majesty's Ministers have persevered in exercising that self-command and
that self-restraint which impatience may mistake for indifference,
feebleness or cowardice, but which are truly the crowning greatness of a
great people, and which do not evince the want of readiness to
vindicate, when the time comes, the honor of this country."

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