Chapter XXXVIII: Appendix: Choice of Profession (1)

_Page 82_

_Mr. Gladstone to his Father_

_Cuddesdon, Aug. 4, 1830._--MY BELOVED FATHER,--I have a good while refrained from addressing you on a subject of importance and much affecting my own future destiny, from a supposition that your time and thoughts have been much occupied for several months past by other matters of great interest in succession. Now, however, believing you to be more at leisure, I venture to bring it before you. It is, as you will have anticipated, the decision of the profession to which I am to look forward for life. Above eighteen months have now passed since you spoke to me of it at Seaforth, and most kindly desired me, if unable then to make up my mind to go into the law, to take some time to consider calmly of the whole question.

It would have been undutiful to trouble you with a recurrence of it, until such a period had been suffered to elapse, as would suffice to afford, by the effects it should itself produce, some fair criterion and presumption of the inclination which my mind was likely to adopt in reference to the _final_ decision. At the same time it would also have been undutiful, and most repugnant to my feelings, to permit the prolongation of that intervening period to such an extent, as to give the shadow of a reason to suppose that anything approaching to reserve had been the cause of my silence. The present time seems to lie between these two extremes, and therefore to render it incumbent on me to apprise you of the state of my own views.

I trust it is hardly necessary to specify my knowledge that when I speak of 'the state of my own views' on this question, I do so not of right but by sufferance, by invitation from you, by that more than parental kindness and indulgence with which I have ever met at my parents' hands, which it would be as absurd to make a matter of _formal_ acknowledgment as it would be impossible to repay, and for which I can only say, and I say it from the bottom of my heart, may God reward them with his best and choicest gifts, eternal, unfading in the heavens.

If then I am to advert to the disposition of my own mind as regards this matter, I cannot avoid perceiving that it has inclined to the ministerial office, for what has now become a considerable period, with a bias at first uncertain and intermittent, but which has regularly and rapidly increased in force and permanence. It has not been owing as far as I can myself discern, to the operation of any external cause whatever; nor of internal ones to any others than those which work their effects in the most gradual and imperceptible manner. Day after day it has grown upon and into my habit of feeling and desire. It has been gradually strengthened by those small accessions of power, each of which singly it would be utterly impossible to trace, but which collectively have not only produced a desire of a certain description, but have led me by reasonings often weighed and sifted and re-sifted to the best of my ability, to the deliberate conclusion which I have stated above. I do not indeed mean to say that there has been _no_ time within this period at which I have felt a longing for other pursuits; but such feelings have been unstable and temporary; that which I now speak of is the permanent and habitual inclination of my mind. And such too, I think, it is likely to continue; as far at least as I can venture to think I see anything belonging to the future, or can anticipate the continuance of any one desire, feeling, or principle, in a mind so wayward and uncertain as my own--so far do I believe that this sentiment will remain.

It gives me pain, great pain, to communicate anything which I have even the remotest apprehension can give the slightest annoyance to you. I trust this will not do so; although I fear it may. But though fearing it may, I feel it is my duty to do it: because I have only these three alternatives before me. First, to delay communication to some subsequent opportunity: but as I have no fair prospect of being able _then_ to convey a different statement, this plan would be attended with no advantage whatever, as far as I can see. Secondly, to dissemble my feelings: an alternative on which if I said another word I should be behaving undutifully and wickedly towards you. Thirdly, to follow the course I have now chosen, I trust with no feelings but those of the most profound affection, and of unfeigned grief that as far as my own view is concerned, I am unable to make it coincide with yours. I say, _as far_ as my own view goes, because I do not now see that my own view can or ought to stand for a moment in the way of your desires. In the hands of my parents, therefore, I am left. But lest you should be led to suppose that I have never reasoned with myself on this matter, but yielded to blind impulses or transitory whims, I will state, not indeed at length, but with as much simplicity and clearness as I am able, some of the motives which seem to me to urge me with an irresistible accumulation of moral force, to this conclusion, and this alone. In the first place, I would say that my own state and character is _not_ one of them; nor, I believe, could any views of that character be compatible with their existence and reception, but that in which it now appears to me: namely, as one on which I can look with no degree of satisfaction whatever, and for the purification of which I can only direct my eyes and offer up my prayers to the throne of God.

First, then, with reference to the _dignity_ of this office, I know none to compare with it; none which can compete with the grandeur of its end or of its means--the end, the glory of God, and the means, the restoration of man to that image of his Maker which is now throughout the world so lamentably defaced. True indeed it is, that there are other fields for the use and improvement of all which God lends to us, which are wide, dignified, beneficial, desirable: desirable in the first and highest degree, _if we had not this_. But as long as this field continues, and as long as it continues unfilled, I do not see how I am to persuade myself that any powers, be they the meanest or the greatest, can be _so_ profitably or _so_ nobly employed as in the performance of this sublime duty. And that this field is _not_ yet filled, how can any one doubt who casts his eyes abroad over the moral wilderness of this world, who contemplates the pursuits, desires, designs, and principles of the beings that move so busily in it to and fro, without an object beyond the finding food, be it mental or bodily, for the _present_ moment or the _present_ life--it matters little which--or beyond ministering to the desires, under whatever modification they may appear, of self-will and self-love? When I look to the standard of habit and principle adopted in the world at large, and then divert my eyes for a moment from that spectacle to the standard fixed and the picture delineated in the book of revelation, then, my beloved father, the conviction flashes on my soul with a moral force I cannot resist, and would not if I could, that the vineyard still wants labourers, that 'the kingdoms of this world are not yet become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ,' and that _till_ they are become such, till the frail race of Adam is restored to the knowledge and the likeness of his Maker, till universally and throughout the wide world the will of God is become our delight, and its accomplishment our first and last desire, there can be no claim so solemn and imperative as that which even now seems to call to us with the voice of God from heaven, and to say 'I have given Mine own Son for this rebellious and apostate world, the sacrifice is offered and accepted, but you, you who are basking in the sunbeams of Christianity, you who are blessed beyond measure, and, oh, how beyond desert in parents, in friends, in every circumstance and adjunct that can sweeten your pilgrimage, why will you not bear to fellow-creatures sitting in darkness and the shadow of death the tidings of this universal and incomprehensible love?'

In this, I believe, is included the main reason which influences me; a reason as full of joy as of glory: that transcendent reason, in comparison with which every other object seems to dwindle into utter and absolute insignificance. But I would not conceal from you--why should I?--that which I cannot conceal from myself: that the darker side of this great picture sometimes meets me, and it is vain that, shuddering, I attempt to turn away from it. My mind involuntarily reverts to the sad and solemn conviction that a fearfully great portion of the world round me is dying in sin. This conviction is the result of that same comparison I have mentioned before, between the principles and practices it embraces, and those which the Almighty authoritatively enjoins: and _entertaining it_ as I do, how, my beloved parent, can I bear to think of my own seeking to wanton in the pleasures of life (I mean even its innocent pleasures), or to give up my heart to its business, while my fellow-creatures, to whom I am bound by every tie of human sympathies, of a common sinfulness and a common redemption, day after day are sinking into death? I mean, not the death of the body, which is but a gate either to happiness or to misery, but that of the soul, the true and the only true death. Can I, with this persuasion engrossing me, be justified in inactivity? or in any measure short of the most direct and most effective means of meeting, if in _any degree_ it be possible, these horrible calamities? Nor is impotency and incompetency any argument on the other side: if I saw a man drowning I should hold out my hand to help him, although I were uncertain whether my strength would prove sufficient to extricate him or not; how much more strongly, then, is this duty incumbent when there are thousands on thousands perishing in sin and ignorance on every side, and where the stake is not the addition or subtraction of a few short years from a life, which can but be a span, longer or shorter, but the doom, the irrevocable doom of spirits made for God, and once like God, but now alienated and apostate? And the remedy which God has provided for this portentous evil is not like the ponderous and elaborate contrivances of men; its spear is not, like Goliath's, the weaver's beam, but all its weapons are a few pure and simple elements of truth, ill calculated, like the arms of David, in the estimation of the world to attain their object, but yet capable of being wielded by a stripling's hand, and yet more, 'mighty, through God, to the pulling down of strongholds.'

What I have said is from the bottom of my heart, and put forward without the smallest reservation of any kind: and I have said it thus, because in duty bound to do it; and having, too, the comfort of the fullest persuasion that even if your judgment should disallow it, your affection would pardon it. It is possible, indeed, that the (as it seems to me) awful consideration which I have last put forward may have been misstated or misapprehended. Would God it may be so! happy should I be to find either by reason or revelation that the principles of this world were other than I have estimated them to be, and consequently that their fate would be other likewise. I may be under darkness and delusion, having consulted with none in this matter; but till it is shown that I am so, I am bound by all the most solemn ties, ties not created in this world nor to be dissolved with it, but eternal and changeless as our spirits and He who made them, to regulate my actions with reference to these all-important truths--the apostasy of man on the one hand, the love of God on the other. Of my duties _to men_ as a social being, can any be so important as to tell them of the danger under which I believe them to lie, of the precipice to which I fear many are approaching, while thousands have already fallen headlong, and others again, even while I write, are continuing to fall in a succession of appalling rapidity? Of my duties _to God_ as a rational and responsible being, especially as a being for whom in common with all men the precious blood of Christ has been given, can any more imperatively and more persuasively demand all the little I can give than this, the proclaiming that one instance of God's unfathomable love which alone so transcends as almost to swallow up all others? while those others thus transcended and eclipsed are such as would be of themselves by far the highest and holiest obligations man could know, did we not know this.

Thus I have endeavoured to state these truths, if truths they are, at least these convictions, to you, dwelling upon them at a length which may perhaps be tedious and appear affected, simply as I trust, in order to represent them to your mind as much to the life as possible, I mean as nearly as possible in the light in which they have again and again appeared, and do habitually appear, to my own, so as to give you the best means in my power of estimating the strength or detecting the weakness of those grounds on which the conclusions above stated rest. (I have not mentioned the benefit I might hope myself to derive from this course of living compared with others; and yet this consideration, though here undoubtedly a secondary one, is, I believe, more weighty than any of those which can be advanced in favour of an opposite determination.)

For some time I doubted whether to state reasons at all: fearing that it might appear presumptuous; but I resolved to do it as choosing rather to incur that risk, than the hazarding an appearance of reserve and desire to conceal my real sentiments from one who has a right to see into the bottom of my heart.

Yet one trespass more I must make on your patience. It may perhaps seem that the inducements I have stated are of an unusual character, unsubstantial, romantic, theoretical, and not practical. Unusual, indeed, they are: because (though it is not without diffidence that I bring this sweeping charge--indeed, I should not dare to bring it were it not brought elsewhere) it is a rare thing in this world even where right actions are performed to ground them upon right motives. At least, I am convinced that there are fundamental errors on this subject very prevalent--that they are in general fixed far too low, and that the height of our standard of practice must ever be adapted more or less to that of principle. God only knows whether this be right. But hence it has been that I have endeavoured, I trust not improperly, to put these motives forward in the simplicity of that form wherein they seem to me to come down from the throne of God to the hearts of men; and to consider my prospects and obligations, not under all the limitations which a highly artificial state of society might seem to impose upon them, but direct and undiluted; not, in short, as one who has certain pursuits to follow, certain objects of his own to gain, and relations to fulfil, and arrangements to execute--but as a being destined shortly to stand before the judgment seat of God, and there give the decisive account of his actions at the tribunal whose awards admit of no evasion and of no appeal.

That I _have_ viewed them in this light I dare not assert; but I have wished and striven to view them so, and to weigh them, and to answer these questions in the same manner as I must answer them on that day when the trumpet of the archangel shall arouse the living and the dead, and when it will be demanded of me in common with all others, how I have kept and how employed that which was committed to my charge. I dare not pretend that I could act even up to the standard here fixed, but I can eye it though distant, with longing hope, and look upwards for the power which I know is all-sufficient, and therefore sufficient to enable even such an one as myself to reach it.

Viewing, then, these considerations in such a light as this, I can come to no other conclusion, at least unaided, than that the work of spreading religion has a claim infinitely transcending all others in dignity, in solemnity, and in usefulness: destined to continue in force until the happy moment come when every human being has been made fully and effectually acquainted with his condition and its remedies--when too, as it seems to me, it will be soon enough--of course, I lay down this rule for myself, provided as I am to the extent of my wants and very far beyond them--to devise other occupations: _now_ it behoves me to discharge the overwhelming obligation which summons me to this.

I have scarcely mentioned my beloved mother in the whole of this letter; for though little has ever passed between us on this subject through the medium of language, and nothing whatever, I believe, since I last spoke with you upon it, yet I have long been well aware of the tendency of her desires, long indeed before my own in any degree coincided with them.

I await with deference and interest the communication of your desires upon this subject: earnestly desiring that if I have said anything through pride or self-love, it may be forgiven me at your hands, and by God through his Son; and that if my statements be false, or exaggerated, or romantic, or impracticable, I may, by His mercy and through your instrumentality or that of others, be brought back to my right mind, and taught to hold the truth of God in all its sobriety as well as in all its force.--And believe me ever, my beloved and honoured father, your affectionate and dutiful son,

WM. E. GLADSTONE.

_John Gladstone to his Son_

_Leamington, 10 Aug. 1830_.

MY BELOVED WILLIAM,--I have read and given my best consideration to your letter, dated the 4th, which I only received yesterday. I did hope that you would have delayed making up your mind on a subject so important as your future pursuits in life must be to yourself and to us all, until you had completed those studies connected with the attainment of the honours or distinctions of which you were so justly ambitious, and on which your mind seemed so bent when we last communicated respecting them. You know my opinion to be, that the field for actual usefulness to our fellow-creatures, where a disposition to exercise it actively exists, is more circumscribed and limited in the occupations and duties of a clergyman, whose sphere of action, unless pluralities are admitted (as I am sure they would not be advocated by you) is necessarily in a great degree confined to his parish, than in those professions or pursuits which lead to a more general knowledge, as well as a more general intercourse with mankind, such as the law, taking it as a basis, and introduction to public life, to which I had looked forward for you, considering you, as I do, peculiarly well qualified to be made thus eminently useful to others, with credit and satisfaction to yourself. There is no doubt but as a clergyman, faithfully and conscientiously discharging the duties of that office to those whose spiritual interests are entrusted to your care, should you eventually be placed in that situation, that you may have both comfort and satisfaction, with few worldly responsibilities, but you will allow me to doubt whether the picture your perhaps too sanguine mind has drawn in your letter before me, would ever be practically realised. Be this as it may, whenever your mind shall be finally made up on this most important subject, I shall trust to its being eventually for your good, whatever that determination may be. In the meantime I am certainly desirous that those studies with which you have been occupied in reading for your degree may be followed up, whether the shorter or longer period may be necessary to prepare you for the results. You are young and have ample time before you. Let nothing be done rashly; be consistent with yourself, and avail yourself of all the advantages placed within your reach. If, when that ordeal is passed, you should continue to think as you now do, I shall not oppose your _then_ preparing yourself for the church, but I do hope that your final determination will not until then be taken, and that whatever events may occur in the interval, you will give them such weight and consideration as they may appear to merit.... Your mother is much as usual.--With our united and affectionate love, I ever am your affectionate father,

JOHN GLADSTONE.

CANADA, 1838

_Page 144_

_Jan. 20/38._--To-day there was a meeting on Canada at Sir R. Peel's. There were present Duke of Wellington, Lords Aberdeen, Ripon, Ellenborough, Stanley, Hardinge, and others.... Peel said he did not object to throwing out the government provided it were done by us on our own principles; but that to throw them out on radical principles would be most unwise. He agreed that less might have been done, but was not willing to take the responsibility of refusing what the government asked. He thought that this rebellion had given a most convenient opportunity for settling the question of the Canadian constitution, which had long been a thorny one and inaccessible; that if we postponed the settlement by giving the assembly another trial, the revolt would be forgotten, and in colder blood the necessary powers might be refused. He thought that when once you went into a measure of a despotic character, it was well to err, if at all, on the side of sufficiency; Lord Ripon strongly concurred. The duke sat with his hand to his ear, turning from one towards another round the circle as they took up the conversation in succession, and said nothing till directly and pressingly called upon by Peel, a simple but striking example of the self-forgetfulness of a great man.

_Jan. 26/38._--I was myself present at about eight hours [_i.e._ on three occasions] of discussion in Peel's house upon the Canadian question and bill, and there was one meeting held to which I was not summoned. The conservative amendments were all adopted in the thoroughly straightforward view of looking simply at the bill and not at the government and the position of parties. Peel used these emphatic words: 'Depend upon it, our course is the direct one; don't do anything that is wrong for the sake of putting them out; don't avoid anything that is right for the sake of keeping them in.' Every one of these points has now been carried without limitation or exception. For the opposition party this is, in familiar language, a feather in its cap. The whole has been carefully, thoroughly, and effectually done. Nothing since I have been in parliament--not even the defeat of the Church Rate measure last year--has been of a kind to tell so strikingly as regards appearances upon the comparative credit of the two parties.

SIR ROBERT PEEL'S GOVERNMENT

_Page 247_

_In the great mountain of Mr. Gladstone's papers I have come across an unfinished and undated draft of a letter written by him for the Queen in 1880 on Sir Robert Peel's government_:--

Mr. Gladstone with his humble duty reverts to the letter which your
Majesty addressed to him a few days back, and in which your Majesty
condescended to recollect and to remind him of the day now nearly
forty years ago, a day he fears not altogether one of pleasure to
your Majesty, when together with others he had the honour to be
sworn of your Majesty's privy council. Your Majesty is pleased to
pronounce upon the government then installed into office a high
eulogy: a eulogy which Mr. Gladstone would presume, as far as he
may, to echo. He values it, and values the recollection of the men
who principally composed it, because it was, in the first place, a
most honourable and high-minded government; because its legislative
acts tended greatly, and almost uniformly, to increase the
wellbeing of the country, and to strengthen the attachment of the
people to the throne and the laws; while it studied in all things
to maintain the reverse of an ambitious or disturbing policy.

It was Mr. Gladstone's good fortune to live on terms of intimacy,
and even affection, with the greater portion of its principal and
more active members until the close of their valued lives; and
although he is far from thinking that they, and he himself with
them, committed no serious errors, yet it is his conviction that in
many of the most important rules of public policy that government
surpassed generally the governments which have succeeded it,
whether liberal or conservative. Among them he would mention purity
in patronage, financial strictness, loyal adherence to the
principle of public economy, jealous regard to the rights of
parliament, a single eye to the public interest, strong aversion to
extension of territorial responsibilities, and a frank admission of
the rights of foreign countries as equal to those of their own.
With these recollections of the political character of Sir R. Peel
and his government Mr. Gladstone has in no way altered his feelings
of regard and respect for them. In all the points he has mentioned
he would desire to tread in their steps, and in many of them, or at
least in some, he has no hope of soon seeing them equalled. The
observance of such principles is in his conviction the best means
of disarming radicalism of whatever is dangerous in its
composition, and he would feel more completely at ease as to the
future prospects of this country could he feel more sure of their
being faithfully observed.

Mr. Gladstone is, and has been, but a learner through his life, and
he can claim no special gift of insight into the future: the
history of his life may not be flattering to his self-love, but he
has great consolation in believing that the great legislative acts
of the last half-century, in most of which he has had some share
...

_And here the fragment closes_.

CRISIS ON THE SUGAR DUTIES, 1844

_Page 267_

In 1841 the whig government raised the question of the sugar duties, and proposed to substitute a protective duty of 12/ per cwt. for the actual or virtual prohibition of foreign sugars which had up to that time subsisted. They were strongly opposed, and decisively beaten. The argument used against them was, I think, twofold. There was the protection plea on behalf of the West Indians whose estates were now worked only by free labour--and there was the great and popular contention that the measure not only admitted sugar the product of slave labour, which we would not allow our own colonies to employ, but that our new supplies would be derived from Brazil, and above all from Cuba and Puerto Rico, where the slave trade was rampant, and was prosecuted on an enormous scale. The government of Sir R. Peel largely modified our system. Its general professions were the abolition of prohibition, and the reduction of protective duties to a moderate rate. In 1844 it was determined to deal with the sugar duties, and to admit sugar at, I think, a rate of 10/ per cwt. beyond the rate for British-grown. But we had to bear in mind the arguments of 1841, and it was determined that the sugars so to be admitted were to be the product of free labour only. There was some uncertainty from whence they were to come. Java produced sugar largely, under a system involving certain restraints, but as we contended essentially free. The whole argument, however, was difficult and perplexed, and a parliamentary combination was formed against the government. The opposition, with perfect consistency, mustered in full force. The West Indian interest, which, though much reduced in wealth, still subsisted as a parliamentary entity, was keenly arrayed on the same side. There were some votes attracted by dislike, perhaps, to the argument on our side, which appeared to be complex and over-refined. A meeting of the party was held in order to confront the crisis. Sir Robert Peel stated his case in a speech which was thought to be haughty and unconciliatory. I do not recollect whether there was hostile discussion, or whether silence and the sulks prevailed. But I remember that when the meeting of the party broke up, Sir Robert Peel said on quitting the room that it was the worst meeting he had ever attended. It left disagreeable anticipations as to the division which was in immediate prospect.... The opposition in general had done what they could to strengthen their momentary association with the West Indian conservatives. Their hopes of a majority depended entirely upon conservative votes. Of course, therefore, it was vital to confine the attack to the merits of the question immediately before the House, as an attack upon the policy of the government generally could only strengthen it by awakening the susceptibilities of party and so reclaiming the stray voters to the administration. Lord Howick, entering into the debate as the hours of enhanced interest began, made a speech which attacked the conservative policy at large, and gave the opening for an effective reply. Lord Stanley perceived his opportunity and turned it to account with great force and adroitness. In a strictly retaliatory speech, he wound up conservative sentiment on behalf of ministers, and restored the tone of the House. The clouds of the earlier evening hours dispersed, and the government was victorious. Two speeches, one negatively and the other positively, reversed the prevailing current, and saved the administration. I have never known a parallel case. The whole honour of the fray, in the ministerial sense, redounded to Lord Stanley. I doubt whether in the twenty-six years of his after life he ever struck such a stroke as this.

COLONIAL POLICY

_Page 362_

You have reversed, within the last seventy years, every one of these salutary principles. Your policy has been this; you have retained at home the management of and property in colonial lands. You have magnificent sums figuring in your estimates for the ordinary expenses of their governments, instead of allowing them to bear their own expenses. Instead of suffering them to judge what are the measures best adapted to secure their peaceful relations with the aboriginal tribes, and endeavouring to secure their good conduct--instead of telling them that they must not look for help from you unless they maintain the principles of justice, you tell them, 'You must not meddle with the relations between yourselves and the natives; that is a matter for parliament'; a minister sitting in Downing Street must determine how the local relations between the inhabitants of the colony and the aboriginal tribes are to be settled, in every point down to the minutest detail. Nay, even their strictly internal police your soldiery is often called upon to maintain. Then, again, the idea of their electing their own officers is, of course, revolutionary in the extreme--if not invading the royal supremacy, it is something almost as bad, dismembering the empire; and as to making their own laws upon their local affairs without interference or control from us, that is really an innovation so opposed to all ideas of imperial policy, that I think my honourable friend the member for Southwark (Sir William Molesworth) has been the first man in the House bold enough to propose it. Thus, in fact, the principles on which our colonial administration was once conducted have been precisely reversed. Our colonies have come to be looked upon as being, not municipalities endowed with internal freedom, but petty states. If you had only kept to the fundamental idea of your forefathers, that these were municipal bodies founded within the shadow and cincture of your imperial powers--that it was your business to impose on them such positive restraints as you thought necessary, and having done so, to leave them free in everything else--all those principles, instead of being reversed, would have survived in full vigour--you would have saved millions, I was going to say countless millions, to your exchequer; but you would have done something far more important by planting societies more worthy by far of the source from which they spring; for no man can read the history of the great American Revolution without seeing that a hundred years ago your colonies, such as they then were, with the institutions they then possessed, and the political relations in which they then stood to the mother-country, bred and reared men of mental stature and power such as far surpassed anything that colonial life is now commonly considered to be capable of producing.--_Speech on second reading of the New Zealand Constitution bill, May_ 21, 1852.

FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS OF 1853 AS AFFECTING IRELAND

_Page 465_

_When the report of the Irish Financial Relations Commission of 1894 was named to him, Mr. Gladstone made the following observations:--_

The changes adopted in that year were explained in my budget speech, and will be found in my volume of _Financial Statements_, pp. 53, 60, and 69. They affected the Spirit Duties and the Income-Tax.

1. _The Spirit Duties._--We laid 8d. per gallon upon Irish spirits, imposed at the same time 1s. per gallon in Scotland, and laid it down that the equalisation of the duty in the three countries would require a reduction of the duty of 8s. chargeable in England. Sir Robert Peel had imposed 1s. per gallon on Irish spirits in 1842, but was defeated by the smuggler, and repealed the duty in consequence of the failure. In 1842 the duty was levied by a separate revenue police. I abolished this separate police, and handed the duty to the constabulary force, which raised it, and without difficulty.

2. _The Income-Tax_ was also in that year extended to Ireland. I pointed out that Sir Robert Peel, in imposing the burden on Great Britain, proposed to give a compensation for it by progressive reductions of duty on consumable commodities, and that Ireland had for twelve years enjoyed her full share of the compensation without undergoing any part of the burden; but I also laid it down as a fundamental principle that the peace income-tax was to be temporary, and I computed that it might cease in 1860. This computation was defeated, first by the Crimean war, second by a change of ideas as to expenditure and establishments which I did everything in my power to check, but which began to creep in with, and after, that war. We were enabled to hold it in check during the government of 1859-66. It has since that time, and especially in these last years, broken all bounds. But although the computation of 1853 was defeated, the principle that the income-tax should be temporary was never forgotten, at least by me, and in the year 1874 I redeemed my pledge by proposing, as mentioned, to repeal it--a course which would have saved the country a sum which it is difficult to reckon, but very large. This fact which was in the public mind in 1853 when the income-tax was temporary, is the key to the whole position. From this point of view we must combine it with the remission of the consolidated annuities. I have not now the means of making the calculation exactly, but it will be found that a descending income-tax on Ireland for seven years at 7d., then 6d., then 5d., is largely, though not completely, balanced by that remission. It will thus be seen that the finance of 1853 is not responsible either for a permanent peace income-tax upon Ireland, or for the present equalisation of the spirit duties. At the same time, I do not mean to condemn those measures. I condemn utterly the extravagance of the civil expenditure in Ireland, which, if Ireland has been unjustly taxed, cannot for a moment be pleaded as a compensation. I reserve my judgment whether political equality can be made compatible with privilege in point of taxation. I admit, for my own part, that in 1853 I never went back to the union whence the difficulty springs, but only to the union of the exchequers in or about 1817. It is impossible to resist the authority which has now affirmed that we owe a pecuniary, as well as a political debt to Ireland.

FINANCIAL PROPOSAL OF 1853

_Page 473_

_Mr. Gladstone to Sir Stafford Northcote_

_Aug._ 6, 1862.--I have three main observations to make upon the conversion scheme, two of which are confessions, and one a maxim for an opposition to remember.

1. In the then doubtful state of foreign politics, had I been capable of fully appreciating it at the time, I ought not to have made the proposal.

2. Such a proposal when made by a government ought either to be resisted outright, or allowed to pass, I do not say without protest, but without delay. For _that_ can do nothing but mischief to a proposal depending on public impression. The same course should be taken as is taken in the case of loans.

3. I am sorry to say I made a more serious error, as regards the South Sea Stocks, than the original proposal. In the summer, I think, of 1853, and a good while before harvest the company proposed to me to take Mr. Goulburn's 3 per cents. to an equal amount in lieu of their own. They were at the time more valuable and I refused; but it would have been wise to accept, not because the event proved it so, but because the state of things at the time was so far doubtful as to have made this kind of insurance prudent.

_For the benefit of the expert, I give Mr. Gladstone's further observations on this highly technical matter:--_

I have other remarks to offer. I write, however, from memory. Three millions of the £8,000,000 were paid in exchequer bills. The difference between £100 and the price of consols at the time may, in argument at least, fairly be considered as public loss. You say it was 90 or 91. We could not, however, if the operation had not taken place, have applied our surplus revenue with advantage to the reduction of debt. The balances would have been richer by £5,000,000, but we had to raise seven millions for the services of the year 1854-5. Now, as I am making myself liable for the loss of half a million of money in repaying the South Sea Company, and thereby starving the balances, I am entitled to say on the other hand that the real loss is to be measured by the amount of necessity created for replenishing them, and the charge entailed in effecting it. This I think was done by the exchequer bonds: and beyond all doubt a large saving was effected to the public by raising money upon those bonds, instead of borrowing in consols at 84 or thereabouts, which I think would have been the price for which we should in that year have borrowed--say, at 84. The redemption price, _i.e._ the price at which on the average consols have been in recent times redeemed, can hardly I think be less than 95, and may be higher. There was in 1854 a strong combination in the City to compel a 'loan' by bearing the funds; and when it was defeated by the vote of the House of Commons, a rapid reaction took place, several millions, as I understand, were lost by the 'bear,' and the attempt was not renewed in 1855, when the loan was, I believe, made on fair terms, relatively to the state of the market.

THE REFORM BILL OF 1854

_Page 491_

In cabinet on Wednesday Lord John Russell opened the question of the Reform bill, stated the prospect of defeat on Sir E. Dering's motion, and expressed his willingness to postpone the measure until the 27th April. Lord Palmerston recommended postponement altogether. Lord Aberdeen and Graham were averse to any postponement, the latter even declaring his opinion that we ought at the time when the Queen's Speech was framed to have assumed the present state of circumstances as inevitable, and that, therefore, we had no apology or ground for change; further, that we ought if necessary to dissolve upon defeat in order to carry the measure. No one else went this length. All the three I have named were, from their different points of view, disposed to concur in the expedient of postponement, which none of them preferred on its merits. Of the rest of the cabinet, Molesworth and I expressed decidedly our preference for the more decided course of at once giving up the bill for the year, as did the chancellor, and this for the ultimate interest of the plan itself. Lord Lansdowne, Wood, Clarendon, Herbert were all, with more or less decision of phrase, in the same sense. Newcastle, Granville, and Argyll were, I believe, of the same mind. But all were willing to accept the postponement until April 27, rather than the very serious alternative. Molesworth and I both expressed our apprehension that this course would in the end subject the government to far more of censure and of suspicion than if we dealt with the difficulty at once. Next day Lord John came to see me, and told me he had the idea that in April it might probably be found advisable to divide the part of the bill which enfranchises new classes from that which disfranchises places and redistributes seats; with a view of passing the first and letting the latter take its chance; as the popular feeling would tell for the first while the selfish interests were provoked by the last. He thought that withdrawal of the bill was equivalent to defeat, and that either must lead to a summary winding up of the session. I said the division of the bill was a new idea and a new light to me; but observed that it would by no means help Graham, who felt himself chiefly tied to the disfranchising part; and submitted to him that his view of a withdrawal of the bill, given such circumstances as would alone induce the cabinet to think of it, was more unfavourable than the case warranted--_March_ 3, 1854.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM

_Page 511_

_Extracts from a letter to Lord John Russell, Jan. 20, 1854_

... I do not hesitate to say that one of the great recommendations of the change in my eyes would be its tendency to strengthen and multiply the ties between the higher classes and the possession of administrative power. As a member for Oxford, I look forward eagerly to its operation. There, happily, we are not without some lights of experience to throw upon this part of the subject. The objection which I always hear there from persons who wish to retain restrictions upon elections is this: 'If you leave them to examination, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and the other public schools will carry _everything_.' I have a strong impression that the aristocracy of this country are even superior in natural gifts, on the average, to the mass: but it is plain that with their acquired advantages, their _insensible education_, irrespective of book-learning, they have an immense superiority. This applies in its degree to all those who may be called gentlemen by birth and training; and it must be remembered that an essential part of any such plan as is now under discussion is the separation of _work_, wherever it can be made, into mechanical and intellectual, a separation which will open to the highly educated class a career, and give them a command over all the higher parts of the civil service, which up to this time they have never enjoyed....

I must admit that the aggregate means now possessed by government for carrying on business in the House of Commons are not in excess of the real need, and will not bear serious diminution. I remember being alarmed as a young man when Lord Althorp said, or was said to have said, that this country could no longer be governed by patronage. But while sitting thirteen years for a borough with a humble constituency, and spending near ten of them in opposition, I was struck by finding that the loss or gain of access to government patronage was not traceable in its effect upon the local political influences. I concluded from this that it was not the intrinsic value of patronage (which is really none, inasmuch as it does not, or ought not, to multiply the aggregate number of places to be given, but only acts on the mode of giving them) that was regarded, but simply that each party liked and claimed to be upon a footing of equality with their neighbours. Just in the same way, it was considered necessary that bandsmen, flagmen, and the rest, should be paid four times the value of their services, without any intention of bribery, but because it was the custom, and was done on the other side--in places where this was thought essential, it has now utterly vanished away, and yet the people vote and work for their cause as zealously as they did before. May not this after all be found to be the case in the House of Commons as well as in many constituencies?...

It might increase the uncertainties of the government in the House of Commons on particular nights; but is not the hold even now uncertain as compared with what it was thirty or forty years ago; and is it really weaker for general and for good purposes, on account of that uncertainty, than it then was? I have heard you explain with great force to the House this change in the position of governments since the Reform bill, as a legitimate accompaniment of changes in our political state, by virtue of which we appeal _more_ to reason, less to habit, direct interest, or force. May not this be another legitimate and measured step in the same direction? May we not get, I will not say more ease and certainty for the leader of the House, but more real and more honourable strength with the better and, in the long run, the ruling part of the community, by a signal proof of cordial desire that the processes by which government is carried on should not in elections only, but elsewhere too be honourable and pure? I speak with diffidence; but remembering that at the revolution we passed over from prerogative to patronage, and that since the revolution we have also passed from bribery to influence, I cannot think the process is to end here; and after all we have seen of the good sense and good feeling of the community, though it may be too sanguine, I cherish the hope that the day is now near at hand, or actually come, when in pursuit not of visionary notions, but of a great practical and economical improvement, we may safely give yet one more new and striking sign of rational confidence in the intelligence and character of the people.

MR. GLADSTONE AND THE BANK

_Page 519_

From the time I took office as chancellor of the exchequer I began to learn that the state held in the face of the Bank and the City an essentially false position as to finance. When those relations began, the state was justly in ill odour as a fraudulent bankrupt who was ready on occasion to add force to fraud. After the revolution it adopted better methods though often for unwise purposes, and in order to induce monied men to be lenders it came forward under the countenance of the Bank as its sponsor. Hence a position of subserviency which, as the idea of public faith grew up and gradually attained to solidity, it became the interest of the Bank and the City to prolong. This was done by amicable and accommodating measures towards the government, whose position was thus cushioned and made easy in order that it might be willing to give it a continued acquiescence. The hinge of the whole situation was this: the government itself was not to be a substantive power in matters of finance, but was to leave the money power supreme and unquestioned. In the conditions of that situation I was reluctant to acquiesce, and I began to fight against it by financial self-assertion from the first, though it was only by the establishment of the Post Office Savings Banks and their great progressive development that the finance minister has been provided with an instrument sufficiently powerful to make him independent of the Bank and the City power when he has occasion for sums in seven figures. I was tenaciously opposed by the governor and deputy-governor of the Bank, who had seats in parliament, and I had the City for an antagonist on almost every occasion.--_Undated fragment_.

THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE AND SIDNEY HERBERT

_Page 521_

With reference to the Crimean war, I may give a curious example of the power of self-deception in the most upright men. The offices of colonial secretary and war minister were, in conformity with usage, united in the hands of the Duke of Newcastle. On the outbreak of war it became necessary to separate them. It evidently lay with the holder to choose which he would keep. The duke elected for the war department, and publicly declared that he did this in compliance with the unanimous desire of his colleagues. And no one contradicted him. We could only 'grin and bear it.' I cannot pretend to know the sentiments of each and every minister on the matter. But I myself, and every one with whom I happened to communicate, were very strongly of an opposite opinion. The duke was _well_ qualified for the colonial seals, for he was a statesman; _ill_ for the war office, as he was no administrator. I believe we all desired that Lord Palmerston should have been war minister. It might have made a difference as to the tolerance of the feeble and incapable administration of our army before Sebastopol. Indeed, I remember hearing Lord Palmerston suggest in cabinet the recall of Sir Richard Airy.

In that crisis one man suffered most unjustly. I mean Sidney Herbert. To some extent, perhaps, his extraordinary and most just popularity led people to refrain from pouring on him those vials of wrath to which his office exposed him in the eyes especially of the uninformed. The duties of his department were really financial. I suppose it to be doubtful whether it was not the duty of the secretary of state's department to deal with the question of supply for the army, leaving to him only the management of the purchasing part. But I conceive it could be subject to no doubt at all that it was the duty of the administrative department of the army on the spot to anticipate and make known their wants for the coming winter. This, if my memory serves me, they wholly failed to do: and, the Duke of Newcastle's staff being in truth very little competent, Herbert strained himself morning, noon, and night to invent wants for the army, and according to his best judgment or conjecture to supply them. So was laden the great steamer which went to the bottom in the harbour of Balaclava. And so came Herbert to be abused for his good deeds.--_Autobiographic Note_, Sept. 17, 1897.

THE CRIMEAN WAR

_Page 546_

_Mr. Gladstone to Duke of Argyll_