entered office for the first time, as chancellor of the exchequer
and leader of the House of Commons. Mr Disraeli introduced
and carried a makeshift budget,Gladstone and
Disraeli. and the government
tided over the session, and dissolved parliament on the
1st of July 1852. There was some talk of inducing Gladstone
to join the Tory government, and on the 29th of
November Lord Malmesbury dubiously remarked, “I cannot
make out Gladstone, who seems to me a dark horse.” In the
following month the chancellor of the exchequer produced his
second budget. The government redeemed their pledge to do
something for the relief of the agricultural interest by reducing
the duty on malt. This created a deficit, which they repaired by
doubling the duty on inhabited houses. The voices of criticism
were heard simultaneously on every side. The debate waxed
fast and furious. In defending his proposals Mr Disraeli gave full
scope to his most characteristic gifts; he pelted his opponents
right and left with sarcasms, taunts and epigrams. Gladstone
delivered an unpremeditated reply, which has ever since been
celebrated. Tradition says that he “foamed at the mouth.”
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 demeanour. 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. Lord
Derby resigned.
The new government was a coalition of Whigs and Peelites.
Lord Aberdeen became prime minister, and Gladstone chancellor
of the exchequer. Having been returned again for
the university of Oxford, he entered on the active
duties of a great office for which he was pre-eminently
Chancellor
of the exchequer.
fitted by an unique combination of financial, administrative
and rhetorical gifts. His first budget was introduced on
the 18th of April 1853. It tended to make life easier and cheaper
for large and numerous classes; it promised wholesale remissions
of taxation; it lessened the charges on common processes of
business, on locomotion, on postal communication, and on
several articles of general consumption. The deficiency thus
created was to be met by a “succession-duty,” or application
of the legacy-duty to real property; by an increase of the duty
on spirits; and by the extension of the income-tax, at 5d. in
the pound, to all incomes between £100 and £150. The speech
in which these proposals were introduced held the House spellbound.
Here was an orator who could apply all the resources
of a burnished rhetoric to the elucidation of figures; 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. Above all, the chancellor’s mode of
handling the income-tax attracted interest and admiration. It
was a searching analysis of the financial and moral grounds on
which the impost rested, and a historical justification and eulogy
of it. Yet, great as had been the services of the tax at a time
of national danger, Gladstone 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. Therefore, having
served its turn, it was to be extinguished in 1860. The scheme
astonished, interested and attracted the country. The queen
and Prince Albert wrote to congratulate the chancellor of the
exchequer. Public authorities and private friends joined in
the chorus of eulogy. The budget demonstrated at once its
author’s absolute mastery over figures and the persuasive force
of his expository gift. It established the chancellor of the
exchequer as the paramount financier of his day, and it was only
the first of a long series of similar performances, different, of
course, in detail, but alike in their bold outlines and brilliant
handling. Looking back on a long life of strenuous exertion,
Gladstone declared that the work of preparing his proposals
about the succession-duty and carrying them through Parliament
was by far the most laborious task which he ever performed.
War between Great Britain and Russia was declared on the 27th of March 1854, and it thus fell to the lot of the most pacific of ministers, the devotee of retrenchment, and the anxious cultivator of all industrial arts, to prepare a war budget, and to meet as well as he might the exigencies of a conflict which had so cruelly dislocated all the ingenious devices of financial optimism. No amount of skill in the manipulation of figures, no ingenuity in shifting fiscal burdens, could prevent the addition of forty-one millions to the national debt, or could countervail the appalling mismanagement at the seat of war. Gladstone declared that the state of the army in the Crimea was a “matter for weeping all day and praying all night.” As soon as parliament met in January 1855 J. A. Roebuck, the Radical member for Sheffield, gave notice that he would move for a select committee “to inquire into the condition of our army before Sevastopol, and into the conduct of those departments of the government whose duty it has been to minister to the wants of that army.” On the same day Lord John Russell, without announcing his intention to his colleagues, resigned his office as president of the council sooner than attempt the defence of the government. Gladstone, in defending the government against Roebuck, rebuked in dignified and significant terms the conduct of men who, “hoping to escape from punishment, ran away from duty.” On the division on Mr Roebuck’s motion the government was beaten by the unexpected majority of 157.
Lord Palmerston became prime minister. The Peelites joined him, and Gladstone resumed office as chancellor of the exchequer. A shrewd observer at the time pronounced him indispensable. “Any other chancellor of the exchequer would be torn in bits by him.” The government was formed on the understanding that Mr Roebuck’s proposed committee was to be resisted. Lord Palmerston soon saw that further resistance was useless; his Peelite colleagues stuck to their text, and, within three weeks after resuming office, Gladstone, Sir James Graham and Mr Sidney Herbert resigned. Gladstone once said of himself and his Peelite colleagues, during the period of political isolation, that they were like roving icebergs on which men could not land with safety, but with which ships might come into perilous collision. He now applied himself specially to financial criticism, and was perpetually in conflict with the chancellor of the exchequer, Sir George Cornewall Lewis.
In 1858 Lord Palmerston was succeeded by Lord Derby at the head of a Conservative administration, and Gladstone accepted the temporary office of high commissioner extraordinary to the Ionian Islands. Returning to England for the session of 1859, he found himself involved in the controversy which arose over a mild Reform Bill introduced by the government. They were defeated on the second reading of the bill, Gladstone voting with them. A dissolution immediately followed, and Gladstone was again returned unopposed for the university of Oxford. As soon as the new parliament met a vote of want of confidence in the ministry was moved in the House of Commons. In the critical division which ensued Gladstone voted with the government, who were left in a minority. Lord Derby resigned. Lord Palmerston became prime minister, and asked Gladstone to join him as chancellor of the exchequer. To vote confidence in an imperilled ministry, and on its defeat to take office with the rivals who have defeated it, is a manœuvre which invites the reproach of tergiversation. But Gladstone risked the reproach, accepted the office and had a sharp tussle for his seat. He emerged from the struggle victorious, and entered on his duties with characteristic zeal. The prince consort wrote: “Gladstone is now the real leader in the House of Commons, and works with an energy and vigour altogether incredible.”
The budget of 1860 was marked by two distinctive features. It asked the sanction of parliament for the commercial treaty which Cobden had privately arranged with the emperor Napoleon, and it proposed to abolish the duty on paper. The French treaty
