THIRD MARQUESS OF SALISBURY 253
any one Bill without upsetting the whole of the financial arrangement of the year. Gladstone now embodied all his financial proposals, including the repeal of the Paper Duties, in one Bill, thus compelling the Lords either to accept it as it stood, or to go to the extreme length of rejecting the whole. Whatever may be said as to the merits of the Bill, it cannot be denied that this action was a piece of trickery deserving the strongest censure of all who valued straight- forwardness in public life. Throughout the debates Lord Robert Cecil distinguished himself by the unsparing vigour of his attacks, both on the principle of the measure, and on the methods by which it was being pushed through the House.
On one occasion he denounced the action of the Chancellor of the Exchequer as " more worthy of an attorney than a statesman," and on being invited to ' reconsider his vocabulary," he solemnly rose to apologise for having done a great injustice to the attorneys.
It was in the course of one of these debates, when complaints had been made from the Govern- ment benches of the violence of Lord Robert Cecil's remarks, that Disraeli took the opportunity to say that he had " listened with satisfaction to the noble Lord, as it appeared to him that he had never heard more constitutional opinions expressed in more effective language."
During these years he perfected himself as a parliamentary debater. He lost no opportunity of attacking Gladstone's methods and principles,
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