hadowy 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 gravit