re or less leaning towards them, Palmerston and
Granville. They agreed to meet again the next day (April 12), when they
got into the open sea. Wood stuck to his text. Lansdowne suggested that
an increased spirit duty and an income-tax for Ireland together would be
something like a breach of faith. Palmerston thought they would be
beaten, but he would accept the budget provided they were not to be
bound to dissolve or resign upon such a point as to the two extensions
of the income-tax. Lord John said that if they were beaten on
differentiating the tax, they would have to dissolve. Palmerston
expressed his individual opinion in favour of a distinction for
precarious incomes, and would act in that sense if he were out of the
government; as it was, he assented. Argyll created a diversion by
suggesting the abandonment of the Irish spirit duty. Mr. Gladstone
admitted that he thought the spirit duty the weakest point of the plan,
though warrantable and tenable on the whole. At last, after further
patient and searching discussion, the cabinet finding that the suggested
amendments cut against one another, were for adopting the entire budget,
the dissentients being Lansdowne, Graham, Wood, and Herbert. Graham was
full of ill auguries, but said he would assent and assist. Wood looked
grave, and murmured that he must take time.

CABINET MISGIVINGS

In the course of these preliminaries Lord John Russell had gone to
Graham, very uneasy about the income-tax. Graham, though habitually
desponding, bade him be of good cheer. Their opponents, he said, were in
numbers strong; but the budget would be excellent to dissolve upon, and
Lord John admitted that they would gain forty seats.

They agreed, however, in Graham's language, that it would never do to
play their trump card until the state of the game actually required it.
Lord John confessed that he was no judge of figures,--somewhat of a
weakness in a critic of a budget,--and Graham comforted him by the reply
that he was at any rate the best judge living of House of Commons
tactics.

The position of the government in the House of Commons was notoriously
weak. The majority that had brought them into existence was excessively
narrow. It had been well known from the first that if any of the
accidents of a session should happen to draw the tories, the Irish, and
the radicals into one lobby, ministers would find themselves in a
minority. Small defeats occurred.