321] _Letters_, March 26, 1853, p. 261.

[322] Interesting particulars of this memorable commission are to be
found in the _Life of Archbishop Tait_, i. pp. 156-170.

[323] Mozley, _Letters_, p. 220. Mr. Gladstone preserved 560 letters and
documents relating to the preparation and passing of the Oxford
University bill. Among them are 350 copies of his own letters written
between Dec. 1853 and Dec. 1854, and 170 letters received by him during
the same period.

[324] _Life_, i. p. 434.

[325] _Academical Organisation._ By Mark Pattison, p. 24.

[326] The following speeches made by Mr. Gladstone on the Oxford bill
were deemed by him of sufficient importance to be included in the
projected edition of his collected speeches: On the introduction of the
bill, March 19 (1854); on the second reading, April 7; during the
committee stage, April 27, June 1, 22, 23, and July 27.

[327] _Life of Lord Sherbrooke_, pp. 421-2.

[328] For an extract see Appendix.

[329] Romilly, quoted by Layard, June 15th, 1855.

[330] He made three speeches on the subject at this period; June 15th
and July 10th, 1855, and April 24th, 1856. The first was on Layard's
motion for reform, which was rejected by 359 to 46.

CHAPTER V

WAR FINANCE--TAX OR LOAN

(_1854_)

The expenses of a war are the moral check which it has pleased the
Almighty to impose upon the ambition and lust of conquest, that are
inherent in so many nations. There is pomp and circumstance, there
is glory and excitement about war, which, notwithstanding the
miseries it entails, invests it with charms in the eyes of the
community, and tends to blind men to those evils to a fearful and
dangerous degree. The necessity of meeting from year to year the
expenditure which it entails is a salutary and wholesome check,
making them feel what they are about, and making them measure the
cost of the benefit upon which they may calculate.--GLADSTONE.

The finance of 1854 offered nothing more original or ingenious than
bluntly doubling the income tax (from seven pence to fourteen pence),
and raising the duties on spirits, sugar, and malt. The draught was
administered in two doses, first in a provisional budget for half a year
(March 6), next in a completed scheme two months later. During the
interval the chancellor of the exchequer was exposed to mu