ch criticism
alike from city experts and plain men. The plans of 1853 had, in the
main, proved a remarkable success, but they were not without weak
points. Reductions in the duties of customs, excise, and stamps had all
been followed by increase in their proceeds. But the succession duty
brought in no more than a fraction of the estimated sum--the only time,
Mr. Gladstone observes, in which he knew the excellent department
concerned to have fallen into such an error. The proposal for conversion
proved, under circumstances already described, to have no attraction for
the fundholder. The operation on the South Sea stock was worse than a
failure, for it made the exchequer, in order to pay off eight millions
at par, raise a larger sum at three and a half per cent., and at three
per cent. in a stock standing at 87.[331] All this brought loudish
complaints from the money market. The men at the clubs talked of the
discredit into which Gladstone had fallen as a financier, and even
persons not unfriendly to him spoke of him as rash, obstinate, and
injudicious. He was declared to have destroyed his prestige and
overthrown his authority.[332]

POWERFUL SELF-DEFENCE

This roused all the slumbering warrior in him, and when the time came
(May 8), in a speech three and a half hours long, he threw his
detractors into a depth of confusion that might have satisfied the
Psalmist himself. Peremptorily he brushed aside the apology of his
assailants for not challenging him by a direct vote of want of
confidence, that such a vote would be awkward in a time of war. On the
contrary, he said, a case so momentous as the case of war is the very
reason why you should show boldly whether you have confidence in our
management of your finances or not; if you disapprove, the sooner I know
it the better. Then he dashed into a close and elaborate defence in
detail, under all the heads of attack,--his manner of dealing with the
unfunded debt, his abortive scheme of conversion, his mode of charging
deficiency bills. This astonishing mass of dry and difficult matter was
impressed in full significance upon the House, not only by the orator's
own buoyant and energetic interest in the performance, but by the sense
which he awoke in his hearers, that to exercise their attention and
judgment upon the case before them was a binding debt imperatively due
to themselves and to the country, by men owning the high responsibility
of their stati