made her adverse alike to Lord
John and himself. Lord Granville first applied to Palmerston, who said
that the Queen ought to have sent for himself first; still he agreed to
serve. Lord John would only serve under Granville on condition of being
leader in the House of Commons; if he joined--so he argued--and if
Palmerston were leader in the Commons, this would make himself third
instead of second: on that point his answer was final. So Lord Granville
threw up a commission that never had life in it; the Queen handed the
task over to Palmerston, and in a few days the new administration was
installed. (June 17, 1859.)

II

Mr. Gladstone went back to the office that he had quitted four years and
a half before, and undertook the department of finance. The appointment
did not pass without considerable remark. 'The real scandal,' he wrote
to his Oxford chairman, 'is among the extreme men on the liberal side;
they naturally say, "This man has done all he could on behalf of Lord
Derby; why is he here to keep out one of us?"' Even some among Mr.
Gladstone's private friends wondered how he could bring himself to join
a minister of whom he had for three or four years used such unsparing
language as had been common on his lips about Lord Palmerston. The plain
man was puzzled by a vote in favour of keeping a tory government in,
followed by a junction with the men who had thrown that government out.
Cobden, as we know, declined to join.[389] 'I am exceedingly sorry,'
wrote Mr. Gladstone to his brother Robertson (July 2), 'to find that
Cobden does not take office. It was in his person that there seemed to
be the best chance of a favourable trial of the experiment of connecting
his friends with the practical administration of the government of this
country. I am very glad we have Gibson; but Cobden would, especially as
an addition to the former, have made a great difference in point of
weight.'[390]

AGAIN AT THE EXCHEQUER

Mr. Gladstone, with no special anxiety to defend himself, was clear
about his own course. 'Never,' he says, 'had I an easier question to
determine than when I was asked to join the government. I can hardly now
think how I could have looked any one in the face, had I refused my aid
(such as it is) at such a time and under such circumstances.' 'At a
moment,' he wrote to the warden of All Souls, 'when war is raging in
Europe, when the English government is