n many constituencies?...

It might increase the uncertainties of the government in the House of
Commons on particular nights; but is not the hold even now uncertain as
compared with what it was thirty or forty years ago; and is it really
weaker for general and for good purposes, on account of that
uncertainty, than it then was? I have heard you explain with great force
to the House this change in the position of governments since the Reform
bill, as a legitimate accompaniment of changes in our political state,
by virtue of which we appeal _more_ to reason, less to habit, direct
interest, or force. May not this be another legitimate and measured step
in the same direction? May we not get, I will not say more ease and
certainty for the leader of the House, but more real and more honourable
strength with the better and, in the long run, the ruling part of the
community, by a signal proof of cordial desire that the processes by
which government is carried on should not in elections only, but
elsewhere too be honourable and pure? I speak with diffidence; but
remembering that at the revolution we passed over from prerogative to
patronage, and that since the revolution we have also passed from
bribery to influence, I cannot think the process is to end here; and
after all we have seen of the good sense and good feeling of the
community, though it may be too sanguine, I cherish the hope that the
day is now near at hand, or actually come, when in pursuit not of
visionary notions, but of a great practical and economical improvement,
we may safely give yet one more new and striking sign of rational
confidence in the intelligence and character of the people.

MR. GLADSTONE AND THE BANK

_Page 519_

From the time I took office as chancellor of the exchequer I began to
learn that the state held in the face of the Bank and the City an
essentially false position as to finance. When those relations began,
the state was justly in ill odour as a fraudulent bankrupt who was ready
on occasion to add force to fraud. After the revolution it adopted
better methods though often for unwise purposes, and in order to induce
monied men to be lenders it came forward under the countenance of the
Bank as its sponsor. Hence a position of subserviency which, as the idea
of public faith grew up and gradually attained to solidity, it became
the interest of the Bank and the City to prolong. Thi