he poor. He told them
that reform of local government must be almost the first reform of the
next parliament, and spoke in favour of allotments, the creation of small
proprietors, the placing of a small tax on the total property of the
taxpayer, and of free education. Mr. Gladstone's attention was drawn from
Windsor to these utterances, and he replied (January 22) that though he
thought some of them were "on various grounds open to grave objection,"
yet they seemed to raise no "definite point on which, in his capacity of
prime minister, he was entitled to interfere and lecture the speaker." A
few days later, more terrible things were said by Mr. Chamberlain at
Birmingham. He pronounced for the abolition of plural voting, and in
favour of payment of members, and manhood suffrage. He also advocated a
bill for enabling local communities to acquire land, a graduated
income-tax, and the breaking up of the great estates as the first step in
land reform. This deliverance was described by not unfriendly critics as
"a little too much the speech of the agitator of the future, rather than
of the minister of the present." Mr. Gladstone made a lenient
communication to the orator, to the effect that "there had better be some
explanations among them when they met." To Lord Granville he wrote
(January 31):--

Upon the whole, weak-kneed liberals have caused us more trouble in
the present parliament than radicals. But I think these
declarations by Chamberlain upon matters which cannot, humanly
speaking, become practical before the next parliament, can hardly
be construed otherwise than as having a remote and (in that sense)
far-sighted purpose which is ominous enough. The opposition can
hardly fail in their opportunity, I must add in their duty, to
make them matter of attack. Such things will happen casually from
time to time, and always with inconvenience--but there is here a
degree of method and system which seem to give the matter a new
character.

It will be seen from his tone that Mr. Gladstone, in all the
embarrassments arising from this source, showed complete freedom from
personal irritation. Like the lofty-minded man he was, he imputed no low
motives to a colleague because the colleague gave him trouble. He
recognised by now that in his cabinet the battle was being fought between
old time and new. He did not allow his dislike of some of the new methods
of forming public opinion,