upon army, navy, and ordnance
expenditure. In another letter he turned personally to Mr. Gladstone
himself: "Unconsciously," he says, "you have administered to the support
of a system which has no better foundation than a gigantic delusion" (June
11, 1860). "You say unconsciously," Mr. Gladstone replies (June 13), "I am
afraid that in one respect this is too favourable a description. I have
consciously, as a member of parliament and as a member of the government,
concurred in measures that provide for an expenditure beyond what were it
in my power I would fix.... But I suppose that the duty of choosing the
lesser evil binds me; _the difficulty is to determine what the lesser evil
is_."

(M15) My story grows long, and it ends as such stories in our politics
usually end. A compromise was arranged on the initiative of the Duke of
Somerset, keeping clear, as Mr. Gladstone supposed, of the fortification
scheme as a whole, and not pledging future years.(30) "Never at any time
in my life," Mr. Gladstone told Graham, "have I had such a sense of mental
and moral exhaustion." The strain was not ended by the compromise, for in
moving the resolution for a vote of two millions for fortifications (July
23), Lord Palmerston not only declared that he held it to be absolutely
necessary to carry the whole scheme into effect--the very proposition which
the compromise put aside--but defended it by a series of stringent
criticisms particularly fitted to offend and irritate France. Mr.
Gladstone was not present,(31) but he felt strongly that he had good
grounds of complaint, and that faith had not been strictly kept. "Much
dismayed," he wrote in his diary (July 24), "at the terms of Lord
Palmerston's resolution." It was now, however, too late to draw back.(32)
Mr. Bright made a weighty and masterly attack (Aug. 2), hinting plainly
that the thing was "a compromise to enable the government to avoid the
rock, or get over the quick-sand, which this question has interjected into
their midst," and quoting with excellent effect a pregnant passage from
Peel: "If you adopt the opinion of military men, naturally anxious for the
complete security of every available point; naturally anxious to throw
upon you the whole responsibility for the loss in the event of war
suddenly breaking out of some of our valuable possessions,--you would
overwhelm this country with taxes in time of peace." But this was a
Palmerstonian parliament. The year before, a remarkab