le debate (July 21,
1859) had promised better things. Disraeli had opened it with emphatic
declarations: "There is no country," he said, "that can go on raising
seventy millions in time of peace with impunity. England cannot, and if
England cannot, no country can." Bright followed with the assurance that
Cobden and he might now consider Mr. Disraeli a convert to their views.
Lord John Russell came next, agreeing with Bright; and even Palmerston
himself was constrained to make a peace speech.

II

In May 1861 Mr. Gladstone notes "a day of over fourteen hours: thank God
for the strength." The atmosphere around him would have depressed a weaker
man. "At Brooks's," says Phillimore, "they hate Gladstone worse than at
the Carlton." In the summer the strife upon expenditure was renewed.
Eventually Mr. Gladstone was able to write to Graham from the cabinet room
(July 20, 1861) that Castor and Pollux appeared aloft at the right moment,
and the clouds had disappeared. In a letter to his close friend, Sir
Walter James, in 1871 Mr. Gladstone says: "The storm of criticism and
rebuke does not surprise nor discourage me. Doubtless much must be just;
and what is not, is what we call in logic an 'inseparable accident' of
politics. Time and reflection will, please God, enable us to distinguish
between them. For my own part I _never_ was so abused as in 1860; but it
was one of the most useful or least useless years of my life." The battle
was as severe in 1861 as it had been the year before. In the middle of the
session (May 9) Phillimore reports: "Found Gladstone in good spirits; he
spoke with real greatness of mind of the attacks made on him."

(M16) The next year Lord Palmerston wrote to express his concern at
something that he came upon in a railway journey. "I read with much
interest," he wrote to his chancellor of the exchequer (April 29, 1862),
"your able and eloquent speeches at Manchester, but I wish to submit to
you some observations upon the financial part of the second speech." He
did not agree with Mr. Gladstone that the nation had forced the cabinet
and parliament into high expenditure, but if it were so, he regarded it
not as matter of reproach, but as a proof of the nation's superior
sagacity. Panic there had been none; governors and governed had for a long
time been blind and apathetic; then they awoke. There was on the other
side of the channel a people who, say what they may, hate us and would
make any sacrifice