to humiliate us, and they had now at their head an
able, active, wary, council-keeping, but ever-planning sovereign [Napoleon
III.]. "Have the parliament and the nation been wrong, and have Bright and
Cobden and yourself been right?" All this being so, he could not but
regret that Mr. Gladstone should by speeches in and out of parliament
invite agitation to force the government of which he was a member, to
retrace its steps taken deliberately and with full sense of
responsibility.(33) To Palmerston's eight quarto pages, written in one of
the finest hands of the time, Mr. Gladstone replied in twelve.

In all good humour, he said, I prefer not being classed with Mr.
Bright, or even Mr. Cobden; first, because I do not know their
opinions with any precision; and secondly, because as far as I do
know or can grasp them, they seem to contemplate fundamental
changes in taxation which I disapprove in principle, and believe
also to be unattainable in practice, and reductions of
establishment and expenditure for which I am not prepared to be
responsible.... I think it a mean and guilty course to hold out
vague and indefinite promises of vast retrenchment, but I think it
will be a healthful day, both for the country and for the party
over which you so ably preside, when the word retrenchment, of
course with a due regard to altered circumstances, shall again
take its place among their battle cries.

A spirited correspondence followed, for Lord Palmerston knew his business,
and had abundant faculty of application; while Mr. Gladstone, for his
part, was too much in earnest to forego rejoinder and even surrejoinder.
"No claptrap reductions," cried the prime minister. "You are feeding not
only expenditure," rejoined the chancellor of the exchequer, "but what is
worse, the spirit of expenditure." "You disclaim political community of
opinion with Bright and Cobden, and justly," said Lord Palmerston, "but
you cannot but be aware that owing to various accidental circumstances
many people at home and abroad connect you unjustly with them, and this
false impression is certainly not advantageous."

"My dear Gladstone," he wrote good-humouredly on another occasion, "You
may not have seen how your name is taken in vain by people with whom I
conceive you do not sympathise,--Yours sincerely,

PALMERSTON."

Enclosed was a placard with many large capital letters, notes of
exclamation, ita