t he preaches to the converted."(9) Then one of those
disasters happened that seem to shake the planetary nations out of their
pre-appointed orbits. Cavour died.(10)

Chapter II. The Great Budget. (1860-1861)

It was said that by this treaty the British nation was about
blindly to throw herself into the arms of this constant and
uniform foe.... Did it not much rather, by opening new sources of
wealth, speak this forcible language--that the interval of peace,
as it would enrich the nation, would also prove the means of
enabling her to combat her enemy with more effect when the day of
hostility should come? It did more than this; by promoting habits
of friendly intercourse and of mutual benefit, while it
invigorated the resources of Britain, it made it less likely that
she should have occasion to call forth these resources.--PITT
(February 12, 1787).

I

As we survey the panorama of a great man's life, conspicuous peaks of time
and act stand out to fix the eye, and in our statesman's long career the
budget of 1860 with its spurs of appendant circumstance, is one of these
commanding points. In the letter to Acton already quoted (p. 1), Mr.
Gladstone says:--

Before parliament met in 1860, the 'situation' was very greatly
_tightened_ and _enhanced_ by three circumstances. First, the
disaster in China.(11) Secondly, a visit of Mr. Cobden's to
Hawarden, when he proposed to me in a garden stroll, the French
treaty, and I, for myself and my share, adopted it (nor have I
ever for a moment repented or had a doubt) as rapidly as the
tender of office two months before. Thirdly, and the gravest of
all, the Savoy affair. If, as is supposed, I have Quixotism in my
nature, I can assure you that I was at this juncture much more
than satiated, and could have wished with Penelope that the
whirlwind would take me up, and carry me to the shore of the great
stream of Ocean.(12) And the wish would in this point not have
been extravagant: the whirlwind was there ready to hand. In and
from the midst of it was born the budget of 1860.

The financial arrangements of 1859 were avowedly provisional and
temporary, and need not detain us. The only feature was a rise in the
income tax from fivepence to ninepence--its highest figure so far in a time
of peace. "My budget," he wrote to Mrs. Gladstone (July 16), "is just
through th