e, a general atmosphere of doubt and
unpopularity seemed suddenly to surround his name.

The fortunes of the budget have been succinctly described by its author:--

They were chequered, and they were peculiar in this, that the
first blow struck was delivered by one of the best among its
friends. Lord John Russell, keenly alive to the discredit of any
tampering as in former years with the question of the franchise,
insisted on introducing his Reform bill on March 1, when the
treaty and the financial proposals of the year, numerous and
complex as they were, had not proceeded beyond their early stages.
This was in flat violation of a rule of Lord Bacon's, even more
weighty now than in his time, which Sir James Graham was fond of
quoting: "Never overlap business." The enemies of the treaty were
thus invited to obstruct it through prolonged debating on reform,
and the enemies of reform to discharge a corresponding office by
prolonged debating on the finance. A large majority of the House
were in disguised hostility to the extension of the franchise. The
discussions on it were at once protracted, intermittent, and
languid. No division was taken against it. It was defeated by the
pure _vis inertiae_ of the House skilfully applied: and it was
withdrawn on June 11. But it had done its work, by delaying the
_tail_ of the financial measures until a time when the marriage
effected by the treaty between England and France had outlived its
parliamentary honeymoon. There had intervened the Savoy and Nice
explosion; settlement with China was uncertain; the prospects of
the harvest were bad; French invasion was apprehended by many men
usually rational. The Paper Duty bill, which would have passed the
Commons by a large majority in the beginning of March, only
escaped defeat on May 8 by a majority of nine.(22)

When Lord John had asked the cabinet to stop the budget in order to fix a
day for his second reading, Mr. Gladstone enters in an autobiographic
memorandum of his latest years(23):--

I said to him, "Lord John, I will go down on my knees to you, to
entreat you not to press that request." But he persevered; and
this although he was both a loyal colleague and a sincere friend
to the budget and to the French treaty. When reform was at last
got rid of, in order to prosecute finance we had much to do, and