laze in the bosom of the
chancellor of the exchequer was inextinguishable, as the Lords in good
time found out. Their rejection of the Paper Duties bill must have had no
inconsiderable share in propelling him along the paths of liberalism. The
same proceeding helped to make him more than ever the centre of popular
hopes. He had taken the unpopular side in resisting the inquiry into the
miscarriages of the Crimea, in pressing peace with Russia, in opposing the
panic on papal aggression, on the bill for divorce, and on the bill
against church rates; and he represented with fidelity the constituency
that was least of all in England in accord with the prepossessions of
democracy. Yet this made no difference when the time came to seek a
leader. "There is not," Mr. Bright said, in the course of this quarrel
with the Lords, "a man who labours and sweats for his daily bread, there
is not a woman living in a cottage who strives to make her home happy for
husband and children, to whom the words of the chancellor of the exchequer
have not brought hope, and to whom his measures, which have been defended
with an eloquence few can equal and with a logic none can contest, have
not administered consolation."

At the end of the session Phillimore reports:--

_Aug. 12._--Gladstone is physically weak, requires rest, air, and
generous living. He discoursed without the smallest reserve upon
political affairs, the feebleness of the government, mainly
attributable to the absence of any effective head; Palmerston's
weakness in the cabinet, and his low standard for all public
conduct. He said in Peel's cabinet, a cabinet minister if he had a
measure to bring forward consulted Peel and then the cabinet.
Nobody thought of consulting Palmerston first, but brought his
measure at once to the cabinet. Gladstone said his work in the
cabinet had been so constant and severe that his work in the House
of Commons was refreshing by comparison. I never heard him speak
so strongly of the timidity and vacillation of his comrades. The
last victory, which alone preserved the government from dropping
to pieces, was won in spite of them.

V

In a contemporary memorandum (May 30, 1860) on the opinions of the cabinet
at this date Mr. Gladstone sets out the principal trains of business with
which he and his colleagues were called upon to deal. It is a lively
picture of the vast and diverse interests