of a minister disposed to take
his cabinet duties seriously. It is, too, a curious chart of the currents
and cross-currents of the time. Here are the seven heads as he sets them
down:--

(1) The Italian question--Austrian or anti-Austrian; (2) Foreign
policy in general--leaning towards calm and peace, or brusqueness
and war; (3) Defences and expenditure--alarm and money charges on
the one side, modest and timid retrenchment with confidence in our
position on the other; (4) Finance, as adapted to the one or the
other of these groups of ideas and feelings respectively; (5)
Reform--ultra-conservative on the one side, on the other, no fear
of the working class and the belief that something _real_ though
limited, should be done towards their enfranchisement; (6) Church
matters may perhaps be also mentioned, though there has been no
collision in regard to them, whatever difference there may be--they
have indeed held a very secondary place amidst the rude and
constant shocks of the last twelve months; (7) Lastly, the _coup
d'etat_ on the paper duties draws a new line of division.

(M11) "In the many passages of argument and opinion," Mr. Gladstone adds,
"the only person from whom I have never to my recollection differed on a
serious matter during this anxious twelvemonth is Milner Gibson." The
reader will find elsewhere the enumeration of the various parts in this
complex dramatic piece.(26) Some of the most Italian members of the
cabinet were also the most combative in foreign policy, the most martial
in respect of defence, the most stationary in finance. In the matter of
reform, some who were liberal as to the franchise were conservative as to
redistribution. In matters ecclesiastical, those who like Mr. Gladstone
were most liberal elsewhere, were (with sympathy from Argyll) "most
conservative and church-like."

On the paper duties there are, I think, only three members of the
cabinet who have a strong feeling of the need of a remedy for the
late aggression--Lord John Russell, Gibson, W. E. G.--and Lord John
Russell leans so much upon Palmerston in regard to foreign affairs
that he is weaker in other subjects when opposed to him, than
might be desired. With us in feeling are, more or less, Newcastle,
Argyll, Villiers. On the other side, and pretty decidedly--first
and foremost, Lord Palmerston; after him, the Chancellor,
Gra