nville, Lewis, Wood, Cardwell, Herbert. It is easy to judge
what an odd shifting of parts takes place in our discussions. We
are not Mr. Burke's famous mosaic, but we are a mosaic in
solution, that is to say, a kaleidoscope.(27) When the instrument
turns, the separate pieces readjust themselves, and all come out
in perfectly novel combinations. Such a cabinet ought not to be
acephalous.

Before he had been a year and a half in office, Mr. Gladstone wrote to
Graham (Nov. 27, '60): "We live in anti-reforming times. All improvements
have to be urged in apologetic, almost in supplicatory tones. I sometimes
reflect how much less liberal as to domestic policy in any true sense of
the word, is this government than was Sir Robert Peel's; and how much the
tone of ultra-toryism prevails among a large portion of the liberal
party." "I speak a literal truth," he wrote to Cobden, "when I say that in
these days it is more difficult to save a shilling than to spend a
million." "The men," he said, "who ought to have been breasting and
stemming the tide have become captains general of the alarmists," and he
deplored Cobden's refusal of office when the Palmerston government was
formed. All this only provoked him to more relentless energy. Well might
Prince Albert call it incredible.

VI

After the "gigantic innovation" perpetrated by the Lords, Mr. Gladstone
read to the cabinet (June 30, 1860) an elaborate memorandum on the paper
duty and the taxing powers of the two Houses. He dealt fully alike with
the fiscal and the constitutional aspects of a situation from which he was
"certain that nothing could extricate them with credit, except the united,
determined, and even authoritative action of the government." He wound up
with a broad declaration that, to any who knew his tenacity of purpose
when once roused, made it certain that he would never acquiesce in the
pretensions of the other House. The fiscal consideration, he concluded,
"is nothing compared with the vital importance of maintaining the
exclusive rights of the House of Commons in matter of supply. There is
hardly any conceivable interference of the Lords hereafter, except sending
down a tax imposed by themselves, which would not be covered by this
precedent. It may be said they are wise and will not do it. Assuming that
they will be wise, yet I for one am not willing that the House of Commons
should hold on sufferance in the nineteenth century wh