thority, for Lord Granville writes to Mr. Gladstone: "Nov. 12, '71: The
cabinet completely assented to the arrangement. Sufficient attention was
perhaps not given to the technical point. For technical it only is.... I
think you said at the cabinet that Collier wished to have three months'
tenure of the judgeship, and that we agreed with you that this would have
been only a sham."

Cockburn, the chief justice of the Queen's bench, opened fire on Mr.
Gladstone (Nov. 10) in a long letter of rather over-heroic eloquence,
protesting that a colourable appointment to a judgeship for the purpose of
getting round the law seriously compromised the dignity of the judicial
office, and denouncing the grievous impropriety of the proceeding as a
mere subterfuge and evasion of the statute. Mr. Gladstone could be
extremely summary when he chose, and he replied in three or four lines,
informing the chief justice that as the transaction was a joint one, and
as "the completed part of it to which you have taken objection, was the
official act of the lord chancellor," he had transmitted the letter for
his consideration. That was all he said. The chancellor for his part
contented himself with half a dozen sentences, that his appointment of
Collier to the puisne judgeship had been made with a full knowledge of Mr.
Gladstone's intention to recommend him for the judicial committee; that he
thus "acted advisedly and with the conviction that the arrangement was
justified as regards both its fitness and its legality"; and that he took
upon himself the responsibility of thus concurring with Mr. Gladstone, and
was prepared to vindicate the course pursued. This curt treatment of his
Junius-like composition mortified Cockburn's literary vanity, and no
vanity is so easily stung as that of the amateur.

(M126) Collier, when the storm was brewing, at once wrote to Mr. Gladstone
(Nov. 13) proposing to retain his judgeship to the end of the term, then
to resign it, and act gratuitously in the privy council. He begged that it
might not be supposed he offered to do this merely as matter of form.
"Though I consider the objection to my appointment wholly baseless, still
it is not pleasant to me to hold a salaried office, my right to which is
questioned." "I have received your letter," Mr. Gladstone replied (Nov..
14), "which contains the offer that would only be made by a high-spirited
man, impatient of suspicion or reproval, and determined to place himself
bey