racted from the fact that the Americans
had preferred before the tribunal a demand of nine millions and a half,
and thus got little more than one-third of what they had asked. So ended
what has been called the greatest of all arbitrations, extinguishing the
embers that could not have been left to smoulder without constant peril of
a vast and fratricidal conflagration. The treaty of Washington and the
Geneva arbitration stand out as the most notable victory in the nineteenth
century of the noble art of preventive diplomacy, and the most signal
exhibition in their history of self-command in two of the three chief
democratic powers of the western world. For the moment the result did
something to impair the popularity of Mr. Gladstone's government, but his
association with this high act of national policy is one of the things
that give its brightest lustre to his fame.

Chapter X. As Head Of A Cabinet. (1868-1874)

Rational co-operation in politics would be at an end, if no two
men might act together, until they had satisfied themselves that
in no possible circumstances could they be divided.--GLADSTONE.

I

The just complacency with which Mr. Gladstone regarded his cabinet on its
first construction held good:--

I look back with great satisfaction on the internal working of the
cabinet of 1868-74. It was a cabinet easily handled; and yet it
was the only one of my four cabinets in which there were members
who were senior to myself (the lord chancellor Hatherley, Lord
Clarendon), with many other men of long ministerial experience.
When this cabinet was breaking up in 1874, I took the opportunity
of thanking them for the manner in which they had uniformly
lightened my task in the direction of business. In reply, Halifax,
who might be considered as the senior in years and experience
taken jointly, very handsomely said the duty of the cabinet had
been made more easy by the considerate manner in which I had
always treated them. Some of them were as colleagues absolutely
delightful, from the manner in which their natural qualities
blended with their consummate experience. I refer especially to
Clarendon and Granville.

(M137) If we may trust some of those who were members of it, no cabinet
ever did its business with livelier industry or effect. Under Mr.
Gladstone's hand it was a really working cabinet, not an assemblage of
department