proposals were-to relieve the shipping interest, to promote the production of colonial sugar, and agricultural interests at home. The duties on malt and hops were to be materially reduced. As, by the proffered remission of duties, there would be a loss to the revenue of between three and four million pounds, and as the property and income-tax, yielding more than five millions of pounds, was about to expire, Mr. Disraeli proposed to extend it to Ireland. Ministers were also prepared to make a distinction between permanent and precarious incomes. On all industrial incomes, they recommended that the point of exemption should be limited to £100 a year; and on incomes arising from property, to £50. Again-that the rates on schedules A and C should be, as before, 7d. in the pound; on B, D, and E, 3d. They took the estimate on the profits of farmers, not at one-half the rent, as heretofore, but at one-third; and the consequence would be, that, with the reduction of the duty, the farmers would pay £156,000, exactly one-half of what they paid under the existing rate. The total amount, including the modest sum of £60,000 for Ireland, he calculated at £5,421,000. The right honourable gentleman next referred to the naval estimates, which it was proposed to increase, though without any reference to the question of peace or war. He then touched on the subject of

administrative reform-a direction in which he conceived that considerable retrenchment was practicable, without in the least impairing the efficiency of the public service. The government hoped to effect some valuable results in that quarter. They also contemplated bringing the entire revenue of the country under the control of parliament, and terminating the exchequer law commission. He advocated the impost of a house-tax, and suggested that its basis be extended to houses rated at not less than £10 a year. It was soon evident that, with such a merciless critic as Mr. Gladstone, the budget had no chance. It was debated four nights. The division was-ayes, 286; noes, 305: thus giving a majority, against the government, of 19. The result was, that, on the next evening, ministers announced that they had resigned; that the Earl of Aberdeen had been sent for, to form a government; and that the Derby-Disraeli administration had ceased to exist.

CHAPTER V.

THE ABERDEEN MINISTRY.

On the 27th of December Lord Aberdeen met parliament, and delivered a programme more liberal than had been expected from his antecedents. As the head of the Peelites, he had succeeded in forming a coalition ministry, which appeared to possess the elements of durability and strength. His colleagues were-Mr. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Palmerston, Home Secretary; the Earl of Clarendon, Foreign Secretary; Colonial, the Duke of Newcastle; Sir James Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty; Earl Granville, President of the Council; the Duke of Argyle, Lord Privy Seal; Mr. Sidney Herbert, Secretary at War; Sir C. Wood, President of the Board of Control; First Commissioner of Public Works, Sir W. Molesworth; leader of the House of Commons, Lord John Russell. The Marquis of Lansdowne also had a seat in the cabinet, without office. An abler administration certainly had not been seen in England for some time past.

Let us glance at some of the leading characters. Of Lord Aberdeen we have already spoken. He was a man to whose wisdom justice was rarely done, as he was slow of speech, and with difficulty aroused. Mr. Kinglake writes-"Lord Aberdeen's hatred of war was so honestly and piously entertained, and was, at the same time, so excessive and self-defeating, that, in one point of view, it had the

character of a virtue; and, in another, it was more like a disease. His feelings, no less than his opinions, turned him against all war; but against a war with Russia he was biassed by the impressions of his early life, by the relations of mutual esteem which had long subsisted between the Emperor Nicholas and himself, and, perhaps, by a dim foresight of the perils which might be brought upon Europe by a forcible breaking-up of the ties established by the congress of Vienna, and riveted by the peace of Paris. In an early stage of the dispute, he resolved that he would not remain at the head of government unless he could maintain peace; and he anxiously sought to choose a moment for making his stand against the further progress towards war. Far from wishing to prolong his power, he was always labouring to make out when, and on what ground, he could lay down the burden which oppressed him. Every day he passed his sure hour and a-half in the Foreign Office, and came away more and more anxious, perhaps, but without growing more clear-sighted. If he could ever have found the point where the road to peace diverged from the road to war, he would instantly have declared for peace; and, failing to carry the government with him, would have joyfully resigned office, and, for his deliverance, would have offered up thanksgiving to Heaven. But his intellect, though not without high quality in it, was deficient in clearness and force. In troubled times it did not yield him light enough to walk by; and it had not the propelling power which was needed for pushing him into opportune action. In politics, though not in matters of faith, he wanted the sacred impulse, which his kirk is accustomed to call the word of quickening."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, as we have already said, is Sir Robert Peel's most distinguished disciple, William Ewart Gladstone. Born in 1809, at Liverpool, where his father was a wealthy merchant, he was educated at Eton, and at Christchurch College, Oxford. After the completion of his academical studies, he passed a short time in continental travel. He entered parliament in 1832, as the representative of Newark, then under the patronage of the anti-reform Duke of Newcastle. His mercantile origin, college successes, and remarkable business habits, are said to have recalled to old members of the House the early career of Sir Robert Peel and Sir Robert himself was not slow to discover and appreciate the value of this new and important recruit to the Conservative ranks; for, on his accession to the premiership, after the dissolution of parliament in 1835, he appointed him, successively, a Lord of the Treasury, and then Under-Secretary for the Colonies. Mr. Gladstone returned, in the spring of that year, with his party to the opposition benches until September, 1841, when he was appointed VicePresident of the Board of Trade, and a Privy Councillor; and on him it devolved to explain and defend, in the House of Commons, the commercial policy of his government, of which he was already a chief stay. Of popular and conciliatory manners; a ready and self-possessed debater; gifted with a marvellous flow of language, and well versed in commercial affairs, he rendered himself particularly acceptable to mercantile men. In May, 1843, Mr. Gladstone became the head of his department. At this time, also, he had become famous by his books-Church Principles considered in their Results, and The State in its Relations with the Church. In his notice of this work, in the Edinburgh Review, Mr. Macaulay makes the following allusion to the author:-"Mr. Gladstone is a young man of unblemished character, and of distinguished parliamentary talents. It would not be at all strange if he were one of the most unpopular men in England; but we believe that we do him but justice, when we say that his abilities and demeanour have attained him the respect and good-will of all parties."

In January, 1845, Mr. Gladstone resigned office, in consequence of a difference of opinion with his government with regard to the Maynooth grant. He voted first in its favour, then against it; and when out of office, and the government announced its intention to increase that grant, he voted again in its favour. Equally inconsistent was his conduct with regard to the Jewish question, which he first opposed, and then supported. In the early part of 1845, Mr. Gladstone published

his Remarks on Recent Commercial Legislation, exhibiting, in detail, the beneficial working of the tariff of 1842. But this adhesion to free-trade principles led to his losing his seat for Newark, and to his being out of parliament in 1846. At the general election of 1847, however, Mr. Gladstone was fully compensated for this temporary exclusion from the House of Commons, by becoming one of the representatives of the University of Oxford. How entirely he appreciated the honour, may be judged from the dedication to his alma mater of his great work on Homer, in the following terms:-"Inscribed to the University of Oxford-tried, and not found wanting through the vicissitudes of a thousand years-in the belief that she is providentially designed to be a fountain of blessings, spiritual, social, and intellectual, to this and other countries, to the present and future times; and in the hope that the temper of these pages may be found not alien from her own." In the parliament, in which he now appeared in the first ranks, he managed to displease, alternately, both sections of his supporters: the Liberals, by his opposition speech on university reform, and his speech on Mr. Disraeli's motion for the relief of the agricultural interests; and the Conservatives, by declining to take office with Lord Derby in 1851, and his exposure of the details of Mr. Disraeli's budget in 1852. He was also strenuously, but unsuccessfully, opposed in the representation of Oxford University. But until a later time than that to which we refer, his talents and his character always gained for him an immense majority. His pamphlet on the Neapolitan dungeons, of which we have already written, created for him great popularity; and when the coalition cabinet was formed, all felt that, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was the right man in the right place.

Let us here give Mr. Kinglake's portrait. He says-" But there was another member of the cabinet who was supposed to hold war in deep abhorrence. Mr. Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer; and since he was, by virtue of his office, the appointed guardian of the public purse, those pure and lofty principles which made him cling to peace, were reinforced by an official sense of the harm which war inflicts by its costliness. Now it happened that, if he was famous for the splendour of his eloquence, for his unaffected piety, and his blameless life, he was celebrated, far and wide, for a more than common liveliness of conscience. He had once imagined it to be his duty to quit a government, and to burst through strong ties of friendship and gratitude, by reason of a thin shade of difference on the subject of white or brown sugar. It was believed, that if he was to commit even a little sin, or to imagine an evil thought, he would instantly arraign himself before the dread tribunal which awaited him in his own bosom; and that his intellect being subtle and microscopic, and delighting in casuistry and exaggeration, he would be likely to give his soul a very harsh trial, and to treat himself as a great criminal for faults too minute to be visible to the naked eyes of laymen. His friends lived in dread of his virtues, as tending to make him whimsical and unstable; and the practical politicians, conceiving that he was not to be depended upon for party purposes, and was bent upon none but lofty objects, used to call him, behind his back, a good man-a good man in the worst sense of that term. In 1853, it seemed only too probable that he might quit office upon an infinitely slight suspicion of the warlike tendency of the government. But what appeared certain was, that if, upon the vital question of peace or war, the government should depart, by even a hair's breadth, from the right path, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would instantly refuse to be a partaker of their faults. He-and he before all other men-stood charged to give the alarm of danger; and there seemed to be no particle of ground for fearing that, like the Prime Minister, he would drift. The honour, watchfulness, and alacrity of his conscience, and his power of detecting small germs of evil, led the world to think it impossible that he could be moving for months in a wrong course without knowing it.'

Of Sir James Graham we have previously written. Lord John Russell, also, we have already described.

The Duke of Newcastle-an unfortunate man through life-was not one of the

least able of the coalition ministry. As Lord Lincoln, he had entered parliament as member for South Nottinghamshire, in the very year that he attained his majority and when Sir Robert Peel hastened from Rome to form a short-lived administration, he appointed the young M.P. one of the Lords of the Treasury. When, a few years after, under happier auspices, Sir Robert returned to power, the Earl of Lincoln was appointed First Commissioner of Woods and Forests; and, as no complaints were ever made of him in that capacity, we may safely conclude that his duties were discharged with unobtrusive but efficient regularity. In the financial policy of his leader he warmly concurred; and the consequence was, that when, upon the reconstruction of the cabinet, he was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, and had to appeal to the electors who had already four times chosen him as their parliamentary representative, the South Notts Protection Society requested him to resign; and even his father took the field against him. Lord Lincoln, however, prepared for the contest, and issued an explanatory address as follows:

"I cannot, within the limits of an address, enter into the details of so large and comprehensive a scheme of commercial policy as that lately laid before the House of Commons. This much, however, I am bound, in candour, when addressing an agricultural constituency, to say that on the question of the corn-laws my opinions are changed. In 1841, honestly, and not from any party motive, I advocated measures for what is now called 'protection of native industry.' Mature reflection; constant and anxious consideration of the subject; attention, year after year, to the arguments brought forward in the House on one side and the other; above all, the experience of the last four years, have convinced me, not that the corn-laws alone should be abolished, but that our whole commercial system should be subjected to a great, a bold, and a comprehensive revision.

"This change of opinion has not come upon me suddenly. Three years ago my confidence in the principles of protection was greatly shaken: last year I felt that they had become indefensible. Still, looking to the mischief of any violent shock to party attachment (not for the sake of the leaders of party, but for the sake of public confidence), and conscious of the peculiar circumstances under which the present parliament was elected, I felt anxious that, if possible, this great but inevitable change should be postponed till after the next dissolution of parliament. This, however, I had finally resolved-that I would never again appear before you on the hustings without an express stipulation that I should be free to vote for a repeal of the corn-laws.

"But in the autumn of last year, it pleased Providence to visit our country, and more especially the sister island, with an infliction which some have ventured to doubt-nay, even to deride; but the alarming extent of which, I greatly fear, has yet to be unfolded. Thus the desires of politicians have been frustrated-the calculations of statesmen have been thwarted. What would have been praiseworthy caution and deference to existing circumstances in times of abundance and prosperity, would now be culpable neglect, or a slavish submission to the fear of reproach and personal odium.

"The government has been compelled, by an imperative sense of duty, to bring forward, at once, a final settlement of these questions; for none but a final settlement-no half-measures, no temporary expedients-could ever again be entertained; and I am prepared to adopt my full share of the responsibility which must attach to the members of a government which has endeavoured to reconcile, in a great and comprehensive scheme, the various but not conflicting interests of the country."

His lordship's appeal was in vain. He was defeated by a large majority, and took refuge in the Falkirk burghs. During the time that his lordship remained in the House of Commons, he voted with the Peel party on all important occasions; and in January, 1851, by the death of his father, he succeeded to the dukedom of Newcastle, and took his seat in the House of Lords. He followed Lord Aberdeen in his opposition to the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill.

Another duke-his grace of Argyle-is also a colleague in the Aberdeen cabinet. Born in 1823, he early evinced capacity for public life. At the age of nineteen, he published a pamphlet in favour of the claims put forward by the church of Scotland on the question of the veto. He took his seat in the House of Lords on his father's death, in 1847; and in May of the following year delivered his first speech, on the motion for the second reading of the bill for admitting Jews to parliament. His speech, we are told, made a great impression on the House, presenting, as it did, a defence of the measure on religious rather than political grounds. He commenced by disclaiming all sympathy with certain theories that had been put forth-by none more effectually than by Mr. Macaulay -that Christianity had nothing to do with making the laws of a country. He showed, in a strain of clear argument, enforced by an easy-flowing and natural eloquence, that Christianity lay at the root of all that was just, and right, and true; and that the nation which systematically excluded Christianity from its laws must end in speedy ruin. At the same time he could not agree with the opponents of the measure, that Christianity consisted in a mere set of forms and symbols, compliance with which should secure, and refusal exclude, admission to the legislature. On the contrary, he maintained that Christianity would be best manifested by abolishing all invidious distinctions which excluded any citizens from obtaining the offices and distinctions of the state, and by maintaining the right of the constituencies of the empire to their free choice of whatever representative they pleased to select. The speech was received with great favour by the House, and the duke was at once hailed as one of its most promising ornaments. As a free-trader the duke was earnest and consistent. His scientific acquirements, also, must not be omitted. He has devoted a large share of his time to the study of practical geology, and with considerable success. On the creation of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, meeting at Edinburgh, he read a paper on the subject, which excited great attention; and it is understood that he has himself made discoveries of some valuable minerals on his extensive but rocky domains. His literary taste is also highly spoken of; and in the characteristics which so honourably distinguish the men of rank of the present day-that of giving lectures to the working classes-he has not been backward. The Tories sneered at the duke on account of his youth, his diminutive stature, his red hair; but he was a gain to the ministry nevertheless.

In the accession of Sir William Molesworth to office, the public saw a pledge, on the part of the Earl of Aberdeen, to the friends of progressive reform. As an advanced reformer, and London Quarterly reviewer, the character of Sir William for talent and sincerity stood high. Entering parliament at the first election after the passing of the Reform Act, it was not long before he distinguished himself as one of the little band of "philosophical Radicals," composed of the late James Mill, Mr. Grote, Mr. Roebuck, Mr. Charles Buller, Mr. Leader, and others, with whose names the public were more or less familiar. Among the more important measures advocated by these gentlemen, were-vote by ballot, triennial parliaments, abolition of the property qualification for members of parliament, a further extension of the electoral franchise, reform of the House of Lords, free trade, retrenchment, separation of church and state, municipal corporation reform, repeal of the taxes on knowledge, and a sweeping reform in the administration of the colonies. The opinions of the philosophical Radicals on all these questions had an able exponent in the London Review, a newly-established quarterly; the first number of which appeared in May, 1835, under the editorship in chief of Sir William, who was also the principal proprietor. A year afterwards, the Westminster came into possession of the same proprietary by purchase. From that time the two reviews were merged into one--the London and Westminster Review; and, under that title, were published for several years, until, upon the secession of the right honourable baronet, the old title of Westminster was resumed. The contributions of Sir William to this department of periodical literature were numerous and