The Grand Old Man Part 12

"The present budget, more than any other budget within our recollection, is a cupboard budget; otherwise, a poor man's budget. With certain very ugly features, the thing has altogether a good, hopeful aspect, together with very fair proportions. It is not given to any Chancellor of the Exchequer to make a budget fascinating as a fairy tale. Nevertheless, there are visions of wealth and comfort in the present budget that mightily recommend it to us. It seems to add color and fatness to the poor man's beef; to give flavor and richness to the poor man's plum-pudding. The budget is essentially a cupboard budget; and let the name of Gladstone be, for the time at least, musical at the poor man's fireside."

It unquestionably established Gladstone as the foremost financier of his day. Greville, in his "Memoirs," says of him: "He spoke for five hours; and by universal consent it was one of the grandest displays and most able financial statements that ever was heard in the House of Commons; a great scheme, boldly and skillfully and honestly devised, disdaining popular clamor and pressure from without, and the execution of its absolute perfection."

We reproduce some extracts from this important speech: "Depend upon it, when you come to close quarters with this subject, when you come to measure and test the respective relations of intelligence and labor and property in all their myriad and complex forms, and when you come to represent those relations in arithmetical results, you are undertaking an operation of which I should say it was beyond the power of man to conduct it with satisfaction, but which, at any rate, is an operation to which you ought not constantly to recur; for if, as my n.o.ble friend once said with universal applause, this country could not bear a revolution once a year, I will venture to say that it cannot bear a reconstruction of the income tax once a year.

"Whatever you do in regard to the income tax, you must be bold, you must be intelligible, you must be decisive. You must not palter with it. If you do, I have striven at least to point out as well as my feeble powers will permit, the almost desecration I would say, certainly the gross breach of duty to your country, of which you will be found guilty, in thus putting to hazard one of the most potent and effective among all its material resources. I believe it to be of vital importance, whether you keep this tax or whether you part with it, that you should either keep it or should leave it in a state in which it will be fit for service on an emergency, and that it will be impossible to do if you break up the basis of your income tax.

"If the Committee have followed me, they will understand that we found ourselves on the principle that the income-tax ought to be marked as a temporary measure; that the public feeling that relief should be given to intelligence and skill as compared with property ought to be met, and may be met with justice and with safety, in the manner we have pointed out; that the income tax in its operation ought to be mitigated by every rational means, compatible with its integrity; and, above all, that it should be a.s.sociated in the last term of its existence, as it was in the first, with those remissions of indirect taxation which have so greatly redoubled to the profit of this country and have set so admirable an example--an example that has already in some quarters proved contagious to the other nations of the earth, These are the principles on which we stand, and these the figures. I have shown you that if you grant us the taxes which we ask, to the moderate amount of 2,500,000 in the whole, much less than that sum for the present year, you, or the Parliament which may be in existence in 1860, will be in the condition, if it shall so think fit, to part with the income tax."

Sir, I scarcely dare to look at the clock, shamefully reminding me, as it must, how long, how shamelessly, I have trespa.s.sed on the time of the committee. All I can say in apology is that I have endeavored to keep closely to the topics which I had before me--

--immensum spatiis confecimus aequor, Et jam tempus equum fumantia solvere colla.

"These are the proposals of the Government. They may be approved or they may be condemned, but I have at least this full and undoubting confidence, that it will on all hands be admitted that we have not sought to evade the difficulties of our position; that we have not concealed those difficulties, either from ourselves or from others; that we have not attempted to counteract them by narrow or flimsy expedients; that we have prepared plans which, if you will adopt them, will go some way to close up many vexed financial questions--questions such as, if not now settled, may be attended with public inconvenience, and even with public danger, in future years and under less favorable circ.u.mstances; that we have endeavored, in the plans we have now submitted to you, to make the path of our successors in future years not more arduous but more easy; and I may be permitted to add that, while we have sought to do justice, by the changes we propose in taxation, to intelligence and skill as compared with property--while we have sought to do justice to the great laboring community of England by furthering their relief from indirect taxation, we have not been guided by any desire to put one cla.s.s against another. We have felt we should best maintain our own honor, that we should best meet the views of Parliament, and best promote the interests of the country, by declining to draw any invidious distinctions between cla.s.s and cla.s.s, by adapting it to ourselves as a sacred aim to differ and distribute--burden if we must, benefit if we may--with equal and impartial hand; and we have the consolation of believing that by proposals such as these we contribute, as far as in us lies, not only to develop the material resources of the country, but to knit the hearts of the various cla.s.ses of this great nation yet more closely than heretofore to that throne and to those inst.i.tutions under which it is their happiness to live."

It is seldom that a venture of such magnitude as Mr. Gladstone's first budget meets with universal success. But from the outset the plan was received with universal favor. Besides the plaudits with which the orator was greeted at the conclusion of his speech, his proposals were received favorably by the whole nation. Being constructed upon Free Trade principles, it was welcomed by the press and the country. It added greatly, not only to the growing reputation of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer as a financier, but also to his popularity.

The following anecdote of Mr. Gladstone is told by Walter Jerrold and is appropriate as well as timely here:

"During Mr. Gladstone's first tenure of office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, a curious adventure occurred to him in the London offices of the late Mr. W. Lindsay, merchant, shipowner and M.P. There one day entered a brusque and wealthy shipowner of Sunderland, inquiring for Mr.

Lindsay. As Mr. Lindsay was out, the visitor was requested to wait in an adjacent room, where he found a person busily engaged in copying some figures. The Sunderland shipowner paced the room several times and took careful note of the writer's doings, and at length said to him, 'Thou writes a bonny hand, thou dost.'

"'I am glad you think so,' was the reply.

"'Ah, thou dost. Thou makes thy figures weel. Thou'rt just the chap I want.'

"'Indeed!' said the Londoner.

"'Yes, indeed,' said the Sunderland man. 'I'm a man of few words. Noo, if thou'lt come over to canny ould Sunderland thou seest I'll give thee a hundred and twenty pounds a year, and that's a plum thou dost not meet with every day in thy life, I reckon. Noo then.'

"The Londoner replied that he was much obliged for the offer, and would wait till Mr. Lindsay returned, whom he would consult upon the subject.

Accordingly, on the return of the latter, he was informed of the shipowner's tempting offer.

"'Very well,' said Mr. Lindsay, 'I should be sorry to stand in your way.

One hundred and twenty pounds is more than I can afford to pay you in the department in which you are at present placed. You will find my friend a good and kind master, and, under the circ.u.mstances, the sooner you know each other the better. Allow me, therefore, Mr.----, to introduce you to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer.' The Sunderland shipowner was a little taken aback at first, but he soon recovered his self-possession, and enjoyed the joke quite as much as Mr. Gladstone did."

CHAPTER X

THE CRIMEAN WAR

The Crimean War, the great event with which the Aberdeen Cabinet was a.s.sociated, was a contest between Russia and Turkey, England and France.

A dispute which arose between Russia and Turkey as to the possession of the Holy Places of Jerusalem was the precipitating cause. For a long time the Greek and the Latin Churches had contended for the possession of the Holy Land. Russia supported the claim of the Greek Church, and France that of the Papal Church. The Czar claimed a Protectorate over all the Greek subjects of the Porte. Russia sought to extend her conquests south and to seize upon Turkey. France and England sustained Turkey. Sardinia afterwards joined the Anglo-French alliance.

The people of England generally favored the war, and evinced much enthusiasm at the prospect of it. Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone wished England to stand aloof. The Peelite members of the cabinet were generally less inclined to war than the Whigs. Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell favored England's support of Turkey. Some thought that England could have averted the war by pursuing persistently either of two courses: to inform Turkey that England would give her no aid; or to warn Russia that if she went to war, England would fight for Turkey. But with a ministry halting between two opinions, and the people demanding it, England "drifted into war" with Russia.

July 2, 1853, the Russian troops crossed the Pruth and occupied the Danubian Princ.i.p.alities which had been by treaty, in 1849, evacuated by Turkey and Russia, and declared by both powers neutral territory between them. London was startled, October 4, 1853, by a telegram announcing that the Sultan had declared war against Russia. England and France jointly sent an _ultimatum_ to the Czar, to which no answer was returned. March 28, 1854, England declared war.

On the 12th of March, while great excitement prevailed and public meetings were held throughout England, declaring for and against war, Mr. Gladstone made an address on the occasion of the inauguration of the statue of Sir Robert Peel, at Manchester. He spoke of the designs of Russia, and described her as a power which threatened to override all other powers, and as a source of danger to the peace of the world.

Against such designs, seen in Russia's attempt to overthrow the Ottoman Empire, England had determined to set herself at whatever cost. War was a calamity that the government did not desire to bring upon the country, "a calamity which stained the face of nature with human gore, gave loose rein to crime, and took bread from the people. No doubt negotiation is repugnant to the national impatience at the sight of injustice and oppression; it is beset with delay, intrigue, and chicane; but these are not so horrible as war, if negotiation can be made to result in saving this country from a calamity which deprives the nation of subsistence and arrests the operations of industry. To attain that result ... Her Majesty's Ministers have persevered in exercising that self-command and that self-restraint which impatience may mistake for indifference, feebleness or cowardice, but which are truly the crowning greatness of a great people, and which do not evince the want of readiness to vindicate, when the time comes, the honor of this country."

In November a conference of some of the European powers was held at Vienna to avert the war by mediating between Russia and Turkey, but was unsuccessful. Mr. Gladstone said: "Austria urged the two leading states, England and France, to send in their _ultimatum_ to Russia, and promised it her decided support.... Prussia at the critical moment, to speak in homely language, bolted.... In fact, she broke up the European concert, by which France and England had hoped to pull down the stubbornness of the Czar."

Mr. Gladstone had opposed the war, not only on humanitarian and Christian grounds, but also because the preparation of a war budget overthrew all his financial schemes and hopes; a new budget was necessary, and he as Chancellor of the Exchequer must prepare it.

Knowing that the struggle was inevitable, he therefore bent his energies to the task and conceived a scheme for discharging the expenses of the war out of the current revenue, provided it required no more than ten million pounds extra, so that the country should not be permanently burdened. It would require to do this the imposition of fresh taxes.

"It thus fell to the lot of the most pacific of Ministers, the devotee of retrenchment, and the anxious cultivator of all industrial arts, to prepare a war budget, and to meet as well as he might the exigencies of a conflict which had so cruelly dislocated all the ingenious devices of financial optimism."

Mr. Gladstone afterwards moved for over six and a half millions of pounds more than already granted, and proposed a further increase in the taxes. Mr. Disraeli opposed Mr. Gladstone's budget. He devised a scheme to borrow and thus increase the debt. He opposed the imposition of new taxes. Mr. Gladstone said: "Every good motive and every bad motive, combated only by the desire of the approval of honorable men and by conscientious rect.i.tude--every motive of ease, comfort, and of certainty spring forward to induce a Chancellor of the Exchequer to become the first man to recommend a loan." Mr. Gladstone was sustained.

The war had begun in earnest. The Duke of Newcastle received a telegram on the 21st of September announcing that 25,000 English troops, 25,000 French and 8000 Turks had landed safely at Eupatoria "without meeting with any resistance, and had already begun to march upon Sebastopol."

The war was popular with the English people, but the ministry of Lord Aberdeen, which inaugurated it, was becoming unpopular. This became apparent in the autumn of 1854. There were not actual dissensions in the Cabinet, but there was great want of harmony as to the conduct of the war. The Queen knew with what reluctance Lord Aberdeen had entered upon the war, but she had the utmost confidence in him as a man and a statesman. She was most desirous that the war be prosecuted with vigor, and trusted the Premier for the realization of her hopes and those of the nation, but unity in the Cabinet was necessary for the successful prosecution of the war.

Parliament a.s.sembled December 12, 1854, "under circ.u.mstances more stirring and momentous than any which had occurred since the year of Waterloo." The management of the war was the main subject under discussion. The English troops had covered themselves with glory in the battles of Alma, Balaclava and Inkermann. But the sacrifice was great.

Thousands were slain and homes made desolate, while the British army was suffering greatly, and the sick and wounded were needing attention. Half a million pounds were subscribed in three months, and Miss Florence Nightingale with thirty-seven lady nurses, soon to be reinforced by fifty more, set out at once for the seat of war to nurse the sick and wounded soldiers. It is recorded that "they reached Scutari on the 5th of November, in time to receive the soldiers who had been wounded at the battle of Balaclava. On the arrival of Miss Nightingale the great hospital at Scutari, in which up to this time all had been chaos and discomfort, was reduced to order, and those tender lenitives which only woman's thought and woman's sympathy can bring to the sick man's couch, were applied to solace and alleviate the agonies of pain or the torture of fever and prostration."

It was natural to attribute the want of proper management to the ministry, and hence the Government found itself under fire. In the House of Lords the Earl of Derby condemned the inefficient manner in which the war had been carried on, the whole conduct of the ministry in the war, and the insufficiency of the number of troops sent out to check the power of Russia. The Duke of Newcastle replied, and while not defending all the actions of the ministry during the war, yet contended that the government were prepared to prosecute it with resolve and unflinching firmness. While not standing ready to reject overtures of peace, they would not accept any but an honorable termination of the war. The ministry relied upon the army, the people, and upon their allies with the full confidence of ultimate success.

Mr. Disraeli, in the House of Commons, attacked the policy of the ministry from beginning to end. Everything was a blunder or a mishap of some description or other; the government had invaded Russia with 25,000 troops without providing any provision for their support.

When the House of Commons a.s.sembled, in January, 1855, it became apparent that there was a determination to sift to the bottom the charges that had been made against the ministry regarding their manner of carrying on the war. The Queen expressed her sympathy for Lord Aberdeen, who was in a most unenviable position. Motions hostile to the government were introduced in the House of Lords, while in the House of Commons Mr. Roebuck moved for a select committee "to inquire into the condition of the army before Sebastopol, and into the conduct of those departments of the government whose duty it has been to minister to the wants of the army."

Lord John Russell resigned his office and left his colleagues to face the vote. He could not see how Mr. Roebuck's motion could be resisted.

This seemed to portend the downfall of the ministry. The Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of War, offered to retire to save the government.

Lord Palmerston believed that the breaking up of the ministry would be a calamity to the country, but he doubted the expediency of the retirement of the Duke of Newcastle, and his own fitness for the place of Minister of War, if vacated. Finally the Cabinet resolved to hold together, except Lord John Russell.

In the debate it was declared that the condition of things at the seat of war was exaggerated; but the speech of Mr. Stafford caused a great sensation. He described the sufferings which he declared he had himself witnessed. He summed up by quoting the language of a French officer, who said: "You seem, sir, to carry on war according to the system of the Middle Ages." The situation of the ministry was critical before, but this speech seemed to make sure the pa.s.sage of the resolutions.

It was under all these depressing circ.u.mstances that Mr. Gladstone rose to defend himself and his colleagues. In a fine pa.s.sage he thus described what the position of the Cabinet would have been if they had shrunk from their duty: "What sort of epitaph would have been written over their remains? He himself would have written it thus: Here lie the dishonored ashes of a ministry which found England at peace and left it in war, which was content to enjoy the emoluments of office and to wield the sceptre of power so long as no man had the courage to question their existence. They saw the storm gathering over the country; they heard the agonizing accounts which were almost daily received of the state of the sick and wounded in the East. These things did not move them. But as soon as the Honorable Member for Sheffield raised his hand to point the thunderbolt, they became conscience-stricken with a sense of guilt, and, hoping to escape punishment, they ran away from duty."

This eloquent pa.s.sage was received with tumultuous cheers. Mr.

Gladstone claimed that there had been many exaggerations as to the state of the army and there were then more than 30,000 British troops under arms before Sebastopol. The administration of the War Department at home was no doubt defective, but he declined to admit that it had not improved, or that it was as bad as to deserve formal censure, and the Duke of Newcastle did not merit the condemnation sought to be cast on him as the head of the War Department.

Mr. Disraeli was eagerly heard when he rose to speak. He said that the government admitted that they needed reconstruction, and that now the House was called upon to vote confidence in the administration. It was not the Duke of Newcastle nor the military system, but the policy of the whole Cabinet which he characterized as a "deplorable administration."

The result of the vote was a strange surprise to all parties, and one of the greatest ever experienced in Parliamentary history. The vote for Mr.

Roebuck's committee was 205; and against it, 148; a majority against the ministry of 157. "The scene was a peculiar and probably an unparalleled one. The cheers which are usually heard from one side or the other of the House on the numbers of a division being announced, were not forthcoming. The members were for a moment spellbound with astonishment, then there came a murmur of amazement and finally a burst of general laughter." The resignation of the Aberdeen ministry was announced February 1st, the Duke of Newcastle stating that it had been his intention to give up the office of Secretary of War whether Mr.

Roebuck's resolution had pa.s.sed or not.

Thus was overthrown the famous coalition Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen--one of the most brilliant ever seen--a Cabinet distinguished for its oratorical strength, and for the conspicuous abilities of its chief members. Mr. Gladstone, who was the most distinguished Peelite in the Cabinet, certainly could not, up to this period, be suspected of lukewarmness in the prosecution of the war. Lord Palmerston formed a reconstructed rather than a new Cabinet. Mr. Gladstone and his friends at first declined to serve in the new Cabinet, out of regard for the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Aberdeen, the real victims of the adverse vote. But these n.o.blemen besought Mr. Gladstone not to let his personal feelings stand in the way of his own interests, and not to deprive the country of his great services, so he resumed office as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lord Palmerston had been regarded as the coming man, and his name carried weight upon the Continent and at home. But the new ministry was surrounded by serious difficulties, and did not pull together very long. The War Minister, Lord Panmure, entered upon his duties with energy, and proposed, February 16th, his remedy for existing evils; but on the 19th of February Mr. Layard in the House of Commons said, "the country stood on the brink of ruin--it had fallen into the abyss of disgrace and become the laughing-stock of Europe." He declared that the new ministry differed little from the last.

Lord Palmerston, in answer to inquiries, lamented the sufferings of the army and confessed that mishaps had been made, but the present ministry had come forward in an emergency and from a sense of public duty, and he believed would obtain the confidence of the country. But another strange turn in events was at hand. Mr. Roebuck gave notice of the appointment of his committee. Hostility to the ministry was disclaimed, but Mr.

Gladstone, Sir James Graham and Mr. Sidney Herbert took the same view of the question they had previously taken. They were opposed to the investigation as a dangerous breach of a great const.i.tutional principle, and if the committee was granted, it would be a precedent from whose repet.i.tion the Executive could never again escape, however unreasonable might be the nature of the demand. They therefore retired from office.