to explain away the new difficulties which their leader has wantonly created. The address does injustice to many of Mr. Gladstone's advocates, who honestly believe that all broad and generous ideas belong, by a wise provision of Providence, to their own party. Mr. Gladstone's manifesto is studded with little sarcasms, with weak taunts levelled at his rivals, and with attacks upon the Conservative party. His absorbing anxiety seems to have been to answer every word which the Premier had advanced. The references which he permits himself to make to education and local taxation have either dissatisfied or alarmed all but those of his admirers who would applaud him if he proposed to institute a Republic without further discussion or delay. He declares himself in favour of allowing to ratepayers, by the principle of representation, a control over county expenditure.' That is, he would introduce into county institutions, which are at present well administered, all the disorder, waste, mismanagement, and riot which frequently characterise the proceedings of vestry boards. The papers recorded, a few weeks ago, a wild scene of merrymaking on the occasion of several metropolitan vestries meeting to inspect a great engineering work. The rates of the metropolis have long been enormous in amount, and the vestrymen seem to have been anxious to show the citizens with what facility vast sums could be disposed of. This is the system which has attracted Mr. Gladstone's admiration. This is one of those liberal ideas' for which extremists challenge universal enthusiasm. The general government having been sufficiently ' revolutionised' for the present, Mr. Gladstone proposes to hand over all forms of local government to the poorest classes. This, surely, ought to complete the measure of his popularity. But if it does not, the most conscientious statesman of modern times is doubtless prepared to throw other portions of an 'exploded system to the expectant crowd.

The unfairness which marked Mr. Gladstone's address was also the only characteristic of his speech at Warrington, which has reached us as these pages were passing through the press; for an almost superhuman exuberance is no new feature of Mr. Gladstone's method of discussing public questions. His bids for popular applause were painfully anxious and forced. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'your true friend is the man who speaks openly the sentiments of his mind and his heart;' and this sentiment found diffuse repetition throughout the speech. Mr. Gladstone's 'mind and heart' have so frequently been the theme of his followers' panegyrics that he may be excused for dwelling

with

with pride upon the charming subject. His former misrepresentations with regard to the national expenditure were increased by a statement of an almost incredible nature. Being totally unable to substantiate the charges of extravagance which he brought against the Conservatives, he accuses them of having tried to force him to squander the public money. 'Great as was the expenditure of 1861,' he tells us, 'it was only by the utmost efforts and the most desperate struggles that we kept down the expenditure at which it stood, in consequence of the constant and persevering efforts of a large portion of the Opposition-of many leaders of the Opposition, and of many men who are now ministers of State-to compel us to spend more public money.' Every word of this ignoble attack is unanswerably refuted by the history of the Conservative opposition to Mr. Gladstone's financial policy of 1859-1861. We have shown that the Conservative party actually for the first time brought Mr. Gladstone to a sense of the need of economy in the public service, and that but for a trick of Lord Palmerston's, in working upon Mr. Walpole's nervous temperament at the last moment, a resolution would certainly have been carried denouncing the monstrous extravagance of Mr. Gladstone's financial administration. Yet at this very time Mr. Gladstone alleges that his opponents were trying to drive him into prodigality, and that he was obliged to make desperate struggles' to prevent them. We can only attribute this strange perversion of facts to a heated oratorical imagination. On the 3rd of June, 1862, Mr. Walpole was to have brought forward a distinct motion for the reduction of the national expenditure. Lord Palmerston, with his habitual shrewdness, perceived that it would not be difficult to scare Mr. Walpole from his path. He therefore announced that he should regard the threatened motion as raising the question of confidence in his Ministry, and Mr. Walpole 'bolted,' to use Mr. Disraeli's phrase. An unmeaning and ridiculous resolution was eventually proposed on the same subject by Lord Palmerston. Mr. Bright himself declared that Mr. Walpole's resolution was more satisfactory' than one of which Mr. Stansfeld had given notice, and of which Mr. Stansfeld has been boasting ever since. On that occasion Mr. Cobden severely rebuked the member for Halifax for his wild attacks upon the Conservative party-a rebuke which Mr. Stansfeld by some accident omits to mention in his vainglorious retrospections of this period.

But Mr. Gladstone's account of the financial question is surpassed by his wonderful statement respecting the affair of the

These events

Peiho, and the war with China which followed. he ascribes, in the comic manner which sits so ill upon him, to the policy of the Conservative party. That was not Lord Palmerston's statement at the time when Mr. Gladstone was a member of the Cabinet, and it is so notoriously untrue to history that it is incomprehensible what can have induced Mr. Gladstone to make it. Let us recall the circumstances:-The Chinese had for years been endeavouring to extinguish our trade. In 1856 the celebrated attack on the British lorcha Arrow took place, the crew being carried off by the Chinese, and the national ensign taken down. Sir J. Bowring then declared hostilities, and applied for troops. A war ensued between 1856 and 1858, and in June and August of the latter year Lord Elgin signed important treaties, for which he deservedly received great honour. The name of Lord Elgin is now most unjustifiably insulted by Mr. Gladstone in the following statement of the causes of the China war:

'At the end of June, 1859, Lord Elgin arrived at the mouth of the Peiho in China to sign a treaty of peace with the Emperor of China, and, under the wise instructions of the Conservative Government, he went to sign this treaty of peace with a large fleet to help him to guide the pen. [Laughter and cheers.] The Chinese did not understand the method of guiding a pen by a fleet, and thought that the Ambassador might do it himself. The consequence was they laid a

sort of ambuscade for our fleet.'

He

Lord Elgin departed from China in May, 1859, and was in England in June, when Mr. Gladstone says he was at the mouth of the Peiho.' The envoy who was stopped in the river Peiho on his way to Pekin held no instructions for which the Conservative party was primarily responsible. He had to pursue a policy which had been adopted by all parties in common. was sent to carry out a mission which had been for many years in progress. Admiral Hope attempted to force a passage of the river and was repulsed. In October, 1859, the French and English joined in an expedition against China. Lord Elgin, who again left England for China in April, 1860, concluded the treaty of Tien-tsin with Prince Kung, under which our relations have since been carried on.

Compare these facts, which are matters of history, with Mr. Gladstone's statements. He vindicates the Chinese at the expense of his own country, merely for the sake of raising an ignorant cry against his political opponents. He does not even remember the history of the war, which he and his colleagues conducted. Mr. Gladstone returned to office in June, 1859

four

four months before the expedition against China was agreed
upon. He now abuses Lord Elgin, a distinguished diplomatist
whom the Liberal party rewarded by giving him the appointment
of Governor-General of India, for committing an act in China at
a time when he was not in the country. And this is an example
of the 'wise and manly statesmanship' which the electors are
asked to approve at the polls!

We trust that the answer will be decisively in favour of the
Government. So far from creating fresh difficulties abroad, it
has well-nigh settled the long-standing disputes with America,
fostered by their predecessors, and aggravated by the rash speeches
and policy of Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone.

The Conservative party does not cling to the mere traditions
of the past. It is willing to do all that can be asked for the
true welfare of the people. In return it deserves the support
of every man in this country who still believes that the govern-
ment under which we live confers upon the whole nation many
priceless blessings, and that to consign it to the reckless hands of
agitators of yesterday's growth would be an act inviting and
deserving greater misfortunes than the whole world arrayed
against us as enemies could bring down upon our heads.

NOTE to No. 248, p. 566.

6

In our article on the Irish Church' we quoted a paragraph from
the Tablet,' which seemed to advocate the confiscation of lay property
in Ireland. The paragraph in question was taken from a pamphlet
giving this quotation from the Tablet; but, upon referring to the
'Tablet' itself, we find that we have done an unintentional injustice
to the paper, and that, so far from advocating the confiscation of the
lay property of Protestant landlords, the Tablet' deprecated any
attempt by the Catholics of Ireland to deprive the Protestants of even
their Church property by the aid of the English Dissenters.

6

INDEX

TO THE

HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIFTH VOLUME OF THE
QUARTERLY REVIEW.