GLADSTONE’S FAMOUS BUDGET
In the cabinet that followed, headed by Lord Aberdeen, Gladstone succeeded Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer, a position in which he was to make a great mark. In April, 1853, he introduced his first budget, a marvel of ingenious statesmanship, in its highly successful effort to equalize taxation. It remitted various taxes which had pressed hard upon the poor and restricted business, and replaced them by applying the succession duty to real estate, increasing the duty on spirits, and extending the income tax.
Taken altogether, and especially in its expedients to equalize taxation, this first budget of Mr. Gladstone may be justly called the greatest of the century. The speech in which it was introduced and expounded created an extraordinary impression on the House and the country. For the first time in Parliament figures were made as interesting as a fairy tale; the dry bones of statistics were invested with a new and potent life, and it was shown how the yearly balancing of the national accounts might be directed by and made to promote the profoundest and most fruitful principles of statesmanship. With such lucidity and picturesqueness was this financial oratory rolled forth that the dullest intellect could follow with pleasure the complicated scheme; and for five hours the House of commons sat as if it were under the sway of a magician’s wand. When Mr. Gladstone resumed his seat, it was felt that the career of the coalition ministry was assured by the genius that was discovered in its Chancellor of the Exchequer.
It was, indeed, to Gladstone’s remarkable oratorical powers that much of his success as a statesman was due. No man of his period was his equal in swaying and convincing his hearers. His rich and musical voice, his varied and animated gestures, his impressive and vigorous delivery, great fluency, and wonderful precision of statement, gave him a power over an audience which few men of the century have enjoyed. His sentences, indeed, were long and involved, growing more so as his years advanced, but their fine choice of words, rich rhetoric, and eloquent delivery carried away all that heard him, as did his deep earnestness and intense conviction of the truth of his utterances.
Meanwhile his Liberalism had been steadily growing reaching its culmination in 1865, when the Tory University of Oxford, which he had long represented, rejected him as its member, unable longer to swallow his ultra views. The rejection was greeted by him as a compliment. He at once offered himself as a candidate for South Lancashire and in the opening of his speech at Manchester said: “At last, my friends, I am come among you; to use an expression which has become very famous and is not likely to be forgotten, ‘I am come among you unmuzzled.’”
Unmuzzled he indeed was, free at last to give the fullest expression to his Liberal faith. In 1866 he became, for the first time in his career, leader of the House of Commons—Lord Russell, the Prime Minister, being in the House of Lords. Many of his friends feared for him in this difficult position; but the event proved that they had no occasion for alarm, he showing himself one of the most successful leaders the House had ever had.