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Mr. Gladstone to Herbert Gladstone
March 10, 1876.—Mr. Pitt's position in the Revolutionary war was, I think, a false one. To keep out of that war demanded from the people of this country an extraordinary degree of self-control, and this degree of it they did not possess. The consequence of our going into it was to give an intensity and vitality to the struggle, which but for the tenacity of English character it would not have possessed. Mr. Pitt did not show the great genius in war which he possessed as a peace minister. Until the epoch [pg 638] of the Peninsula our military performances were small and poor, and the method of subsidy was unsatisfactory and ineffective. The effect of borrowing money in three per cents. was to load us with a very heavy capital of national debt. I think at one time we only got £46, or some such amount, for the £100. It must, however, be taken into view that a perpetual annuity of £3, redeemable upon paying £100, brought more than 3/4 of what a perpetual annuity of £4, similarly redeemable, would have brought; or than 3/5 of what a £5 annuity, similarly redeemable, would have brought. It is not easy to strike the balance. Mr. Newmarch, a living economist of some authority, I believe, thinks Mr. Pitt was right. I do not think the case is so clear against him as to detract from his great reputation. But were I in the unhappy position of having to call for a large loan, I should be disposed to ask for the tender in more than one form, e.g., to ask for a tender in three per cents, pure and simple, and an alternative in 4 or 5 per cents., with that rate of interest guaranteed for a certain number of years. Sir Robert Walpole had not to contend with like difficulties, and I think his administration should be compared with the early years of Pitt's, in which way of judging he would come off second, though a man of cool and sagacious judgment, while morally he stood low.
French Commercial Treaty. 1860
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Mr. Gladstone at Leeds, October 8, 1881:—
I, for my part, look with the deepest interest upon the share that I had in concluding—I will not say so much in concluding, but in conducting on this side of the water, and within the walls of parliament as well as in administration—the proceedings which led to the memorable French treaty of 1860. It is quite true that that treaty did not produce the whole of the benefits that some too sanguine anticipations may possibly have expected from it, that it did not produce a universal smash of protective duties, as I wish it had, throughout the civilised world. But it did something. It enormously increased the trade between this country and France. It effectually checked and traversed in the year 1860 tendencies of a very different kind towards needless alarms and panics, and tendencies towards convulsions and confusion in Europe. There was no more powerful instrument for confining and controlling those wayward and angry spirits at that particular crisis, than the commercial treaty with France. It produced no inconsiderable effect for a number of years upon the legislation of various European countries, which tended less decisively than we could have desired, but still intelligibly and beneficially, in the direction of freedom of trade.