Footnotes
[1.]Eng. Hist. Rev. April 1887, p. 296.[2.]Il Conte di Cavour. Ricordi biografici. Per G. Massari (Turin, 1875), p. 204.[3.]See L'Empire Libéral, by Émile Ollivier, iv. p. 217.[4.]It is a notable thing that in 1859 the provisional government of Tuscany made a decree for the publication of a complete edition of Machiavelli's works at the cost of the state.[5.]One of the pope's chamberlains gravely assured the English resident in Rome that he knew from a sure and trustworthy source that the French Emperor had made a bargain with the Devil, and frequently consulted him.[6.]Walpole's Russell, ii. pp. 335-339.[7.]Martin's Prince Consort, v. p. 226.[8.]A General Review of the Different States of Italy; prepared for the Foreign Office by Sir Henry Bulwer, January 1853.[9.]Cavour to Marquis d'Azeglio, Dec. 9, 1860. La Politique du Comte Camille de Cavour de 1852 à 1861, p. 392.[10.]June 6, 1861.[11.]The disaster was the outcome of the Chinese refusal to receive Mr. Bruce, the British minister at Pekin. Admiral Hope in endeavouring to force an entrance to the Peiho river was repulsed by the fire of the Chinese forts (June 25, 1859). In the following year a joint Anglo-French expedition captured the Taku forts and occupied Pekin (Oct. 12, 1860).[12.]Odyssey, xx. 63.[13.]On a motion by Lord Elcho against any participation in a conference to settle the details of the peace between Austria and France.[14.]I may be forgiven for referring to my Life of Cobden, ii. chap. xi. For the French side of the transaction, see an interesting chapter in De La Gorce, Hist. du Second Empire, iii. pp. 213-32.[15.]“I will undertake that there is not a syllable on our side of the treaty that is inconsistent with the soundest principles of free trade. We do not propose to reduce a duty which, on its merits, ought not to have been dealt with long ago. We give no concessions to France which do not apply to all other nations. We leave ourselves free to lay on any amount of internal duties and to put on an equal tax on foreign articles of the same kind at the custom-house. It is true we bind ourselves for ten years not otherwise to raise such of our customs as affect the French trade, or put on fresh ones; and this, I think, no true free trader will regret.”—Cobden to Bright.[16.]The reader who wishes to follow these proceedings in close detail will, of course, read the volume of The Financial Statements of 1853, 1860-63, containing also the speech on tax-bills, 1861, and on charities, 1863 (Murray, 1863).[17.]Strictly speaking, in 1845 the figure had risen from 1052 to 1163 articles, for the first operation of tariff reform was to multiply the number in consequence of the transition from ad valorem to specific duties, and this increased the headings under which they were described. In 1860 Mr. Gladstone removed the duties from 371 articles, reducing the number to 48, of which only 15 were of importance—spirits, sugar, tea, tobacco, wine, coffee, corn, currants, timber, chicory, figs, hops, pepper, raisins, and rice.[18.]See an interesting letter to Sir W. Heathcote in reply to other criticisms, in [Appendix].[19.]On Mr. Duncan's resolution against adding to an existing deficiency by diminishing ordinary revenue and against re-imposing the income-tax at an unnecessarily high rate. Moved Feb. 21.[20.]Martin's Life of Prince Consort, v. pp. 35, 37, 51.[21.]Greville, iii. ii. p. 291.[22.]Eng. Hist. Rev. April 1887, p. 301. The majority in the Lords was 193 to 104.[23.]Aug. 31, 1897.[24.]Martin, v. p. 100.[25.]Bright wrote to Mr. Gladstone that he was inclined “to think that the true course for Lord John, yourself, and Mr. Gibson, and for any others who agreed with you, was to have resigned rather than continue a government which could commit so great a sin against the representative branch of our constitution.”[26.]See [Appendix].[27.]“He made an administration so checkered and speckled, he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed, a cabinet so variously inlaid, such a piece of diversified mosaic, such a tessellated pavement without cement ... that it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand upon.”—Speech on American Taxation.[28.]At Manchester, Oct. 14, 1864.[29.]For his letter to Mr. Gladstone, Dec. 16, 1859, see Ashley, ii. p. 375.[30.]See Appendix. “This account,” Mr. Gladstone writes, “contains probably the only reply I shall ever make to an account given or printed by Sir Theodore Martin in his Life of the Prince Consort, which is most injurious to me without a shadow of foundation: owing, I have no doubt, to defective acquaintance with the subject.” The passage is in vol. v. p. 148. Lord Palmerston's words to the Queen about Mr. Gladstone are a curiously unedifying specimen of loyalty to a colleague.[31.]“It appears that he wrote his final opinion on the subject to the cabinet on Saturday, left them to deliberate, and went to the Crystal Palace. The Duke of Argyll joined him there and said it was all right. The Gladstones then went to Cliveden and he purposely did not return till late, twelve o'clock on Monday night, in order that Palmerston might make his speech as he pleased. I doubt the policy of his absence. It of course excited much remark, and does not in any way protect Gladstone. M. Gibson was also absent.”—Phillimore Diary, July 23. In his diary Mr. Gladstone records: “July 21.—Cabinet 3 ½-5 1/4. I left it that the discussion might be free and went to Stafford House and Sydenham. There I saw, later, Argyll and S. Herbert, who seemed to bring good news. At night we went off to Cliveden.”[32.]For an interesting letter on all this to the Duke of Argyll, see [Appendix].[33.]This letter is printed in full by Mr. Ashley, ii. p. 413.[34.]Diary.[35.]Mr. Evelyn Ashley in National Review, June 1898, pp. 536-40.[36.]Plan for Economical Reform.[37.]27 and 28 Vict., chap. 43.[38.]Financial Statements, p. 151.[39.]See his elaborate article in the Nineteenth Century for February 1880, on Free Trade, Railways, and Commerce, in which he endeavours fairly to divide the credit of our material progress between its two great factors, the Liberation of Intercourse, and the Improvement of Locomotion. Under the head of new locomotive forces he counts the Suez canal.[40.]From a letter to his son Herbert, March 10, 1876, containing some interesting remarks on Pitt's finance. See [Appendix].[41.]Τὸ ζητεῖν πανταχοῦ τὸ χρήσιμον ἤκιστα ἁρμόττει τοῖς ἐλευθεροῖς.—Politics, viii. 3.[42.]Edinburgh, Nov. 29, 1879.[43.]Edinburgh, Nov. 29, 1879.[44.]Guinevere, 90-92.[45.]For his later views on the French treaty, see his speech at Leeds in 1881, an extract from which is given in [Appendix].[46.]Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1880, p. 381.[47.]Mr. Courtney contributes a good account of this measure to the chapter on Finance in Ward's Reign of Queen Victoria, i. pp. 345-7.[48.]On this sentence in his copy of the memorandum Mr. Gladstone pencils in the margin as was his way, his favourite Italian corrective, ma![49.]Of course the literature of this great theme is enormous, but an English reader with not too much time will find it well worked out in the masterly political study, The Slave Power, by J. E. Cairnes (1861), that vigorous thinker and sincere lover of truth, if ever there was one. Besides Cairnes, the reader who cares to understand the American civil war should turn to F. L. Olmsted's Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom (1861), and A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856)—as interesting a picture of the South on the eve of its catastrophe, as Arthur Young's picture of France on the eve of the revolution.[50.]See Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, v. p. 28. Also Martin's Life of the Prince Consort, v. p. 421.[51.]See Walpole's Russell, ii. p. 358.[52.]War-with England, or the probability of it, would have meant the raising of the blockade, the withdrawal of a large part of the troops from the Southern frontier, and substantially the leaving of the Confederates to a de facto independence.—Dana's Wheaton, p. 648.[53.]Rhodes, History of the United States since 1850, iii. p. 538. See also Life of C. F. Adams, by his son C. F. A., Boston, 1900, chapter xii., especially pp. 223-4.[54.]In the summer of 1862 he took an active part in schemes for finding employment at Hawarden for Lancashire operatives thrown out of work by the cotton-famine. One of the winding-paths leading through some of the most beautiful spots of the park at Hawarden was made at this time by factory workers from Lancashire employed by Mr. Gladstone for purposes of relief.[55.]Walpole's Life of Russell, ii. p. 361.[56.]
In a jingle composed for the occasion, the refrain is—
“Honour give to sterling worth,
Genius better is than birth,
So here's success to Gladstone.”
In thanking a Newcastle correspondent for his reception, Mr. Gladstone writes (Oct. 20, 1862): “To treat these occurrences as matter of personal obligation to those who have taken a part in them would be to mistake the ground on which they rest. But I must say with unfeigned sincerity that I can now perceive I have been appropriating no small share of honour that is really due to the labour of others: of Mr. Cobden as to the French treaty, and of the distinguished men who have in our day by their upright and enlightened public conduct made law and government names so dear to the people of England.” “Indeed,” says a contemporary journalist, “if Middlesborough did not do honour to Mr. Gladstone, we don't know who should, for the French treaty has been a greater boon to the iron manufacturers of that young but rising seaport, than to any other class of commercial men in the north of England.”—Newcastle Daily Chronicle, Oct. 11, 1862.
Once at Hawarden I dropped the idle triviality that Mr. Pitt, Mr. Goschen, and a third person, were the three men who had been put into cabinet after the shortest spell of parliamentary life. (They were likewise out again after the shortest recorded spell of cabinet life.) “I don't believe any such thing,” said Mr. Gladstone. “Well, who is your man?” “What do you say,” he answered, “to Sir George Murray? Wellington put him into his cabinet (1828); he had been with him in the Peninsula.” On returning to London, I found that Murray had been five years in parliament, and having written to tell Mr. Gladstone so, the next day I received a summary postcard—“Then try Lord Henry Petty.” Here, as far as I make out, he was right.
“It is very unusual, I think,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to the prime minister (Jan. 6, 1866) “to put men into the cabinet without a previous official training. Lord Derby could not help himself. Peel put Knatchbull, but that was on political grounds that seemed broad, but proved narrow enough. Argyll was put there in '52-3, but there is not the same opportunity for previous training in the case of peers.”
Edmund John Armstrong (1841-65). Republished in 1877. Sir Henry Taylor, Edinburgh Review, July 1878, says of this poet: “Of all the arts Poetic, that which was least understood between the Elizabethan age and the second quarter of this century was the art of writing blank verse.