for it. He produced the same extraordinary plan as he had described to me on the morning of his Newcastle speech—i.e. that the Inland Revenue should ascertain from their own books the income of every M.P., and if they found any below the limit of exemption, should notify the same to the Speaker, and the Speaker should thereupon send to the said M.P. below the limit an annual cheque for, say, £300, the name to appear in an annual return to Parliament of all the M.P.'s in receipt of public money on any grounds whatever. I demurred to this altogether, as drawing an invidious distinction between paid and unpaid members; said it was idle to ignore the theory on which the demand for paid members is based, namely, that it is desirable in the public interest that poor men should have access to the H. of C.; and that the poor man should stand there on the same footing as anybody else.
Friday, Jan. 1, 1892.—After breakfast Mrs. Gladstone came to my room and said how glad she was that I had not scrupled to put unpleasant points; that Mr. G. must not be shielded and sheltered as some great people are, who hear all the pleasant things and none of the unpleasant; that the perturbation from what is disagreeable only lasts an hour. I said I hoped that I was faithful with him, but of course I could not be always putting myself in an attitude of perpetual controversy. She said, “He is never made angry by what you say.” And so she went away, and —— and I had a good and most useful set-to about Irish finance.
At luncheon Mr. G. asked what we had made out of our morning's work. When we told him he showed a good deal of impatience and vehemence, and, to my dismay, he came upon union finance and the general subject of the treatment of Ireland by England....
In the afternoon we took a walk, he and I, afterwards joined by the rest. He was as delighted as ever with the swell of the waves, as they bounded over one another, with every variety of grace and tumultuous power. He wondered if we had not more and better words for the sea than the French—“breaker,” “billow,” “roller,” as against “flot,” “vague,” “onde,” “lame,” etc.
At dinner he asked me whether I had made up my mind on the burning question of compulsory Greek for a university degree. I said, No, that as then advised I was half inclined to be against compulsory Greek, but it is so important that I would not decide before I was obliged. “So with me,” he said, “the question is one with many subtle and deep-reaching consequences.” He dwelt on the folly of striking Italian out of the course of modern education, thus cutting European history in two, and setting an artificial gulf between the ancient and modern worlds.
Saturday, Jan. 2.—Superb morning, and all the better for being much cooler. At breakfast somebody started the idle topic of quill pens. When they came to the length of time that so-and-so made a quill serve, “De Retz,” said I, “made up his mind that Cardinal Chigi was a poor creature, maximus in minimis, because at their first interview Chigi boasted that he had used one pen for three years.” That recalled another saying of Retz's about Cromwell's famous dictum, that nobody goes so far as the man who does not know where he is going. Mr. G. gave his deep and eager Ah! to this. He could not recall that Cromwell had produced many dicta of such quality. “I don't love him, but he was a mighty big fellow. But he was intolerant. He was intolerant of the episcopalians.”
Mr. G.—Do you know whom I find the most tolerant churchman of that time? Laud! Laud got Davenant made Bishop of Salisbury, and he zealously befriended Chillingworth and Hales. (There was some other case, which I forget.)
The execution of Charles.—I told him of Gardiner's new volume which I had just been reading. “Charles,” he said, “was no doubt a dreadful liar; Cromwell perhaps did not always tell the truth; Elizabeth was a tremendous liar.”
J. M.—Charles was not wholly inexcusable, being what he was, for thinking that he had a good game in his hands, by playing off the parliament against the army, etc.
Mr. G.—There was less excuse for cutting off his head than in the case of poor Louis xvi., for Louis was the excuse for foreign invasion.