752 LIFE OF OOBDEN. [cmaAT

1860. never to be the tolleagne.” But at the same time, he
fr. 56. detected in the Treaty the idiosyncrasies of the negotiator
he saw the negotiator’s strong personal convictions in the
wanton sacrifice of so many sources of revenue; he saW if
in the light treatment of belligerent rights.
Then the parliamentary battle began according to the
well-known rules. Private secretaries rapidly hunted 9P
the circumstances of Pitt’s Commercial Treaty of 1786, and
their chiefs set to work to show that the precedent had been
accurately followed, or else, if they happened to sit on the
other side of the House, that it had been most unreasonably
departed from. Men whose intellectual position was $0
strong as that of Sir James Graham and Earl Grey, pro
tested against the policy of commercial treaties. 08°
member, as I have already mentioned, still happily alive
and vocal, asked if it had come to this—that the free Parlisment
 of England sat to register the decrees of the despob
of France. There was the usual abundance of predictions
in which the barely possible was raised to the degree of
probable or certain, and to which the only answer Was
that men were not bound to believe them. The great
authority from the city prophesied that there would be
no permanent enlargement of our trade with France as 8
consequence of the Treaty. Mr. Disraeli declared that he
had always strongly desired an improvement of our commercial
 relations with France, and even if that improve”
ment took the form of a commercial treaty he could endure
it: but this was a bad treaty; it was caloulated 0
sow the seeds of discord and dissension between the twO
countries. Mr. Disraeli’s chief in the House of Lords
argued that the time was inopportune for a reductiot
of the sources of revenue; and he pointed out that the
Treaty admitted to France articles of vital importance for
purposes of war, and the Government itself acted in other