MB. GLADSTONE'S POSITION. 771
d I am for ‘civil and religions liberty all over the 1860.
World,» Zr. 66.
There was one powerful man in the Cabinet who did his
Yest to stem the dangerous tide. Fut though in the session
*f 1860 Mr. Gladstone had delighted the House and the
*ountry by the eloquence and the mastery of his budget
Peech of February, and by the consummate skill with
"hich he conducted his case in the debates that followed,
Yet he was a long way from the commanding eminence at
Which he arrived afterwards when Lord Palmerston’s place
® the popular imagination became empty. If he had left
Lord Palmerston’s Government, the effect would perhaps
hardly have been greater than it was when he left the
Sovernment of Sir Robert Peel in 1845, or that of Lord
Palmerston himself in 1855. But the struggle in the
forum of his own conscience was long and severe. He
elt all the wealmess of the evidence by which his
*olleagues Justified the urgency of their suspicions and the
lecessity for preparation. He revolted from the frank
rationality of the common panicmonger of the street and
the newspaper. As a thrifty steward he groaned over the
foolish profusion with which he saw his masters flinging
Money out of the window. He was in very frequent cor-*espondence
 with Cobden, and Cobden brought to bear upon
Yim a]] his powers of persuasion, supported by a strong and
‘ccurate knowledge of all that the French Government had
% show in defence of their own innocence. It is hardly too
Ruch to say that Cobden at this time subjected Mr. Gladstone
bo the same intense intellectual and moral pressure to which he
hag subjected Peel fifteen years before. But the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, in the spirit of Lord Palmerston’s appeal to
Cobden himself to come within the citadel, decided that he
“ould do more good by remaining in the Government than
by leaving it. At the close of the session, marked as it had

xx)