glass-blower. Contracted trade was not the worst evil which arose from dear glass. The poor boarded up the windows in their wretched houses, excluding sun and air. In vain had the Legislature exempted these dwellings from the windowtax; the poor could not afford the luxury of windows made of taxed glass.

Health, too, was not the only object to be promoted by cheapening the commodity. If the manufacturer were once freed from the restrictions and expense with which the duty fettered him, glass might be applied to many new uses. Waterpipes in France were being made of glass; Peel himself showed the House of Commons the balance-spring of a watch made of glass. What limits was it possible to place on the use of an article which was tough enough to be employed as a water-pipe, and delicate enough to be made into a watchspring? The prospect in which Peel thus indulged has not indeed been fulfilled water-pipes are still made of iron or earthenware, watch-springs of steel. But, though in these respects his anticipations have not come true, glass has been turned to uses which even he did not contemplate. Any one who compares the old glass bottle in common use forty years ago with the modern bottle in which the manufacturer reproduces the designs of antiquity in a material surpassing in its exceeding delicacy anything that the ancients possessed, or who recollects that six years after the Budget of 1845 a palace made of glass was erected in Hyde Park to receive the richest treasures which a world could expose to view, will perhaps conclude that the reality surpassed the dream, that the fulfilment was more marvellous than the prophecy.

Auction duty.

The excise on glass interfered with its manufacture; the auction duty led to fraud. It was estimated that property worth £45,000,000 was annually sold by auction, but that property worth only £8,000,000 paid the duty. The ingenuity of those who sold and those who bought was occupied in devising means to evade the tax. The commonest expedient for evading it was to put up the property, not for sale, but to test its value. When its value was ascer

tained the property was bought in, and the day after sold to the highest bidder by private contract. Dishonesty, or something akin to it, was thus promoted by law. Peel swept away the duty, increasing to a slight extent the licence payable by auctioneers.

Two other alterations were made by Peel. He remitted the duty on cotton-wool; he reduced the duties on colonial sugar. The victory which Miles had won over Cotton-wcol Goulburn in the previous year had probably con- and Sugar. vinced him that it was unsafe to leave the sugar duties alone. Peel accordingly proposed to reduce the duty on colonial sugar from 245. to 145., and on foreign sugar, the produce of free labour, from 345. to 235. 4d. The reduction, he estimated, would deprive the revenue of £1,300,000 a year.1

The great Budget naturally led to sharp debates. The minister, in a military phrase, was attacked all along the line. Russell, with the keen instinct of the first parlia- Debates on mentary tactician of his day, assailed the weakest the Budget. part of his opponent's position, and denounced the sugar duties; Roebuck, and one or two other Radicals, resisted the continuance of the income-tax, or criticised its inequalities. The Tories, on the contrary, annoyed at the neglect of their

1 The 245. and 345. duty in 1844 had, moreover, been subject to the general addition of 5 per cent. made by Baring in 1840; the duties in the text are those on brown sugar, the duties on white sugar were simultaneously varied. Hansard, vol. Ixxvii. p. 477.

2 The financial aspect of the Budget may be placed as follows:

The result is incorrectly given in ibid., p. 494, as £3,338,000. Sir S. Northcote has copied the error in Peel's figures in his text, Financial Policy, p. 64, but corrected it in his Appendix, p. 379.

Increasing

own interests, tried to preserve the auction duties, and the customs duties which constituted a protection to agriculture. Criticisms of this kind were not formidable to the minister. His assailants disliked his Budget; but they disliked one. another still more. The protectionists declined to support Russell; and Russell, of course, declined to support the protectionists. Peel was certain of defeating his opponents. by rallying his own friends, and of subsequently defeating his friends by the aid of his opponents. In every part of the battlefield he won an easy victory. Yet, as the contest progressed, evidence was continually forthcoming of an increasdistrust of ing coldness between the minister and his supporters. The country gentlemen, who had placed Peel in power, complained that he had changed his opinions, abandoned their interests, and "truckled" to the Radicals. What could be said for a Tory minister who was actually proposing to remove import duties on grease and on lard? How could English or Irish farmers pay their rents if foreign butter were admitted duty-free under the guise of grease? or if American swine were suffered to compete with Irish pigs? The subordinate officials of the ministry endeavoured to allay the apprehensions of country gentlemen by explaining that, in the

Peel.

1 The opposition to the sugar duties was led by Milner Gibson, who tried to equalise all the duties on foreign and colonial sugar. Labouchere, speaking on behalf of the regular opposition, declined to go quite so far, and Milner Gibson was beaten by 211 votes to 84. Hansard, vol. lxxvii. pp. 1043-1151. Russell almost immediately afterwards refought the old battle which he had fought so often before, and tried to equalise the duties on all foreign sugar. He was beaten by 236 votes to 142. Ibid., p. 1346. The resolutions were agreed to in ibid., vol. lxxviii. p. 514. Cobden, in the debate on them, said the discriminating duty amounted to a protection of £10, 10s. a ton on colonial sugar, or on 230,000 tons to a grant of £2,416,000 to the West Indian colonists. Ibid., p. 440. Roebuck tried to exclude professional incomes from the income duty, and was beaten by 263 votes to 55 (ibid., vol. lxxvii. p. 634); and to extend the tax to Ireland, and was beaten by 275 votes to 33 (ibid., p. 821); while Charles Buller, on an abstract resolution that the tax should be made less unequal and inquisitorial, was beaten by 240 votes to 112. Ibid., vol. lxxviii. p. 614. Bankes tried to save the auction duties, with a view to applying the money to the relief of the ratepayers, and was beaten by 167 votes to 30. Ibid., vol. lxxix. p. 295.

2 Malmesbury's Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, pp. 103, 108.

language of the custom-house, grease meant butter that had been damaged and was unfit for food. The explanation brought down upon the country gentlemen the indignant invective of free traders. Had it, then, come to this, that the great agricultural interest of England was dependent on polluting foreign butter with tar, lest by some chance the poor operative should succeed in getting a little cheaper food? Did the prosperity of the Tories really depend on dear butter and dear lard? "I have sometimes said at Covent Garden," exclaimed Cobden, "that there should be written over this House, 'Dealers in corn and cattle, and no competition allowed with the shop over the water.' But I never said anything so insulting to you as that you were cheesemongers and dealers in butter."1

Discontented with the minister whom they had placed in power, angry with the policy which he had pursued, smarting under the gives of the free traders, the Tories only gave Peel a grudging support. Step by step they had been led into a support of Whig principles. Point by point every privilege to which they had clung was being taken away from them. The Administration, which had been placed in office to preserve the Corn Laws, had amended them in 1842; it had admitted Canadian corn on favourable terms in 1843; it had authorised the entry of foreign cattle; it had repealed the import duty on wool; it was now removing the duties on grease, lard, hides, and even tares. What could Russell have done that Peel was not doing? Had not the country gentlemen a right to say that they had been betrayed by their leader. If he had thought when the new Corn Law was brought in by the right honourable baronet-such was the declaration of the eldest son of the Duke of Richmond 2-that it was to be followed by the tariff and Canada Corn Bill, no power on earth would have induced

1 See the debate in Hansard, vol. lxxviii. p. 1161; and cf. ibid., vol. lxxix. p. 293. This debate had evidently much effect on Peel. He said in 1846 that a protectionist in taking his stand upon grease had done more injury to protection than had been done by any decided enemy to the cause. Ibid., vol. lxxxiii. p. 1024.

2 Ibid., vol. lxxviii. p. 983.

VOL. V.

D

him to vote for it. He, like the rest of his friends, had been betrayed by Peel.

Disraeli's

Yet the country gentlemen, bitter as they were, felt themselves powerless. They could not cross the House and join the Opposition; they could not defeat their leader without Whig aid. Their ablest speakers had their tongues attack on the tied by office, and they had the mortification of ministry. finding themselves worsted in debate as well as in the lobby. Help from any quarter would, in such circumstances, have been welcome to them; and help came from an unexpected place. In the preceding chapter allusion has been made to the young literary adventurer, who, after many unsuccessful efforts, had succeeded in obtaining a seat in the House of Commons. Disraeli had not displayed, since his election, any great parliamentary activity. The inquirer who takes the trouble to analyse division lists will probably be surprised at his almost constant absence. But he occasionally came down to the House to make a set speech, and on these occasions he displayed an increasing distrust of the Whigs, and an increasing admiration of Peel. "Placed in an age of rapid civilisation and rapid transition," so he spoke of the great Conservative statesman in May 1841, "he has adapted the character of his measures to the condition of the times. When in power he never proposed a change which he did not carry, and when in opposition he never forgot that he was at the head of the Conservative party." Warm panegyric of this kind its author probably thought worthy of acknowledgment. Peel, however, in forming his ministry failed to provide any place for his young supporter. But Disraeli did not immediately alter his opinions. He became an authority on commercial treaties-the great advocate of reciprocity. He was compared afterwards to a clock, "whose hands were at one time supposed (having gone for three hours in a dull monotonous tick upon foreign policy) to point to some diplomatic appointment abroad. But the right honourable baronet, knowing the maker too well, would have nothing to do with it, and Disraeli remained unemployed.

"1