There are a great many whispered inquiries
in the gallery for Lord Palmerston, but he is
not here tonight (gout), and his absence greatly
detracts from the interest with which the
"stranger" usually scans the ministerial bench.
It is very pleasant to find the strangers around
me highly discriminative persons, with the right
taste for greatness. Pending the arrival of the
master-spirit, the men they look for and talk
about are Bulwer Lytton and Disraeli and
Austen Layard. The last is only an under-
secretary, but he is far more in request than the
upper-secretary, his chief. Bulwer Lytton and
Disraeli are sitting side by side, both, from this
distance, looking wonderfully young. "What a
pity it is that they sit on that side of the House!"
I was mentally exclaiming, when I suddenly
checked myself to inquire what "that side of
the House" would be without them?

A pause of expectancy, then suddenly "Yar,
yar, yar" (usually reported as "cheers"), and all
eyes are turned towards the door. A false alarm.
Mr. Cox of Finsbury! A laugh. Presently
"Yar! yar! yar!" again, and then—the man!

He walks up to his seat opposite the brass-
bound oak box (of which Mr. Disraeli has a
duplicate) quietly and modestly. He takes off his
hat, sits down, and calmly opens a little leather
bag. He looks in to see that his papers are all
right—that he hasn't forgotten the notes of his
sermon—and then leans back on the bench to
await his cue. Sir George Grey gives notice of
an address to her Majesty in reference to the
terrible American calamity, and his few well
expressed sentences evoke a solemn assent from all
sides of the House.

And now Mr. Gladstone! You know what it
is, when, after the minor characters have been
mumbling through the introductory portion of
the play, the great tragedian or comedian—the
leading man of the company—steps upon the
stage. You don't want to look at the bill. He
declares himself at once. He stands confessed
before you. So with Mr. Gladstone. Others
had mumbled and buzzed in our ears, and we
caught only half what they said. But now,
every word was as distinct and audible, away in
the distant gallery, as if it had been spoken
across the table to us. I had heard, with the
rest of the world, extravagant praises of Mr.
Gladstone's oratory, but I had never until now
received the right idea of it. He is not an
orator of the high-flown order, he does not
indulge in nights of studied rhetoric, he never
condescends to clap-trap, nor does he seek to catch
the ear by any of the favourite artifices of popular
speakers. His style is chiefly characterised by
a masterly simplicity. His voice is not a powerful
one, but it is singularly distinct and clear.
He adopts little variety of mood, but he never
wearies you: he is never monotonous.

The great intellect of the man shines out
through the whole performance like a steady
bright light, and the course of his argument goes
on with the inexorable precision of an hydraulic
machine, which may be regulated to gently
crack an egg or crush into powder a ton of iron.
Yet, with all this sledge-hammer force, he has a
charming persuasiveness. When he is trying to
clear away some mist of prejudice, or demolish
some false notion, he appeals to those who are
misguided as if he were addressing a whimsical
woman. He seems to say, "Now, my dear, do
be a good reasonable creature, and listen to
common sense." Only once in the course of
his speech was he tempted to adopt a tone of
defiance, and that was when he concluded his
triumphant reply to the arguments in favour of
the reduction of the malt-tax. Then he turned
round and shook his forefinger—like an eagle's
claw—in the face of the Opposition. Never was
a case so completely and thoroughly demolished.
To abolish the malt-tax, altogether would be to
strike the death-blow of indirect taxation; to
reduce it by one-half, and give up more than
three millions, would cheapen beer to the extent
of one farthing a quart; and, finally, no article
of the same class was so lightly taxed as beer.
The way in which these arguments were
insinuated, rather than enforced, one after the
other, was suggestive of a cunning artificer
using some small neat instrument to take out a
bolt which others had driven in and clenched
with sledge-hammers. The moral effect upon
the Opposition was very evident; not a syllable
of denial was uttered; there was not even a
gesture of dissent. It was made very clear that
the case of the malt-tax was a bad one; but the
announcement that the duty would be taken off
tea instead, did not appear to give very lively
satisfaction. I believe my neighbour in the
gallery faithfully interpreted the feeling on the
subject when he whispered that the public
never had got, and never would get, the full
benefit of the reduction of the tea duties.

The equalising of the duties on fire insurances
was received rather coldly, but when the
announcement came that the income-tax would be
reduced to fourpence, the House was roused to
real enthusiasm. The very strangers could not
refrain from joining in the cheers, and the gallery
keeper was himself too much carried away to
think of checking them. The Chancellor made
several small proposals with regard to licenses
and the measuring of barley by weight, which
certain persons stigmatised as "crotchety" and
"niggling," but it appeared to me that the aim
of those proposals was to do justice, and to put
taxation as much as possible upon a fair and
equable footing. And indeed it is this honest
aim which lifts Mr. Gladstone as a financial
minister so far above all his predecessors. He is
not content to frame a budget that will pass, or
that will merely serve the purpose of the
exchequer. His aim is not to get as much money
as possible out of the people, but so to manage
matters that the burden which he is obliged to
impose upon the people shall be as light as
possible. He is like the good farmer who does
not fail to give back to the fields from which he
reaps; or like a thrifty housewife who is not
satisfied merely to make both ends meet, but
who saves and makes the most of everything,
that she may increase the comforts of her home.