nderstood that they were not candidates for office. 'Our day has not
come yet,' Bright said to Graham, and the representative of the radicals
in the cabinet was Sir William Molesworth. In their newspaper the
radicals wrote rather stiffly and jealously. In the end Lord Palmerston
changed his mind and joined.

It was three days before the post of the exchequer was filled. Mr.
Gladstone in his daily letter to Hawarden writes: 'At headquarters I
understand they say, "Mr. G. destroyed the budget, so he ought to make a
new one." However we are trying to press Graham into that service.' The
next day it was settled. From Osborne a letter had come to Lord
Aberdeen: 'The Queen hopes it may be possible to give the chancellorship
of the exchequer to Mr. Gladstone, and to secure the continuance of Lord
St. Leonards as chancellor.'[279] Notwithstanding the royal wish, 'we
pressed it,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'on Graham, but he refused point
blank.' Graham, as we know, was the best economist in the administration
of Peel, and Mr. Gladstone's frequent references to him in later times
on points of pure finance show the value set upon his capacity in this
department. His constitutional dislike of high responsibility perhaps
intervened. Mr. Gladstone himself would cheerfully have returned to the
colonial office, but the whigs suspected the excesses of his colonial
liberalism, and felt sure that he would sow the tares of anglicanism in
these virgin fields. So before Christmas day came, Mr. Gladstone
accepted what was soon in influence the second post in the
government,[280] and became chancellor of the exchequer.

Say what they would, the parliamentary majority was unstable as water.
His own analysis of the House of Commons gave 270 British liberals, not
very compact, and the radical wing of them certain to make occasions of
combination against the government, especially in finance. The only
other party avowing themselves general supporters of the government were
the forty Peelites--for at that figure he estimated them. The ministry,
therefore, were in a minority, and a portion even of that minority not
always to be depended on. The remainder of the House he divided into
forty Irish brigaders, bent on mischief; from fifty to eighty
conservatives, not likely to join in any factious vote, and not
ill-disposed to the government, but not to be counted on either for
attendance or confidence; finally, the Derby opposition, from 200 to
250, ready to