The budget was only four days off. Mr.
Gladstone enters in his diary: 'Spoke against Gibson; beaten by 200-169.
Our third time this week. Very stiff work this. Ellice said dissolution
would be the end of it; we agreed in the House to a cabinet to-morrow.
Herbert and Cardwell, to whom I spoke, inclined to dissolve.' Next day
(April 15), the cabinet met in a flutter, for the same tactics might
well be repeated, whenever Mr. Disraeli should think the chances good.

Lord John adverted to the hostility of the radicals as exhibited in the
tone of the debate, and hinted the opinion that they must take in a reef
or two. Mr. Gladstone doubted whether the budget could live in that
House, whatever form it might assume; but even with such perils he
should look upon the whole budget as less unsafe than a partial
contraction. Graham took the same view of the disposition of parliament:
keen opposition; lukewarm support; the necessity of a greater party
sympathy and connection to enable them to surmount the difficulties of a
most unusual and hazardous operation. But he did not appear to lean to
dissolution, and the older members of the cabinet generally declared
themselves against it. 'In the end we went back to the position that we
must have a budget on Monday, but Clarendon, Herbert, and Palmerston
joined the chorus of those who said the measure was too sharp upon
Ireland. The idea was then started whether we should go the length of
the entire remission of the consolidated annuities[288] and impose the
income-tax at sevenpence, with the augmented spirit duty. This view
found favour generally; and I felt that some excess in the mere
sacrifice of money was no great matter compared with the advantage of so
great an approximation to equal taxation.' Then, 'speaking with great
deference,' Gladstone repeated his belief once more that the entire
budget was safer than a contracted one, both for the House and the
country, and his conviction that if they proposed it, the name and fame
of the government at any rate would stand well. 'Wood seemed still to
hang back, but the rest of the cabinet now appeared well satisfied, and
we parted, each resolved and certainly more likely to stand or fall by
the budget as a whole than we seemed to be on Wednesday.'

III

The decisive cabinet was on Saturday, April 16. It was finally settled
that the budget should be proposed as it stood, with its essential
features unalt