ecords. On
the change of government Peel, with much judgment, offered me the
vice-presidentship of the board of trade. On sound principles of
party discipline, I took the office at once; and having taken it I
set to work with all my might as a worker. In a very short time I
came to form a low estimate of the knowledge and information of
Lord Ripon; and of the cabinet Sir James Graham, I think, knew
most. And now the stones of which my protectionism was built up
began to get uncomfortably loose. When we came to the question of
the tariff, we were all nearly on a par in ignorance, and we had a
very bad adviser in Macgregor, secretary to the board of trade. But
I had the advantage of being able to apply myself with an undivided
attention. My assumption of office at the board of trade was
followed by hard, steady, and honest work; and every day so spent
beat like a battering ram on the unsure fabric of my official
protectionism. By the end of the year I was far gone in the
opposite sense. I had to speak much on these questions in the
session of 1842, but it was always done with great moderation.

II

PEEL'S SLOW CONVERSION

The case on the accession of the new ministers was difficult. Peel
himself has drawn the picture. By incompetent finance, by reckless
colonial expenditure, by solving political difficulties through gifts or
promises of cash from the British treasury, by war and foreign relations
hovering on the verge of war and necessitating extended preparations,
the whigs had brought the national resources into an embarrassment that
was extreme. The accumulated deficits of five years had become a heavy
incubus, and the deficit of 1842-3 was likely to be not less than two
and a half millions more. Commerce and manufactures were languishing.
Distress was terrible. Poor-rates were mounting, and grants-in-aid
would extend impoverishment from the factory districts to the rural.
'Judge then,' said Peel, 'whether we can with safety retrograde in
manufactures.'[153]

So grave a crisis could only be met by daring remedies. With the highest
courage, moral courage no less than political, Peel resolved to ask
parliament to let him raise four or five millions a year by income-tax,
in order to lower the duties on the great articles of consumption, and
by reforming the tariff both to r