unusually nervous. H. of C. 41/2-9. I was kindly
spoken of and heard, and I hope attained practically purposes I had
in view, but I think the House felt that the last part by taking
away the sting reduced the matter to flatness.

RESIGNATION OF OFFICE

According to what is perhaps a questionable usage, Lord John Russell
invited the retiring minister to explain his secession from office to
the House. In the suspicion, distraction, tension that marked that
ominous hour in the history of English party, people insisted that the
resignation of the head of the department of trade must be due to
divergence of judgment upon protection. The prime minister, while
expressing in terms of real feeling his admiration for Mr. Gladstone's
character and ability, and his high regard for his colleague's private
qualities, thought well to restate that the resignation came from no
question of commercial policy. 'For three years,' he went on, 'I have
been closely connected with Mr. Gladstone in the introduction of
measures relating to the financial policy of the country, and I feel it
my duty openly to avow that it seems almost impossible that two public
men, acting together so long, should have had so little divergence in
their opinions upon such questions.' If anybody found fault with Mr.
Gladstone for not resigning earlier, the prime minister was himself
responsible: 'I was unwilling to lose until the latest moment the
advantages I derived from one whom I consider capable of the highest and
most eminent services.'[168]

The point of Mr. Gladstone's reply was in fact an extremely simple and a
highly honourable one. While carefully abstaining from laying down any
theory of political affairs as under all circumstances inflexible and
immutable, yet he thought that one who had borne such solemn testimony
as he had borne in his book, to a particular view of a great question,
ought not to make himself responsible for a material departure from it,
without at least placing himself openly in a position to form a judgment
that should be beyond all mistake at once independent and unsuspected.
That position in respect of the Maynooth policy he could not hold, so
long as he was a member of the cabinet proposing it, and therefore he
had resigned, though it was understood that he would not resist the
Maynooth increase itself. All this, I fancy, might easily have been made
plain even to those who thought his actio