tute for enlargement of the franchise, which he chiefly
dreads; 2. as perhaps an obstacle to the framing of a measure.

6. In church matters Herbert, Newcastle, and I are the most conservative
and the most church-like; with a sympathy from Argyll. But, as I said,
there is no struggle here: patronage, the sore subject, not being a
cabinet affair.

Session Of 1860

_Page __47_

_Extract from a Letter to the Duke of Argyll._

_Penmaen., September 3, 1860._--The session has been one to make all of us
thoughtful, and me perhaps most of all. It is indeed much before my mind,
but my head has not ceased to whirl, so that I cannot get a clear view of
what Seward would call my position. Two things I know, one is that it
produced the greatest pleasures and the greatest pains I have ever known
in politics; the other that 1 have had to take various decisions and
perform acts that could neither be satisfactory to others, nor from the
doubt attaching to one side or the other of the alternative, even to
myself. To have been the occasion of the blow to the House of Commons, or
as I call it the "gigantic innovation," will be a grief to me as long as I
live; if by wildness and rashness I have been its cause, it will be a much
greater grief. Of that I am not yet able to judge. On the whole when I
think of the cabinet, I always go back to Jacob and Esau fighting in their
mother's womb; only here there have been many Jacobs and Esaus, by which I
do not mean the sixteen members of the cabinet, but the many and very
unhandy causes of division. Perhaps I should find it easiest in the work
of confession to own my neighbour's faults, _i.e._ to dwell upon those
strange sins of foreign policy which have happily for the most part been
nipped in the bud almost _a l'unanimite_ (yet with what exceptions!); but
avoiding that task, I will make my own confession. I cannot justify the
finance of the year as a whole.... As to the amount of the final demand
[for the China war], what it really demonstrates is _one_ among the
follies and dangers of our high-handed policy, our want of control over
proceedings at the other end of the world. But the weak point is the
fortification plan; I do not now speak of its own merits or demerits, but
I speak of it in relation to the budget.... It is a vile precedent to give
away money by remission, and borrow to supply the void; and in the full
and _chief_ responsibility for having established this precedent I a