them, as by other people, to the
government that protects them. Why should this burden be compulsorily laid
upon him? What is the quality of an endowment for a charitable purpose
that constitutes a valid claim for such a boon? Into this case Mr.
Gladstone threw himself with full force. The opposition to him was as
heated and as vigorous as he ever provoked, and the violence of the
resistance roused an answering vehemence in him. He speaks in his diary of
his "deadly encounter with the so-called charities." "I was endeavouring,"
he says, "to uphold the reality of truth and justice against their
superficial and flimsy appearances." "Spoke from 5.10 to 8.20, with all my
might, such as it was." This speech, with its fierce cogency and trenchant
reasoning, was counted by good judges who heard it, to be among the two or
three most powerful that he ever made, and even to-day it may be read with
the same sort of interest as we give to Turgot's famous disquisition on
Foundations. It turns a rude searchlight upon illusions about charity that
are all the more painful to dispel, because they often spring from pity
and from sympathy, not the commonest of human elements. It affects the
jurist, the economist, the moralist, the politician. The House was
profoundly impressed by both the argument and the performance, but the
clamour was too loud, all the idols of market-place and tribe were marched
out in high parade, and the proposal at last was dropped.

(M24) Though the idea of putting a tax on the income of charitable
endowments was rejected, the budget of 1863 was the record of a triumph
that was complete. The American civil war by arresting the supply of
cotton had half ruined Lancashire. The same cause had diminished the
export trade to America by six millions sterling. Three bad seasons
spoiled the crops. There was distress in Ireland. Yet the chancellor had a
revenue in excess of expenditure by the noble figure of three millions and
three quarters. Mr. Gladstone naturally took the opportunity of surveying
the effects of four years of his financial policy. He admitted that they
had been four years of tension, and this tension had been enhanced by his
large remissions of duty, and by taking in hand the completion of the
great work of commercial legislation. The end of it all was a growth of
wealth, as he called it, almost intoxicating. The value of British goods
sent to France had risen from four millions and three quarters to near