. He is unreasonable, as are all those who
expect more from life and the world than life and the world have to give.
Yet here at least the reformer has not failed. The efficacy of secret
voting is negative if we will, but it averts obvious mischiefs alike from
old privileged orders in states and churches and from new.

III

(M121) In finance the country looked for wonders. Ministers were called
the cabinet of financiers. The cabinet did, in fact, contain as many as
five men who were at one time or another chancellors of the exchequer, and
its chief was recognised through Europe as the most successful financier
of the age. No trailing cloud of glory, as in 1853 or 1860, attended the
great ministry, but sound and substantial results were achieved,
testifying to a thrifty and skilful management, such as might have
satisfied the ambition of a generation of chancellors. The head of the new
government promised retrenchment as soon as the government was formed. He
told his constituents at Greenwich (Dec. 21, 1868) that he was himself
responsible for having taken the earliest opportunity of directing the
public mind to the subject of expenditure at an opening stage of the late
election; for "although there may be times when the public mind may become
comparatively relaxed in regard to the general principles of economy and
thrift, it is the special duty of public men to watch the very beginnings
of evil in that department. It is a very easy thing to notice these
mischiefs when they have grown to a gigantic size; but it commonly happens
that when financial error has arisen to those dimensions, the case has
become too aggravated for a remedy." He reminded them of the addition that
had been made to the standing charges of the country in the ordinary and
steadily recurring annual estimates presented to parliament. He said that
he knew no reason why three millions should have been added during the two
years of tory government to the cost of our establishments:--

It is one thing, I am very well aware, to put on three millions;
it is another thing to take them off. When you put three millions
on to the public expenditure, you create a number of new
relations, a number of new offices, a number of new claims, a
number of new expectations. And you can't, and what is more, you
ought not to, destroy all these in a moment. And, therefore, the
work of retrenchment must be a well-considered and a gradual w