Note 69 — Chapter XIX · THE CONSERVATIVE REACTION.

To those who had the advantage of taking no personal interest in these transactions, Mr. Gladstone’s statement reads like the apology of a Minister who was “riding for a fall.” He was admittedly pledged to the House of Commons since 1853, to abolish the Income Tax when he had a sufficient surplus. Instead of redeeming his pledge in 1874 to the House, he took it to an electorate that had no existence in 1853, and who, even if they had been competent to the task, could not have given a fair decision on such a point in the turmoil of elections which seemed purposely hurried through in a few days. Mr. Gladstone, moreover, never defended his proposal at length. Had he really desired to carry it, he would have submitted it to Parliament—for the House of Lords, whose hostility he affected to dread, could not constitutionally have meddled with it—and then if, after exhaustive discussion in the Commons it had been defeated, he could have appealed to a nation sufficiently instructed by that discussion to pronounce a rational opinion on the question. As it was, the matter hardly entered into the election controversies of 1874 at all.