and 7,000,000l. for the purchase of the telegraphs, there had been a reduction since the close of the Russian war of 38,000,000l. on the National Debt; in all, nearly 60,000,000l. applied to debt beyond the ordinary expenditure, met out of revenue in those thirteen years.

He remitted another penny of the income tax, halved the duty on sugar and molasses, and also remitted a number of minor duties, including that on the passenger receipts of railway companies, and hawkers' licences, as well as reducing the postage on newspapers and printed matter, which he described as the last relic of the old taxes on knowledge.'

In the most graphic manner he dealt with the advantages and disadvantages of direct and indirect taxation, and answered those who urged him to sweep away at once the income tax and resist the tea duty, by saying, 'Everybody should contribute, however small his contribution, to the revenue. We must look to taxation, not as with reference to this moment, but to the future. At present we are prosperous and at peace; but the indiscretion of a subordinate official; half a dozen glasses of wine too much, drunk by somebody in a responsible situation, the merest accident may involve us in trouble from which there is no refuge except in enormous outlay.'

So far, Robert Lowe's career as Chancellor of the Exchequer had been one of almost uniform success. If he had not displayed the unrivalled mastery over the details of our national accounts, and the vast departmental knowledge of Mr. Gladstone and his master Sir Robert Peel, he had done quite as well as Mr. Disraeli or any other Finance Minister, as Mr. Bagehot very pertinently reminded the latter. But

The painful warrior famousèd for fight,
After a thousand victories, once foiled,
Is from the book of honour razèd quite

And all the rest forgot for which he toiled.

Robert Lowe's third Budget was introduced April 20, 1871, and it showed a deficit of nearly 2,000,000l., mainly caused by

the increased expenditure on the army, due in great measure to the abolition of purchase. To meet this deficit, he proposed his ill-fated match tax, an increase in the probate and succession duties, and an increase of a 14d. in the income tax. The one thing that the general public seized upon and remember to this day was the match tax, which proved to be singularly impolitic, as it was the cause of bringing a very doleful gathering of girls and others engaged in this industry in the East End of London to the precincts of St. Stephen's, which, of course, effectually discounted any arguments that might have been used in favour of the tax. In Mr. Tollemache's Reminiscences of Lord Sherbrooke at the close of this volume will be found a reference to the match tax by Lord Aberdare, who was then a member of the Gladstone Cabinet. He not only states that the Cabinet were unanimous in thinking the tax an excellent one (which is quite in accord with Lord Sherbrooke's own assertion), but he states that the famous procession of match-makers had little or nothing to do with its abandonment. However that may be, it was abandoned, and to that extent damaged the reputation of Robert Lowe as a Finance Minister. After its abandonment, the late Mr. Stanley Jevons published a most interesting pamphlet entitled The Match Tax: a Problem in Finance, in which he maintained that it was free from any fundamental objection and was well fitted to draw a small contribution to the revenue from that large portion of the population exempted from direct taxation.

It was in the budget of this year that Mr. Lowe, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposed the match tax, which was received with such an indignant outcry by the press and the people that it was

Lowe's quickness of repartee did not desert him on the public platform. On one occasion he was enumerating the list of beneficial measures passed by the Liberal Government. Ah, yes the Match Tax!' shouted a voice from the crowd. No,' retorted Lowe, without a moment's hesitation, there my friend is mistaken; he is in the wrong. The Match Tax is one of those measures which we did not pass.'

abandoned. In time Mr. Jevons published a pamphlet-The Match Tax: a Problem in Finance-in which he calmly considered the most important objections raised to the tax, pointing out how many of them had been unreasonable, and proving that even to the very poor the match tax would have been less than one-third the burden which the shilling corn duty repealed in 1869 had been.1

Unfortunately Robert Lowe, in his attempt to cope with a coming deficit, had laid himself open to attack from both the masses and the classes: the match tax enraged the one, and the probate and succession duty disconcerted the other. Disraeli, therefore, as therefore, as became an astute leader of the Opposition (whose function it is to oppose), denounced both. Lowe's proposal with regard to the legacy and succession duties was to raise the scale on the nearest of kin; thus it was to rise from one to two per cent. for lineals, and from three to three and a half per cent. for brothers, and from three and a half per cent. to five per cent. for first cousins or descendants of the same grandfather. Of course the wealthy Liberals sitting behind Mr. Lowe cheered Disraeli's attack on this scheme with great heartiness, the result being that it had to be withdrawn. Yet it was an admirable proposal, inasmuch as it was a tax in no way disturbing to trade, and in no wise affecting the thrift or industry of the people. Lowe had, indeed, given much thought and time to this Budget, and the opposition that it met with was not the least of his disappointments. The consequence was that the match tax (though it had in the first instance been agreed to by the House) and the legacy and succession duties were abandoned; following which, in the rough and ready way of our homespun legislation, the income tax was raised from 14d. to 2d., and a carefully prepared and well-thought-out Budget practically destroyed.

Robert Lowe's fourth and last Budget was introduced on April 25, 1872, and was a pronounced success, showing as it

'Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons. Edited by his Wife. (Macmillan.)

VOL. II.

BB

did a surplus of three millions and a half, which enabled him to remove the extra 2d. of income tax which he had been compelled to impose in 1871. He also exempted from inhabited house tax, shops, offices and warehouses, reduced the duty on coffee and chicory about one-half, and in the matter of the income tax extended the principle of abatement in respect of incomes from 200l. to 300l. a year, and increased the amount to be deducted from the assessment from 601. to 801.

'The Budget was generally thought to be simple and felicitous, showing judicious finance, a sound fiscal system, and a just regard for the interests of the people.'1

Taking these four Budgets, it may be doubted if any Chancellor of the Exchequer ever gave a more straightforward or, on the whole, a more successful account of the finances of the kingdom. It will be seen, too, that in at least three of the years, Lowe's management of those finances met with very general commendation; but the man in the street and, one regrets to say, the newspaper which he reads-remembers only the match tax.

In a speech delivered at Sheffield in defence of the Liberal Government, on September 4, 1873, Robert Lowe himself took up the challenge and met the mass of loose accusations in the press and elsewhere by declaring that the finances of the country had been managed and husbanded so as to permit of 3,600,000l. of special claims being paid off without borrowing a sixpence or imposing a tax. Despite a great reduction in the expenditure, the army had been increased by 14,000 men, nor, as his expenditure on the British Museum and the National Gallery showed, had he been niggardly in those matters where a great nation should be wisely lavish. None of these statements can be controverted; and that being the case, the match tax notwithstanding, there is a hope that Robert Lowe may yet receive some measure of tardy justice for his 1 Annals of Our Time. By Joseph Irving. (Macmillan.)

arduous and anxious and on the whole successful labours as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

His own amusing lines, written in 1876 after his retirement

from office, are, however, the best epitaph :

Four Years' Work of a Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Twelve millions of Taxes I struck off,

Left behind me six millions of gains;
Of Debt forty millions I shook off,
And got well abused for my pains.

There is one charge persistently made against Lord Sherbrooke while at the Treasury with regard to his treatment of deputations. It has been repeatedly declared that he was unnecessarily brusque and often rude and insulting to those who called upon him for the purpose of bringing grievances under his notice, or with a view of enlisting his support and sympathy for various causes. It will be remembered that Lord Sherbrooke himself, in his Autobiography, admits that he really felt his deficient eyesight to be a very serious drawback at this time. He who has to refuse many things to many men,' he wrote, 'has need to exert some counteracting power to neutralise the offence which, if he does his duty, he is pretty sure to give.' At the same time he points out how extremely difficult this was to one who was practically unable to discern the faces of his fellows, and who, as a public man, was frequently compelled to hold a conversation with those whom he could not even recognise. I could not,' he writes, conciliate either my victims or my antagonists, because I could not find them.'

Most of the stories current with regard to Lord Sherbrooke's alleged brusquerie might well be passed over unnoticed; they are generally the mere irrepressible chatter that gets into print, having no relevancy or foundation in fact whatever.

The truth of the matter is that Lord Sherbrooke, though one of the kindest-hearted men in the world, was born with the true Socratic bent, than which there can be nothing more irritating to the ordinary muddle-headed citizen. As Sir