It is related as an evidence of the intense excitement, if not frenzy,
that prevailed at the time, that Mr. Gladstone met with indignity at his
Club. Greville, in his "Memoirs," says that, "twenty ruffians of the
Carleton Club" had given a dinner to Major Beresford, who had been
charged with bribery at the Derby election and had escaped with only a
censure, and that "after dinner, when they were drunk, they went up
stairs and finding Mr. Gladstone alone in the drawing-room, some of them
proposed to throw him out of the window. This they did not quite dare to
do, but contented themselves with giving some insulting message or order
to the waiter and then went away." Mr. Gladstone, however, remained a
member of the Club until he joined the Whig administration in 1859.
Mr. Gladstone's crushing _expose_ of the blunders of Mr. Disraeli's
budget was almost ludicrous in its completeness, and it was universally
felt that the scheme could not survive his brilliant attack. The effect
that the merciless criticism of Disraeli's budget was not only the
discomfiture of Mr. Disraeli and the overthrow of the Russell
administration, but the elevation of Mr. Gladstone to the place vacated
by Chancellor Disraeli.
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