"
It unquestionably established Gladstone as the foremost financier of
his day. Greville, in his "Memoirs," says of him: "He spoke for five
hours; and by universal consent it was one of the grandest displays and
most able financial statements that ever was heard in the House of
Commons; a great scheme, boldly and skillfully and honestly devised,
disdaining popular clamor and pressure from without, and the execution
of its absolute perfection."
We reproduce some extracts from this important speech: "Depend upon it,
when you come to close quarters with this subject, when you come to
measure and test the respective relations of intelligence and labor and
property in all their myriad and complex forms, and when you come to
represent those relations in arithmetical results, you are undertaking
an operation of which I should say it was beyond the power of man to
conduct it with satisfaction, but which, at any rate, is an operation to
which you ought not constantly to recur; for if, as my noble friend once
said with universal applause, this country could not bear a revolution
once a year, I will venture to say that it cannot bear a reconstruction
of the income tax once a year.
"Whatever you do in regard to the income tax, you must be bold, you must
be intelligible, you must be decisive.
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