Mr. Gladstone's first great canvassing speech,—delivered on Monday at Warrington,—was
an exceedingly powerful attack on the Tory propensity to squander, and an exposure of the replies which the Tory organs have recently made to the censures of their critics. He showed that even when the Tory Government of 1858-9 had nominally reduced the income-tax to 5d., they had themselves received a larger amount, having received in the first half-year receipts belonging to the income-tax of 7d. of the pre- vious year,—that they raised the estimates greatly both in 1858 and 1859; that the Tory critics, though deducting the Abyssinian expenditure from the expenditure of 1868, had not deducted the expenditure for the Chinese war from the Liberal expenditure of 1860,-5,000,000/. He charged the Conservative Opposition with constantly urging on expenditure instead of resisting it, and said that three-fourths of the motions, questions, &c., tending to new expenditure have proceeded, during the last Parliament, from the Conservative benches. And he illus- trated the laxity of the Conservative Government by quoting a case in which the Liberal Government had refused to remit the claim for a loan of 20,000/, to a local authority, the greater part of which was remitted by the Conservatives directly they came into office,—the remission being made the ground of an appeal by a Conservative candidate for the political support of the borough. As a financial criticism on the recent Conservative proofs of the economy of the existing Government, and on its really spendthrift character, the speech was crushing.
