Against the financial proposal Mr. Gladstone protested as warmly as
ever, though he declined to be a party to any farther resistance after fairly recording his vote against it, and the reason of that vote. He could find no precedent for such a vote in the case of any previous Conference held to close a war, and he declared that he had never heard of a precedent for it, or any rational justification for it. The arguments of the party oppo- site had been summed up in a parody on the Poet-Laureate's lines on the Balaklava Charge of the Six Hundred :—
is Ring out your battle-cry, Vote us this War-supply, This must we have, or die,—
Vote the Six Millions! Yours not to reason why, Ours not to make reply, Ours but to say, ' You lie !'- Vote the Six Millions !"
This, as Mr. Gladstone says, is a true and spirited summary of the reasons for the vote. And yet, like the famous Light Brigade, the Tories never faltered. And we might truly say of them, in the same language, " Was there a man dismayed ? Not though the Tories knew, some one had blundered." Even the discipline of the Light Brigade was not better than theirs.
