It was when the people were moodily pondering over the evil fate of England under the Government that was to have given it rest and prosperity, that Lord Beaconsfield’s opponents became unusually active. Mr. Gladstone reprinted his speech on Finance which he had delivered in Edinburgh in November (1879), and reminded the electors how Lord Beaconsfield, after promising to repeal the Income Tax in 1874, had raised it; how in bad times he had increased expenditure, whereas in good times the Liberals had reduced it; how he had imposed £6,000,000 more taxes than he remitted, whereas the Liberals remitted £12,500,000 more than they imposed; how he had transformed a surplus into a deficit, and kept on rolling up debt, instead of paying off the nation’s liabilities as they were incurred. There was a stroke of high art in publishing this sombre speech when the New Year opened. Sir Stafford Northcote had, at Leeds, essayed a mild and apologetic reply to it. Mr. Gladstone thus considered it necessary, when men were beginning to suspect that they were ruled by a Government of bad luck, to answer Sir Stafford in an appendix to the November speech, which tended to deepen the prevailing depression of spirits. Sir William Harcourt, in his New Year orations at Oxford, on the other hand, dealt with the Government from a comic point of view. He touched with caustic wit on their incongruities and inconsistencies, and by contrasting their swelling words with their small deeds, their affluence of promise with their poverty of performance, contrived to create an impression that Ministers were making the country the laughing-stock of the world. When Mr. Gladstone showed that the nation was being ruined, Sir William Harcourt immediately followed up by declaring, in speeches which everybody read, because they were amusing and personal, that it was being ruined by a group of mountebanks. To him succeeded Mr. Bright, who, at a Liberal banquet at Birmingham (20th of January), elaborately explained how that which had happened was only what might have been looked for. He exhibited, from the treasure-house of his memory, an interminable series of examples to illustrate one simple thesis. It was that the history of England had ever been a tragic conflict between the Spirits of Good and Evil--the Tory Party representing the Spirit of Evil. His political Manichæism would not have influenced the country if it had not been downhearted. Inasmuch as it manifestly affected public opinion, it ought to have warned Lord Beaconsfield that the people were out of humour with him. The Tories, however, had eyes and ears for nothing, save Sir William Harcourt’s jokes and gibes, and flouts and sneers. These were not highly refined or polished, but they were just what was wanted to make the average voter laugh at Imperialism. The Imperialists being sensitive, not to say short-tempered persons, instead of pleading their own case rationally before the country, spent their force in vituperative attacks on Sir William Harcourt. It was also the misfortune of Lord Beaconsfield, that at this juncture he became nervous over the growing hostility of the clergy of all denominations to his foreign policy, the tone of which they deemed anti-Christian.