"My first statement to the Queen was, that, had I been a member of the House of Commons, I should have certainly supported the motion of Mr Disraeli.[C]... I stated that it would be impossible for me, as an honest man, to take office without a full determination to deal with that distress, and endeavour to apply to it, as a Minister, effective measures of relief." And yet again, with an explicitness defying all possibility of misapprehension--"I stated, that if I could so far forget myself as to sacrifice my honest convictions, the loss of honour which would be involved in such a course of procedure would make my services worse than valueless; ... that I would not take office on any other condition than that of endeavouring, _bonâ fide_, to give effect to my own conviction, of the necessity of legislating for that class [the agricultural] of her Majesty's subjects: _but I did not bind myself to any specific measure._" So much for Lord Stanley's explanation of what had passed between himself and the Queen. Now let us see the policy on which he would have acted with his Ministry; and he explained it with admirable straightforwardness, principally with reference to three great topics--the _Income Tax_, _Agricultural Distress_, and _Papal Aggression_. He began by saying, "I might, I think, have brought to a satisfactory issue two or three important questions, which appear to be the great stumbling-block of politicians at the present moment." _First_, then, of the INCOME TAX. "Take it as you will, levy it as you please, this is a tax which is full of anomalies and inconveniences, pressing variously upon different classes of the community, with a complicated injustice which no modification can altogether remove." He declared his conviction in strong terms, that if the House of Commons had not implicitly relied on Sir Robert Peel's pledge that the Income Tax was to last for only three years, "it would not have consented to the imposition of it for an hour; ... there was no man living who believed that it would." And he added, "I hold it to be an object, not only of vital importance, but one to which the faith of successive Ministers has been pledged, that the Income Tax should not be permitted to degenerate into a permanent tax." [B] HANSARD, (3d Series,) vol. cxiv., col. 998-9. [C] On Agricultural Distress, _ante_, p. 389.