A colleague once said about Gladstone, "The only two things which really interest him are Religion and Finance." The saying is much too unguarded, but it conveys a certain truth. My own opinion is that Finance was the field of intellectual effort in which his powers were most conspicuously displayed; and it was always remarked that, when he came to deal with the most prosaic details of national income and expenditure, his eloquence rose to an unusual height and power. At the same time, he was a most vigilant guardian of the public purse, and he was incessantly on the alert to prevent the national wealth, which his finance had done so much to increase, from being squandered on unnecessary and unprofitable objects. This jealousy of foolish expenditure combined with his love of peace to make him very chary of spending money on national defences. When he was Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Palmerston, his eagerness in this regard caused his chief to write to the Queen that "it would be better to lose Mr. Gladstone than to run the risk of losing Portsmouth or Plymouth." At the end of his career, his final retirement was precipitated by his reluctance to sanction a greatly increased expenditure on the Navy, which the Admiralty considered necessary. From first to last he sheltered himself under a dogma of his financial master--Sir Robert Peel--to the effect that it is possible for a nation, as for an individual, so to over-insure its property as to sacrifice its income. "My name," he said at the end, "stands in Europe as a symbol of the policy of peace, moderation, and non-aggression. What would be said of my active participation in a policy that will be taken as plunging England into the whirlpool of Militarism?" 4. ARBITRATION AND THE "ALABAMA." Gladstone's hatred of war, and his resolve to avoid it at all hazards unless national duty required it, determined his much criticized action in regard to the _Alabama_. That famous and ill-omened vessel was a privateer, built in an English dockyard and manned by an English crew, which during the American Civil War got out to sea, captured seventy Northern vessels, and did a vast deal of damage to the Navy and commerce of the Union. The Government of the United States had a just quarrel with England in this matter, and the controversy--not very skilfully handled on either side--dragged on till the two nations seemed to be on the edge of war. Then Gladstone agreed to submit the case to arbitration, and the arbitration resulted in a judgment hostile to England. From that time--1872--Gladstone's popularity rapidly declined, till it revived, after an interval of Lord Beaconsfield's rule, at the General Election of 1880. In the first Session of that Parliament, he vindicated the pacific policy which had been so severely criticized in the following words: