graduated Income Tax, which lurked in the distinction made between permanent and precarious incomes. He further protested against the danger of estimating too narrowly for the services of the year, and urged with incontestable force that it was a vicious principle to reckon as surplus revenue £400,000 of repayments on the score of local loans--that is to say, to regard the repayment of borrowed money as true income. The Government were beaten on their Budget, by a vote of 305 to 286, on the morning of the 17th of December.[68] In the evening Lord Derby handed his resignation to the Queen at Osborne. Her Majesty, fully aware of the reasons that rendered Lord John Russell an impossible Premier, now saw her way to organising the strong Government of capable and experienced statesmen which, ever since 1846, she had held could only be formed by a coalition of the Whigs and the Peelites. She accordingly summoned Lord Aberdeen and Lord Lansdowne to assist her out of the Ministerial crisis. Gout prevented Lord Lansdowne from attending at Osborne. His ill-health, together with his loyalty to Lord John Russell, and the disinclination of the Peelites to serve under him, rendered it impossible for him to accept the Premiership. It was equally impossible for the Queen to ask Lord Palmerston to become Prime Minister, after the recent events which had led to his dismissal from the Foreign Office. Hence Lord Aberdeen, though the head of the smallest faction, was the candidate for the Premiership who least divided the Opposition. He was therefore charged with the task of forming a Cabinet.[69] On the 28th of December the famous Coalition Ministry was organised--Lord Cranworth was Lord Chancellor; Lord Aberdeen, Prime Minister; Mr. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Palmerston, Home Secretary; Lord John Russell,[70] Foreign Secretary; the Duke of Newcastle, Colonial Secretary; Mr. Sidney Herbert, War Secretary; Sir J. Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty; Lord Granville, President of the Council; Sir C. Wood, President of the Board of Control; the Duke of Argyle, Lord Privy Seal; Sir W. Molesworth, Chief Commissioner of Works; the Marquis of Lansdowne, a Minister without office. “The success of our excellent Aberdeen’s arduous task,” writes the Queen to the King of the Belgians, “and the formation of so brilliant and strong a Cabinet would, I was sure, please you. It is the realisation of the country’s and our own most ardent wishes, and it deserves success, and will, I think, command support.”[71] The Queen here simply reflected public opinion. Never had a Cabinet of abler men, individually speaking, ruled England since the Ministry of “All the Talents” fell from power. But the Sovereign and her people both forgot that in our strange and anomalous constitution no Cabinet is, as a rule, so weak as a Cabinet of strong men. This Ministry, which started on its career on the flood-tide of Court and popular favour, was destined, by its vacillation in foreign