keen their hunger for office had grown. But that the Tory Party was disorganised through Mr. Disraeli’s unpopularity, and also because Lord Palmerston’s policy, though Liberal abroad, was really too Conservative at home to be successfully attacked, is clear from a letter which Lord Derby wrote to Lord Malmesbury on the prosperity of the Conservatives at the close of 1856.[294] Parliament was opened on the 3rd of February, 1857, and the Queen’s Speech naturally referred to the wars and rumours of war that filled the air. Law Reform and the Bank Act were the only subjects of domestic interest dwelt upon. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert now appeared almost anxious to join Lord Derby; and the Tories, on their part, were quite prepared to support Mr. Gladstone in demanding that the Income Tax be reduced to 5d. in the current year, and abolished altogether in 1860, as had been agreed on in 1853.[295] Mr. Disraeli’s attack, on the other hand, was directed against the Foreign Policy of the Government. He complained that at the very time Lord Clarendon was encouraging the hopes of Count Cavour and of Italy at the Congress of Paris, France had signed a Secret Treaty guaranteeing to Austria her Italian provinces, and had signed it by the advice of England. Lord Palmerston denied the existence of this Secret Treaty. But he admitted that in 1854, when there was some hope that Austria would take part in the war, an agreement was made to the effect that should Russia raise an insurrection in North Italy, France would help Austria to put it down, if Austrian armies were actually co-operating with the Allies against Russia. In the Upper House, Lord Aberdeen voted for the amendment to the Address with many of the Tories--a somewhat unusual thing for an ex-Premier to do--and this, along with Mr. Gladstone’s cordial support of Mr. Disraeli, was taken to be a sign that the Peelites desired to coalesce with the Opposition. Lord John Russell, who was a kind of political Ishmaelite, also spoke bitterly about the abortive demonstration of the fleet at Naples, which had drawn upon us insulting remonstrances, and had not coerced King Ferdinand into good behaviour. On the 17th of February Mr. Disraeli compelled Lord Palmerston to admit that “a military convention,” if not a Secret Treaty, between France and Austria _had_ been signed, but only as a temporary arrangement. When, however, Mr. Disraeli persisted in saying it was a Secret Treaty, and that on the face of it there was no limit to the period of its operation, Palmerston lost his temper, a circumstance so extraordinary that it convinced the House he had been again caught tripping. [Illustration: OLD WINDSOR LOCK. (_From a Photograph by Taunt and Co., Oxford._)]