which produced the rupture between Peel and his party
have been more fully examined. For the present it is
sufficient to say that there was no department of states-
manship in which a breach was so likely to occur as that
of finance--a department which the circumstances of the
time required the minister to handle boldly, while his
own genius specially fitted him to handle it brilliantly.
The finance of the Whigs had been a lamentable failure.
Their foreign policy had increased expenditure, while
their attempts to increase the revenue were alike clumsy
and inadequate. They had established the penny post
without providing for the immediate loss of revenue
which it was certain to entail. In 1840 Baring, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, had attempted to restore
the equilibrium by a general increase of taxation with-
out readjustment of its incidence, and the attempt had
proved a failure. In the same year the celebrated
Committee on Imports had sat and reported, and the
effects of its report were seen in the abortive budget of
1841. The Whigs at last began to see that the pro-
tective system under which the commerce and industry
of the country groaned could no longer be maintained.
A fresh turn of the screw had been their only expedient
for raising revenue in 1840. In 1841 they determined
to try an experiment in relaxation. To the growing
agitation for the repeal of the corn laws they so far
yielded as to propose a moderate and fixed duty in lieu
of the sliding scale established in 1828, and they so far
profited by the teaching of the Imports Committee as
to recommend a large reduction in the protective and
differential duties on timber and sugar. But by this
time their course was run, and they were not even

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