GLADSTONE, William Ewart. 19647

£200

Description

Autograph Letter Signed, to J.Stuart-Wortley, referring to Stuart-Wortley’s scheme [for financing the Atlantic Cable] and the means for carrying out this enterprise. 3 pp. with the signature on the fourth page. 7 x 4½ inches, fine. Hawarden, 25 August 1865. A cautious enquiry about the ambitious project of the Atlantic Cable by William Ewart Gladstone (1809-98) who became Prime Minister 1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94. The Rt. Hon James Archibald Stuart-Wortley (1805-1881), who joined Peel’s second administration as Judge-Advocate-General and Lord Palmerston’s as Solicitor-General in 1857. “… I assumed that you had exhausted, before writing to me, all means & hope of obtaining the additional supplies you need from private means. Perhaps this was a hasty assumption. If it was an erroneous one, I think every measure should be tried for carrying on the enterprise by private means, whether before going to the U.S. Government or not you are the best judge, but at any rate before coming to the Cabinet here. …Yesterday or the day before I saw rather an awkward comment in a letter to the Times, in the opposition sense. But on this scientific & practical question, of course it would be our duty to take the best advice at our command & not to look for more conclusive evidence than the nature of the case admits.”