Three things seem to underpin his genius. The first is the economic policy. He understood that Peel was right to repeal the Corn Laws, and that by applying the principle of free trade more generally, Britain – then the workshop of the world – would become richer. This cast of mind found loud echoes in the north of England, notably in the Manchester liberalism of Cobden and Bright, from whom Gladstone borrowed much. What we now regard as the monuments of Victorian ambition – Manchester, Bradford or Leeds town halls, Joe Chamberlain's Birmingham, the Gothic revival buildings still to be seen all over London and other major cities – are monuments to Gladstone's vision. It was not just his belief in free trade: it was his recognition that a complicated structure of taxation could only impede prosperity. He understood what it would take monetarists another century to demonstrate again: that if you cut taxes, you raise more revenue, because of the provision of the incentive to work and take risks. The moral cowards who revere the memory of the mountebank Disraeli in the Tory Party today speak of his social improvement legislation between 1874 and 1880: they forget that the wealth required to provide it had been stimulated by the policies of Gladstone.