We come now to another memorable period in the life of William E. Gladstone. This period, beginning with 1840, has been styled "a memorable decade" in the history of Parliament. His marriage and the publication of his first book were great events in his eventful life, but the young and brilliant statesman was soon to enter the British Cabinet. He was before long to demonstrate that he not only possessed the arts of the fluent and vigorous Parliamentary debater, but the more solid qualities pertaining to the practical statesman and financier. In following his course we will be led to observe the early stages of his changing opinions on great questions of State, and to trace the causes which led to his present advanced views as well as to his exalted position. The estimation in which he was then held may be indicated by the following, from one of his contemporaries, Sir Stafford Northcote, afterwards Lord Iddesleigh, and who subsequently succeeded him as leader of the House of Commons: "There is but one statesman of the present day in whom I feel entire confidence, and with whom I cordially agree, and that statesman is Mr. Gladstone. I look upon him as the representative of the party, scarcely developed as yet, though secretly forming and strengthening, which will stand by all that is dear and sacred in my estimation, in the struggle which I believe will come ere very long between good and evil, order and disorder, the Church and the world, and I see a very small band collecting round him, and ready to fight manfully under his leading." In 1840 Mr. Gladstone crossed swords with the distinguished historian and Parliamentary debater, Lord Macaulay, in debate in the House of Commons on the relations of England with China. The speech of Mr. Gladstone was remarkable for its eloquent expression of anxiety that the arms of England should never be employed in unrighteous enterprises. Sir James Graham moved a vote of censure of the ministry for "want of foresight and precaution," and "especially their neglect to furnish the superintendent at Canton with powers and instructions calculated to provide against the growing evils connected with the contraband traffic in opium, and adapted to the novel and difficult situation in which the superintendent was placed." Mr. Gladstone, on the 8th of April, spoke strongly in favor of the motion, and said if it failed to involve the ministry in condemnation they would still be called upon to show cause for their intention of making war upon China. Answering the speech of Lord Macaulay of the previous evening, Mr. Gladstone said: "The right honorable gentleman opposite spoke last night in eloquent terms of the British flag waving in glory at Canton, and of the animating effects produced on the minds of our sailors by the knowledge that in no country under heaven was it permitted to be insulted. But how comes it to pass that the sight of that flag always raises the spirit of Englishmen? It is because it has always been associated with the cause of justice, with opposition to oppression, with respect to national rights, with honorable commercial enterprises; but now, under the auspices of the noble lord, that flag is hoisted to protect an infamous contraband traffic, and if it were never to be hoisted except as it is now hoisted on the coast of China, we should recoil from its sight with horror, and should never again feel our hearts thrill, as they now thrill with emotion, when it floats proudly and magnificently on the breeze." The ministry escaped censure when the vote was taken by a bare majority. In the summer of 1840 Mr. Gladstone, accompanied by Lord Lyttleton, went to Eton to examine candidates of the Newcastle Scholarship, founded by his political friend, the Duke of Newcastle. Mr. Gladstone had the pleasure in this examination of awarding the Newcastle medal to Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam, the youngest brother of his own beloved friend and son of the historian Hallam. One of the scholars he examined writes: "I have a vivid and delightful impression of Mr. Gladstone sitting in what was then called the library, on an estrade on which the head master habitually sate, above which was placed, about 1840, the bust of the Duke of Newcastle and the names of the Newcastle scholars.... When he gave me a Virgil and asked me to translate Georg. ii, 475, seq., I was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful eye turning on me with the question, 'What is the meaning of sacra fero?' and his look of approval when I said, 'Carry the sacred vessels in the procession.'" "I wish you to understand that Mr. Gladstone appeared not to me only, but to others, as a gentleman wholly unlike other examiners or school people. It was not as a politician that we admired him, but as a refined Churchman, deep also in political philosophy (so we conjectured from his quoting Burke on the Continual State retaining its identity though made up of passing individuals), deep also in lofty poetry, as we guessed from his giving us, as a theme for original Latin verse, 'the poet's eye in a fine frenzy,' etc. When he spoke to us in 'Pop' as an honorary member, we were charmed and affected emotionally: his voice was low and sweet, his manner was that of an elder cousin: he seemed to treat us with unaffected respect; and to be treated with respect by a man is the greatest delight for a boy. It was the golden time of 'retrograding transcendentalism,' as the hard-heads called the Anglo-Catholic symphony. He seemed to me then an apostle of unworldly ardor, bridling his life." The Whig administration, which for some time had been growing very unpopular, was defeated and went out of power in 1841. From the very beginning of the session their overthrow was imminent. Among the causes which rendered the ministry obnoxious to the country, and led to their downfall, may be named the disappointment of both their dissenting English supporters and Irish allies; their financial policy had proved a complete failure and dissatisfied the nation; and the deficit in the revenue this year amounted to no less a sum than two millions and a half pounds. Every effort to remedy the financial difficulties offered by the ministry to the House was rejected, Hence it was felt on all sides that the government of the country must be committed to stronger hands. Accordingly, in May, Sir Robert Peel proposed a resolution in the House of Commons to the effect that the ministry did not possess sufficiently the confidence of the House to carry through measures deemed essential for the public welfare; and that their continuance in office was, under the circumstances, at variance with the Constitution, For five days this resolution was discussed, but Mr. Gladstone took no part in the debate. The motion of Sir Robert Peel passed by a majority vote of one, and on the 7th of June Lord John Russell announced that the ministry would at once dissolve Parliament and appeal to the country. Parliament was prorogued by the Queen in person June 22d, and the country was soon in the turmoil of a general election. By the end of July it was found that the ministry had been defeated and with greater loss than the Tories even had expected. The Tories had a great majority of the new members returned. The Liberal seats gained by the Tories were seventy-eight, while the Tory seats gained by Liberals were only thirty-eight, thus making a Tory majority of eighty. Mr. Gladstone was again elected at Newark, and was at the head of the poll; with Lord John Manners, afterwards Duke of Rutland, as his colleague. Illus0567 (110K) The new Parliament met in August, and the ministers were defeated, in both Houses, on the Address and resigned. Sir Robert Peel was called upon by the Queen to form a new ministry, and Mr. Gladstone was included by his leader in the administration. In appearing on the hustings at Newark Mr. Gladstone said that there were two points upon which the British farmer might rely—the first being that adequate protection would be given him, and, second, that protection would be given him through the means of the sliding scale. The duties were to be reduced and the system improved, but the principle was to be maintained. "There was no English statesman who could foresee at this period the results of that extraordinary agitation which, in the course of the next five years, was destined to secure the abrogation of the Corn Laws." There is a tradition that, having already conceived a lively interest in the ecclesiastical and agrarian problems of Ireland, Mr. Gladstone had set his affections on the Chief Secretaryship. But Sir Robert Peel, a consummate judge of administrative capacity, had discerned his young friend's financial aptitude, and the member for Newark became vice-president of the Board of Trade and master of the Mint. Although in the midst of engrossing cares of office as vice-president of the Board of Trade, yet Mr. Gladstone found time to renew his old interest in ecclesiastical concerns. In the fall of 1841 an English Episcopal Bishopric was established at Jerusalem, Mr. Gladstone dined with Baron Bunsen on the birthday of the King of Prussia, when, as reported by Lord Shaftesbury, he "stripped himself of a part of his Puseyite garments, spoke like a pious man, rejoiced in the bishopric of Jerusalem, and proposed the health of Alexander, the new Bishop of that see. This is delightful, for he is a good man, a clever man and an industrious man." And Baron Bunsen, speaking of the same occasion, said, "Never was heard a more exquisite speech, It flowed like a gentle, translucent stream. We drove back to town in the clearest starlight; Gladstone continuing with unabated animation to pour forth his harmonious thoughts in melodious tone." And Mr. Gladstone himself writes later; "Amidst public business, quite sufficient for a man of my compass, I have, during the whole of the week, perforce, been carrying on with the Bishop of London and with Bunsen a correspondence on, and inquisition into, the Jerusalem design, until I almost reel and stagger under it." And still later he writes: "I am ready individually to brave misconstruction for the sake of union with any Christian men, provided the terms of the union be not contrary to sound principle; and perhaps in this respect might go further, at least in one of the possible directions, than you. But to declare the living constitution of a Christian Church to be of secondary moment is of course in my view equivalent to a denial of a portion of the faith—and I think you will say it is a construction which can not fairly be put upon the design, as far as it exists in fixed rules and articles. It is one thing to attribute this in the way of unfavorable surmise, or as an apprehension of ultimate developments—it is another to publish it to the world as a character ostentatiously assumed." We have evidence also that at this time he was not permitted to forget that he was an author, for he thus writes, April 6, 1842, to his publisher: "Amidst the pressure of more urgent affairs, I have held no consultation with you regarding my books and the sale or no sale of them. As to the third edition of the 'State in its Relations,' I should think that the remaining copies had better be got rid of in whatever summary or ignominious mode you may deem best. They must be dead beyond recall. As to the others, I do not know whether the season of the year has at all revived the demand; and would suggest to you whether it would be well to advertise them a little. I do not think they find their way much into the second-hand shops. With regard to the fourth edition, I do not know whether it would be well to procure any review or notice of it, and I am not a fair judge of its merits, even in comparison with the original form of the work; but my idea is that it is less defective, both in the theoretical and in the historical development, and ought to be worth the notice of those who deemed the earlier editions worth their notice and purchase; that it would really put a reader in possession of the view it was intended to convey, which I fear is more than can with any truth be said of its predecessors. I am not, however, in any state of anxiety or impatience; and I am chiefly moved to refer these suggestions to your judgment from perceiving that the fourth edition is as yet far from having cleared itself." It was from this time that a marked change was observable in the subjects of Mr. Gladstone's Parliamentary addresses. "Instead of speaking on the corporate conscience of the State and the endowments of the Church, the importance of Christian education and the theological unfitness of the Jews to sit in Parliament, he was solving business-like problems about foreign tariffs and the exportation of machinery; waxing eloquent over the regulation of railways and a graduated tax on corn; subtle on the momentary merits of half-farthings and great in the mysterious lore of quassia and cocculus indicus." In the short session of Parliament, in 1841, that which followed the accession of Sir Robert Peel to the office of Prime Minister, he was questioned by his opponents as to his future policy. The Premier declined to state the nature of the measures he intended to present, or which he contemplated making, in the intervening months of the recess of Parliament so near at hand. He wanted time for the arrangement of his plans and the construction of his political programme. An effort was made to embarrass the administration by refusing to vote the necessary supplies, until inquiry should be made into the existing distress, but it was defeated. Three weeks later Parliament was dissolved by Royal commission. In the following sitting of Parliament several measures of high practical character were presented. Sir Robert Peel acceded to office in very critical times. The condition of the country was truly lamentable. Distress and discontent were widespread and the difficulties of the government were greatly enhanced by popular tumults. The Free Trade agitation was already making great headway in the land, and when the Premier brought forward his new sliding scale of duties in the House of Commons it was denounced by Mr. Cobden as an insult to a suffering people. The Premier said that he considered the present not an unfavorable time for discussing the corn laws; that there was no great stock on hand of foreign growth to alarm the farmers; that the recess had been marked by universal calm; that there was no popular violence to interrupt legislation; and that there was a disposition to view any proposal for the adjustment of the question with calmness and moderation. The Premier's view of the situation did not seem to be wholly in accord with the well-known facts, for the Queen even, on her appearance at the London theatres, had been hooted, and the Prime Minister himself was burnt in effigy during a riot at Northampton; great excitement prevailed throughout the country, and Lord John Russell moved as an amendment "That this House, considering the evils which have been caused by the present corn laws and especially by the fluctuation of the graduated or sliding scale, is not prepared to adopt the measure of her Majesty's government, which is founded on the same principles and is likely to be attended by similar results." It was incumbent upon Mr. Gladstone to lead the opposition to this motion. He showed that the proposed plan was not founded on the same principle of the existing one, except that both involved a sliding scale; that the present distress was caused by fluctuation of the seasons and not by the laws; that high prices of food were chargeable to successive failures of the crops; that these unavoidable fluctuations were not aggravated by the corn laws; that Sir Robert Peel's plan of working was far superior to that of Lord John Russell; that the drains upon the currency, caused by bad harvests, were not to be prevented by a fixed duty; that a uniform protection could not be given to corn, as to other articles, because at high prices of corn no duty could be maintained, and that, therefore, at low prices, it was but just to give a duty which would be an effectual protection. The debate which followed was characterized by vigorous speeches from Mr. Roebuck and Lord Palmerston. Lord John Russell's amendment was lost by a large majority. A motion presented by Mr. Villiers, the Free Trade advocate, for the immediate repeal of the corn laws was also lost by a majority of over three hundred. On the 11th of March Sir Robert Peel introduced his budget. The budget for 1842 was produced under depressing circumstances. There was a deficit of £2,750,000, or about $15,000,000, and taxation upon articles of consumption had been pushed to its utmost limit. Peel was a great financier, but the fiscal difficulties by which he was now surrounded were enough to appall the most ingenious of financial ministers. Mr. Gladstone rendered the Premier invaluable service in the preparation both of his budget and of his tariff scheme. The merit of the budget was its taxation of wealth and the relief of the manufacturing industry. The second branch of the financial plan, the revised tariff—a customs duties scheme—was very important, and it was understood to be mainly the work of Mr. Gladstone. Out of nearly 1200 duty-paying articles, a total abolition, or a considerable reduction, was made in no fewer than 750. This was certainly a great step towards the freedom of manufacturers, Sir Robert Peel's boast that he had endeavored to relieve manufacturing industries was more than justified by this great and comprehensive measure. The very best means for relieving the manufacturing industries had been devised. But while this great relief to industry was welcomed the Opposition did not relax their efforts for the abolition of the corn laws, which were continued into the session of 1843. Sir Robert Peel acknowledged, amidst loud cheers from the Opposition, that all were agreed in the general rule that we should purchase in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest; but he added, "If I propose a greater change in the corn laws than that which I submit to the consideration of the House I should only aggravate the distress of the country, and only increase the alarm which prevails among important interests." Mr. Hume hailed with joy the appearance of the Premier and his colleagues as converts to the principles of Free Trade; Mr. Gladstone replied, that, whoever were the authors of the principles on which the government measures rested, he must protest against the statement that the ministry came forward as converts to principles which they had formerly opposed. During the progress of the debate of 1842, on the revised Tariff Bill, Mr. Gladstone's labors were very great. He was called upon to explain or defend the details of the scheme, and had something to say about every article of consumption included in, or excluded from, the list. He spoke one hundred and twenty-nine times, chiefly on themes connected with the new fiscal legislature. He demonstrated his capacity for grasping all the most complicated details of finance, and also the power of comprehending the scope and necessities of the commercial interests of the country. No measure with which his name has since been connected has done him more credit. He spoke incessantly, and amazed the House by his mastery of details, his intimate acquaintance with the commercial needs of the country, and his inexhaustible power of exposition. On March 14th Greville wrote, "Gladstone has already displayed a capacity which makes his admission into the Cabinet indispensable." A commercial minister had appeared on the scene, and the shade of Hoskisson had revived. Though engrossed in schemes of practical legislation, and in all the excitements and interests of office, he could, as he has ever done during his long career, turn aside for the discourse on social and educational questions with much earnestness and eloquence, as if they, and only they, possessed his mind. In January, 1843, he spoke at the opening of the Collegiate Institute of Liverpool, and delivered a powerful plea for the better education of the middle classes, which was one of the most forcible speeches he ever delivered. He said: "We believe that if you could erect a system which should present to mankind all branches of knowledge save the one that is essential, you would only be building up a Tower of Babel, which, when you had completed it, would be the more signal in its fall, and which would bury those who had raised it in its ruins. We believe that if you can take a human being in his youth, and if you can make him an accomplished man in natural philosophy, in mathematics, or in the knowledge necessary for the profession of a merchant, a lawyer, or a physician; that if in any or all of these endowments you could form his mind—yes, if you could endow him with the science and power of a Newton, and so send him forth—and if you had concealed from him, or, rather, had not given him a knowledge and love of the Christian faith—he would go forth into the world, able indeed with reference to those purposes of science, successful with the accumulation of wealth for the multiplication of more, but 'poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked' with reference to everything that constitutes the true and sovereign purposes of our existence—nay, worse, worse—with respect to the sovereign purpose— than if he had still remained in the ignorance which we all commiserate, and which it is the object of this institution to assist in removing." It was admitted on all hands that great fiscal reforms had been conceived and executed; and speaking of the session of 1842, a writer, not favorable to the Tories, wrote: "The nation saw and felt that its business was understood and accomplished, and the House of Commons was no longer like a sleeper under a nightmare. The long session was a busy one. The Queen wore a cheerful air when she thanked Parliament for their effectual labors. The Opposition was such as could no longer impede the operations of the next session. The condition of the country was fearful enough, but something was done for its future improvement, and the way was now shown to be open for further beneficent legislation." The corn law reformers renewed their efforts, led by Lord Howick, as soon as the parliamentary session of 1843 opened. An inquiry by the whole House was demanded into the causes of the long continued manufacturing depression referred to in the Queen's speech. Mr. Gladstone replied that while the Opposition proposed to repeal the corn laws, they offered no measure of relief in their place. The corn laws were at the root of the distress in the country, but the difficulty was to unite the ranks of the Opposition in opinion as to what ought to follow the repeal of the corn laws. The question between the government and the Opposition was not really so great as the latter wished to make out. It was simply as to the amount of relaxation the country could bear in the duties. It was the intention of the First Lord of the Treasury to attain his object "by increasing the employment of the people, by cheapening the prices of the articles of consumption, as also the articles of industry, by encouraging the means of exchange with foreign nations, and thereby encouraging in return an extension of the export trade; but besides all this, if he understood the measure of the government last year, it was proposed that the relaxation should be practically so limited as to cause no violent shock to existing interests, such as would have the tendency of displacing that labor which should be employed, and which, if displaced, would be unable to find another field." The measure of the previous year had nothing but a beneficial effect, but the repeal of the corn laws would displace a vast mass of labor. Lord Howick's motion was defeated and so were others offered by Mr. Villiers and Lord John Russell, by diminishing majorities, and Mr. Gladstone protested against the constant renewal of uneasiness in the country by successive motions of this kind in Parliament. The year 1843 was one destined to witness a great advance in Mr. Gladstone's progress towards the front rank among statesmen. June 10th, Lord Ripon, who was President of the Board of Trade, left this place for the Board of Control, and Mr. Gladstone was appointed to the position, and thus became a member of the Cabinet at the age of thirty-three Mr. Gladstone now became in name what he had been already in fact—the President of the Board of Trade. He states that "the very first opinion which he was ever called upon to give in Cabinet" was an opinion in favor of withdrawing the bill providing education for children in factories; to which vehement opposition was offered by the Dissenters, on the ground that it was too favorable to the Established Church. It seemed that his position was assured and yet in October he wrote to a friend: "Uneasy, in my opinion, must be the position of every member of Parliament who thinks independently in these times, or in any that are likely to succeed them; and in proportion as a man's course of thought deviates from the ordinary lines his seat must less and less resemble a bed of roses." Mr. Gladstone possibly felt when he penned these lines that the time was at hand when his convictions would force him to take a position that would array against him some of his most ardent friends. During the session of 1844 Mr. Gladstone addressed the House on a variety of subjects, including rail ways, the law of partnership, the agricultural interest, the abolition of the corn laws, the Dissenters' Chapel Bill and the sugar duties. One very valuable bill he had carried was a measure for the abolition of restrictions on the exportation of machinery. Another was the railway bill, to improve the railway system, by which the Board of Trade had conditional power to purchase railways which had not adopted a revised scale of tolls. The bill also compulsorily provided for at least one third-class train per week-day upon every line of railway, to charge but one penny a mile, regulated the speed of traveling, compelled such trains to stop at every station, and arranged for the carrying of children under three years of age for nothing and those under twelve at reduced fares. This measure, conceived so distinctly in the interests of the poorer classes, met with considerable opposition at first from the various railway companies, but it was ultimately passed into law. These were measures passed in the spirit of reform, though by a Conservative government. There was another matter legislated upon which shows how Mr. Gladstone's mind was undergoing changes in the direction of religious toleration. Lady Hewley had originally founded and given to Calvinistic Independents certain charities which had gradually passed to Unitarians, who were ousted from their benefits. A bill was proposed to vest property left to Dissenting bodies in the hands of that religions body with whom it had remained for the preceding twenty years. The measure was passed, but when it was discussed in the House of Commons Mr. Gladstone said that it was a bill which it was incumbent upon the House to endorse; that there was no contrariety between his principles of religious belief and those on which legislation in this case ought to proceed; that there was a great question of justice, viz., whether those who were called Presbyterian Dissenters, and who were a century and a half ago of Trinitarian opinions, ought not to be protected at the present moment in possession of the chapels which they held, with the appurtenances of those chapels? On the question of substantial justice he pronounced the strongest affirmative opinion. "After this speech there were those who thought, and expressed their hope and belief in words, that the 'champion of Free Trade' would ere long become the advocate of the most unrestricted liberty in matters of religion. Their hope, if sanguine as to its immediate fulfillment, was far from groundless." However, in December of the same year Mr. Gladstone wrote to his friend Archdeacon, afterwards Bishop Wilberforce, about the prospects of the Church of England: "I rejoice to see that your views on the whole are hopeful. For my part I heartily go along with you. The fabric consolidates itself more and more, even while the earthquake rocks it; for, with a thousand drawbacks and deductions, love grows larger, zeal warmer, truth firmer among us. It makes the mind sad to speculate upon the question how much better all might have been; but our mourning should be turned into joy and thankfulness when we think also how much worse it was." The next event in the life of Mr. Gladstone is marked by a momentous change in his political position. Scarcely had Parliament met in January, 1845, when it was announced to the astonishment of everyone that Mr. Gladstone had resigned his place as President of the Board of Trade in the Cabinet. He set a good deal of speculation at rest by the announcement made in his speech on the address of the Queen, that his resignation was due solely to the government intentions with regard to Maynooth College. Before, however, he had resigned, Mr. Gladstone had completed a second and revised tariff, carrying further the principles of the revision of 1842. In the session of 1844 Sir Robert Peel, in response to the requests of Irish members, had promised that the Government would take up the question of academical education in Ireland, with the view of bringing it more nearly to the standard of England and Scotland, increasing its amount and improving its quality. In fulfillment of this pledge the government, at the beginning of the session of 1845, proposed to establish non-sectarian colleges in Ireland, and to increase the appropriation to Maynooth. The College of Maynooth, which was established for the education of Roman Catholic priests and laymen, had fallen into poverty and decay. In order to gratify the Irish, the government offered to increase the grant already made from $45,000 to $150,000 a year. This appropriation was not to be subject to any annual vote, and the affairs of the College were to be executed by the Board of Works. These proposals placed Mr. Gladstone in a position of great difficulty. He must either support Sir Robert Peel's measure, or retire from the Cabinet into isolation, if not subject to the imputation of eccentricity. He took council with his friends, Archdeacon Manning and Mr. Hope, who advised him to remain, and with Lord Stanley who warned him that his resignation must be followed by resistance of the proposals of the government, which would involve him in a storm of religious agitation. But Mr. Gladstone persisted in his intention, in what seemed like giving up his brilliant prospects, but said it would not necessarily be followed by resistance to the proposal about Maynooth. Mr. Gladstone said that the proposed increase in the Maynooth endowment and the establishment of non-sectarian colleges were at variance with views he had written and uttered upon the relations of the Church and State. "I am sensible how fallible my judgment is," said Mr. Gladstone, "and how easily I might have erred; but still it has been my conviction that although I was not to fetter my judgment as a member of Parliament by a reference to abstract theories, yet, on the other hand, it was absolutely due to the public and due to myself that I should, so far as in me lay, place myself in a position to form an opinion upon a matter of so great importance, that should not only be actually free from all bias or leaning with respect to any consideration whatsoever, but an opinion that should be unsuspected. On that account I have taken a course most painful to myself in respect to personal feelings, and have separated myself from men with whom and under whom I have long acted in public life, and of whom I am bound to say, although I have now no longer the honor of serving my most gracious Sovereign, that I continue to regard them with unaltered sentiments both of public regard and private attachment." Then again he said: "My whole purpose was to place myself in a position in which I should be free to consider any course without being liable to any just suspicion on the ground of personal interest. It is not profane if I now say, 'with a great price obtained I this freedom.' The political association in which I stood was to me at the time the alpha and omega of public life. The government of Sir Robert Peel was believed to be of immovable strength. My place, as President of the Board of Trade, was at the very kernel of its most interesting operations; for it was in progress from year to year, with continually waxing courage, towards the emancipation of industry, and therein towards the accomplishment of another great and blessed work of public justice. Giving up what I highly prized, aware that male sarta I felt myself open to the charge of being opinionated and wanting in deference to really great authorities, and I could not but know that I should inevitably be regarded as fastidious and fanciful, fitter for a dreamer, or possibly a schoolman, than for the active purposes of public life in a busy and moving age." There were some of his party angry and others who thought that there was something almost Quixotic in Mr. Gladstone's honorable resignation, because so soon as he felt himself free he gave his support to the Maynooth Bill and also to the scheme for the extension of academical education in Ireland, which latter was described by Sir R. Inglis as a "gigantic scheme of godless education." In Greville's "Memoirs" we find: "Gladstone's explanation is ludicrous. Everybody said that he had only succeeded in showing that his resignation was unnecessary. He was criticised as the possessor of a kind of supernatural virtue that could scarcely be popular with the slaves of party, and he was considered whimsical, fantastic, impracticable, a man whose 'conscience was so tender that he could not go straight,' a visionary not to be relied on—in fact, a character and intellect useless to the political manager." "I am greatly alarmed at Gladstone's resignation. I fear it foretells measures opposed to the Church truth," wrote Wilberforce; and Peel told Gladstone beforehand that his reasons for his resignation would be considered insufficient. But Mr. Gladstone's resignation, when understood, elicited the liveliest expressions of regret from friend and foe, as well as the most flattering testimonies as to his ability and character. His chief, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord John Russell, the leader of the Opposition, were alike complimentary in their remarks. Dr. Russell, the biographer of Mr. Gladstone, says: "Mr. Gladstone's retirement, by impairing his reputation for common sense, threatened serious and lasting injury to his political career, But the whirligig of time brought its revenges even more swiftly than usual. A conjunction of events arose in which he was destined to repair the mischief which the speculative side had wrought; but for the moment the speculative side was uppermost." Mr. Gladstone was fast leaving his Toryism behind. To show how far his views had changed in the course of seven years, it may be said that in his speech on these measures he observed how that exclusive support to the Established Church was a doctrine that was being more and more abandoned. Mr. Burke considered it contrary to wise policy to give exclusive privileges to a negative creed like that of Protestantism. They could not prove their religious scruples for denying this grant to Roman Catholics, because they gave their votes of money to almost every Dissenting seat. He hoped the concession now made—which was a great and liberal gift, because unrestricted and given in a spirit of confidence—would not lead to the renewal of agitation in Ireland by Mr. O'Connell. It might be well for him to reflect that agitation was a two-edged sword. Being conformable to justice and not contrary to principle, he hoped the measure proposed would pass into a law. W.T. Stead, in a recent article, said, in relation to Mr. Gladstone's retirement from the Cabinet, that "It is ridiculous to pretend, with Mr. Gladstone's career before us, that his course has been swayed by calculating self-interest. He has been the very madman of politics from the point of view of Mr. Worldly Wiseman. 'No man,' said he, the other day, 'has ever committed suicide so often as I,' and that witness is true. The first and perhaps the most typical of all his many suicides was his resignation of his seat in Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet, not because he disapproved of the Maynooth Grant, but because, as he had at one time written against it, he was determined that his advocacy of it should be purged of the last taint of self-interest. As Mr. George Russell rightly remarks, 'This was an act of Parliamentary Quixotism too eccentric to be intelligible. It argued a fastidious sensitiveness of conscience, and a nice sense of political propriety so opposed to the sordid selfishness and unblushing tergiversation of the ordinary place-hunter as to be almost offensive.' But as Mr. Gladstone was then, so he has been all his life—the very Quixote of conscience. Judged by every standard of human probability, he has ruined himself over and over and over again. He is always ruining himself, and always rising, like the Phoenix, in renewed youth from the ashes of his funeral pyre. As was said in homely phrase some years ago, he 'always keeps bobbing up again.' What is the secret of this wonderful capacity of revival? How is it that Mr. Gladstone seems to find even his blunders help him, and the affirmation of principles that seem to be destructive to all chance of the success of his policy absolutely helps him to its realization?" From a merely human standpoint it is inexplicable. But
then the mystery is not so insolvable. He believed in the higher powers. He never shrank from putting his faith to the test; and on the whole, who can deny that for his country and for himself he has reason to rejoice in the verification of his working hypothesis? 'We walk by faith and not by sight,' he said once; 'and by no one so much as by those who are in politics is this necessary.' It is the evidence of things not seen, the eternal principles, the great invisible moral sanctions that men are wont to call the laws of God, which alone supply a safe guide through this mortal wilderness.
"Mr. Gladstone has never hesitated to counter at sharp right angles the passion and the fury of the day. Those who represent him as ever strong upon the strong side, wilfully shut their eyes to half his history. He challenged Lord Palmerston over the Don Pacifico question, and was believed to have wrecked himself almost as completely as when in 1876 he countered even more resolutely the fantastic Jingoism of Lord Beaconsfield. It is easy for those who come after and enter into the spoils gained by sacrifices of which they themselves were incapable to describe the Bulgarian agitation as an astute party move. The party did not think so. Its leaders did not think so. Some of those who now halloo loud enough behind Mr. Gladstone were then bitter enough in their complaint that he had wrecked his party. One at least, who was constrained to say the other thing in public, made up for it by bitter and contemptuous cavilings in private. Now it is easy to see that Lord Beaconsfield was mistaken and that Mr. Gladstone held the winning card all along. But no one knew it at the time when the card had to be played, certainly not Mr. Gladstone himself. He simply saw his duty a dead sure thing, and, like Jim Bludsoe on the burning boat, 'He went for it there and then.' It turned up trumps, but no one knew how heavy were the odds against it save those who went through the stress and the strain of that testing and trying time by his side." In the summer of 1845 Mr. Gladstone proposed to his intimate friend, Mr. J.R. Hope, that they should spend the month of September in a working tour in Ireland, giving evidence of his characteristic desire always to come in personal contact with any question that he had to discuss. He suggests "their eschewing all grandeur, and taking little account even of scenery, compared with the purpose of looking, from close quarters, at the institutions for religion and education of the country, and at the character of the people. It seems ridiculous to talk of supplying the defects of second-hand information by so short a trip; but although a longer time would be much better, yet even a very contracted one does much when it is added to an habitual, though indirect, knowledge." The projected trip, however, had to be abandoned. Towards the close of the year 1845 Mr. Gladstone issued a pamphlet entitled "Remarks upon recent Commercial Legislation," in which he not only discussed the salutary effects of the late commercial policy, but used arguments clearly showing that he was advancing to the position of a free-trader. His general conclusion was that English statesmen should use every effort to disburden of all charges, so far as the law was concerned, the materials of industry, and thus enable the workman to approach his work at home on better terms, as the terms in which he entered foreign markets were altered for the worse against him. While Mr. Gladstone was so willing to deal generously more than ever before with the Irish Roman Catholics, his confidence in the Established Episcopal Church of Ireland was growing less. "I am sorry," he wrote to Bishop Wilberforce, "to express my apprehension that the Irish Church is not in a large sense efficient; the working results of the last ten years have disappointed me. I may be answered, Have faith in the ordinance of God; but then I must see the seal and signature, and these, how can I separate from ecclesiastical descent? The title, in short, is questioned, and vehemently, not only by the Radicalism of the day, but by the Roman Bishops, who claim to hold succession of St. Patrick, and this claim has been alive all along from the Reformation, so that lapse of years does nothing against it." The name of Dr. DÖllinger, the distinguished reformed Roman Catholic, has been mentioned already in connection with that of Mr. Gladstone. In the fall of 1845 Mr. Gladstone went to Munich and paid his first visit to Dr. DÖllinger. For a week he remained in daily intercourse with this eminent divine, and the foundation was laid of a friendship which was sustained by repeated visits and correspondence, and which lasted until the doctor's death in 1890. In the winter of 1845 Mr. Gladstone met with a painful accident that resulted in a permanent injury to his hand. He was by no means what is termed a sportsman, yet he was somewhat fond of shooting. His gun was prematurely discharged while he was loading it, and shattered the first finger of his left hand, so that amputation was necessary. 213 (98K)
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