FOOTNOTES:

The year 1833 was, as measured by quantity and in part by quality, a splendid year of legislation. In 1834 the Government and Lord Althorp far beyond all others did themselves high honour by the new Poor Law Act, which rescued the English peasantry from the total loss of their independence. Of the 658 members of Parliament about 480 must have been their general supporters. Much gratitude ought to have been felt for this great administration. But from a variety of causes, at the close of the session 1834 the House of Commons had fallen into a state of cold indifference about it.

He was himself destined one day to feel how soon parliamentary reaction may follow a sweeping popular triumph.

FOOTNOTES:[54]Henry James's Act (1883).[55]Thuc. i. 84, § 7.—'We should remember that man differs little from man, except that he turns out best who is trained in the sharpest school.'[56]Proposed by Sir R. Inglis and seconded by George Denison, afterwards the militant Archdeacon of Taunton. He was on the committee from 1834 to 1838, and he withdrew from the Club at the end of 1842.[57]Sadler is now not much more than a name, except to students of the history of social reform in England, known to some by a couple of articles of Macaulay's, written in that great man's least worthy and least agreeable style, and by the fact that Macaulay beat him at Leeds in 1832. But he deserves our honourable recollection on the ground mentioned by Mr. Gladstone, as a man of indefatigable and effective zeal in one of the best of causes.[58]Memoir of Althorp, p. 471.[59]Lord George Bentinck, chapter xviii. p. 324.[60]Report of an interview with Mr. Gladstone in 1890, inScottish Liberal, May 2, 9, etc., 1890.[61]Daniel Whittle Harvey was an eloquent member of parliament whom the benchers of his inn refused to call to the bar, on the ground of certain charges against his probity. The House appointed a committee of which Mr. Gladstone was a member to inquire into these charges. O'Connell was chairman, and they acquitted Harvey, without however affecting the decision of the benchers. Mr. Gladstone was the only member of the committee who did not concur in its final judgment. See his article on Daniel O'Connell in theNineteenth Century, Jan. 1889.[62]See Cobbett'sLifeby Edward Smith, ii. p. 287. Attwood of Birmingham seems to have voted for the motion.

[54]Henry James's Act (1883).

[55]Thuc. i. 84, § 7.—'We should remember that man differs little from man, except that he turns out best who is trained in the sharpest school.'

[56]Proposed by Sir R. Inglis and seconded by George Denison, afterwards the militant Archdeacon of Taunton. He was on the committee from 1834 to 1838, and he withdrew from the Club at the end of 1842.

[57]Sadler is now not much more than a name, except to students of the history of social reform in England, known to some by a couple of articles of Macaulay's, written in that great man's least worthy and least agreeable style, and by the fact that Macaulay beat him at Leeds in 1832. But he deserves our honourable recollection on the ground mentioned by Mr. Gladstone, as a man of indefatigable and effective zeal in one of the best of causes.

[58]Memoir of Althorp, p. 471.

[59]Lord George Bentinck, chapter xviii. p. 324.

[60]Report of an interview with Mr. Gladstone in 1890, inScottish Liberal, May 2, 9, etc., 1890.

[61]Daniel Whittle Harvey was an eloquent member of parliament whom the benchers of his inn refused to call to the bar, on the ground of certain charges against his probity. The House appointed a committee of which Mr. Gladstone was a member to inquire into these charges. O'Connell was chairman, and they acquitted Harvey, without however affecting the decision of the benchers. Mr. Gladstone was the only member of the committee who did not concur in its final judgment. See his article on Daniel O'Connell in theNineteenth Century, Jan. 1889.

[62]See Cobbett'sLifeby Edward Smith, ii. p. 287. Attwood of Birmingham seems to have voted for the motion.

ToC

THE NEW CONSERVATISM AND OFFICE

(1834-1845)

I consider the Reform bill a final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question.... If by adopting the spirit of the Reform bill it be meant that we are to live in a perpetual vortex of agitation; that public men can only support themselves in public estimation by adopting every popular impression of the day, by promising the instant redress of anything that anybody may call an abuse ... I will not undertake to adopt it. But if the spirit of the Reform bill implies merely a careful review of institutions civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper, the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances, then, etc. etc.—Peel(Tamworth Address).

MISCELLANEOUS READING

The autumn of 1834 was spent at Fasque. An observant eye followed political affairs, but hardly a word is said about them in the diary. A stiff battle was kept up against electioneering iniquities at Newark. Riding, boating, shooting were Mr. Gladstone's pastimes in the day; billiards, singing, backgammon, and a rubber in the evening. Sport was not without compunction which might well, in an age that counts itself humane, be expected to come oftener. 'Had to kill a wounded partridge,' he records, 'and felt after it as if I had shot the albatross. It might be said: This should be more or less.' And that was true. He was always a great walker. He walked from Montrose, some thirteen or fourteen miles off, in two hours and three quarters, and another time he does six miles in seventy minutes. Nor does he ever walk with an unobserving mind. At Lochnagar: 'Saw Highland women from Strathspey coming down for harvest with heavy loads, some with babies, over these wild rough paths through wind and storm. Ah, with what labour does a large portion of mankind subsist, while we faresumptuously every day!' This was the ready susceptibility to humane impression in the common circumstance of life, the eye stirring the emotions of the feeling heart, that nourished in him the soul of true oratory, to say nothing of feeding the roots of statesmanship. His bookmindedness is unabated. He began with a resolution to work at least two hours every morning before breakfast, and the resolution seems to have been manfully kept, without prejudice to systematic reading for a good many hours of the day besides. For the first time, rather strange to say, he read St. Augustine'sConfessions, and with the delight that might have been expected. He finds in that famous composition 'a good deal of prolix and fanciful, though acute speculation, but the practical parts of the book have a wonderful force, and inimitable sweetness and simplicity.' In other departments of religion, he read Archbishop Leighton's life and Hannah More's, Arnold's Sermons and Milner'sChurch Historyand WhewellsBridgewater Treatise. Once more he analyses theNovum Organumand theAdvancement of Learning, and he reads or re-reads Locke'sEssay. He studies political science in the two great manuals of the old world and the new, in thePoliticsof Aristotle and thePrinceof Machiavelli. He goes through three or four plays of Schiller; also Manzoni, and Petrarch, and Dante at the patient rate of a couple of cantos a day; then Boccaccio, from whom, after a half-dozen of the days, he willingly parts company, only interested in him as showing a strange state of manners and how religion can be dissociated from conduct. In modern politics he reads the memoirs of Chatham, and Brougham on Colonial Policy, of which he says that 'eccentricity, paradox, fast and loose reasoning and (much more) sentiment, appear to have entered most deeply into the essence of this remarkable man when he wrote his Colonial Policy, as now; with the rarest power ofexpressinghis thoughts, has he any fixed law to guide them?' On Roscoe'sLeo X.he remarks how interesting and highly agreeable it is in style, and while disclaiming any right to judge its fidelity and research, makes the odd observation that it has in some degree subdued the leaven of its author's unitarianism. Hewrites occasional verses, including the completion of 'some stanzas of December 1832 on “The Human Heart,” but I am not impudent enough to call them by that name.'

In the midst of days well filled by warm home feeling, reasonable pleasure, and vigorous animation of intellect came the summons to action. On November 18, a guest arrived with the astonishing news that ministers were out. The king had dismissed the Melbourne government, partly because he did not believe that Lord John Russell could take the place of Althorp as leader of the Commons, partly because like many cleverer judges he was sick of them, and partly because, as is perhaps the case with more cabinets than the world supposes, the ministers were sick of one another, and King William knew it. Mr. Gladstone in 1875[63]described the dismissal of the whigs in 1834 as the indiscreet proceeding of an honest and well-meaning man, which gave the conservatives a momentary tenure of office without power, but provoked a strong reaction in favour of the liberals, and greatly prolonged the predominance which they were on the point of losing through the play of natural causes.[64]Sir Robert Peel was summoned in hot haste from Rome, and after a journey of twelve days over alpine snows, eight nights out of the twelve in a carriage, on December 9 he reached London, saw the king and kissed hands as first lord of the treasury. Less than two years before, he had said, 'I feel that between me and office there is a wider gulf than there is perhaps between it and any other man in the House.'

PROPOSAL OF OFFICE

Mr. Gladstone meanwhile at Fasque worked off some of his natural excitement which he notes as invading even Sundays, by the composition of a political tract. The tract has disappeared down the gulf of time. December 11 was his father's seventieth birthday, 'his strength and energy wonderful and giving promise of many more.' Within the week the fated message from the new primeminister arrived; the case is apt to quicken the pulse of even the most serene of politicians, and we may be sure that Mr. Gladstone with the keen vigour of five-and-twenty tingling in his veins was something more or less than serene.

Dec. 17.—Locke, and Russell'sModern Europein the morning. Went to meet the post, found a letter from Peel desiring to see me, dated 13th. All haste; ready by 4—no place! Reluctantly deferred till the morning. Wrote to Lincoln, Sir R. Peel, etc.... A game of whist. This is a serious call. I got my father's advice to take anything with work and responsibility.18th.—Off at 7.40 by mail. I find it a privation to be unable to read in a coach. The mind is distracted through the senses, and rambles. Nowhere is it to me so incapable of continuous thought.... Newcastle at 9¼P.M.19th.—Same again. At York at 6¼A.M.to 7. Ran to peep at the minster and bore away a faint twilight image of its grandeur.20th.—Arrived safe, thank God, and well at the Bull and Mouth 5¾A.M.Albany soon. To bed for 2¼ hours. Went to Peel about eleven.

He writes to his father the same day—

My interview with him was not more than six or eight minutes, but he wasextremelykind. He told me his letter to me was among his first; that he was prompted only by his own feelings towards me and some more of that kind; that I might have a seat either at the admiralty or treasury boards, but the latter was that which he intended for me; that I should then be in immediate and confidential communication with himself; and should thereby have more insight into the general concerns of government; that there was a person very anxious for the seat at the treasury, who would go to the admiralty if I did not; but that he meant to go upon the principle of putting every one to the post for which he thought them most fit, so far as he could, and therefore preferred the arrangement he had named. As he distinctly preferred the treasury for me, and assigned such reasons for the preference, it appeared to me that the question was quite settled, and I immediately closed with his offer. I expressed my gratitude for the opinions of me which he had expressed; and said I thought it my duty to mention that the question of my re-election at Newark upon a singlevacancy had never been put to my friends, and I asked whether I should consider any part of what he had said as contingent upon the answer I might receive from them. He said no, that he would willingly take that risk. At first, he thought I had suspicions about the Duke of Newcastle, and assured me that he would be much pleased, of which I said I felt quite persuaded. This inquiry, however, served the double purpose of discharging my own duty, and drawing out something about the dissolution. He said to me, 'You will address your constituents upon vacating your seat, and acquaint them of your intention to solicit a renewal of their confidence whenever they are called upon to exercise their franchise,which I tell you confidentially,' he added, 'will be very soon.' I would have given a hundred pounds to be then and there in a position to express my hopes and fears! But it is, then, you seecertainthat we are to have it, and that they will not meet the present parliament. Most bitterly do I lament it.

Mr. Gladstone at a later date (July 25, 1835) recorded that he had reason to believe from a conversation with a tory friend who was in many party secrets, that the Duke of Wellington set their candidates in motion all over the country before Sir Robert's return. Active measures, and of course expense, had so generally begun, so much impatience for the dissolution had been excited, and the anticipations had been permitted for so long a time to continue and to spread, as to preclude the possibility of delay.[65]

SECOND ELECTION AT NEWARK

The appointment of the young member for Newark was noted at the time as an innovation upon a semi-sacred social usage. Sir Robert Inglis said to him, 'You are about the youngest lord who was ever placed at the treasury on his own account, and not because he was his father's son.' The prime minister, no doubt, rejoiced in finding for the public service a young man of this high promise, sprung out of the same class, and bred in the same academictraditions as his own.[66]The youthful minister's path was happily smoothed at Newark. This time blues and reds called a grand truce, divided the honours, and returned Mr. Gladstone and Sergeant Wilde without a contest. The question that excited most interest in the canvass was the new poor law. Mr. Gladstone gave the fallen ministers full credit for their measure. Most of their bills, he said, were projected from a mere craving for popularity, but in the case of the poor law they acted in defiance of the public press and many of their own friends. On the other hand, he defended the new government as the government of a truly reforming party, pointing to the commercial changes made by Lord Liverpool's administration, to the corporation and test Acts, and to catholic emancipation. Who could deny that these were changes of magnitude settled in peaceful times by a parliament unreformed? Who could deny that Sir Robert Peel had long been a practical reformer of the law, and that the Duke of Wellington had carried out great retrenchments? Let them then rally round throne and altar, and resist the wild measures of the destructives. The red hero was drawn through the town by six greys, with postilions in silk jackets, amid the music of bands, the clash of bells, and the cheers of the crowd. When the red procession met the blue, mutual congratulations took the place of the old insult and defiance, and at five o'clock each party sat down to its own feast. The reds drank toasts of a spirited, loyal, and constitutional character, many admirable speeches were made which the chronicler regrets that his limits will not allow him to report,—regrets unshared by us,—and soon after eleven Mr. Gladstone escaped. After a day at Clumber, he was speedily on his way to London. 'Off at 10½P.M.Missed the High Flyer at Tuxford, broke down in my chaise on the way to Newark; no injury, thanks to God. Remained 2½ hours alone; overtaken by the Wellington at 3½A.M.Arrived in London (Jan. 8) before 8P.M.Good travelling.' On reckoning up his movements he finds that, though not at all fond of travelling for the sake of going from place to place, he has had in 1834 quite 2400 miles of it.

Before the dissolution, Sir H. Hardinge had told him that the conservatives would not be over 340 nor under 300, but by the middle of the month things looked less prosperous. The reaction against the whigs had not yet reached full flood, the royal dismissal of the administration was unpopular, moderate people more especially in Scotland could not stand a government where the Duke of Wellington, the symbol of a benighted and stubborn toryism, was seen over Peel's shoulder. 'At present,' Mr. Gladstone writes, 'the case is, even in my view, hopeful; in that of most here it is more. And certainly, to have this very privilege of entertaining a deliberate and reasonable hope, to think that notwithstanding the ten pound clause, a moderate parliament may be returned; in fine, to believe that we have nowsomeprospect of surviving the Reform bill without a bloody revolution, is to me as surprising as delightful; it seems to me the greatest and most providential mercy with which a nation was ever visited.... To-day I am going to dine with the lord chancellor [Lyndhurst], having received a card to that effect last night.'

It was at this dinner that Mr. Gladstone had his first opportunity of making a remarkable acquaintance. In his diary he mentions as present three of the judges, the flower of the bench, as he supposes, but he says not a word of the man of the strangest destiny there, the author ofVivian Grey. Disraeli himself, in a letter to his sister, names 'young Gladstone,' and others, but condemns the feast as rather dull, and declares that a swan very white and tender, and stuffed with truffles, was the best company at the table. What Mr. Gladstone carried away in his memory was a sage lesson of Lyndhurst's, by which the two men of genius at his table were in time to show themselves extremely competent to profit,—'Never defend yourself before a popular assemblage, except with and byretorting the attack; the hearers, in the pleasure which the assault gives them, will forget the previous charge.' As Disraeli himself put it afterwards,Never complain and never explain.

CHANGE OF OFFICE

One afternoon, a few days later, while he was grappling at the treasury with a file of papers on the mysteries of superannuation, Mr. Gladstone was again summoned by the prime minister, and again (Jan. 26) he writes to his father:—

I have had an important interview with Sir R. Peel, the result of which is that I am to be under-secretary for the colonies. I will give you a hurried and imperfect sketch of the conversation. He began by saying he was about to make a great sacrifice both of his own feelings and convenience, but that what he had to say he hoped would be gratifying to me, as a mark of his confidence and regard. 'I am going to propose to you, Gladstone, that you should be, for you know Wortley has lost his election, under-secretary of state for the colonies, and I give you my word that I do not know six offices which are at this moment of greater importance than that to which is attached the representation of the colonial department in the House of Commons, at a period when so many questions of importance are in agitation.' I expressed as well as I could, and indeed it was but ill, my unfeigned and deep sense of his kindness, my hesitation to form any opinion of my own competency for the office, and at the same time my general desire not to shrink from any responsibility which he might think proper to lay upon me. He said that was the right and manly view to take.... He adverted to my connection with the West Indies as likely to give satisfaction to persons dependent on those colonies, and thought that others would not be displeased. In short, I cannot go through it all, but I can only say that if I had always heard of him that he was the warmest and freest person of all living in the expression of his feelings, such description would have been fully borne out by his demeanour to me. When I came away he took my hand and said, 'Well, God bless you, wherever you are.'

From Sir Robert the new under-secretary made his way, in fear and trembling, to his new chief, Lord Aberdeen.

Distinction of itself naturally and properly rather alarms the young. I had heard of his high character; but I had also heard of him as a man of cold manners, and close and even haughty reserve. It was dark when I entered his room, so that I saw his figure rather than his countenance. I do not recollect the matter of the conversation, but I well remember that, before I had been three minutes with him, all my apprehensions had melted away like snow in the sun. I came away from that interview conscious indeed of his dignity, but of a dignity so tempered by a peculiar purity and gentleness, and so associated with impressions of his kindness and even friendship, that I believe I thought more about the wonder of his being at that time so misunderstood by the outer world, than about the new duties and responsibilities of my office.[67]

Time only deepened these impressions. It is not hard for a great party chief to win the affection and regard of his junior colleague, and where good fortune has brought together a congenial pair, no friendship outside the home can be more valuable, more delightful, alike to veteran and to tiro. Of all the host of famous or considerable men with whom he was to come into official and other relations, none ever, as we shall see, held the peculiar place in Mr. Gladstone's esteem and reverence of the two statesmen under whose auspices he now first entered the enchanted circle of public office. The promotion was a remarkable stride. He was only five-and-twenty, his parliamentary existence had barely covered two years, and he was wholly without powerful family connection. 'You are aware,' Peel wrote to John Gladstone, 'of the sacrifice I have made of personal feeling to public duty, in placing your son in one of the most important offices—that of representative of the colonial department in the House of Commons, and thus relinquishing his valuable aid in my own immediate department. Wherever he may be placed, he is sure to distinguish himself.'[68]

III

POSITION OF GOVERNMENT

Mr. Gladstone's first spell of office was little more than momentary. The liberal majority, as has so often happened, was composite, but Peel can hardly have supposed that the sections of which it was made up would fail to coalesce, and coalesce pretty soon, for the irresistible object of ejecting ministers who were liked by none of them, and through whose repulse they could strike an avenging blow against the king. Ardent subalterns like Mr. Gladstone took more vehement views. The majority at once beat the government (supported by the group of Stanleyites, fifty-three strong) in the contest for the Speaker's chair. Other repulses followed. 'The division,' writes Mr. Gladstone to his father, with the honourable warmth of the young party man, 'I need not say was a disappointment to me; but it must have been much more so to those who have ever thought well of the parliament. Our party mustered splendidly. Some few, but very, very few, of the others appear to have kept away through a sense of decency; they had not virtue enough to vote for the man whom they knew to be incomparably the best, and against whom they had no charge to bring. No more shameful act I think has been done by a British House of Commons.'

Not many days after fervently deprecating a general resignation, an ill-omened purpose of this very course actually flitted across the mind of the young under-secretary himself. A scheme was on the anvil for the education of the blacks in the West Indies, and a sudden apprehension startled Mr. Gladstone, that his chief might devote public funds to all varieties of denominational religious teaching. Any plan of that kind would be utterly opposed to what with him, as we shall soon discover, was then a fundamental principle of national polity. Happily the fatal leap was not needed, but if either small men like the government whips, or great men like Peel and Aberdeen, could have known what was passing, they would have shaken grave heads over this spirit of unseasonable scruple at the very start of the race in a brilliant man with all his life before him.

Feb. 4 or 5.—Charles Canning told me Peel had offered him the vacant lordship of the treasury, through his mother. They were, he said, very much gratified with the manner in which it had been done, though the offer was declined, upon the ground stated in the reply, that though he did not anticipate any discrepancy in political sentiments to separate him from the present government, yet he should prefer in some sense deserving an official station by parliamentary conduct.... Peel's letter was written at some length, very friendly, without any statesmanlike reserve or sensitive attention to nicety of style. In the last paragraph it spoke with amiable embarrassment of Mr. Canning; stating that his 'respect, regard, and admiration' (I think even), apparently interrupted by circumstances, continued fresh and vivid, and that those very circumstances made him more desirous of thus publicly testifying his real sentiments.March 30.—Wished to speak on Irish church. No opportunity. Wrote on it. A noble-minded speech from Sir J. Graham.March 31.—Spoke on the Irish church—under forty minutes. I cannot help here recording that this matter of speaking is really my strongest religious exercise. On all occasions, and to-day especially, was forced upon me the humiliating sense of my inability to exercise my reason in the face of the H. of C., and of the necessity of my utterly failing, unless God gave me the strength and language. It was after all a poor performance, but would have been poorer had He never been in my thoughts as a present and powerful aid. But this is what I am as yet totally incompetent to effect—to realise, in speaking, anything, however small, which at all satisfies my mind. Debating seems to me less difficult, though unattained. But to hold in serene contemplative action the mental faculties in the turbid excitement of debate, so as to see truth clearly and set it forth such as it is, this I cannot attain to.As regards my speech in the Irish church debate, he tells his father (April 2), it was received by the House, and has been estimated, in a manner extremely gratifying to me. As regards satisfaction to myself in the manner of its execution, I cannot say so much. Backed by a numerous and warm-hearted party, and strong in the consciousness of a good cause, I did notfind it difficult to grapple with the more popular parts of the question; but I fell miserably short of my desires in touching upon the principles which the discussion involved, and I am sure that it must be long before I am enabled in any reasonable sense to be a speaker according even to the conception which I have formed in my own mind.

March 30.—Wished to speak on Irish church. No opportunity. Wrote on it. A noble-minded speech from Sir J. Graham.March 31.—Spoke on the Irish church—under forty minutes. I cannot help here recording that this matter of speaking is really my strongest religious exercise. On all occasions, and to-day especially, was forced upon me the humiliating sense of my inability to exercise my reason in the face of the H. of C., and of the necessity of my utterly failing, unless God gave me the strength and language. It was after all a poor performance, but would have been poorer had He never been in my thoughts as a present and powerful aid. But this is what I am as yet totally incompetent to effect—to realise, in speaking, anything, however small, which at all satisfies my mind. Debating seems to me less difficult, though unattained. But to hold in serene contemplative action the mental faculties in the turbid excitement of debate, so as to see truth clearly and set it forth such as it is, this I cannot attain to.

As regards my speech in the Irish church debate, he tells his father (April 2), it was received by the House, and has been estimated, in a manner extremely gratifying to me. As regards satisfaction to myself in the manner of its execution, I cannot say so much. Backed by a numerous and warm-hearted party, and strong in the consciousness of a good cause, I did notfind it difficult to grapple with the more popular parts of the question; but I fell miserably short of my desires in touching upon the principles which the discussion involved, and I am sure that it must be long before I am enabled in any reasonable sense to be a speaker according even to the conception which I have formed in my own mind.

A few days later, he received the congratulations of a royal personage:—

In the evening, dining at Lord Salisbury's, I was introduced to the Duke of Cumberland, who was pleased to express himself favourably of my speech. He is fond of conversation, and the common reputation which he bears of including in his conversation many oaths, appears to be but too true. Yet he said he had made a point of sending his son to George the Fourth's funeral, thinking it an excellent advantage for a boy to receive the impression which such a scene was calculated to convey. The duke made many acute remarks, and was, I should say, most remarkably unaffected and kind. These are fine social qualities for a prince, though, of course, not the most important—'My dear Sir,' and thumps on the shoulder after a ten minutes' acquaintance. He spoke broadly and freely—much on the disappearance of the bishops' wigs, which he said had done more harm to the church than anything else!

MINISTERS DEFEATED

On the same night the catastrophe happened. After a protracted and complex struggle Lord John Russell's proposal for the appropriation of the surplus revenues of the Irish church was carried against ministers. The following day Peel announced his resignation.

Though his official work had been unimportant, Mr. Gladstone had left an excellent impression behind him among the permanent men. When he first appeared in the office, Henry Taylor said, 'I rather like Gladstone, but he is said to have more of the devil in him than appears.' A few weeks were enough to show him that 'Gladstone was far the most considerable of the rising generation, having besides his abilities an excellent disposition and great strength of character.' James Stephen thought well of him, but doubted if he had pugnacity enough for public life.

A few days later Mr. Gladstone dined with an official party at the fallen minister's:—

Sir R. Peel made a very nice speech on Lincoln's proposing and our drinking his health. The following is a slight and bad sketch:—'I really can hardly call you gentlemen alone. I would rather address you as my warm and attached friends in whom I have the fullest confidence, and with whom it has afforded me the greatest satisfaction to be associated during the struggle which has just been brought to a close. In undertaking the government, from the first I have never expected to succeed; still it was my conviction that good might be done, and I trust that good has been effected. I believe we have shown that even if a conservative government be not strong enough to carry on the public affairs of this country, at least we are so strong that we ought to be able to prevent any other government from doing any serious mischief to its institutions. We meet now as we met at the beginning of the session, then perhaps in somewhat finer dresses, but not, I am sure, with kindlier feelings towards each other.'

The rest of the session Mr. Gladstone passed in his usual pursuits, reading all sorts of books, from the correspondence of Leibnitz with Bossuet, and Alexander Knox'sRemains, down to Rousseau'sConfessions. As to the last of these he scarcely knew whether to read on or to throw it aside, and, in fact, he seems only to have persevered with that strange romance of a wandering soul for a day or two. Besides promiscuous reading, he performed some scribbling, including a sonnet, recorded in his diary with notes of wondering exclamation. His family were in London for most of May, his mother in bad health; no other engagement ever interrupted his sedulous attendance on her every day, reading the Bible to her, and telling the news about levees and drawing-rooms, a great dinner at Sir Robert Peel's, and all the rest of his business and recreations. In the House he did little between the fall of the ministry and the close of the session. He once wished to speak, but was shut out by the length of other speeches. 'So,' he moralises, 'I had two useful lessons instead of one. For the sense of helplessness which alwayspossesses me in prospect of a speech is one very useful lesson; and being disappointed after having attained some due state of excitement and anticipation is another.'

SPEECH AT NEWARK

In June at a feast at Newark, which, terrible to relate, lasted from four o'clock to eleven, Mr. Gladstone gave them nearly an hour, not to mention divers minor speeches. His father 'expressed himself with beautiful and affectionate truth of feeling, and the party sympathised.' His own speech deserves to be noted as indicating the political geography for three or four years to come. The standing dish of the tory opposition of the period was highly-spiced reproach of the ministers for living on the support of O'Connell, and Newark was regaled with an ample meal. Mr. Gladstone would not enter into a detail of the exploits, character, political opinions of that Irish gentleman; he would rather say what he thought of him in his presence than in his absence, because he could unfortunately say nothing of him but what was bad. 'This is not the first period in English history,' Mr. Gladstone noted down at that time, 'in which a government has leaned on the Roman catholic interest in Ireland for support. Under the administration of Strafford and at the time of the Scotch revolt, Charles I. was enthusiastically supported by the recusants of the sister isle, and what was the effect? The religious sympathies of the people were touched then and they were so now with the same consequence, in the gradual decline of the party to whom the suspicion attaches in popular fervour and estimation.' Half a century later he may have recalled this early fruit of historic observation. Meanwhile, in his Newark speech, he denounced the government for seeking to undo the mischief of the Irish alliance by systematic agitation. But it was upon the church question, far deeper and more vital than municipal corporations, that the fate of the government should be decided. Then followed a vindication of the church in Ireland. 'The protestant faith is held good for us, andwhat is good for us is also good for the population of Ireland.' That most disastrous of all our false commonplaces was received at Newark, as it has been received so many hundreds of times ever since all overEngland, with loud and long-continued cheering, to be invariably followed in after act and event with loud and long-continued groaning.[69]Four years later Mr. Gladstone heard words from Lord John Russell on this point, that began to change his mind. 'Often do I think,' he wrote to Lord Russell in 1870, 'of a saying of yours more than thirty years back which struck me ineffaceably at the time. You said: "The true key to our Irish debates was this: that it was not properly borne in mind that as England is inhabited by Englishmen, and Scotland by Scotchmen, so Ireland is inhabited by Irishmen."'[70]

FOOTNOTES:[63]Gleanings, i. p. 38.[64]In another place he describes it as an action done 'with no sort of reason' (Ib.p. 78). But the Melbourne papers, published in 1890, pp. 219-221 and 225, indicate that Melbourne had spontaneously given the king good reasons for cashiering him and his colleagues.[65]Lord Palmerston doubted (Nov. 25, 1834) whether Peel would dissolve. 'I think his own bias will rather be to abide by the decision of this House of Commons, and try to propitiate it by great professions of reform. The effect of a dissolution must be injurious to the principles that he professes.... But he may be overborne by the violent people of his own party whom he will not be able to control.' Ashley'sLife of Palmerston(1879), i. p. 313.[66]Greville, on the other hand, grumbled at Peel, for taking high birth and connections as substitutes for other qualities, because he made Sidney Herbert secretary at the board of control, instead of making him a lord of the treasury, and sending 'Gladstone, who is a very clever man,' to the other and more responsible post.[67]Lord Stanmore'sEarl of Aberdeen(1893), p. iii.[68]Parker'sPeel, ii. p. 267.[69]O'Connell paid Newark a short visit in 1836—spoke against Mr. Gladstone for an hour in the open air, and then left the town, both he and it much as they had been before his arrival.[70]Walpole,Life of Lord John Russell, ii. p. 455.

[63]Gleanings, i. p. 38.

[64]In another place he describes it as an action done 'with no sort of reason' (Ib.p. 78). But the Melbourne papers, published in 1890, pp. 219-221 and 225, indicate that Melbourne had spontaneously given the king good reasons for cashiering him and his colleagues.

[65]Lord Palmerston doubted (Nov. 25, 1834) whether Peel would dissolve. 'I think his own bias will rather be to abide by the decision of this House of Commons, and try to propitiate it by great professions of reform. The effect of a dissolution must be injurious to the principles that he professes.... But he may be overborne by the violent people of his own party whom he will not be able to control.' Ashley'sLife of Palmerston(1879), i. p. 313.

[66]Greville, on the other hand, grumbled at Peel, for taking high birth and connections as substitutes for other qualities, because he made Sidney Herbert secretary at the board of control, instead of making him a lord of the treasury, and sending 'Gladstone, who is a very clever man,' to the other and more responsible post.

[67]Lord Stanmore'sEarl of Aberdeen(1893), p. iii.

[68]Parker'sPeel, ii. p. 267.

[69]O'Connell paid Newark a short visit in 1836—spoke against Mr. Gladstone for an hour in the open air, and then left the town, both he and it much as they had been before his arrival.

[70]Walpole,Life of Lord John Russell, ii. p. 455.

ToC

PROGRESS IN PUBLIC LIFE

(1835-1838)

Les hommes en tout ne s'éclairent que par le tâtonnement de l'expérience. Les plus grands génies sont eux-mêmes entraînés par leur siècle.—Turgot.Men are only enlightened by feeling their way through experience. The greatest geniuses are themselves drawn along by their age.

Les hommes en tout ne s'éclairent que par le tâtonnement de l'expérience. Les plus grands génies sont eux-mêmes entraînés par leur siècle.—Turgot.

Men are only enlightened by feeling their way through experience. The greatest geniuses are themselves drawn along by their age.

In September (1835), after long suffering, his mother died amid tender care and mournful regrets. Her youngest son was a devoted nurse; her loss struck him keenly, but with a sense full of the consolations of his faith. To Gaskell he writes: 'How deeply and thoroughly her character was imbued with love; with what strong and searching processes of bodily affliction she was assimilated in mind and heart to her Redeemer; how above all other things she sighed for the advancement of His kingdom on earth; how few mortals suffered more pain, or more faithfully recognised it as one of the instruments by which God is pleased to forward that restoring process for which we are placed on earth.'

Then the world resumed its course for him, and things fell into their wonted ways of indefatigable study. His scheme for week-days included Blackstone, Mackintosh, Aristotle'sPolitics—'a book of immense value for all governors and public men'—Dante'sPurgatorio, Spanish grammar, Tocqueville, Fox'sJames II., by which he was disappointed, not seeing such an acuteness in extracting and exhibiting the principles that govern from beneath the actions of men and parties, nor such a grasp of generalisation, nor such a faculty of separating minute from material particulars, nor such an abstraction from a debater's modes of thought and forms of expression, as he should havehoped. To these he added as he went along theGénie du Christianisme, Bolingbroke, Bacon'sEssays,Don Quixote, theAnnalsof Tacitus, Le Bas'Life of Laud('somewhat too Laudish, though rightau fond'; unlike Lawson'sLaud, 'a most intemperate book, the foam swallows up all the facts'),Childe Harold,Jerusalem Delivered('beautiful in its kind, but how can its author be placed in the same category of genius as Dante?'), Pollok'sCourse of Time('much talent, little culture, insufficient power to digest and construct his subject or his versification; his politics radical, his religious sentiments generally sound, though perhaps hard').

In the evenings he read aloud to his father theFaery Queenand Shakespeare. On Sundays he read Chillingworth and Jewel, and, above all, he dug and delved in St. Augustine. He drew a sketch of a project touching Peculiarities in Religion. For several days he was writing something on politics. Then an outline or an essay on our colonial system. For he was no reader of the lounging, sauntering, passively receptive species; he went forward in a sedulous process of import and export, a mind actively at work on all the topics that passed before it.

At the beginning of the year 1836 he was invited to pay a visit to Drayton, where he found only Lord Harrowby—a link with the great men of an earlier generation, for he had acted as Pitt's second in the duel with Tierney, and had been foreign secretary in Pitt's administration of 1804; might have been prime minister in 1827 if he had liked; and he headed the Waverers who secured the passing of the Reform bill by the Lords. Other guests followed, the host rather contracting in freedom of conversation as the party expanded.[71]

VISIT TO DRAYTON

I cannot record anything continuous, Mr. Gladstone writes in his memorandum of the visit, but commit to paper several opinions and expressions of Sir R. Peel, which bore upon interesting and practical questions. That Fox was not a man of settled, reasoned, political principle. Lord Harrowby added that he was throwninto opposition and whiggism by the insult of Lord North. That his own doctrines, both as originally declared, and as resumed when finally in office, were of a highly toned spirit of government. That Brougham was the mostpowerfulman he had ever known in the H. of C.; that no one had ever fallen so fast and so far. That the political difficulties of England might be susceptible of cure, and were not appalling; but that the state of Ireland was to all appearance hopeless. That there the great difficulty lay in procuring the ordinary administration of justice; that the very institution of juries supposed a common interest of the juror and the state, a condition not fulfilled in the present instance; that it was quite unfit for the present state of society in Ireland. Lord Harrowby thought that a strong conservative government might still quell agitation. And Sir B. Peel said Stanley had told him that the whig government were on the point of succeeding in putting a stop to the resistance to payment of tithe, when Lord Althorp, alarmed at the expense already incurred, wrote to stop its collection by the military. We should probably live to see the independence of Poland established.The Duke of Wellington and others arrived later in the day. It was pleasing to see the deference with which he was received as he entered the library; at the sound of his name everybody rose; he is addressed by all with a respectful manner. He met Peel most cordially, and seized both Lady Peel's hands. I now recollect that it was withgleeSir R. Peel said to me on Monday, 'I am glad to say you will meet the duke here,' which had reference, I doubt not, partly to the anticipated pleasure of seeing him, partly to the dissipation of unworthy suspicions. He reported that government are still labouring at a church measure without appropriation.Jan. 20.—The Duke of Wellington appears to speak little; and never for speaking's sake, but only to convey an idea, commonly worth conveying. He receives remarks made to him very frequently with no more than 'Ha,' a convenient, suspensive expression, which acknowledges the arrival of the observation and no more. Of the two days which he spent here he hunted on Thursday, shot on Friday, and to-day travelled to Strathfieldsay, more, I believe, than 100 miles, to entertain a party of friends to dinner. With this bodilyexertion he mixes at 66 or 67 a constant attention to business. Sir R. Peel mentioned to me to-night a very remarkable example of his [the duke's] perhaps excessive precision. Whenever he signs a draft on Coutts's, he addresses to them at the same time a note apprising them that he has done so. This perfect facility of transition from one class of occupation to their opposites, and their habitual intermixture without any apparent encroachments on either side, is, I think, a very remarkable evidence of self-command, and a mental power of singular utility. Sir Robert is also, I conceive, a thrifty dealer with his time, but in a man of his age [Peel now 48] this is less beyond expectation.

The Duke of Wellington and others arrived later in the day. It was pleasing to see the deference with which he was received as he entered the library; at the sound of his name everybody rose; he is addressed by all with a respectful manner. He met Peel most cordially, and seized both Lady Peel's hands. I now recollect that it was withgleeSir R. Peel said to me on Monday, 'I am glad to say you will meet the duke here,' which had reference, I doubt not, partly to the anticipated pleasure of seeing him, partly to the dissipation of unworthy suspicions. He reported that government are still labouring at a church measure without appropriation.Jan. 20.—The Duke of Wellington appears to speak little; and never for speaking's sake, but only to convey an idea, commonly worth conveying. He receives remarks made to him very frequently with no more than 'Ha,' a convenient, suspensive expression, which acknowledges the arrival of the observation and no more. Of the two days which he spent here he hunted on Thursday, shot on Friday, and to-day travelled to Strathfieldsay, more, I believe, than 100 miles, to entertain a party of friends to dinner. With this bodilyexertion he mixes at 66 or 67 a constant attention to business. Sir R. Peel mentioned to me to-night a very remarkable example of his [the duke's] perhaps excessive precision. Whenever he signs a draft on Coutts's, he addresses to them at the same time a note apprising them that he has done so. This perfect facility of transition from one class of occupation to their opposites, and their habitual intermixture without any apparent encroachments on either side, is, I think, a very remarkable evidence of self-command, and a mental power of singular utility. Sir Robert is also, I conceive, a thrifty dealer with his time, but in a man of his age [Peel now 48] this is less beyond expectation.

He said good-bye on the last night with regret. In the midst of the great company he found time to read Bossuet on Variations, remarking rather oddly, 'some of Bossuet's theology seems to me very good.'

MIXED AVOCATIONS

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