Mr. Gladstone made a speech on this occasion which may be regarded as the opening of the dike through which the floods of a political revolu­tion were destined to rush in. While he did not positively advocate the adoption of the resolution proposed by Baines he nevertheless concurred in the general view that there ought to be a considerable extension of the fran­chise to the working classes of the nation. He was unwilling to advocate a measure of wholesale suffrage thrown broadcast to the laboring men, but he did advocate an enlargement of the franchise in that direction. He said that the right of suffrage under the present system hardly reached the working classes at all; the great mass was disfranchised, and this ought not to be.

Then Mr. Gladstone broke into the remarkable part of his speech. He replied vigorously to the assertion that the working classes were not themselves moving for the right of suffrage; that they were not agitating the question of their right to vote. He inquired whether it was a true policy for the British Parliament to wait for an agitation among the working classes before undertaking the duty of reform. " In my opinion," said Mr. Gladstone, " agitation by the working classes upon any political subject whatever is a thing not to be waited for, not to be made a condition pre­vious to any parliamentary movement, but, on the contrary, is to be depre­cated, and, if possible, prevented by wise and provident measures. An agitation by the working classes is not like an agitation by the classes above them having leisure. The agitation of the classes having leisure is easily conducted. Every hour of their time has not a money value; their wives and children are not dependent on the application of those hours to labor. When a workingman finds himself in such a condition that he must abandon that daily labor on which he is strictly dependent for his daily bread, it is

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only because then, in railway language, the clanger signal is turned on, and because he feels a strong necessity for action and a distrust of the rulers who have driven him to that necessity. The present state of things, I

rejoice to say, does not indicate that distrust; but if we admit that we must not allege the absence of agitation on the part of the working classes as a reason why the Parliament of Eng­land and the public mind of England should be indisposed to entertain the discussion of the question.

To the American reader this speech would seem to be mildly conservative on the question of suffrage. That it should, as late as the middle of the seventh decade, be regarded in any civil­ized country as a radical challenge to the existing order appears from our point of view an astonishing, if not an absurd, proposition. So also of the rest of the speech, which was in the same tenor. He showed that the middle classes in England are not divided from those below them by any well-marked line of virtue or capacity, such as might indi­cate the right of suffrage to them and the withholding of it from their humbler neighbors. He favored the enlargement of the franchise as a measure calculated indeed to obliterate somewhat the artificial lines in Brit­ish society, and to promote that social and civil unity of the English people as a whole which he was glad to say was indicated by the signs of the times and the progress of humanity.

Had this argument of Mr. Gladstone, relating wholly to secular reform, been the sum of his offending the probabilities are that he would have remained in virtually the same relations as hitherto with the existing politi­cal parties. But he presently went further in a matter relating to the Church. On that side also he veered away from the opinions held by his constituents of Oxford University, and, as we shall presently see, alienated a majority of them from his support.

In the meantime other questions arose that, for the present, postponed the break between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his old party associ­ates. All along a strong tide of opposition had beaten against the govern­ment of Lord Palmerston on the score of his foreign policy. For years it

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had been alleged that that statesman with respect to the imperial regime in France was a toady. To this offense he was said to have added many an odious favor to the revolutionary party existing widely in other European nations.

At this particular juncture Germany had summoned Denmark to give up Schleswig-Holstein to the military occupation of Prussia and Austria, until what time the claims of the Duke of Augustenburg might be settled. Driven to close quarters, the Danish government appealed to England and France for support, and received from those governments what the Danes thought were sufficient assurances, and war was declared against Germany; but the war was not successful. The line of the Dannewerk was taken by the enemy, and the Danes in panic found that the expected backing of Eng­land and France was not in evidence. They rallied, however, in a splendid manner, but could not stand against the overwhelming power of the Ger­mans. They were obliged to accept such terms as were meted out to them by the peace of Vienna, concluded in October of 1864. For a while Europe waited for Prussia to render back North Schleswig and the island of Alsen to Denmark, and when this was not done, as Austria had demanded, the break came between that power and Prussia, so lately in alliance, in the great conflict of 1866, ending in the humiliation of Austria and in the begin­ning of the ascendancy of Prussia and the house of Hohenzollern.

The course of Great Britain toward Denmark in this emergency gave opportunity to the opposition in Parliament to challenge the ministerial management. On the 4th of July, 1864, Benjamin Disraeli offered a resolu­tion, " To thank her majesty for having directed the correspondence on Denmark and Germany, and the protocol of the conference recently assembled in London to be laid before Parliament; to assure her majesty that we have heard with deep concern that the sittings of the conference have been brought to a close without accomplishing the important purpose for which it was convened ; and to express to her majesty our great regret that, while the course pursued by her majesty's government has failed to maintain their avowed policy of upholding the integrity and independence of Denmark, it has lowered the just influence of this country in the capitals of Europe, and thereby diminished the securities for peace."

He who ran might read that Mr. Disraeli in this resolution intended in a covert way to carry if possible a vote of want of confidence in the minis­try through the House of Commons. As soon as the resolution was before the House Mr. Alexander W. Kinglake offered an amendment or substitute for the last clause of Disraeli's propositions, as follows: " To express the satisfaction with which we have learned that at this conjuncture her majesty has been advised to abstain from armed interference in the war now going on between Denmark and the German powers." The presentation of this

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amendment made a sharp issue, and Mr. Disraeli came with great spirit and wit to the support of the resolution, declaring that forbearance had ceased to be a virtue, and that a crisis was now on in which the government might not any longer evade their responsibility to the crown and to the nation.

This situation was well calculated to bring into combat the two great statesmen who were destined for so many years to divide the admira­tion of their countrymen. Mr. Gladstone went into the arena with more than his usual spirit. He declared that never before had the British House of Commons been asked to degrade the country in the hope of overthrow­ing a government! He wished to know why the right honorable gentleman (Mr. Disraeli) had not come plainly and openly to the charge. The resolu­tion before the House was a subterfuge. The mover was aiming to accom­plish one end by promoting another end, and that other end was the affixing of a stigma on Great Britain. The resolution before the House read as though it might have been composed in the office of an obscure newspaper in Germany! Certainly the inspiration of it had come from that remote and disreputable source. Why should not the right honorable gentleman adopt the language of the British forefathers, who, when dissatisfied with a govern­ment, said so in unambiguous language? The fathers were wont in such cases to address the crown and to pray that the offending government might be dismissed. “They said boldly," the speaker continued, "that the conduct of the government was open to such and such charges, and they prayed that other men might be put in their places. But the right honorable gentleman was afraid to raise that issue. He has, indeed, plucked up courage to pro­pose this motion; but why has he not done it in the proper constitutional form in which votes of want of confidence have hitherto been drawn? Never before, as far as I know, has party spirit led gentlemen in this country to frame a motion which places on record that which must be regarded as dishonorable to the nation. I go back to the time of Sir R. Walpole of Lord North, and Mr. Fox, but nowhere do we find such a sterile and jejune affair as this resolution. Those charges were written in legible and plain terms; but the right honorable gentleman substitutes language which might indeed be sufficient for the purpose of rendering it impossible for the government to continue in office, but which cannot transfix them without its sting first passing through the honor of England. For the reasons I have stated I look forward with cheerfulness to the issue which has been raised with regard to our conduct. Nay, more, I feel the most confident anticipa­tion that both the House and the country will approve of the course taken in this difficult negotiation by her majesty's government, and that they will reject a motion which both prudence and patriotism must alike emphatically condemn."

The issue thus sharply made up was further debated by several mem-

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bers. Among those may be mentioned Mr. Bernal Osborne, who spoke with much wit against the government. The British cabinet, he said, seemed to him much like a museum of curiosities. In it there were birds of many plumages, some rare and some noble; some alive and some stuffed! There was a breed or two that had been preserved with the greatest difficulty—one in particular that had to be crossed with the genus Peelite! The speaker, however, would do the cabinet the justice to say that there was one great and able minister in the body, namely, the Chancellor of the Exchequer; to him and to him alone it was that the government owed “the little popularity and the little support that they get from this Liberal party."

If the speaker made an exception complimentary to Mr. Gladstone he did not except Mr. Milner Gibson, whom he described as being a fly in amber, and then declared his astonishment over the problem of how the devil he got there! And so on and on through the persiflage of the hour. When the matter came to the issue of a vote the Disraeli resolution was rejected and the amendment of Mr. Kinglake adopted by a majority of eighteen, that vote being a tolerable test of the existing ministerial strength.

In the following spring, namely, in March of 1865, a resolution was offered in the House by Mr. Dillwyn to this effect: "That the present position of the Irish Church Establishment is unsatisfactory and calls for the early attention of her majesty's government." These were ominous words. They were the fore shining of a great issue that could be settled in only one way. The author of the resolution was a member of the opposi­tion. It devolved on Mr. Gladstone rather than on Lord Palmerston, who was now within a few months of the end of his life, to state the position of the government in the matter which had been brought to the attention of the House. He said that the government could not accept the resolution, but significantly added that they were not prepared to deny the abstract truth of the first clause. This clause was that the present position of the Irish Church Establishment was unsatisfactory. The government could not affirm that that establishment was satisfactory. Mr. Gladstone then branched out on the merits of the question, speaking to the general condition of the Irish Church and its relations to the people to whom it was expected to minister. The general tenor of his argument was favorable to the theory that the Episcopal Establishment in Ireland was out of its natural and just relations with the people of that country; that the Church was really in a false position, logically and historically.

“There is not," said the speaker, " the slightest doubt that the Church of England is a national Church, and that if the conditions upon which the ecclesiastical endowments are held were altered at the Reformation, that alteration was made mainly with the view that these endowments should be intrusted to a body ministering to the wants of a great majority of the

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people. I am bound to add my belief that those who directed the govern­ment of this country in the reign of Queen Elizabeth acted in the firm con­viction that that which had happened in England would happen in Ireland' and they would probably be not a little surprised if they could look down the vista of time and see that in the year 1865 the result of all their labors had been that, after three hundred years, the Church which they had endowed and established ministered to the religious wants of only one eighth or one ninth part of the community."

The speaker then referred to the great difficulty of prescribing or even suggesting a remedy that might meet the evils which he had pointed out. He said that many other political problems were closely involved with that before the House. He went so far as to become the spokesman of the Irish people, the interpreter of their thoughts, and declared that while they were out of the nature of the case, utterly opposed to the maintenance of the Church Establishment in their country when that Establishment was ben­eficial to only a small fraction of the people, they were not covetous of the Church endowments for themselves. They had no idea of availing them­selves of the revenues which were now bestowed on the Episcopal Church in Ireland.

But the question was in what manner the administration might meet the condition of affairs here set forth. Mr. Gladstone confessed that no satisfactory way appeared of meeting it. He said that the government could not follow the honorable gentleman (Mr. Dillwyn) into the lobby and declare it to be the duty of the government to give their early attention to the subject. No such promise or hint of a promise as that could be made. And why not? It could not be made for the reason that a govern­ment so promising could not fulfill. While the abstract truth of the honor­able gentleman's proposition was admitted it related to a kind of subject-matter which the government, not being omnipotent, could not manage. The government could not reduce history to logical conditions.

This outgiving of an opinion, added to the speech which Mr. Gladstone had made on the Baines Bill relative to the borough franchise, was a cry that signified much in Great Britain. The speech was read with the great­est interest by all classes of people, and by some it was discerned that if history were not logical it might become the duty of a government in Great Britain to contribute something toward abolishing its illogical character and results. How far Mr. Gladstone in his utterance was deliberate, how-far he had excogitated the matter beforehand, reducing it to a form of expression by which he was willing to stand or fall, we do not know. At any rate he put himself in the attitude of admitting the truth, and if the truth, then the justice, of an open indictment of the Irish Church. As to the debate, that passed without further results.

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Sir George Grey spoke for the government, saying that a measure could not be brought forward calculated to promote the object that Mr. Dillwyn had in view. That object was nothing less than the disestablish­ment of the Irish Church. Mr. Gathorne Hardy also attacked the Dillwyn resolution with his usual force and acerbity. Mr. Whiteside, whilom the Conservative attorney-general for Ireland, in his turn attacked the opinions presented by Mr. Gladstone; and so the debate was at length adjourned.

Soon afterward, however, Mr. Gladstone, when pressed by one of his correspondents at Trinity College to take up the cause of the disestablish­ment of the Irish Church, gave his reasons why he could not as follows: " First, because the question is remote and apparently out of all bearing on the practical politics of the day, I think it would be for me worse than superfluous to determine upon any scheme, or basis of a scheme, with respect to it. Secondly, because it is difficult; even if I anticipated any likelihood of being called upon to deal with it I should think it right to take no deci­sion beforehand on the mode of dealing with the difficulties. But the first reason is that which chiefly weighs. ... I think I have stated strongly my sense of the responsibility attaching to the opening of such a question, except in a state of things which gave promise of satisfactorily closing it. For this reason it is that I have been so silent about the matter, and may probably be so again ; but I could not, as a minister and as member for Oxford University, allow it to be debated an indefinite number of times and remain silent. One thing, however, I may add, because I think it a clear landmark. In any measure dealing with the Irish Church I think (though I scarcely expect ever to be called on to share in such a measure) the act of union must be recognized and must have important consequences, espe­cially with reference to the position of the hierarchy."

Here, then, were laid the foundations of the great controversy which was soon to arise. History can say only thus much that the time had come when the anachronism of the English Church Establishment in Ireland must be rectified, and, with her usual care, she had provided her antecedent conditions and her man. The personal and historical results of Mr. Glad­stone's utterances were soon to appear, stirring England to her depths, transforming somewhat the political landscape and bringing in the new era of liberalism.

The existing Parliament was now rapidly approaching its constitutional limitations. At the opening of the session of 1865 the presentation of the budget was withheld for a while, the same not being presented until the 27th of April in that year. Nor will the American reader fail to remember the great events that were just then completing themselves in America. The drama of secession had reached its bloody end. Appomattox was passed by only eighteen days, and the assassination of Lincoln—dark be the

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day in the annals of mankind !—had occurred only thirteen days previously. Not our own country only, but the whole civilized world, stood for a time aghast when that tall patriot, that homely genius, that tremendous spirit of the age, fell prone and lay still in his sarcophagus under the crash of the bullet of an infamous dastard.

As for Mr. Gladstone, he had now reached a period in his financial career when he was virtually master of the situation. He had the confi­dence of Great Britain to a remarkable degree. His recommendations carried with them as they came almost the force of law. On the occasion just referred to he addressed the House in his usual manner, pointing out, first of all, the contrasts that existed as between that day so near the close of the current Parliament and that other day when that body first convened. “When the Parliament met," said he, " we had been 'involved—although we did not know it at the time—in a costly and difficult war with China The harvest of the year which succeeded was the worst that had been known for half a century. The recent experience of war had led to costly, exten­sive, and somewhat uncertain reconstructions; and clouds hung over the continent of Europe, while the Italian war had terminated in such a man­ner as to occasion vague but serious alarms in the public mind.

" Since that period those clouds have moved westward across the Atlan­tic, and have burst in a tempest, perhaps the wildest that ever devastated a civilized country, a tempest of war distinguished, indeed, by the exhibition of many of the most marvelous and extraordinary qualities of valor, hero­ism, and perseverance ; and on the whole, perhaps, no scenes have been so entirely painful as that of which the intelligence has last reached us, which now causes one thrill of horror throughout Europe.

“But so far as this country is concerned we have been mercifully spared. We see the state of the public mind tranquil and reassured, and the condi­tion of the country generally prosperous and satisfactory. The financial history of the Parliament has been a remarkable one. It has raised larger revenue than I believe, at any period, whether of peace or war, was ever raised by taxation. After taking into account the changes in the value of money within an equal time the expenditure of the Parliament has been upon a scale that has never before been reached in time of peace. The amount and variety of the changes introduced into our financial legislation have been greater than within a like number of years at any former time. And I may say, lastly, that it has enjoyed the distinction that, although no Parliament ever completes the full term of its legal existence, yet this is the seventh time on which you have been called upon to make provision for the financial exigencies of the country."

These paragraphs aptly illustrate the manner of Mr. Gladstone on the occasion of presenting a budget. Year after year he delivered what maybe

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called fiscal orations, putting into them the necessary statistics and practical recommendations ; but he did this with a skill which hardly marred the flow of his eloquence. On the present occasion he was able in a business way to report another diminution of expenditures. The estimate on this score had not been reached by six hundred and eleven thousand pounds. On the other hand, and still more gratifying, was the excess of the revenue over the estimates. Under this head there was an increase of three million a hundred and, eighty-five thousand pounds; indeed, the surplus which had accumulated was well up to four million pounds.

During the year there had been a large reduction in the national debt. The average of such reductions in the last six years had been about three million pounds annually. In the next place the speaker referred with pleasure to the paper trade and to the general commercial relations between England and France. While the trade of the latter country had increased more rapidly than that of England during the past year British trade had also increased in a satisfactory measure. There was also a very gratifying trade balance with Belgium and Holland. Once more he emphasized the great advantage which the country had gained by making trade as free as the winds and seas. Here again he turned aside to repeat and vary the eulogy which he had more than once pronounced on Richard Cobden, the Father of Free Trade.

Turning to the question of the fiscal management for the ensuing year, he presented an estimate of expenditure of sixty-six million a hundred and thirty-nine thousand pounds. He calculated the total revenue at seventy million a hundred and seventy thousand pounds. This would produce a surplus of more than four million pounds. How should this large sum be applied? Should it be used to extinguish the duty on malt? That, the speaker thought, would be the end of the system of indirect taxation in Great Britain. This might be done, but it was not the most desirable method of balancing the surplus. He admitted that beer was twenty per cent higher than it would be if the duty were removed from malt; but he showed that it would require a reduction of only one farthing the quart to consume one half or more of all the expected surplus for the ensuing year. Was it worth while to attempt at such a cost so small a reduction in the price of beer to consumers?

The House must remember in this connection that while beer was taxed twenty per cent the wines which met the greatest consumption in England were taxed fully fifty per cent. If it was a question of cheapening the popular drinks then why not begin with the duty on wine ? Moreover, the growing consumption of beer in England showed conclusively that the tax did not perceptibly impede the use of the article. Again, the tax on tea was forty per cent by the chest; wherefore the common drink of the

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poorer classes at the domestic board was taxed twice as heavily as beer! To his mind it was clear that the next reduction of duty ought to be a reduction of the tea tax, and this he recommended by sixpence a pound He showed that the aggregate loss to the revenue from this source would be, at the present rate of importation, two million three hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. But with a reduction of the tax a much larger quantity of tea would be consumed, from which he thought the actual loss would not exceed a million eight hundred and eight thousand pounds.

Mr. Gladstone next came to the ever-present and all-important question of the income tax. What should be done with that? He would recommend the reduction of the same from sixpence to four pence the pound. This would diminish the sum total of that tax to a little over five million pounds. It would also bring the rate to four pence, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer thought was as small a figure as need to be retained at all. If there were to be further reduction it might be made a total abolition, and have done. That question he would leave to the next Parliament, to be dealt with according to its wisdom.

Adding together the loss from the reduction of the duty on tea and that from the reduction of the income tax Mr. Gladstone was still able to show a surplus that would justify a further reduction in the expense of fire insurance. Hitherto a duty of a shilling had been charged on each policy; he would recommend that this duty be reduced to a penny stamp for each policy. To sum up, the budget showed a reduction of taxation to the amount of five million four hundred and twenty thousand pounds. There would be a total loss to revenue in the following year of three million seven hundred and seventy-eight thousand pounds, and for the ensuing year (1866-67) of a million four hundred and seventeen thousand pounds. After all balances were made there would still remain a surplus of a little more than two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which Mr. Gladstone urged the necessity of retaining against the contingencies of the treasury.

The document thus presented was less elaborate than its predecessors. It also invaded less the grounds of controversy. Only on one question was there a serious objection to the budget, whether in the house or out of it. That related to the duty on malt. The maltsters and barley farmers were of course dissatisfied, and their representatives were ready to declaim. Nevertheless the opposition was ineffectual. The bill for the adoption of the budget was readily passed without amendments. In many respects the measures proposed were met with great popular favor. The reduction of the tea tax was something to appeal to the common people. At the other extreme of society the payers of large sums on incomes cheerfully accepted the reduction that was offered. Moreover, the recent heavy expenditures

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for fortifications and for the maintenance of navies in distant seas were either at an end or greatly reduced. Mr. Gladstone was able to pass his annual ordeal with more than the usual applause.

The Parliament so long in existence was now drawing rapidly to a close. It would reach its constitutional limitation on the 6th of July, 1865. Lord Palmerston had already announced the termination of the session and the end of the existing Parliament at that date. Already the members of the House were busy with preparation for going to the country on the records made. It was noted that political excitement was for the time running low. There could hardly be found a single question of general importance on which the electors might divide. There were, however, many local questions, and the seats of great numbers of members were to be vigorously contested. What about William E. Gladstone?

The statesman made the usual appeal to his constituency of Oxford University. He might well expect that his great success as a finance minis­ter and his widening reputation, extending to all civilized lands, would ap­peal strongly for endorsement to the electors on whom he must depend for his return to Parliament. Now it was, however, that his advanced and ad­vancing opinions on both secular and ecclesiastical concerns began to tell seriously on his prospects in the ancient seat of learning. There was a por­tentous defection from his interest. A clamor was raised against his prin­ciples. His speech on the Baines Bill and his more offending utterance on the Dillwyn resolution were brought forth against him. He had become a dangerous man! Opposition put on a bold front. It was noted that the enemy was not so strong in the very seat of the university as it was among those electors who were nonresident at Oxford. The older Fellows and others whose opinions had been fixed at an earlier date were mortally offended at their representative, and were determined to prevent his re­election.

It chanced at this particular juncture that a new system of voting had been adopted, by which the electors of Oxford were authorized to send their ballots through the mail to the vice chancellors, thus obviating the necessity of going to the poll in person. The same measure extended the time of voting to a period of five days. The scheme had been devised by the Liberals as a matter of convenience and popularity, and with little expecta­tion that on the very first trial it would return to plague the inventors by giving an advantage to the nonresident opponents of Mr. Gladstone. But so it was.

The Conservatives came to the contest in full feather. Their candi­date in direct opposition to Mr. Gladstone was Gathorne Hardy, whose wit and force of character made him by no means an opponent to be despised. As to Sir William Heathcote, the other representative of Oxford, he was to

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be returned by common consent of both parties. The election, or in English Parlance, the nomination, began on the 13th of July. Dr. Liddell, Dean of Christ Church College, proposed Mr. Gladstone; Sir William Heathcote Was named by the warden of All Souls' College ; and Mr. Hardy was an­nounced by the public orator of St. John's.

As the election proceeded it was found that Mr. Gladstone was falling behind his competitor. At the end of the first day's voting there was a serious difficulty involving a question of law. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Winchester, son of William Wilberforce, the philanthropist, came to the poll to vote. On announcing his name he was informed that by a new law of Parliament peers of the realm were not permitted to vote at elections for members of the House of Commons. The bishop said he was informed of the law, but offered his vote none the less; and the ballot was accepted. Two or three other peers, of whom one was the Bishop of Durham, also voted for Mr. Gladstone; but even this powerful—if illegal—support could not avail; and before the five days' voting was out it became evident that Mr. Gladstone would be defeated.

An appeal was sent out at this crisis by Sir John Taylor Coleridge, recently Justice of the King's Bench, in which he set forth the danger of the defeat of the Liberal candidate, saying: “The committee do not scruple to advocate his cause on grounds above the common level of politics. They claim for him the gratitude due to one whose public life has for eighteen years reflected a luster on the university herself. They confidently invite you to consider whether his pure and exalted character, his splendid abilities, and his eminent services to Church and State do not constitute the highest of all qualifications for an academical seat and entitle him to be judged by his constituents as he will assuredly be judged by posterity."

The event justified the growing expectation. On the last day of the voting the Liberals made a rally; but the election had already gone against their candidate. Sir William Heathcote received virtually the whole vote of the Oxford constituency; that is, 3,226. Mr. Gathorne Hardy had 1,904, and Mr. Gladstone 1,724, leaving the latter in a minority of 180 votes. The total of ballots cast showed that the constituency was aroused. Of the votes 415 had no other name than that of Mr. Gladstone, while of this kind there were but 43 for Sir William Heathcote, and only 16 for Mr. Gathorne Hardy.

The friends of the candidates, particularly the adherents of Mr. Glad­stone, were quick to analyze the votes, and to point out the peculiarities of the contest. It was found that a fair majority of the resident Oxonians were for Gladstone, and, what was more important, this majority included nearly even- name of men whose support in America from that seat of learning would be regarded as an honor. Among these were the great scholar, Pro-

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fessor Max Miller; Sir John Taylor Coleridge, Justice of the King's Bench; the poet Francis Turner Palgrave; Professor John Conington, the trans­lator of Vergil ; Edward Augustus Freeman, the historian ; Professor Ben­jamin Jowett, the translator of Plato ; Dr. Jelf, custodian of the Bodleian Library; and the three Bishops (be it said to their honor!) of Durham, Ox­ford, and Chester. This array of scholarship, character, and progress, standing firmly in his support, might almost compensate Mr. Gladstone for the loss of his election.

Indeed, of the whole college body, properly so-called, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had as his supporters the great majority. Twenty-four of the professors gave him their votes, while only ten supported Mr. Hardy. In Lincoln College seven of the ten Fellows voted for Gladstone, and only three for his opponent. Moreover, it must have been—and was—when the business was done, that they who compassed Mr. Gladstone's defeat should feel a certain inward wilting over their triumph. It is in human nature to do such things and to repent afterward.

The election at Oxford was decisive of much. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was cast forth to seek what constituency he might in a more congenial field. To him there was in the event a mingled sense of regret and exultation. For how long a time he had felt hampered and constrained by the views and political purposes of his constituents we know not. That he was heartily tired of the necessity that was on him to be true to the wishes and opinions of his electoral body may well be believed.' Now, in any event, he was set free. He might seek among the numerous bodies of English electors a new support, whose purposes and motives back of him might better accord with his own. He was not the man to be cast down by re­verse—if reverse that might be called which had made him a free man.

To the British Liberals the result at Oxford seemed a happy deliver­ance. They perceived at a glance that the liberalizing tendencies in Glad­stone's mind would be accentuated by the thing done. Throughout England there was a general opinion that Oxford had made a sad muss of her oppor­tunity. That a great academic institution should discard a man like Glad­stone appeared to reason as a thing well-nigh impossible. The public sentiment ran strongly to the notion that Oxford had fallen down in the dirt. The newspapers—at least the leading journals—echoed this opinion far and wide. The London Times suggested that the enemies of Oxford would make the most of her recent disgrace. “It has hitherto been sup­posed," said that great organ, “that a learned constituency was to some extent exempt from the vulgar motives of party spirit, and capable of form­ing a higher estimate of statesmanship than common tradesmen or tenant farmers. It will now stand on record that they have deliberately sacrificed a representative who combined the very highest qualifications, moral and

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intellectual, for an academical seat, to party spirit, and party spirit alone Mr. Gladstone's brilliant public career, his great academical distinctions and literary attainments, his very subtlety and sympathies with ideas for their own sake, mark him out beyond all living men for such a position. How­ever progressive in purely secular politics, he has ever shown himself a stanch and devoted Churchman, wherever Church doctrine or ecclesiastical rights were concerned." The Times went on to enlarge upon this state­ment, and to establish it with citations from Mr. Gladstone's past history showing his loyalty to the existing religious order. Continuing, the paper said : " Henceforth Mr. Gladstone will belong to the country, but no longer to the university. Those Oxford influences and traditions which have so deeply colored his views, and so greatly interfered with his better judgment must gradually lose their hold on him."

Such was the decision of the Thunderer on this important personal and historical episode. Other great organs of opinion ratified the same notion relative to Oxford's mistake and Gladstone's emancipation. The London Daily News, at that time the mouthpiece of the Liberal party in the metrop­olis, said: " Mr. Gladstone's career as a statesman will certainly not be arrested, nor Mr. Gathorne Hardy's capacity be enlarged by the number of votes which Tory squires or Tory parsons may inflict upon Lord Derby's cheerful and fluent subaltern, or withhold from Lord Palmerston's brilliant colleague. The late Sir Robert Peel was but the chief of a party until admonished by one ostracism, he became finally emancipated by another. Then, as now, the statesman who was destined to give up to mankind what was never meant for the barren service of a party could say to the honest bigots who rejected him : 'I banish you: There is a world elsewhere.' Mediocrity will not be turned into genius, honest and good-natured insig­nificance into force, fluency into eloquence, if the resident and nonresident Toryism of the University of Oxford should prefer the safe and sound Mr. Hardy to the illustrious minister whom all Europe envies us, whose name is a household word in every political assembly in the world."

So the expressions of public opinion drew in this direction and in that. The journals of the Church Establishment for the most part justified the thing done by Oxford; and therein lay the secret of the whole business. Political conservatism Mr. Gladstone was able to drag after him somewhat, and to plant it slowly in more liberal fields; ecclesiastical conservatism, never. The former might forgive him for advancing in the direction of new truth; the latter would forgive neither him nor any man for leaving the old camping ground or for suggesting that by any possibility a better station might be found on the other side of the mountain.

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The Chancellor of the Exchequer took his defeat with perfect good humor. We may discover in what he said and wrote just afterward some evidence of suppressed excitement, but no sign of mortification or resent­ment. On the 18th of July, the day after the closing of the poll at Oxford, he sent to the members of the Convocation his valedictory address, saying: "After an arduous connection of eighteen years I bid you, respectfully, farewell. My earnest purpose to serve you, my many faults and shortcom­ings, the incidents of the political relation between the university and myself, established in 1847, so often questioned in vain, and now, at length, finally dissolved, I leave to the judgment of the future. It is one imperative duty, and one alone, which induces me to trouble you with these few parting words—the duty of expressing my profound and lasting gratitude for indulgence as generous, and for support as warm and enthusiastic in itself, and as honorable from the character and distinctions of those who have given it, as has, in my belief, ever been accorded by any constituency to any representative."

After the Oxonians, whom? Mr. Gladstone immediately surveyed the landscape, and saw in South Lancashire his open opportunity. The election there had not yet been held. On the last day of the balloting at Oxford, the electors in South Lancashire, foreseeing what was to come in the Oxo­nian complication, proposed the name of William E. Gladstone as their rep­resentative. After sending his brief note to his former constituency Mr. Gladstone, on the same day, made all haste to Manchester, and there had an interview with the local leaders of that party of which he was himself to become the leader par excellence.

The interview was highly satisfactory, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer at once prepared and sent out his address to the electors. “I appear before you," said he to the voters of South Lancashire, "as a candi­date for the suffrages of your division of my native county. Time forbids me to enlarge on the numerous topics which justly engage the public interest. I will bring them all to a single head. You are conversant—few so much so—with the legislation of the last thirty-five years. You have seen, you have felt its results. You cannot fail to have observed the verdict which the country generally has within the last eight days pronounced upon the relative claims and positions of the two great political parties with respect to that legislation in the past and to the prospective legislation of public affairs. I humbly, but confidently, without the least disparagement to many excellent persons, from whom I have the misfortune frequently to differ, ask you to give your powerful voice in confirmation of that verdict, and to pronounce with significance as to the direction in which you desire the wheels of the State to turn. Before these words can be read I hope to be among you, in the hives of your teeming enterprise."

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And so he was. He was received on the following day on the Man­chester Exchange. The hum of excitement swelled to a roar as the distin­guished candidate was borne away to the Free-Trade Hall, in which he was to address his intending constituents. There the throng had gathered to the number of many thousands. The people poured in like a flood, and the orator, as he began, struck fire with his first sentence. He said: " At last, my friends, I am come among you—and I am come, to use an expression which has become very famous and is not likely to be forgotten, I am come among you unmuzzled'" The vast crowd caught the reference and broke into a universal shout. The speaker had already, with that one word, car­ried Manchester. The whole drama of the contest at Oxford, with the sug­gestion of long constraint now ended, was revealed at a stroke in the word unmuzzled. It was equivalent to saying, “I shall now speak out my best thought on the political and ecclesiastical polity of Great Britain."

Mr. Gladstone went on to say that after an anxious struggle of eighteen years, during which time he had been upheld by the unbounded devotion and partiality of his friends, the electors of the University of Oxford, who had maintained him in the arduous position of their representative, he had been pushed from his seat. “I have loved the university," said he, "with a deep and passionate love, and, as long as I breathe, that attachment will continue ; if my affection is of the smallest advantage to that great, that ancient, that noble institution, that advantage, such as it is, and it is most insignificant, Oxford will possess as long as I live. But do not mistake the issue which has been raised. The university has at length, after eighteen years of self-denial, been drawn, by what I might, perhaps, call an overween­ing exercise of power, into the vortex of mere politics. Well, you will readily understand why, as long as I had a hope that the zeal and kindness of my friends might keep me in my place, it was impossible for me to aban­don them. Could they have returned me by a majority of one, painful as it is to a man of my time of life, and feeling the weight of public cares, to be incessantly struggling for his seat, nothing could have induced me to quit that university to which I had so long ago devoted my best care and attach­ment.

“But by no act of mine," continued the speaker," I am free to come among you. And having been thus set free, I need hardly tell you that it is with joy, with thankfulness and enthusiasm, that I now, at this eleventh hour, a candidate without an address, make my appeal to the heart and the mind of South Lancashire, and ask you to pronounce upon that appeal. As I have said, I am aware of no cause for the votes which have given a majority against me in the University of Oxford, except the fact that the strongest conviction that the human mind can receive, that an overpowering sense of the public interests, that the practical teachings of experience, to

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which from my youth Oxford herself taught me to lay open my mind—all these had shown me the folly, and, I will say, the madness of refusing to join in the generous sympathies of my countrymen, by adopting what I must call an obstructive policy."

The speaker then adverted to the magnificent legislation that had been enacted under the direct and indirect influence of the Liberal party. " With­out entering," said he, " into details, without unrolling the long record of all the great measures that have been passed—the emancipation of Roman Catholics; the removal of tests from Dissenters; the emancipation of the slaves; the reformation of the Poor Law ; the reformation—I had almost said the destruction, but it is the reformation—of the Tariff; the abolition of the Corn Laws; the abolition of the Navigation Laws; the conclusion of the French treaty; the laws which have relieved Dissenters from stigma and almost ignominy, and which in doing so have not weakened, but have strengthened, the Church to which I belong—all these great acts accom­plished with the same, I had almost said sublime, tranquility of the whole country as that with which your own vast machinery performs its appointed task, as it were, in perfect repose—all these things have been done. You have seen the acts. You have seen the fruits. It is natural to inquire who have been the doers. In a very humble measure, and yet according to the degree and capacity which Providence has bestowed upon me, I have been desirous, not to obstruct, but to promote and assist, this beneficent and blessed process. And if I entered Parliament, as I did enter Parliament, with a warm and anxious desire to maintain the institutions of my country, I can truly say that there is no period of my life during which my con­science is so clear, and renders me so good an answer, as those years in which I have cooperated in the promotion of Liberal measures. . . . Because they are Liberal, they are the true measures, and indicate the true policy by which the country is made strong and its institutions preserved."

This speech, of which the extracts are but a hint was the beginning of a short, swift campaign that roared along with enthusiasm to its end. From the Free-Trade Hall of Manchester the candidate went next and spoke on the same evening in the Royal Amphitheater at Liverpool. There he was met with the same popular approval. It was evident that he was already becoming the idol of the great middle classes of the English people. For the time he was visited with what Whittier calls “the angel of the backward look," who reminded him ever and anon of the academic shades at Oxford. At Liverpool he referred again to the university which had sent him forth in his youth and had now sent him forth in a different sense. “If I am told," said he, " that it is only by embracing the narrow interests of a politi­cal party that Oxford can discharge her duties to the country, then, gentlemen, I at once say I am not the man for Oxford. We see repre-

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sented in that ancient institution—represented more nobly, perhaps, and more conspicuously than in any other place, at any rate with more remark­able concentration—the most prominent features that relate to the past of England. 1 come into South Lancashire, and I find here around me an assemblage of different phenomena. I find development of industry; I find growth of enterprise; I find progress of social philanthropy; I find prev­alence of toleration; and I find an ardent desire for freedom."

The speaker went on to elaborate the aspects of the social and indus­trial condition in the great centers of Liverpool and Manchester. He spoke in commendation of the tremendous social, industrial, and commercial forces that were here displayed, and in profound sympathy with the teeming cities and progressive people that had evolved so auspicious a civic life. Then he continued: " I have honestly, I have earnestly, although I may have feebly, striven to unite in my insignificant person that which is represented by Oxford and that which is represented by Lancashire. My desire is that they should know and love one another. If I have clung to the representa­tion of the university with desperate fondness, it was because I would not desert that post in which I seem to have been placed. I have not abandoned it. I have been dismissed from it, not by academical, but by .political agencies.

"I do not complain," said the speaker, "of those political influences by which I have been displaced. The free constitutional spirit of the country requires that the voice of the majority shall prevail. I hope the voice of the majority will prevail in South Lancashire. I do not for a moment complain that it should have prevailed at Oxford; but, gentlemen, I come now to ask you a question whether, because I have been declared unfit longer to serve the university on account of my political position, there is anything in what I have said and done in the arduous office which I hold which is to unfit me for the representation of my native county."

The reader may discover in this appeal the deep anxiety of a great and earnest mind not to be again stranded on the rocks. The orator did not fail, however, to lay sound logical foundations also for his intending constituents to build upon. He took up the course of legislation as promoted by the liberal ministry of Lord Palmerston, and enacted by the House of Commons, and defended that policy against the arguments of Conservative politicians and statesmen. But he had no time for much speaking. The day of the poll was already at hand. On the 20th of July the election was held, and resulted in the choice of two Conservatives and one Liberal, the latter being William E. Gladstone. The candidate having the highest number of votes (9,171) was Mr. A. Egerton; the second in rank was Mr. Turner, who received 8,806 votes; and the third was Mr. Gladstone, who received 8,786 votes. The majority of the last named over his

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Conservative competitor, Mr. Leigh, was only 310 votes. In Liverpool and Manchester, however, the balloting showed better results for the Liberal candidates. In these great cities Mr. Gladstone led all the others, with so large a majority as to carry him back to the House of Commons, as if in triumph—though he was only third on the general poll of South Lancashire.

The general complexion of the new Parliament was Liberal. The majority, which had been barely a working majority at the late session, was emphasized by the gain of a number of seats. Of the 657 members of Parliament returned at the elections 367 were set down as Liberals, and 290 as Conservatives. The Liberal party, as the exponent of those commercial and reformatory tendencies described in the preceding pages, had the manifest approval of the country. The time had come, however, when the leadership of that party must pass from its late head, Lord Palmerston, to another.

Henry John Temple, the Viscount Palmerston, died at Brocket Hall, near Hatfield, in Hertfordshire, on the 18th of October, 1865. He was within two days of completing his eighty-first year. He was descended from the Irish Temples. When he was in his eighteenth year he succeeded to his father's title. His education was obtained at Harrow School. He first appeared in public life as a member of Parliament for Newton, Isle of Wight, in the year 1807. In the Duke of Portland's cabinet he held the place of junior lord of the admiralty. Afterward, from the year 1808 to 1828, he was secretary of war. In politics he was in youth a Tory disciple of Pitt, and advocated Catholic emancipation. At the age of forty-six he accepted the place of minister of foreign affairs in the Whig cabinet of Earl Grey.

It was at this juncture that Palmerston acquired his strong taste—and some said his strong sympathy—for continental affairs and tendencies. He favored the establishment of Prince Leopold as King of the Belgians, and advocated the maintenance, under the auspices of the great Powers, of the Ottoman Empire, as a breakwater against the Russian floods. From the year 1840 to 1845 Lord Palmerston was out of office. In 1848 he appeared again in the ministry of Lord John Russell, and made himself conspicuous as the champion of the revolutionary cause on the Continent. He regarded the coup d'etat in France as a part of the general movement, and strongly supported the cause of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte—until what time he was virtually dismissed from office.

We have seen Lord Palmerston again as home secretary in the ministry of the Earl of Aberdeen. Finally, on the 5th of February, 1855, he became Prime Minister of England, and remained in that high office, omitting the brief interregnum of the Derby administration in 1858, until the day of his death. He made a powerful political and social impression upon his countrymen. He might almost be regarded as the founder of the Liberal

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party; for it was under his wing that the erstwhile belligerent factions were unified and brought to a common purpose under the name of Liberals. Lord Palmerston had been greatly admired by the majority of his country­men and greatly disliked by the rest. He was a man of strong and peculiar characteristics, a wit, an epigrammatist, a satirist, almost a skeptic, but withal a thorough Englishman, jovial and self-confident, believing in the attainment of success, the champion of progressive ideas, and the hero of Punch.

The death of Lord Palmerston did not pass without appropriate public notice. It fell to Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons to move an address to the queen, praying her majesty to order a monument for the late minister in Westminster Abbey. In the formal commemoration of the death of the statesman Mr. Gladstone said in the House: "All who knew Lord Palmerston knew his genial temper and the courage with which he entered into the debates in this House; his incomparable tact and ingenuity; his command of fence; his delight, his old English delight, in a fair stand-up fight. Yet, notwithstanding the possession of these powers, I must say I think there was no man whose inclination and whose habit were more fixed, so far as our discussions were concerned, in avoiding whatever tended to exasperate, and in having recourse to those means by which animosity might be calmed down. He had the power to stir up angry passions, but he chose, like the sea god in the AEneid, rather to pacify!

' Quos ego—sed motos prastat cojnponere fluctus.' ['Whom I—but it is first needful to pacify the perturbed seas.']

That which, in my opinion, distinguished Lord Palmerston's speaking from the oratory of other men, that which was its most remarkable characteristic, was the degree in which he said precisely that which he meant to express," In concluding his remarks the speaker emphasized the noble quality of Lord Palmerston in refusing to nurse the anger and animosity which were so frequently the incidents, of public life. The leader of the opposition fol­lowed in a similar vein, speaking of the social character of Lord Palmerston and of the enviable tradition of a great and generous personality which he had left to his countrymen.

Nor may we pass from this event and epoch without referring also to the death of Richard Cobden. That statesman expired in London, almost in sight of the House of Commons, on the 2d of April, 1865, lacking two months of having completed his sixty-first year. His fame in Great Brit­ain and throughout the world as a political economist, as an advocate of free trade, and as an incorruptible statesman had become immense. He was an explorer in the domain of untried reforms. We have seen him as the chief supporter of the Anti-Corn-Law League in 1838-46; also as the unaided negotiator of the commercial treaty with France; also as the

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uncompromising friend of the American Union in the day of our greatest trials. He was a man of the very highest abilities. His genius was acknowledged in his own day, and is now an unchallenged fact in the per­sonal history of the age.

Still further was the character of this man illustrated within less than two months of his death. On the 10th of February, 1865, being then in a greatly enfeebled condition, he received a letter from Mr. Gladstone speak­ing in behalf of Lord Palmerston, and offering to him the chairmanship of the Board of Audit, which was about to become vacant. The salary of the position was two thousand pounds a year, and the duties, though highly responsible and honorable, were not onerous. Mr. Gladstone's letter was cordial and sympathetic, but Cobden would not accept. He gave a suffi­cient reason, found in the state of his health, which would not permit him, he thought, to assume the performance of any stated and permanent duties. Then that peculiar conscience which he carried came into play, and he added: “Were my case different, still, while sensible of the kind intentions which prompted the offer, it would assuredly not be consulting my welfare to place me in the post in question with my own views respecting the nature of our finances. Believing, as I do, that while the income of the govern­ment is derived in a greater proportion than in any other country from the taxation of the humblest classes, its expenditure is to the last degree waste­ful and indefensible, it would be almost a penal appointment to consign me for the remainder of my life to the task of passively auditing our finance accounts. I fear my health would sicken and my days be shortened by the

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nauseous ordeal. It will be better that I retain my seat in Parliament as long as I am able in any tolerable degree to perform its duties, where I have at least the opportunity of protesting, however unavailingly, against the government expenditure." There spoke one of the most robust and incor­ruptible natures of this great century of power and subserviency. Would that in the last decade of it one other such voice might be heard above the roar of place-seeking, avarice, greed, and compromise!

Mr. Cobden gradually sank under an attack of bronchitis running into consumption. There were little intervals of delusive improvement. He went with his eldest daughter into Suffolk Street, and there took his last lodgings near the Athenaeum Club and the House of Commons. He con­tinued to perform certain light duties of correspondence, and finally, on the day of his death, left a half-written letter on his desk. He was laid to rest in a slope of pine woods in the humble churchyard of Lavington, where he had buried his promising son years before.

As soon as Lord Palmerston was gone the queen sent for Earl Rus­sell and intrusted to him the conduct of her government. Mr. Gladstone was called to assume the leadership of the House of Commons. It was agreed by his friends beforehand, and was eagerly remarked by his political enemies, that this position would be especially trying to him on account of his temper and temperament. There were, indeed, good grounds to doubt, not his qualifications, but his qualities with respect to the position to which he was now assigned. We may agree that the place in question called rather for the humor, the irony, the recklessness, the audacity, and even the unscrupulous methods and manners of a man such as Benjamin Disraeli or Lord Palmerston himself than for the philosophical, urbane, and serious Gladstone, always in earnest, didactic rather than paradoxical, convincing rather than amusing. But the exigency of party government made his assumption of parliamentary leadership a necessity, and he came to his task with force of will, great abilities, and a high measure of success. Not a year elapsed until both friends and foes acknowledged that the great finance minister was also to be regarded as a great leader of the House of Commons.