HE political condition of Great Britain during the first three or four years of the reign of Victoria might well furnish oppor­tunity to a scholarly young statesman to express his opinions and policies by means of literature. A quiet had fallen on England, and the debates in Parliament were, for the most part, factitious and irrelevant. The Reform Bill, and the results of that measure, had been accepted as parts of the British Constitution. Conservatism, from having bitterly opposed the reformatory legislation which was effected at the beginning of the decade, passed over in the usual manner and encamped in the abandoned bivouac of Liberalism.

Meanwhile, ministerial changes had been going forward. Earl Grey, after having had the distinguished, almost immortal, honor of leading the ministry when the struggle was on for parliamentary reform, for the abolition of slavery throughout the British empire, and the enactment of the Poor Law amendment, finally went out of office in July of 1834. William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne, then became prime minister until the following November, to be returned to the same position in April of 1835. The Melbourne administration lasted for six years and four months, ending in August of 1841. The period of this ministry was almost wholly uneventful from a legislative point of view. Great Britain was engaged in quietly adjusting herself to the reformed conditions, and was very willing that the administration should remain in the hands of a statesman more noted for negations than for anything else; more indebted for his reputation to his successful induction of Queen Victoria into her duties as sovereign than for any popularity derived from his policy as a statesman. His talents were by no means brilliant. His oratory was weak and often pointless. Personally he was popular and acceptable. His skill in statecraft lay in his ability to manage the subordinates of his party and to interest them with his wit and other attractive personal qualities.

It was during this rather colorless period of the Melbourne ministry, just after the accession of Victoria and just before his own marriage, that Mr. Gladstone found opportunity to indulge his passion for letters, and to promote his future interests in politics by advocating the doctrines discussed in the foregoing chapter relative to the union of Church and State. The time now came, however, for a change in the tide. Great Britain wearied of the Melbourne ministry, and in August of 1841 that administration went to pieces. It was the signal for the beginning of a new epoch in parlia-

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mentary history ;and of this history William E. Gladstone had now become a not inconsiderable part.

Lord Melbourne was succeeded by Sir Robert Peel, who had been out of office since 1835. During this interval Mr. Gladstone had followed in the wake of him who now became Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury. At the first it could not be known what changes in the policy of the empire Sir Robert was disposed to promote. Possibly he did not

himself see clearly the course of events. At any rate, he moved cautiously on coming into power, examining tentatively the ground he was to occupy; and in this policy he was supported by Mr. Gladstone.

In September of 1841 a lengthy debate occurred in Parliament on a motion to constitute a Committee of Supply. On this proposition Mr. Fielden moved to amend by appointing a committee to investigate the causes of the existing distress before attempting to relieve it. The debate

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showed a strong disposition on the part of Parliament to ascertain its own whereabouts with relation to that past from which the House had emerged, and to that future which seemed altogether obscure.

We are now able to see historically, as by the immutable laws of cause and effect, how great industrial and social questions must follow hard after the Reform Bill of 1832. Among such questions none was of greater impor­tance than that of the Corn Laws. Those laws touched the history of Great Britain in many places, and extended over several centuries of time. They existed as a part of the system which the empire had long maintained in favor of the agricultural classes. The general effect of the Reform Bill had been to reduce somewhat the overwhelming influence of the landed aristocracy, and correspondingly to enhance the influence of the commercial and manufacturing classes. The Corn Laws were involved in this change; and the question of amending or abolishing them could hardly long be post­poned. Besides, certain conditions of distress, industrial and social, had now appeared in British society. It were hard to say whether such distress had long existed and had only now found a voice, or whether the accumulation of populations in the manufacturing centers and the pressure of the whole people on the means of subsistence had led to the suffering which at length cried out for relief.

We need not here enter elaborately into the history of the Corn Laws of Great Britain. That would carry us far back, at least to the early part of the fifteenth century. The laws in question related fundamentally to the export and import of wheat, rye, barley, and the immediate products of some of these grains. Duties were imposed on the exportation and trade in these cereals, all of which were included under the general term corn. Statute after statute had been passed through a period of about three hundred years, regulating the corn trade and determining prices, the theory being that the home product of Great Britain was necessary in toto for the well-being of the people.

The act of the year 1815 had been intended to fix the price of wheat in the British markets at about eighty shillings the quarter. In the ensuing twenty years .the laws were many times modified in the hope of maintaining the price of the bread materials at a high point, in spite of natural conditions. In 1827 George Canning secured the pas­sage of a new schedule in the House of Commons, lowering the duties and expressing the tendency of legislation toward their final extinction. Two years previously an act had been passed permitting the importation of wheat from North America at a duty of five shillings per quarter, without respect to the home price of wheat in Great Britain. The law of Canning had been one shilling the quarter on wheat, when the home price was above seventy shillings, and an increased duty of two shillings

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for every point that the price should fall below sixty-nine shillings the quarter.

These rules of trade were difficult of application, and frequently of little effect. The laws became more and more unsatisfactory, and the reformed Conservative government undertook, in 1841, to revise the schedule. On the 9th of February in that year Sir Robert Peel proposed a new sliding scale of duties on corn, beginning with a duty of twenty shillings, to be levied when the home price of wheat was fifty-one shillings the quarter, with a re­duction to one shilling when the home price should rise to seventy-three shillings the quarter. The theory was that by the sliding scale the price of the various grains to which the law referred might be maintained at a high point and with comparatively little fluctuation therefrom.

It was with this important economic proposition that the stormy legis­lative history of the decade was introduced. It was the intention of Sir Robert Peel to precipitate a discussion of the Corn Laws as such. He declared in so many words that he regarded the crisis as not unfavorable for the consideration of the bottom principles of the laws. He spoke of the conditions present in the country, saying that the foreign crops in sight had not been such as to alarm the farming interest of England. There had been quiet in the country during the period of the recess. Legislation might be resumed with no apprehension of popular violence ; for there was none. The House might proceed with calmness and moderation to con­sider any measure which had for its end the solution of the problem involved in the duties on corn. The event showed, however, that Sir Robert had drawn on his imagi­nation rather than on the facts in the foregoing statements. The echo of his speech had hardly died away before the popular young queen had been hooted at one of the London theaters. That was a signal that the ministry was imperiled. The country came into a condition of feverish excitement. Five days after Sir Robert Peel had introduced his proposition Lord John Russell, taking advantage of a parliamentary opportunity, thrust before the House of Commons an amendment, which was really a substitute, in these : “That this House, considering the evils which have been caused bv the present Corn Laws, and especially by the fluctuation of the graduated, or sliding scale, is not prepared to adopt the measure of her majesty's government, which is founded on the same principles, and is likely to be attended by similar results."

If this substitute should prevail it would amount to the overthrow of the ministry. Indeed, Lord John Russell had that end in view. The Con­servative leaders, however, planted themselves with the panoply of party contrivance around them in the way of the movement. Gladstone took up the cause of the premier, and spoke with great plausibility in favor of the

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ministerial proposition. He denied that Sir Robert Peel's measure was identical with that of Lord John Russell, or even like it. The speaker was more careful than his master in regard to the existing distress, which he admitted, but laid to the charge of nature. For, he said, the crops had failed, and no rate of import duties could prevail against such a disaster. For four years successively there had been a comparative failure in the production of wheat, barley, and rye. The high prices of food under such circumstances could not be wholly obviated under any contrivance of man. The proposition of the government was in nearly all respects different from that of Lord Russell, and markedly superior thereto. The measure pro­posed by the premier was temperate, rational, conservative. The country might safely, under such a measure, expect an equalization in prices and a betterment of social and domestic conditions. The debate waxed hot; but when it came to a vote the government was sustained by a large majority. Lord Russell's substitute was vigorously rejected.

Nevertheless, public discontent was everywhere. Sir Robert Peel, in his optimistic misrepresentation of the industrial condition of England, incurred much ridicule and sarcasm. The animosity against him broke out here and there in tumults, denunciations, and burnings in effigy. The ministry, however, was strong and unyielding. Only ten days after the Russell episode Mr. Villiers, a free trader pure and simple, offered a resolu­tion in the House for the absolute repeal of the existing Corn Laws. This struck down to the heart of the question. Since it was a measure of disturb­ance, a thing always frightful to a British Parliament, it was rejected by a majority of more than two thirds.

Something, however, had to be done; for there was a deficit of nearly three million pounds, and the existing system of tariff duties on articles of consumption was already strained to the point of breaking. It is in the nature of such situations that they suggest an income tax. Property, in the day of final resort, is summoned to give back a part of what it has taken away. Sir Robert Peel espoused the principle of a tax on incomes. He presented a scheme for raising three million seven hundred thousand pounds, at the same time indicating his purpose, should his method be adopted, of reducing the duties of the existing schedule to a much lower figure. The main feature of the scheme was the levying of a seven pence rate on all incomes over a hundred and fifty pounds for a period of three years. The Whigs, under the lead of Lord John Russell, entered the arena against the ministerial plan, but could not prevail.

As soon as the Income Tax Bill was passed government went forward to carry out its pledge of reducing and abolishing duties. The idea was to relieve the manufacturing industries of Great Britain, and to popularize the government with them, by reducing, minimizing, or wholly removing those

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duties by which the agricultural interest had so long been favored. Nor will the American reader fail to observe in this situation, partibus reversis, the exact counterpart of the tariff legislation in the United States in the decade following the first accession ©f Cleveland to the presidency. An examination of the ministerial schedule, which Mr. Gladstone is said to have prepared and to have put into Sir Robert Peel's hands for introduction into the Commons, showed that a large number of the articles hitherto under duty were to be changed to the free list, and that the duties on a still greater number had been heavily reduced. The measure was virtually the proto­type of the American Wilson Bill of 1893-94. The free traders in Parlia­ment shouted with derisive laughter to see, as they said, the ministry of Great Britain driven over by public opinion to the position held by the Radicals.

A long debate ensued, marked with stormy passages, in the course of which Mr. Gladstone stood as the champion of what was virtually his own measure. The debates reported in Hansard and the Annual Register for this period show that the statesman (for we may now call him such) spoke at greater length or less no fewer than a hundred and twenty-nine times during the session of 1841-42, and by far the greater number of his efforts were directed to the question of tariff reform as expressed in the pending ministerial bill.

e We shall here for the moment neglect the general political and domes­tic conditions in England, and go forward to the end of the contest over the Corn Laws. The fate of those long-standing interferences with the natural conditions of trade was at hand. The debate over the tariff schedules was ever and anon deflected to that which was the bottom ques­tion, namely, the advisability of abolishing utterly the restrictions on the commerce in the cereals grown in England. The manufactures of the realm were seriously impaired. It was a periodical epoch of distress. Everything seemed to go to the advantage of those who sought to make Great Britain an absolutely free-trade country. Mr. Gladstone at this time, having become virtually the ablest speaker among the ministerial benches, had devolved on him the onerous duty of explaining away the suffering and discontent of the country. He was much more concessiv than his leader, Sir Robert Peel, in admitting the hard conditions of the times. The session of 1842 expired, and that of 1843 began. The queen's speech, devised to meet the exigencies of the existing ministry, spoke thankfully of the labors of her Parliament, optimistically of the condition of her people, and quite hopefully of the future.

The address from the throne called forth serious opposition. There was a proposition to consider the speech of her majesty in committee of the whole. Should such a motion prevail it would imply a want of confi-

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dence in the government. A debate ensued, in the course of which Mr. Gladstone defended the policy of the ministry, but at the same time held out the lure that the differences between the two parties in Parliament—parties which had recently combined to the number of more than three hundred votes against the proposition to abolish the Corn Laws—were not so great but that all conservative lovers of their country might join in relaxing, as much as might be expedient, the prevalent system of duties. The speaker made a politic and rather tentative address, warning the House not to take such action as should give a great shock to the commercial industries of England, such as would manifestly be produced by the total abolition of the Corn Laws. The speech, as a whole, was a moderate plea for such limited protection as still held its place in the industrial and commercial relations of Great Britain, and as had not yet been exterminated from the current theory of political economy. Finally, he charged the opposition with inconsistency in this, that the Whig party, whether in power or out of power, had as much as the Conservatives neglected—until obliged by the recent distress of the country—to propose or promote any salutary meas­ures of trade reform.

The result of these debates was another triumph for the ministry.

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Later in the session the project of abolishing the Corn Laws was once and again renewed; and it might be observed with alarm by the dominant party that the ministerial majority wavered from time to time, was reduced at intervals on the votes, and became sensitive to the distress of the country and the outside agitation. Still the ministry of Sir Robert Peel held on. It was supported by the fully represented and powerfully organized landed aristocracy of England, while the opposition to the current policy came up from the clamorous but rather chaotic manufacturing centers, where opinion had not yet become consolidated in favor of free trade.

We shall here return to consider the outside social reasons for the political disturbances of these times. We have now entered fully upon the great Epoch of Chartism, a crisis in which modern English democracy discovered its power and forged its way to the front. The career of William E. Gladstone cannot be well estimated and interpreted without noting the oncoming conditions which prevailed coincidently with his rise to influ­ence in Parliament and to national and international reputation.

It was in the year 1838 that the Chartists first paraded what they called the People's Charter. It is believed that the brief code of principles so denominated was prepared by Daniel O'Connell. There was an enumeration of six fundamental things which the masses of the English people were said to demand. These were :

1. A demand for universal suffrage ; 2. A demand for an annual Parliament ; 3. A demand for the right to vote by ballot ; 4. A demand for the abolition of the property qualification then exist­ing for membership in the House of Commons ; 5. A demand that members of Parliament be. paid a salary for their services ; 6. A demand for the division of the United Kingdom into equal electoral districts on the basis of population.

Relative to these demands or principles of political progress we should remark that the appeal for universal suffrage signified only manhood suffrage, and had no respect to the political rights of women. The third principle, or right to vote by ballot, had respect to the secret, written ballot as against the method of voting viva voce, which was then in vogue. The latter method had always been used by the dominant aristocracy as a means of suppressing the real voice of the under man. For how could the under man express his preference at the polls if he had to do so in the presence of the country squire, who was virtually his master? Such is the influence of property, and of money in particular, that a free ballot must mean, the whole world over, the secret ballot by which the under man is able to be counted without fear of the consequences. How hardly did civilization

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discover the ballot box, and how more than hardly has that ballot box been made a reality for the legitimate expression of the wishes of the people !

The Chartists put their charter on their banners and began to agitate. Of course the masses followed in the wake of the proclamation. There was a general turbulence in the seabed of British life. In the retrospect we see how reasonable and moderate were the demands of the Chartist leaders; and yet, such was the hostility of the governing classes toward this meek proclamation of republicanism that one might well imagine, from the political literature of the day, that the end of all things was at hand—that both man and nature were about to be engulfed in the abyss of anarchy. Several remarkable personages led the political insurrection. O'Connell himself was charged with being the author of the Chartist platform. His country­man, Feargus O'Connor, became the most popular as well as the most vehe­ment of the agitators. The poet and phil­anthropist, Thomas Cooper, was another. Henry Vincent, well known in America as a lecturer in the eighth decade, was another. Some of these were seized and imprisoned. All were persecuted. But the volume of agitation rolled and swelled and broke, until at length the Melbourne ministry tottered and went down. Then it was that Sir Robert Peel, Gladstone's friend and ideal leader, came to the fore and brought his able lieutenant with him.

We may note another circumstance of this time as a matter of interest in that his­tory of which Mr. Gladstone was about to become a great part. This was the mar­riage of the queen. At the opening of Parliament in 1840 Victoria appeared in person and announced her purpose to be married to her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The young majesty said that she was intending to secure the happiness of her people and her own. Common fame had it that the queen and the prince were really in love—a rare thing in those high courts where monarchy sits and contrives in what way it shall best perpetuate itself at the expense of nature and in mockery of the human heart. The marriage was accord­ingly celebrated, and the prince consort became an influential factor in the current domestic, civil, and artistic life of Great Britain. He did his part well /or a little more than twenty years. Albert was always a man of moderation and good taste. He and the queen, or rather the queen and he, lived happily together. Their family grew and multiplied. Great

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Britain was honored with a virtuous home at the head of the State, a thing not known for a long time in the annals of the empire. Albert became the patron of arts and industries; sympathized with the British public; smoothed not a little the gnarled forehead of John Bull; and finally—which was of great importance—attended in politics strictly to his own business. He was known as an outside privy council; but the influence which he must necessarily exercise over his wife was never against the dictates of reason and conscience, and never adverse to the interests of the English nation. The queen thought him the ideal man.and came as near to adoration as was possible with her unenthusiastic, prudent, and almost wholly neutral nature.

An incident of the parliamentary session of 1842 was Mr. Gladstone's opposition to a reduction in the duty on imported sugar. The mood of his mind may be discovered by examining his argument on this subject. He was prudent enough to discern the rising and inevitably predominant senti­ment of free trade. The existing duties on foreign sugar were not in the nature of free trade, and their continuance would be inconsistent with what was about to be accomplished in the abolition of the Corn Laws. Glad­stone therefore defended the sugar duties on the ground that the reduction of the same would encourage the opening of the slave trade again—this for the reason that cheap sugar would signify cheap labor in Demerara and Jamaica; and cheap labor would tempt the planters to reinforce the slave system of cultivation.

The next measure with which the name of Gladstone was publicly associated was a bill proposed by himself for the abolition of the interdict on the exportation of machinery. The law to prohibit such exportation had been passed in the preceding reign. It was, of course, strictly accord­ant with the Corn Laws, being a part of the general interference with the natural laws of trade. It was intended to regulate the price of machinery by restricting the sale of it to the home market. Mr. Gladstone had now become President of the Board of Trade. In that relation he was the successor of the Earl of Ripon, whom he succeeded in the Peel ministry. It was claimed by the author of the bill that the existing statute had become practically inoperative. It appeared that, notwithstanding the law, the foreign trade in English machinery had been continued. At all events, Gladstone succeeded in carrying his bill through Parliament. This was per­haps as important a measure as any which he promoted in the parliamen­tary session of 1843.

In the meantime, however, he began to take a larger view of the needs and tendencies of British society. Some of his biographers have pointed to this period as the time when Mr. Gladstone began to discuss those social and educational questions with which he was subsequently so much con-

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cerned. It was in the year 1843 that he was invited to deliver the address at the opening of the collegiate institution of Liverpool. His speech on the occasion was carefully prepared, and showed once more the strongly reli­gious bias of his life. The nature of Gladstone being large and sincere, and his character aspiring, he had become in boyhood deeply imbued with the prevailing religious system, and this tendency had been so strongly confirmed in his whole educational career that the old forces of his youth would not readily loose their grasp on the now adult man.

In the beginning of his address on the occasion referred to he advo­cated, almost vehemently, the maintenance of religion as a part of the educational system. Addressing himself to the regents he said: " We believe that if you could erect a system which should present to mankind all the branches of knowledge save the one that is essential, you would only be building up a tower of Babel which, when you had completed it, would be the more signal in its fall, and which would bury those who had raised it in its ruins. We all believe that if you can take a human being in his youth, and if you can make him an accomplished man in natural philosophy, in mathematics, or in the knowledge necessary for the profession of a mer­chant, a lawyer, or a physician; that if in any or all of these endowments you could form his mind—yes, if you could endow him with the science of a Newton and so send him forth—and if you had concealed from him, or rather had not given him a knowledge and love of the Christian faith—he would go forth into the world, able indeed with reference to those purposes of science, successful with the accumulation of wealth for the multiplication of more, but ' poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked ' with reference to everything that constitutes the true and sovereign purpose of our existence —nay worse, worse—with respect to the sovereign purpose—than if he had still remained in the ignorance which all commiserate, and which it is the object of this institution to assist in removing."

The traces of Mr. Gladstone's origin among the commercial classes are to be seen in nearly the whole of his career. He always spoke with more zeal and more knowledge on commercial questions than on any other phase of the industrial life. By the year 1844 the railway system of Great Britain had sufficiently grown to claim the attention of Parliament. It was the business of the Board of Trade, and in particular of the president of that body, to consider with attention the rising interests of the British rail­ways. It was at the session of this year that Gladstone brought forward a bill providing for the purchase, after a period of fifteen years, of any rail­ways whose rights might be acquired during the period named.

Already some of the railways had cut down their rates. All of them had adopted the principle of classification in the matter of fares. The trains were run as first-class, as second-class, as third-class, etc. The bill of

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Mr. Gladstone was of a kind to enforce itself as a sort of charter or consti­tution upon all the railways that should be built after the passage of the measure. A strong trace of a future leaning toward democracy might be seen in that provision of the bill which compelled railways to run at least one daily train, at a speed of not less than twelve miles, for the local accommodation of the common people, at the rate of one penny per mile for each passenger, to whom was allowed an amount of baggage weighing fifty pounds without extra charge. Children under three years of age were to be carried free and those between three years and twelve years at half the price for adults.

The companies of the railways already in existence set themselves to prevent the passage of this popular measure, but their opposition was unavailing. If any railway should refuse to be governed by the provisions thus made, then such railway became purchasable by the Board of Trade and might be paid for within a period of twenty-five years out of the profits, at a rate not exceeding ten per cent per annum of the purchase price.

It is to this year, 1844, that another significant piece of legislation favored by Gladstone must be referred. It was the first, perhaps, of those measures which betokened a dawning liberalism in his opinions. Hopefully enough, the liberalism appeared against the principles of that strict orthodoxy in which he had been reared and to which his first book had been so ardently devoted. It had happened in England that not a few of the Nonconformists who, far back in the revolutionary times, had begun as Presbyterians, had now ended by becoming Unitarian in belief. Religion­ists of such profession had in the long interval acquired many properties. Such properties had been transmitted from age to age, while those who owned and controlled them were gradually passing to new grounds in the matter of religious profession. To the Church of England it was somewhat tolerable that men should be dissenting Trinitarians, such as they of the Presbyterian faith, but quite intolerable that Unitarians should be seized of those ecclesiastical properties which had come down from an ancestry more nearly orthodox.

The properties referred to were in many cases charitable in character. Lady Hewley had given to the Calvinists an establishment which had passed to Unitarian control, and so passing, the managers were expelled from possession and occupancy! At the session of 1844 a bill was before Parliament to ratify and confirm all such properties to the rightful owners, subject only to the restriction that the ownership had been undisturbed for a period of twenty years preceding. It was in the discussion of this bill that Mr. Gladstone appeared in the affirmative. He stood up boldly in the Commons and declared that, while his own allegiance to the Church of England and her rights was unshaken and unchallengeable, he nevertheless

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regarded the pending proposition simply as a matter of common justice which, independently of all creed and abstract consideration of reason and theory, should be adopted. The Unitarians ought to be defended in their natural and inalienable rights as well as they of orthodox belief. The address of the President of the Board of Trade produced something of a sensation in the Commons, and from that day predictions began to be heard to the effect that William E. Gladstone might some day become the cham­pion of equal rights to all religions whatsoever.

This forgiving, indeed, of the liberalizing tendency in Gladstone was destined soon to be confirmed in a striking crisis of his parliamentary life. Now it was that the question arose of voting a sum of money for the improvement of the Catholic college of Maynooth, in Ireland. This insti­tution is situated in a village of the same name in the County of Kildare, Province of Leinster, about fifteen miles distant from Dublin. The college was instituted by the Irish Parliament in 1765, with the design of furnishing a seat of learning for the education of Roman Catholic clergymen. In the time of William Pitt the question of supporting the institution by grants of money under parliamentary act was agitated, and a measure of dubious justice and little efficacy was adopted. The time had now arrived when the college must be supported or must cease to perform its functions. New

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buildings were required, which the management was unable to supply. The people who patronized Maynooth were taxpayers, as any other, and subjects of the British crown, but received no benefit in return.

At the first parliamentary session of 1845 a measure called the May­nooth Improvement Bill was introduced into the House of Commons. As matter of fact, the bill went forward regularly through its several readings, and with much debate, until 1846, when the act was passed granting an annual gift of twenty-six thousand pounds for the support of the Royal Catholic College, and in particular for the erection of the new Gothic buildings which the institution has ever since occupied. The measure was of a kind to bring Mr. Gladstone into a close place. For how could he, who had written The State in its Relations with the Church, support from his ministerial position a bill for the proposed grant to a Catholic university? He had held that the religious establishment, whatever it may be, is a legiti­mate organ of the government, and must be supported to the exclusion of all other forms of ecclesiastical organization. Should he now take the opposite view, and, under the impulses of a broader humanity, adopt the motto, Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur? Would not all men say that for the sake of his place in the ministry his opinions had gone by vendue to the highest competing interest? In reality Gladstone's opinions had changed to the extent that his conscience now required him to support the Maynooth Bill. That he could do only in one way without laying himself liable to the charge of interested tergiversation. The one way was to resign his place in the ministry. That done he might honorably stand on the floor of the House and declare—which was indeed the truth—that he had changed, but changed from conscientious motives and to his own hurt.

This course he boldly pursued. At the opening of the session of 1845 he resigned his place in the ministry, and made full explanation of his reasons for doing so. If he should favor—so he said—an increase in the endowments of Maynooth, and perhaps go so far as to favor the support of nonsectarian colleges, he should go against the opinions which he had advocated in his work on Church and State. He acknowledged the falli­bility of his judgment as expressed in that book. "It has been my convic­tion," said he, " that although I was not to fetter my judgment as a member o( Parliament by a reference to abstract theories, yet, on the other hand it was absolutely due to the public and due to myself that I should, so far as in me lay, place myself in a position to form an opinion upon a matter of so great importance that should not only be actually free from all bias or leaning with respect to any consideration whatsoever, but an opinion that should be unsuspected. On that account, I have taken a course most pain­ful to myself in respect to personal feelings, and have separated myself

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from men with whom and under whom I have long acted in public life, and of whom I am bound to say, although I have now no longer the honor of serving my most gracious sovereign, that I continue to regard them with unaltered sentiments both of public regard and private attachment."

These sentiments were emphatically honorable to him who uttered them. They set him right before Parliament and the country. They showed him to be a conscientious and thoroughgoing man, capable of self-sacrifice in the cause of truth as he understood it. His speech on the sub­ject was warmly applauded by his friends, and respected by the opposition. The speaker added to his explanation some conciliatory things about the ministry, and in particular about Sir Robert Peel. The latter responded to Gladstone's address in fitting words, pronouncing a eulogium on him, and declaring him to be a man of honor, whose services he should lose with the greatest regret. In like manner Lord John Russell expressed his appreci­ation of the motives and high character of the retiring minister. In fact, the whole transaction was of a kind to improve not a little our estimate of the current political morality of Great Britain as reflected in the lives and actions of some of her leading men.

Thus passed Mr. Gladstone out of the ministry of Sir Robert Peel. While the Maynooth Bill was under discussion he appeared openly as its advocate. This was a thing that a man of profound political intuition and prevision of things to come might have done for policy. Possibly Glad­stone foresaw the tendency of the British mind. Possibly he already knew better than his colleagues the drift of opinion which must lead on to a larger, more just, and more humane policy in the conduct of the State. But it cannot be doubted that he was moved most of all by the simple consider­ation of right as he perceived it. The forces that had bound his boyhood and early public life began to relax. He said that he would by no means renounce the theories of government in Church and State which he had hitherto defended. Neither would he allow that the endowments now pro­posed to the Royal College of Maynooth signified the restitution to that establishment of funds due on the score of previous spoliation by the gov­ernment of Great Britain. He was not willing to allow that any sum of money was due to the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. He supported the bill on other grounds exclusively. The state of Irish society suggested and demanded the measure as one part of a sound and humane policy. The proposed endowment must, in the nature of the case, exercise a strong influence on the management and sentiments of Maynooth, so adverse hitherto to the Church of England and to the government by which that Church was authorized and supported. " There is reason," said he, " to favor this bill on the score of the poverty of the Roman Catholics in

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Ireland and of their great numbers. These people find great difficulty i providing for themselves the necessaries of life, and still greater hardship in supporting their own preachers and procuring education for them." He noted with delight the enlarged sentiments which he was able to discover in the leaders on both sides of the House. These sentiments, expressed in both words and actions, showed clearly the rising of a humane opinion, that they who pay the taxes of a country have a right to the benefit of that country's institutions. As for the theory that it was the duty of the British government to support exclusively the Church of England, that doctrine was no longer wholly tenable. It might be true, as he himself in an abstract argument had urged that the exclusive support of the Established Church was a function of the State; but practically the doctrine could be no longer applied to conditions present and prevalent in Great Britain and Ireland The speaker went down deep into the philosophy of the situation. He ventured to refer to a saying of Burke's, that there is on the whole less ground for supporting the somewhat negative creed of Protestantism than there is for supporting the absolutely positive creed of Catholicism. The attitude of Great Britain on this question had become illogical. Nearly all the dissenting sects in England received some kind of support, recognition encouragement from the government. To give such support and recognition to English Nonconformists and to refuse it to Irish Catholics was an incon­sistent policy which could not well be defended—indeed, not defended at all in a philosophical manner. The endowment about to be voted ought to be voted in a liberal spirit, and he hoped that mutual confidence between the two islands would be promoted thereby. Under such a policy Irish agita­tion ought to pass away. The measure must really, he thought be accepted, not only as a truce and an armistice, but as a positive element of peace. He begged to remind them who were unreasonably agitating the question from the Irish side that a corresponding agitation from the Church establishment of England had met the proposals of the pending bill, and that mutual distrust and animosity were not in the nature of patriotism, whether on the one side or the other. “I trust," said he," that a wiser spirit will preside over the minds of both parties, and that a conviction will spring up in both that this measure is a surrender of rival claims for the sake of peace. Believing the measure to be conformable to justice, and not finding any principle on which to resist it, I hope it will pass into law and receive, if not the sanction, at least the acquiescence, of the English nation." It is honorable to the parliamentary history of Great Britain that the affirmative vote on the Maynooth Improvement Bill included the leading men of both parties in the House of Commons. We should not forget that in all such movements which history undertakes for the improvement of mankind she avails herself of personal and political interests. She uses 141

humanities and prejudices with equal facility. The politician, in balancing up the probabilities favorable to himself, must make account of how his humane and enlightened measure will hereafter bring him votes. At this calculation History smiles, but allows the human scheme to go on without interference; albeit in the end her own greater purposes will always be reached and confirmed.

Such measures as the Maynooth Bill opened the dike for the inletting of many fructifying waters. In the case before us, it was not long until another measure was introduced for the general improvement of academical education in Ireland. The bill in this case was brought forward by Sir James Graham, and was the largest concession to Roman Catholic interests that had thus far been seriously advocated in the House of Commons. The Tories hereupon took greater umbrage than ever. It is at once instructive and amusing to note the terror of the past on the appearance of some beneficent agitation in human society. Gladstone had now gone so far in religious liberalism that he supported Sir James Graham's bill ; but the Conservative leader, Sir R. H. Inglis, flew to the rescue, and denounced the measure as the most gigantic scheme of godless education ever propounded in any country.

A debate ensued between Sir Robert and Mr. Gladstone, in which the latter had the advantage. He admitted, in his usual cautious manner, that the proposed bill had imperfections which he would gladly see removed. For his own part, he thought that the Catholic bishops of Ireland ought to have a hand in the revision of an educational measure which was designed to fit conditions so thoroughly understood by them. He waived aside the furious declamation of Sir Robert Inglis about a godless education, showing that the bill itself contained a mild and reasonable provision for a religious function in the schools of Ireland ; namely, that in all the schools a room or rooms were to be provided in which theological lectures might be delivered of a kind to assert and even maintain the truth of Episcopalianism as the religion of the State.—This might be regarded as equivalent to saying that the antidote should be administered with the bane !

In the parliamentary sessions of the years 1844-46, certain questions of vast importance to the interests of Great Britain were brought for­ward as the basis of legislation. One of these related to the law of partner­ship; another to the agricultural condition of Great Britain; a third to the sugar duties, and a fourth to the abolition of the Corn Laws. That relating to the British railways has already been considered. The sugar question struck down deep into the whole commercial system of the realm. The Corn-Law dispute also held in it the whole issue as between free trade and protection, considered as a policy of the State. So important were these ques­tions that Gladstone at this time considered them in extenso in a political

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and economic brochure entitled Remarks upon Recent Commercial Legisla­tion. The work was made up, in part, from his own report as President of the Board of Trade, in part from his speeches in Parliament, and in part from a general consideration of the question.

The writer dwelt in particular on the tariff as affecting the trade of England. He attempted, as so many others have done, to follow out the

principle of legislative interference with economic laws to the ultimate results On the whole his arguments tended to the defense of free trade as the true policy of the empire. It is evident from an examination of his pamphlet at its distance, that his opinions were rapidly crystallizing into a conviction that the best course to follow in the establishment of the supremacy 0f British trade throughout the world was to make that trade as free as possi­ble—subject to as few restrictions in the shape of customs duties as might be under existing conditions.

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Just at this juncture, namely, in the year 1845, one of those peculiar crises for which the political history of England is remarkable arrived. It became evident to the Conservative leaders, and to those highest in authority, that the time had come when the Corn Laws, so long regarded as necessary if not sacred, must be abolished. Experience had now written on these laws, Mene Tekel, and the Muse of Tom Moore had sung them into oblivion. It is a peculiarity of British method, that unexpectedly in high quarters there comes a change of front. One party, perhaps in power but about to be overwhelmed by the other party, suddenly tacks and takes the wind out of the bellying sails of the opposition, and speeds away high-blown across the ocean of inconsistency to the harbor of all statesmanship—success.

Just at the close of the year 1845 the London Times, without previous hint or forgiving of the thing to be done, sent out an editorial declaring that Parliament would be convened by the queen's government with the beginning of the New Year, to consider the question of abolishing the Corn Laws in toto. Her majesty's address would recommend as much. The announcement came like a thunderclap, unheralded by cloud. The news was denied and denounced as false. The very journals and public men who had long labored to secure the abolition of the Corn Laws were horrified to see their prospective conquest about to be circumvented by a stroke of policy.

Sir Robert Peel still stood at the head of the ministry. For a long time the leaven had been working in his stubborn mind, thoroughly British, tending ever more and more to change him from the old restrictive policy to the new methods and theory of free trade. But another strongly British complication arose with this change in the purposes of the premier. He might change himself but he could not so easily transform his ministry. Glad­stone, it will be remembered, had already traveled far in the direction of absolute freedom of commerce ; but some of the other members of the Peel ministry could not be controlled. There was a defection on the part of Lord Stanley, the colonial secretary, and of the Duke of Buccleuch, both of whom declared that they would not follow Sir Robert in his change of front. This so weakened the government that Peel resigned, and Lord John Russell was summoned by her majesty to form a new ministry. The latter statesman undertook to do so; but in this he ran counter to the rising and determined sentiment in favor of abolishing the Corn Laws, and was obliged to give way, with a request to the queen to reappoint Sir Robert. The latter came back to power; Lord Stanley disappeared from his post as colonial secretary, and William E. Gladstone was appointed to that impor­tant trust.

This movement led at once to a complication in the latter statesman's affairs. Appointed to the ministry, he must be reelected by his constituents.

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Into this period he had continued to represent the city and borough of Newark. That precinct was a sort of perquisite of his long-time friend, the Duke of Newcastle. But the duke was a Conservative of the Conserva­tives who would not follow the new policy, or even assent to so radical a measure as the repeal of the Corn Laws. The high Conservatives at this epoch were protectionists, pure and simple.

The American reader, however, must remember that protection, as then applied in Great Britain, looked directly to the primary productions of the country, and not at all to the secondary industries, as in our country, In England it was the manufactures that clamored for free trade, while the agricultural interest held stoutly to protection. The country squires were, therefore, the high Tories of the realm, and the Duke of Newcastle followed this banner. Gladstone, the man of the Liverpool merchants, followed it no longer. It became a political impropriety for him to appeal again to the electors of Newark, under the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle. He must leave that borough in order to honor the opinions of his friend, and to be a consistent member of a free-trade ministry.

The character of Gladstone in such emergencies always shone with a clear luster. He was an honorable man. Accepting the post of colonial secretary, he issued to the voters of Newark an address bidding them farewell. Under date of the 5th of January, 1846, being then in his thirty-seventh year, he sent forth his communication, in which he said:

“By accepting the office of Secretary of State for the Colonies I have ceased to be your representative in Parliament. On several accounts I should have been peculiarly desirous, at the present time, of giving you an opportunity to pronounce your constitutional judgment on my public con­duct by soliciting at your hands a renewal of the trust which I have already received from you on five successive occasions, and held during a period of thirteen years. But as I have good reason to believe that a candidate recommended to your favor through local connections may ask your suf­frages, it becomes my very painful duty to announce to you on that ground alone my retirement from a position which has afforded me so much of honor and of satisfaction."

In the course of his address Mr. Gladstone explained his motives in accepting office in a government avowedly in favor of removing the legisla­tion which was supposed to uphold the agricultural interest of England. He avowed his belief that the new policy would prove a beneficial one to all classes of British subjects. He further declared that he had followed in this instance not only his own conscience, but the public call, which none might patriotically disregard. However reasonable all this was, the change involved a temporary loss to Gladstone. No other constituency could be immediately found to return

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him to the House, and for the nonce he might be regarded as a statesman without a vocation. He had now become, however, so pronounced in his advocacy of free trade, and his ability and honesty were so much in evidence, that his influence was almost as great as ever in the brief interval between the sessions of 1846 and 1847.

In the meantime a natural disaster came on to influence most strongly the affairs of men. The potato rot appeared in Ireland. The people were about to famish. As the law then stood the cereals so necessary for life might not be imported without paying such duties as greatly to aggravate the price. England was in the attitude of starving Ireland by means 0! her tariff! The argument was stronger than the combined energies of Aristotle and Adam Smith. The only question was whether Sir Robert Peel, remaining over, so to speak, from the old order, should take away from the Liberals the fruits of their victory, or whether he should give way to them, letting them work their will.

Sir Robert was not the man to surrender his advantage, and his colo­nial secretary was as little as he disposed to leave the execution of the reform that was now inevitable to the hands of the opposition. The premier, at the opening of Parliament in 1847, declared his purpose to pros forward at once to the abrogation of the Corn Laws. His speech on the occasion was marked with as much energy as he ever displayed. He acknowledged the change in his own opinions. He had yielded, he said, to the logic of events. A potato famine was at the door. Consistency must give way before hunger, and mere logic must yield to that necessity which is higher even than States. An investigation into the affairs of Ireland had brought him to understand his duty, and he would not quail before it.

It is a notable circumstance of the crisis which was now on that Ben- jamin Disraeli, rising in an eccentric manner above the horizon, appeared as the mouthpiece of the agricultural aristocracy of England, entered the arena against the proposed repeal, and twitted the colonial secretary, with whom he was destined to contend for the mastery for so many years, with his alleged inconsistency. His remarks on the occasion were directed in part to Sir Robert Peel, and in part to Mr. Gladstone. Disraeli declared that, as for him, he adhered without wavering to the opinions which he had hitherto declared in favor of the time-honored policy of agricultural protec- tion. He referred to the fact that the representatives of this view of national economy had sent him to speak for them in Parliament, and that he could not, either from his own convictions or from fidelity to those whom he represented, abandon his well-known views. He would sooner resign his seat in the House.

These remarks were not without pungency. While they were logically

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keen they could hardly be said to have reached their mark, for the bosses of progress were held between the speaker's javelin and the targets at which they were aimed, and the hollow-eyed specter of the potato famine looked sardonically into the face of the archer. The measure went steadily * on until it accomplished itself, and the Corn Laws were no more. The act had a specific and a general significance. Specifically it signified that the particular industry of producing the cereals in England should not be further favored at the expense of the manufacturing and commercial inter­est. Generally it signified that Great Britain was now on the high road to the adoption of the permanent policy of free trade as against the whole protective theory and practice.

Thus, by the famous Act 9 and 10 Vict. c. 22, the long-standing Corn Laws of Great Britain were abolished. The policy of raising and maintaining at a higher than natural figure the price of grain went down before the arguments of Richard Cobden and the persistent pressure of the Anti-Corn Law League. The reason of man and the interest of a class, energized by the potato rot in Ireland, prevailed to put an end to the tax so long imposed on manufacturers and consumers in the interest of grain raisers. The repeal

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bill provided for an immediate reduction of the duty on foreign wheat to a maximum of ten shillings the quarter when the price should be under forty-eight shillings the quarter ; to five shillings the quarter on barley, when the price should be under twenty-six shillings the quarter ; and to four shillings the quarter on oats when the price should be under eighteen shillings the quarter. When the price should rise above these figures then the duties should be lower, and finally, on the 1st of February, 1849, the system of duties was to cease in toto. Thereafter all foreign cereals were to be admitted at the nominal rate of one shilling the quarter, and all foreign meal and Hour at the rate of four and a half pence the hundredweight. And we may here anticipate by referring to the act of i860, by which even the nominal duties remaining under the act of repeal were abolished—since which time wheat, barley, oats, etc., and their immediate products have been admitted into the United Kingdom free from duties.