226 



GLADIOLUS 



GLADSTONE 



scarlet G. brenchleyensis is similarly a standard 

 form. The corm of G. communis was formerly 

 officinal ; and the Hottentots dig up some of the 

 Cape species for the sake of their starchy corms. 

 See Nicholson's Dictionary of Gardening ; Robin- 

 son's Flower-garden, &c. 



Gladstone, WILLIAM EWART, statesman, 

 orator, and author, was born in Rodney Street, 

 Liverpool, on the 29th December 1809. He was 

 the fourth son of Sir John Gladstone ( 1764-1851 ), a 

 well-known and it might almost be said a famous 

 Liverpool merchant, who sat for some years' in 

 parliament, and was a devoted friend and supporter 

 of George Canning. Mr Gladstone was of Scotch 

 descent on both sides, and declared more than once 

 in a public speech that the blood that ran in his 

 veins was exclusively Scottish. He was educated 

 at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford. He became 

 a student at Oxford in 1829, and graduated as a 

 double first-class in 1831. He had distinguished 

 himself greatly as a speaker in the Oxford Union 

 Debating Society, and had before that time written 

 much in The Eton Miscellany, which indeed he 

 helped to found. He appears to have begun his 

 career as a strong opponent of all advanced 

 measures of political reform. In the Oxford Union 

 he proposed a vote of censure on the government 

 of Lord Grey for introducing the great Reform Bill 

 which was carried in 1832, and on the Duke of 

 Wellington because of his having yielded to the 

 claims for Catholic emancipation. He also opposed 

 a motion in favour of immediate emancipation of 

 the slaves in our West Indian islands. He soon 

 became known as a young man of promise, who 

 would be able to render good service to the Con- 

 servative party in the great struggle which seemed 

 likely to be forced upon them a struggle, as many 

 thought, for their very existence. It was a time 

 of intense political emotion. Passion and panic 

 alike prevailed. The first great ' leap in the dark ' 

 had been taken ; the Reform Bill was carried ; the 

 sceptre of power had passed away from the aris- 

 tocracy and the privileged ranks to the middle and 

 lower middle classes. The Conservative party 

 were looking eagerly out for young men of promise 

 to stiffen their ranks in the new parliament the 

 first elected under the Reform Bill, the first which 

 the middle-class had their due share in creating ; 

 the first in which such cities as Manchester and 

 Liverpool and Birmingham were allowed to have 

 representation. 



Mr Gladstone was invited to contest the burgh 

 of Newark in the Conservative interest, and he had 

 the support of the great Newcastle family. He 

 stood for Newark, and he was elected. He de- 

 livered his maiden speech on a subject connected 

 with the great movement for the emancipation of 

 the West Indian slaves ; but he seems to have con- 

 fined himself mainly to a defence of the manner in 

 which his father's estates were managed, the course 

 of the debate having brought out some charge 

 against the management of the elder Gladstone's 

 possessions in one of the West Indian islands. 

 The new orator appears to have made a decided 

 impression on the House of Commons. His 

 manner, his voice, his diction, his fiuency were 

 alike the subject of praise. Mr Gladstone evidently 

 continued to impress the House of Commons with a 

 sense of his great parliamentary capacity. We get 

 at this fact rather obliquely ; for we do not hear of 

 his creating any great sensation in debate ; and to 

 this day some very old members of the House insist 

 that for a long time he was generally regarded as 

 merely a fluent speaker, who talked like one read- 

 ing from a book. But on the other hand we find 

 that he is described by Macaulay in 1839 as ' the 

 rising hope ' of the ' stern and unbending Tories, ' 

 and the whole tone of Macaulay's essay a criti- 



cism of Gladstone's first serious attempt at author- 

 ship, his book on the relations between church 

 and state shows that the critic treats the author 

 as a young man of undoubted mark and position 

 in the House of Commons. 



In December 1834 Sir Robert Peel appointed 

 Gladstone to the office of a Junior Lord of the 

 Treasury. In the next year Peel, who was quick 

 to appreciate the great abilities and the sound 

 commercial knowledge of his new recruit, gave to 

 him the more important post of Under-secretary 

 for the Colonies. Gladstone looked up to Peel with 

 intense admiration. There was much to draw the 

 two men together. Knowledge of finance, thorough 

 understanding and firm grasp of the principles on 

 which a nation's business must be conducted 

 perhaps it may be added a common origin in the 

 middle-class these points of resemblance might 

 well have become points of attraction. But there 

 were other and still higher sympathies to bring 

 them close. The elder and the younger man 

 were alike earnest, profoundly earnest ; filled with 

 conscience in every movement of their political 

 and private lives ; a good deal too earnest and 

 serious perhaps for most of the parliamentary 

 colleagues by whom they were surrounded. Mr 

 Gladstone always remained devoted to Peel, and 

 knew him perhaps more thoroughly and intimately 

 than any other man was privileged to do. Peel 

 went out of office very soon after he had made Mi- 

 Gladstone Under-secretary for the Colonies. Lord 

 John Russell had brought forward a series of 

 motions on the ominous subject of the Irish Church, 

 and Peel was defeated, and resigned. It is almost 

 needless to say that Gladstone went with him. 

 Peel came back again to office in 1841, on the fall 

 of the Melbourne administration, and Mr Glad- 

 stone became Vice-president of the Board of Trade 

 and Master of the Mint, and was at the same 

 time sworn in a member of the Privy-council. 

 In 1843 he became President of the Board of Trade. 

 Early in 1845 he resigned his office because he 

 could not approve of the policy of the government 

 with regard to the Maynooth grant. 



The great struggle on the question of the repeal 

 of the Corn Laws was now coming on. It would 

 be impossible that a man with Mr Gladstone's turn 

 of mind and early training could have continued a 

 protectionist when once he had applied his intellect 

 and his experience to a practical examination of 

 the subject. Once again he went with his leader. 

 Peel saw that there was nothing for it but to 

 accept the principles of the Free-trade party, who 

 had been bearing the fiery cross of their peaceful 

 and noble agitation all through the country, and 

 were gathering adherents wherever they went. It 

 is utterly unfair to say that Peel merely yielded to 

 the demands of an agitation which was growing 

 too strong for him. The more generous and the 

 more truthful interpretation of his conduct is that 

 the agitation first compelled him to give his atten- 

 tion to the whole subject ; and that as he thought 

 it out he became converted and convinced. When 

 the agitation began, and for long after, Lord John 

 Russell and the Whigs generally were no whit 

 more inclined to free trade than Sir Robert Peel 

 and Mr Gladstone. 



It is a somewhat curious fact that Mr Gladstone 

 was not in the House of Commons during the 

 eventful session when the great battle of free 

 trade was fought and won. In thorough sympathy 

 with Peel, he had joined the government again as 

 Colonial Secretary. Knowing that he could no 

 longer be in political sympathy with the Duke of 

 Newcastle, whose influence had obtained for him 

 the representation of Newark, he had given up his 

 seat, and did not come into parliament again until 

 the struggle was over. At the general elections in 



