THE NEW CONSERVATISM AND OFFICE
(_1834-1845_)
I consider the Reform bill a final and irrevocable settlement of a
great constitutional question.... If by adopting the spirit of the
Reform bill it be meant that we are to live in a perpetual vortex
of agitation; that public men can only support themselves in public
estimation by adopting every popular impression of the day, by
promising the instant redress of anything that anybody may call an
abuse ... I will not undertake to adopt it. But if the spirit of
the Reform bill implies merely a careful review of institutions
civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper, the
correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances,
then, etc. etc.--PEEL (_Tamworth Address_).
MISCELLANEOUS READING
The autumn of 1834 was spent at Fasque. An observant eye followed
political affairs, but hardly a word is said about them in the diary. A
stiff battle was kept up against electioneering iniquities at Newark.
Riding, boating, shooting were Mr. Gladstone's pastimes in the day;
billiards, singing, backgammon, and a rubber in the evening. Sport was
not without compunction which might well, in an age that counts itself
humane, be expected to come oftener. 'Had to kill a wounded partridge,'
he records, 'and felt after it as if I had shot the albatross. It might
be said: This should be more or less.' And that was true. He was always
a great walker. He walked from Montrose, some thirteen or fourteen miles
off, in two hours and three quarters, and another time he does six miles
in seventy minutes. Nor does he ever walk with an unobserving mind. At
Lochnagar: 'Saw Highland women from Strathspey coming down for harvest
with heavy loads, some with babies, over these wild rough paths through
wind and storm. Ah, with what labour does a large portion of mankind
subsist, while we fare sumptuously every day!' This was the ready
susceptibility to humane impression in the common circumstance of life,
the eye stirring the emotions of the feeling heart, that nourished in
him the soul of true oratory, to say nothing of feeding the roots of
statesmanship. His bookmindedness is unabated. He began with a
resolution to work at least two hours every morning before breakfast,
and the resolution seems to have been manfully kept, without prejudice
to systematic reading for a good many hours of the day besides. For the
first time, rather strange to say, he read St. Augustine's
_Confessions_, and with the delight that might have been expected. He
finds in that famous composition 'a good deal of prolix and fanciful,
though acute speculation, but the practical parts of the book have a
wonderful force, and inimitable sweetness and simplicity.' In other
departments of religion, he read Archbishop Leighton's life and Hannah
More's, Arnold's Sermons and Milner's _Church History_ and Whewells
_Bridgewater Treatise_. Once more he analyses the _Novum Organum_ and
the _Advancement of Learning_, and he reads or re-reads Locke's _Essay_.
He studies political science in the two great manuals of the old world
and the new, in the _Politics_ of Aristotle and the _Prince_ of
Machiavelli. He goes through three or four plays of Schiller; also
Manzoni, and Petrarch, and Dante at the patient rate of a couple of
cantos a day; then Boccaccio, from whom, after a half-dozen of the days,
he willingly parts company, only interested in him as showing a strange
state of manners and how religion can be dissociated from conduct. In
modern politics he reads the memoirs of Chatham, and Brougham on
Colonial Policy, of which he says that 'eccentricity, paradox, fast and
loose reasoning and (much more) sentiment, appear to have entered most
deeply into the essence of this remarkable man when he wrote his
Colonial Policy, as now; with the rarest power of _expressing_ his
thoughts, has he any fixed law to guide them?' On Roscoe's _Leo X._ he
remarks how interesting and highly agreeable it is in style, and while
disclaiming any right to judge its fidelity and research, makes the odd
observation that it has in some degree subdued the leaven of its
author's unitarianism. He writes occasional verses, including the
completion of 'some stanzas of December 1832 on "The Human Heart," but I
am not impudent enough to call them by that name.'
In the midst of days well filled by warm home feeling, reasonable
pleasure, and vigorous animation of intellect came the summons to
action. On November 18, a guest arrived with the astonishing news that
ministers were out. The king had dismissed the Melbourne government,
partly because he did not believe that Lord John Russell could take the
place of Althorp as leader of the Commons, partly because like many
cleverer judges he was sick of them, and partly because, as is perhaps
the case with more cabinets than the world supposes, the ministers were
sick of one another, and King William knew it. Mr. Gladstone in 1875[63]
described the dismissal of the whigs in 1834 as the indiscreet
proceeding of an honest and well-meaning man, which gave the
conservatives a momentary tenure of office without power, but provoked a
strong reaction in favour of the liberals, and greatly prolonged the
predominance which they were on the point of losing through the play of
natural causes.[64] Sir Robert Peel was summoned in hot haste from Rome,
and after a journey of twelve days over alpine snows, eight nights out
of the twelve in a carriage, on December 9 he reached London, saw the
king and kissed hands as first lord of the treasury. Less than two years
before, he had said, 'I feel that between me and office there is a wider
gulf than there is perhaps between it and any other man in the House.'
PROPOSAL OF OFFICE
Mr. Gladstone meanwhile at Fasque worked off some of his natural
excitement which he notes as invading even Sundays, by the composition
of a political tract. The tract has disappeared down the gulf of time.
December 11 was his father's seventieth birthday, 'his strength and
energy wonderful and giving promise of many more.' Within the week the
fated message from the new prime minister arrived; the case is apt to
quicken the pulse of even the most serene of politicians, and we may be
sure that Mr. Gladstone with the keen vigour of five-and-twenty tingling
in his veins was something more or less than serene.
_Dec. 17._--Locke, and Russell's _Modern Europe_ in the morning.
Went to meet the post, found a letter from Peel desiring to see me,
dated 13th. All haste; ready by 4--no place! Reluctantly deferred
till the morning. Wrote to Lincoln, Sir R. Peel, etc.... A game of
whist. This is a serious call. I got my father's advice to take
anything with work and responsibility. _18th._--Off at 7.40 by
mail. I find it a privation to be unable to read in a coach. The
mind is distracted through the senses, and rambles. Nowhere is it
to me so incapable of continuous thought.... Newcastle at 9¼ P.M.
_19th._--Same again. At York at 6¼ A.M. to 7. Ran to peep at the
minster and bore away a faint twilight image of its grandeur.
_20th._--Arrived safe, thank God, and well at the Bull and Mouth 5¾
A.M. Albany soon. To bed for 2¼ hours. Went to Peel about eleven.
He writes to his father the same day--
My interview with him was not more than six or eight minutes, but
he was _extremely_ kind. He told me his letter to me was among his
first; that he was prompted only by his own feelings towards me and
some more of that kind; that I might have a seat either at the
admiralty or treasury boards, but the latter was that which he
intended for me; that I should then be in immediate and
confidential communication with himself; and should thereby have
more insight into the general concerns of government; that there
was a person very anxious for the seat at the treasury, who would
go to the admiralty if I did not; but that he meant to go upon the
principle of putting every one to the post for which he thought
them most fit, so far as he could, and therefore preferred the
arrangement he had named. As he distinctly preferred the treasury
for me, and assigned such reasons for the preference, it appeared
to me that the question was quite settled, and I immediately closed
with his offer. I expressed my gratitude for the opinions of me
which he had expressed; and said I thought it my duty to mention
that the question of my re-election at Newark upon a single
vacancy had never been put to my friends, and I asked whether I
should consider any part of what he had said as contingent upon the
answer I might receive from them. He said no, that he would
willingly take that risk. At first, he thought I had suspicions
about the Duke of Newcastle, and assured me that he would be much
pleased, of which I said I felt quite persuaded. This inquiry,
however, served the double purpose of discharging my own duty, and
drawing out something about the dissolution. He said to me, 'You
will address your constituents upon vacating your seat, and
acquaint them of your intention to solicit a renewal of their
confidence whenever they are called upon to exercise their
franchise, _which I tell you confidentially_,' he added, 'will be
very soon.' I would have given a hundred pounds to be then and
there in a position to express my hopes and fears! But it is, then,
you see _certain_ that we are to have it, and that they will not
meet the present parliament. Most bitterly do I lament it.
Mr. Gladstone at a later date (July 25, 1835) recorded that he had
reason to believe from a conversation with a tory friend who was in many
party secrets, that the Duke of Wellington set their candidates in
motion all over the country before Sir Robert's return. Active measures,
and of course expense, had so generally begun, so much impatience for
the dissolution had been excited, and the anticipations had been
permitted for so long a time to continue and to spread, as to preclude
the possibility of delay.[65]
SECOND ELECTION AT NEWARK
The appointment of the young member for Newark was noted at the time as
an innovation upon a semi-sacred social usage. Sir Robert Inglis said to
him, 'You are about the youngest lord who was ever placed at the
treasury on his own account, and not because he was his father's son.'
The prime minister, no doubt, rejoiced in finding for the public service
a young man of this high promise, sprung out of the same class, and bred
in the same academic traditions as his own.[66] The youthful minister's
path was happily smoothed at Newark. This time blues and reds called a
grand truce, divided the honours, and returned Mr. Gladstone and
Sergeant Wilde without a contest. The question that excited most
interest in the canvass was the new poor law. Mr. Gladstone gave the
fallen ministers full credit for their measure. Most of their bills, he
said, were projected from a mere craving for popularity, but in the case
of the poor law they acted in defiance of the public press and many of
their own friends. On the other hand, he defended the new government as
the government of a truly reforming party, pointing to the commercial
changes made by Lord Liverpool's administration, to the corporation and
test Acts, and to catholic emancipation. Who could deny that these were
changes of magnitude settled in peaceful times by a parliament
unreformed? Who could deny that Sir Robert Peel had long been a
practical reformer of the law, and that the Duke of Wellington had
carried out great retrenchments? Let them then rally round throne and
altar, and resist the wild measures of the destructives. The red hero
was drawn through the town by six greys, with postilions in silk
jackets, amid the music of bands, the clash of bells, and the cheers of
the crowd. When the red procession met the blue, mutual congratulations
took the place of the old insult and defiance, and at five o'clock each
party sat down to its own feast. The reds drank toasts of a spirited,
loyal, and constitutional character, many admirable speeches were made
which the chronicler regrets that his limits will not allow him to
report,--regrets unshared by us,--and soon after eleven Mr. Gladstone
escaped. After a day at Clumber, he was speedily on his way to London.
'Off at 10½ P.M. Missed the High Flyer at Tuxford, broke down in my
chaise on the way to Newark; no injury, thanks to God. Remained 2½ hours
alone; overtaken by the Wellington at 3½ A.M. Arrived in London (Jan.
8) before 8 P.M. Good travelling.' On reckoning up his movements he
finds that, though not at all fond of travelling for the sake of going
from place to place, he has had in 1834 quite 2400 miles of it.
Before the dissolution, Sir H. Hardinge had told him that the
conservatives would not be over 340 nor under 300, but by the middle of
the month things looked less prosperous. The reaction against the whigs
had not yet reached full flood, the royal dismissal of the
administration was unpopular, moderate people more especially in
Scotland could not stand a government where the Duke of Wellington, the
symbol of a benighted and stubborn toryism, was seen over Peel's
shoulder. 'At present,' Mr. Gladstone writes, 'the case is, even in my
view, hopeful; in that of most here it is more. And certainly, to have
this very privilege of entertaining a deliberate and reasonable hope, to
think that notwithstanding the ten pound clause, a moderate parliament
may be returned; in fine, to believe that we have now _some_ prospect of
surviving the Reform bill without a bloody revolution, is to me as
surprising as delightful; it seems to me the greatest and most
providential mercy with which a nation was ever visited.... To-day I am
going to dine with the lord chancellor [Lyndhurst], having received a
card to that effect last night.'
It was at this dinner that Mr. Gladstone had his first opportunity of
making a remarkable acquaintance. In his diary he mentions as present
three of the judges, the flower of the bench, as he supposes, but he
says not a word of the man of the strangest destiny there, the author of
_Vivian Grey_. Disraeli himself, in a letter to his sister, names 'young
Gladstone,' and others, but condemns the feast as rather dull, and
declares that a swan very white and tender, and stuffed with truffles,
was the best company at the table. What Mr. Gladstone carried away in
his memory was a sage lesson of Lyndhurst's, by which the two men of
genius at his table were in time to show themselves extremely competent
to profit,--'Never defend yourself before a popular assemblage, except
with and by retorting the attack; the hearers, in the pleasure which
the assault gives them, will forget the previous charge.' As Disraeli
himself put it afterwards, _Never complain and never explain._
II
CHANGE OF OFFICE
One afternoon, a few days later, while he was grappling at the treasury
with a file of papers on the mysteries of superannuation, Mr. Gladstone
was again summoned by the prime minister, and again (Jan. 26) he writes
to his father:--
I have had an important interview with Sir R. Peel, the result of
which is that I am to be under-secretary for the colonies. I will
give you a hurried and imperfect sketch of the conversation. He
began by saying he was about to make a great sacrifice both of his
own feelings and convenience, but that what he had to say he hoped
would be gratifying to me, as a mark of his confidence and regard.
'I am going to propose to you, Gladstone, that you should be, for
you know Wortley has lost his election, under-secretary of state
for the colonies, and I give you my word that I do not know six
offices which are at this moment of greater importance than that to
which is attached the representation of the colonial department in
the House of Commons, at a period when so many questions of
importance are in agitation.' I expressed as well as I could, and
indeed it was but ill, my unfeigned and deep sense of his kindness,
my hesitation to form any opinion of my own competency for the
office, and at the same time my general desire not to shrink from
any responsibility which he might think proper to lay upon me. He
said that was the right and manly view to take.... He adverted to
my connection with the West Indies as likely to give satisfaction
to persons dependent on those colonies, and thought that others
would not be displeased. In short, I cannot go through it all, but
I can only say that if I had always heard of him that he was the
warmest and freest person of all living in the expression of his
feelings, such description would have been fully borne out by his
demeanour to me. When I came away he took my hand and said, '_Well,
God bless you, wherever you are._'
From Sir Robert the new under-secretary made his way, in fear and
trembling, to his new chief, Lord Aberdeen.
Distinction of itself naturally and properly rather alarms the
young. I had heard of his high character; but I had also heard of
him as a man of cold manners, and close and even haughty reserve.
It was dark when I entered his room, so that I saw his figure
rather than his countenance. I do not recollect the matter of the
conversation, but I well remember that, before I had been three
minutes with him, all my apprehensions had melted away like snow in
the sun. I came away from that interview conscious indeed of his
dignity, but of a dignity so tempered by a peculiar purity and
gentleness, and so associated with impressions of his kindness and
even friendship, that I believe I thought more about the wonder of
his being at that time so misunderstood by the outer world, than
about the new duties and responsibilities of my office.[67]
Time only deepened these impressions. It is not hard for a great party
chief to win the affection and regard of his junior colleague, and where
good fortune has brought together a congenial pair, no friendship
outside the home can be more valuable, more delightful, alike to veteran
and to tiro. Of all the host of famous or considerable men with whom he
was to come into official and other relations, none ever, as we shall
see, held the peculiar place in Mr. Gladstone's esteem and reverence of
the two statesmen under whose auspices he now first entered the
enchanted circle of public office. The promotion was a remarkable
stride. He was only five-and-twenty, his parliamentary existence had
barely covered two years, and he was wholly without powerful family
connection. 'You are aware,' Peel wrote to John Gladstone, 'of the
sacrifice I have made of personal feeling to public duty, in placing
your son in one of the most important offices--that of representative of
the colonial department in the House of Commons, and thus relinquishing
his valuable aid in my own immediate department. Wherever he may be
placed, he is sure to distinguish himself.'[68]
III
POSITION OF GOVERNMENT
Mr. Gladstone's first spell of office was little more than momentary.
The liberal majority, as has so often happened, was composite, but Peel
can hardly have supposed that the sections of which it was made up would
fail to coalesce, and coalesce pretty soon, for the irresistible object
of ejecting ministers who were liked by none of them, and through whose
repulse they could strike an avenging blow against the king. Ardent
subalterns like Mr. Gladstone took more vehement views. The majority at
once beat the government (supported by the group of Stanleyites,
fifty-three strong) in the contest for the Speaker's chair. Other
repulses followed. 'The division,' writes Mr. Gladstone to his father,
with the honourable warmth of the young party man, 'I need not say was a
disappointment to me; but it must have been much more so to those who
have ever thought well of the parliament. Our party mustered splendidly.
Some few, but very, very few, of the others appear to have kept away
through a sense of decency; they had not virtue enough to vote for the
man whom they knew to be incomparably the best, and against whom they
had no charge to bring. No more shameful act I think has been done by a
British House of Commons.'
Not many days after fervently deprecating a general resignation, an
ill-omened purpose of this very course actually flitted across the mind
of the young under-secretary himself. A scheme was on the anvil for the
education of the blacks in the West Indies, and a sudden apprehension
startled Mr. Gladstone, that his chief might devote public funds to all
varieties of denominational religious teaching. Any plan of that kind
would be utterly opposed to what with him, as we shall soon discover,
was then a fundamental principle of national polity. Happily the fatal
leap was not needed, but if either small men like the government whips,
or great men like Peel and Aberdeen, could have known what was passing,
they would have shaken grave heads over this spirit of unseasonable
scruple at the very start of the race in a brilliant man with all his
life before him.
_Feb. 4 or 5._--Charles Canning told me Peel had offered him the
vacant lordship of the treasury, through his mother. They were, he
said, very much gratified with the manner in which it had been
done, though the offer was declined, upon the ground stated in the
reply, that though he did not anticipate any discrepancy in
political sentiments to separate him from the present government,
yet he should prefer in some sense deserving an official station by
parliamentary conduct.... Peel's letter was written at some length,
very friendly, without any statesmanlike reserve or sensitive
attention to nicety of style. In the last paragraph it spoke with
amiable embarrassment of Mr. Canning; stating that his 'respect,
regard, and admiration' (I think even), apparently interrupted by
circumstances, continued fresh and vivid, and that those very
circumstances made him more desirous of thus publicly testifying
his real sentiments.
_March 30._--Wished to speak on Irish church. No opportunity. Wrote
on it. A noble-minded speech from Sir J. Graham. _March 31._--Spoke
on the Irish church--under forty minutes. I cannot help here
recording that this matter of speaking is really my strongest
religious exercise. On all occasions, and to-day especially, was
forced upon me the humiliating sense of my inability to exercise my
reason in the face of the H. of C., and of the necessity of my
utterly failing, unless God gave me the strength and language. It
was after all a poor performance, but would have been poorer had He
never been in my thoughts as a present and powerful aid. But this
is what I am as yet totally incompetent to effect--to realise, in
speaking, anything, however small, which at all satisfies my mind.
Debating seems to me less difficult, though unattained. But to hold
in serene contemplative action the mental faculties in the turbid
excitement of debate, so as to see truth clearly and set it forth
such as it is, this I cannot attain to.
As regards my speech in the Irish church debate, he tells his
father (April 2), it was received by the House, and has been
estimated, in a manner extremely gratifying to me. As regards
satisfaction to myself in the manner of its execution, I cannot say
so much. Backed by a numerous and warm-hearted party, and strong in
the consciousness of a good cause, I did not find it difficult to
grapple with the more popular parts of the question; but I fell
miserably short of my desires in touching upon the principles which
the discussion involved, and I am sure that it must be long before
I am enabled in any reasonable sense to be a speaker according even
to the conception which I have formed in my own mind.
A few days later, he received the congratulations of a royal
personage:--
In the evening, dining at Lord Salisbury's, I was introduced to the
Duke of Cumberland, who was pleased to express himself favourably
of my speech. He is fond of conversation, and the common reputation
which he bears of including in his conversation many oaths, appears
to be but too true. Yet he said he had made a point of sending his
son to George the Fourth's funeral, thinking it an excellent
advantage for a boy to receive the impression which such a scene
was calculated to convey. The duke made many acute remarks, and
was, I should say, most remarkably unaffected and kind. These are
fine social qualities for a prince, though, of course, not the most
important--'My dear Sir,' and thumps on the shoulder after a ten
minutes' acquaintance. He spoke broadly and freely--much on the
disappearance of the bishops' wigs, which he said had done more
harm to the church than anything else!
MINISTERS DEFEATED
On the same night the catastrophe happened. After a protracted and
complex struggle Lord John Russell's proposal for the appropriation of
the surplus revenues of the Irish church was carried against ministers.
The following day Peel announced his resignation.
Though his official work had been unimportant, Mr. Gladstone had left an
excellent impression behind him among the permanent men. When he first
appeared in the office, Henry Taylor said, 'I rather like Gladstone, but
he is said to have more of the devil in him than appears.' A few weeks
were enough to show him that 'Gladstone was far the most considerable of
the rising generation, having besides his abilities an excellent
disposition and great strength of character.' James Stephen thought well
of him, but doubted if he had pugnacity enough for public life.
A few days later Mr. Gladstone dined with an official party at the
fallen minister's:--
Sir R. Peel made a very nice speech on Lincoln's proposing and our
drinking his health. The following is a slight and bad sketch:--'I
really can hardly call you gentlemen alone. I would rather address
you as my warm and attached friends in whom I have the fullest
confidence, and with whom it has afforded me the greatest
satisfaction to be associated during the struggle which has just
been brought to a close. In undertaking the government, from the
first I have never expected to succeed; still it was my conviction
that good might be done, and I trust that good has been effected. I
believe we have shown that even if a conservative government be not
strong enough to carry on the public affairs of this country, at
least we are so strong that we ought to be able to prevent any
other government from doing any serious mischief to its
institutions. We meet now as we met at the beginning of the
session, then perhaps in somewhat finer dresses, but not, I am
sure, with kindlier feelings towards each other.'
The rest of the session Mr. Gladstone passed in his usual pursuits,
reading all sorts of books, from the correspondence of Leibnitz with
Bossuet, and Alexander Knox's _Remains_, down to Rousseau's
_Confessions_. As to the last of these he scarcely knew whether to read
on or to throw it aside, and, in fact, he seems only to have persevered
with that strange romance of a wandering soul for a day or two. Besides
promiscuous reading, he performed some scribbling, including a sonnet,
recorded in his diary with notes of wondering exclamation. His family
were in London for most of May, his mother in bad health; no other
engagement ever interrupted his sedulous attendance on her every day,
reading the Bible to her, and telling the news about levees and
drawing-rooms, a great dinner at Sir Robert Peel's, and all the rest of
his business and recreations. In the House he did little between the
fall of the ministry and the close of the session. He once wished to
speak, but was shut out by the length of other speeches. 'So,' he
moralises, 'I had two useful lessons instead of one. For the sense of
helplessness which always possesses me in prospect of a speech is one
very useful lesson; and being disappointed after having attained some
due state of excitement and anticipation is another.'
SPEECH AT NEWARK
In June at a feast at Newark, which, terrible to relate, lasted from
four o'clock to eleven, Mr. Gladstone gave them nearly an hour, not to
mention divers minor speeches. His father 'expressed himself with
beautiful and affectionate truth of feeling, and the party sympathised.'
His own speech deserves to be noted as indicating the political
geography for three or four years to come. The standing dish of the tory
opposition of the period was highly-spiced reproach of the ministers for
living on the support of O'Connell, and Newark was regaled with an ample
meal. Mr. Gladstone would not enter into a detail of the exploits,
character, political opinions of that Irish gentleman; he would rather
say what he thought of him in his presence than in his absence, because
he could unfortunately say nothing of him but what was bad. 'This is not
the first period in English history,' Mr. Gladstone noted down at that
time, 'in which a government has leaned on the Roman catholic interest
in Ireland for support. Under the administration of Strafford and at the
time of the Scotch revolt, Charles I. was enthusiastically supported by
the recusants of the sister isle, and what was the effect? The religious
sympathies of the people were touched then and they were so now with the
same consequence, in the gradual decline of the party to whom the
suspicion attaches in popular fervour and estimation.' Half a century
later he may have recalled this early fruit of historic observation.
Meanwhile, in his Newark speech, he denounced the government for seeking
to undo the mischief of the Irish alliance by systematic agitation. But
it was upon the church question, far deeper and more vital than
municipal corporations, that the fate of the government should be
decided. Then followed a vindication of the church in Ireland. 'The
protestant faith is held good for us, and _what is good for us is also
good for the population of Ireland_.' That most disastrous of all our
false commonplaces was received at Newark, as it has been received so
many hundreds of times ever since all over England, with loud and
long-continued cheering, to be invariably followed in after act and
event with loud and long-continued groaning.[69] Four years later Mr.
Gladstone heard words from Lord John Russell on this point, that began
to change his mind. 'Often do I think,' he wrote to Lord Russell in
1870, 'of a saying of yours more than thirty years back which struck me
ineffaceably at the time. You said: "The true key to our Irish debates
was this: that it was not properly borne in mind that as England is
inhabited by Englishmen, and Scotland by Scotchmen, so Ireland is
inhabited by Irishmen."'[70]
FOOTNOTES:
[63] _Gleanings_, i. p. 38.
[64] In another place he describes it as an action done 'with no sort of
reason' (_Ib._ p. 78). But the Melbourne papers, published in 1890, pp.
219-221 and 225, indicate that Melbourne had spontaneously given the
king good reasons for cashiering him and his colleagues.
[65] Lord Palmerston doubted (Nov. 25, 1834) whether Peel would
dissolve. 'I think his own bias will rather be to abide by the decision
of this House of Commons, and try to propitiate it by great professions
of reform. The effect of a dissolution must be injurious to the
principles that he professes.... But he may be overborne by the violent
people of his own party whom he will not be able to control.' Ashley's
_Life of Palmerston_ (1879), i. p. 313.
[66] Greville, on the other hand, grumbled at Peel, for taking high
birth and connections as substitutes for other qualities, because he
made Sidney Herbert secretary at the board of control, instead of making
him a lord of the treasury, and sending 'Gladstone, who is a very clever
man,' to the other and more responsible post.
[67] Lord Stanmore's _Earl of Aberdeen_ (1893), p. iii.
[68] Parker's _Peel_, ii. p. 267.
[69] O'Connell paid Newark a short visit in 1836--spoke against Mr.
Gladstone for an hour in the open air, and then left the town, both he
and it much as they had been before his arrival.
[70] Walpole, _Life of Lord John Russell_, ii. p. 455.