M.P. FOR OXFORD UNIVERSITY.
In 1845 the Whigs, failing to form a Cabinet, resigned, and Sir Robert
Peel was again in office to carry the abolition of the Corn Laws. After
resigning office, Mr. Gladstone published a pamphlet on 'Recent
Commercial Legislation,' the tendency of which was in favour of the
conclusion that all materials of industry should, as far as possible, be
set free from Custom duties. When Lord Stanley refused to accompany his
chief in the achievement of Free Trade in corn, Mr. Gladstone became, in
his place, Secretary of State for the Colonies. But the Duke of
Newcastle would not allow Mr. Gladstone his seat for Newark--he had
turned his own son, Lord Lincoln, out of the representation of Nottingham
for a similar reason--and Mr. Gladstone was out of Parliament when the
question of Free Trade was being fought and won. Early in 1847 it was
announced that there would be a vacancy in the representation of Oxford,
and Mr. Gladstone was selected for the vacant seat. It was known to all
that to represent Oxford University was Mr. Gladstone's desire, as it had
been that of Canning. In May, 1847, a meeting was held in Oxford in
favour of Mr. Gladstone's candidature. The canvassing went on with more
than the usual excitement in a University constituency. There was an
electioneering Gladstonian rhyme worth preserving. The anti-Gladstonians
had difficulty in finding a candidate.
'A cipher's sought,
A cipher's found;
His work is nought,
His name is Round.'
The question for the electors was, as Mr. Gladstone put it, 'Whether
political Oxford shall get shifted out of her palaeozoic position into
one more suited to her position and work as they now stand.' On August 2
Mr. Gladstone writes that he heard, not without excitement, the horse's
hoofs of the messenger bearing the news of the poll. He was elected by a
majority of 173 over Mr. Round, the senior member, Sir Robert Inglis,
being some 700 votes in advance of him. Mr. Hope Scott has left it on
record that Mrs. Gladstone was a copious worker on her husband's behalf.
Sir Robert Peel went down to vote for his colleague. The venerable Dr.
Routh, then nearly ninety-two years old, left his seclusion at Magdalen
College to vote for him. The feeling of Mr. Gladstone's supporters may
be summed up in a letter written by Dr. Moberly, afterwards Bishop of
Gloucester, to a doubtful voter:
'For my own part, I certainly disapprove of Mr. Gladstone's vote on the
godless colleges in Ireland, and I am not sure, even though I acknowledge
the difficulties of the case, whether I approve of that respecting
Maynooth; but I feel that I am not specially called on to reward or
punish individual voters as to select _the deepest_, _truest_, _most
attached_, _most efficient advocate for the Church and Universities_ in
coming, and very probably serious, dangers. I think your correspondence
with Gladstone's committee has probably done great good. It is very
useful that Gladstone should know that there are those who are not
satisfied with some of his past acts; but surely you will not press this
hitherto useful course to the extreme result of refraining from voting?'
Mr. Gladstone still continued in politics to uphold Conservative
traditions, apart from Free Trade. He opposed marriage with a deceased
wife's sister; he deprecated the appointment of a Commission to inquire
into the Universities; but he vindicated the policy of admitting Jews to
Parliament, and defended the establishment of diplomatic relations with
the Court of Rome. He supported the alteration of the Parliamentary
oath, but was opposed to an abstract attack on Church rates. One
domestic sorrow befell him about this time, the death of a little
daughter, Catherine, between four and five years old. Another difficulty
which gave him much trouble was on an affair which agitated all England
at one time, and was known as the Gorham case. Mr. Gorham was an
Evangelical clergyman, and the Bishop of Exeter refused to institute on
the ground that his views on baptism were not sound; but in March, 1850,
the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council held that his teaching was
not such as to debar him from preferment in the Church of England. In a
letter addressed to the Bishop of London (Bloomfield), entitled 'The
Royal Supremacy viewed in the Light of Reason, History, and
Common-sense,' Mr. Gladstone contended that the Royal Supremacy was not
inconsistent with the spiritual life and inherent jurisdiction of the
Church, and that the recent establishment of the Privy Council as a final
court of appeal in religious causes was an injurious, and even dangerous,
departure from the Reformation settlement. The Bishops, he held, when
'acting jointly, publicly, solemnly, responsibly, are the best and most
natural organs of the judicial office of the Church in matters of heresy,
and, according to reason, history, and the Constitution in that
subject-matter, the fittest and safest counsellors of the Crown.' To
that controversy it is due to a great extent that Mr. Hope Scott and Dr.
Manning went over to the Church of Rome--the two men on whom in Church
matters Mr. Gladstone principally relied. The blow was severe. 'I
felt,' said Mr. Gladstone, 'as if I had lost my two eyes.'
In this year Mr. Gladstone was very much depressed. Sir Stafford
Northcote writes: 'He (Gladstone) was out of spirits himself about public
matters, and did not paint Parliamentary life in rose colour. . . . He
is distressed at the position Peel has taken up, and at the want of
sympathy between those who had acted for so many years cordially
together, and he looks forward to serious Church troubles, which he
thinks might possibly drive him out of Parliament.' An idea which, had
it been carried out, would have deprived the world of Mr. Gladstone's
greatest triumphs, political and oratorical. In that year came up the
Don Pacifico affair, and Lord Palmerston's triumph by means of the
_Romanus civis sum_ dictum, against which Mr. Gladstone thundered. It
was, as Lord Palmerston admitted, a first-rate performance, appealing to
the law of Nature and of God, and deprecating the vain conception that
we, forsooth, have a mission to be the censors of vice and folly, of
abuse and imperfection, among the other countries of the world, a
doctrine which Mr. Gladstone subsequently seemed altogether to have
departed from.
On the lamented death of Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Gladstone bore eloquent
testimonies to the merits of that great man.
In the following winter Mr. Gladstone was in Naples, taken there by the
illness of one of his children, for whom the medical men had recommended
a warmer climate, and thence he addressed to the Earl of Aberdeen those
letters denouncing the atrocities of the Italian Government which for the
first time made Mr. Gladstone popular with the English people.
On his return, he found the country excited to a temporary fury, because
the Pope had planned Roman Bishops in English counties. To meet it, Lord
John Russell carried an Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which Mr. Gladstone
powerfully attacked, and which some twenty years after he had the
pleasure of quietly repealing. But the Bill proved a death-blow to Lord
John Russell's hold on office, weakened as it was by Lord Palmerston's
retirement, in consequence of his unauthorized recognition of Louis
Napoleon's _coup d'etat_. Lord Derby came into office, and there was a
General Election.
Mr. Gladstone was sent by Lord Derby as a Lord Commissioner to the Ionian
Islands, to carry out needed reforms in that part of the world, Her
Majesty Queen Victoria having refused her assent to the petition of the
Ionian Parliament for union with Greece. But Mr. Gladstone was to reform
the Ionian Parliament, so as to make it resemble as much as possible that
of England. When he left, his successor, Sir H. Stocks, wrote:
'Gladstone is regretted by many, respected by all. Nothing could have
been better than the firmness, judgment, and temper and talent he has
shown. It sometimes staggers me to reflect that I have to succeed him.'
It was about this time that M. Thiers paid England a visit, having left
France in consequence of the _coup d'etat_. A dinner was made up for
him, at which were present Mr. Gladstone, Bulwer the novelist, Lord
Elcho, Lord Herbert of Lea, Mr. Hayward, and others. The conversation
was varied and animated. Mr. Hayward writes: 'Thiers had the advantage
of language and choice of subject, but the general opinion was that Mr.
Gladstone was, if anything, the superior conversationalist of the two.'
When the election of 1852 approached, the opponents of Mr. Gladstone,
thinking that his friends might have been alienated by his votes on
Jewish disabilities and on the Papal Aggressions Bill, brought forward a
third candidate for the University, Dr. Marsham, of Merton, in spite of a
declaration signed by 1,276 members; but Mr. Gladstone managed to secure
a majority of 350. In the debate in November Mr. Gladstone attacked Mr.
Disraeli's Budget, and at the election following the Tories again
attacked Mr. Gladstone's seat. The opposition was a curious affair--the
result of an obscure intrigue--Lord Crompton being put forward apparently
without his consent and against his wish. Then Mr. Percival was suddenly
brought forward. Mr. Gladstone, however, on a small poll, had a majority
of 87, and his seat was saved for the time. As a rule, a University M.P.
is supposed to hold his seat for life.
By this time the Tories had become outrageous against Mr. Gladstone.
After the defeat of the Derby Government, some of them gave a dinner to
Major Beresford at the Carlton, who had been charged with bribery at the
Derby election, and had been acquitted. 'After dinner,' writes Mr.
Greville, 'when they got drunk, they went upstairs, and found Mr.
Gladstone alone in the drawing-room. Some of them proposed to throw him
out of the window. This they did not quite dare do, but contented
themselves with giving an insulting message or order to the waiter, and
then went away.' But Mr. Gladstone remained a member of the club till
1859. On the Coalition Government being formed under Lord Aberdeen, Mr.
Gladstone became Chancellor of the Exchequer. His Budget speech, five
hours long, held the House spell-bound. It was devoted mainly to
remission of taxation. The deficiency thus created was made up by the
application of the legacy duty to real property, by an increase of the
duty on spirits, and by an extension of the income-tax at 5d. in the
pound to all incomes between 100 and 150. The Irish were indignant at
the tax being extended to Ireland. One of the few genuine Irish
patriots, Mr. J. O'Neil Daunt, writes: 'One of Mr. Gladstone's arguments
is curious from its dishonest ingenuity. He extracts from our poverty a
pretext for disarming us. Pitt and Castlereagh promised at the Union
that Irish taxation should not be approximated to British until an
increased prosperity should enable us to bear the increased burden. The
prosperity has not come, but the tax must be got. If, says Gladstone,
you have not got wealth to be mulcted, your poverty will answer me quite
as well. For the purchasing power of 150 is greater in a poor country
than a rich one; whence he argues that, as Ireland is poor, an Irish
income of 150 is a fitter subject of taxation than an income of equal
amount in England. The peculiar beauty of this argument is, that the
poorer a country is, the stronger is the force of argument for taxing
it.' Evidently Mr. Gladstone's Budget found more favour in English than
in Irish eyes. The income-tax, said Mr. Gladstone, was to expire in
1860. Alas! he did not then foresee the Crimean War. On the contrary,
everything seemed to betoken a happy future.
In May, 1853, Mr. Greville records an interview he had with Sir James
Graham. 'Graham seemed in excellent spirits about their political state
and prospects, all owing to Gladstone and the complete success of the
Budget. The long and numerous Cabinets, which were attributed in the
_Times_ to disunion, were occupied in minute consideration of the Budget,
which was there fully discussed; and Gladstone spoke in the Cabinet one
day for three hours, rehearsing his speech in the House of Commons,
though not quite at such length. . . . He talked of a future head, as
Aberdeen is always quite ready to retire; but it is very difficult to
find anyone to succeed him. I suggested Gladstone. He shook his head,
and said it would not do. He spoke of the great mistakes Derby had made.
Gladstone's object certainly was for a long time to be at the head of the
Conservative party in the House of Commons, and to join with Derby, who
might, in fact, have had all the Peelites, if he had chosen to ally
himself with them instead of Disraeli. The latter had been the cause of
the ruin of the party.'
In the same year Bishop Wilberforce wrote: 'Lord Aberdeen is now growing
to look upon Gladstone as his successor, and so told Gladstone the other
day.'
A little while after we find Lord Aberdeen saying: 'Gladstone intends to
be Prime Minister. He has great qualifications, but some serious
defects. The chief is that when he has convinced himself, perhaps, by
abstract reasoning of some view, he thinks that everyone ought at once to
see as he does, and can make no allowance for difference of opinion.
Gladstone must thoroughly recover his popularity. The Queen has quite
got over her feeling against him, and likes him much. . . . I have told
Gladstone that when he is Prime Minister I will have a seat in his
Cabinet, if he desires it, without an office.'