Meantime he was already member for Newark. His own election was no sooner over than he caught the last vacant place on the mail to Carlisle, whence he hastened to the aid of his father's patriotic labours as candidate for Dundee. Here he worked hard at canvassing and meetings, often pelted with mud and stones, but encouraged by friends more buoyant than the event justified.
Aug. 1st.—My father beaten after all, our promised votes in many cases going back or going against us.... Two hundred promises broken. Poll closed at Parnell, 666; Gladstone, 381. It is not in human approbation that the reward of right action is to be sought. Left at 4½ amid the hisses of the crowd. Perth at 7¼. Left at one in the morning for Glasgow. 2nd.—Glasgow 8½. Steamer at 11. Breeze; miserably sick; deck all night. 3rd.—Arrived at 11½; (Liverpool), very sore. 4th.—Out at 8½ to vote for S. Lancashire. Acted as representative in the booth half the day. Results of election excellent. 5th.—Again at the booths. A great victory here. 6th.—Wrote to Manning on the death of his wife. 9th.—Manchester. Public dinner at 6; lasted till near 12. Music excellent. Spoke 1½ hours, I am told, proh pudor!75
Back at Fasque, only a day too late for the Twelfth, he found the sport bad and he shot badly, but he enjoyed the healthful walks on the hill. His employments were curiously mixed. 'Sept. 8th.—In the bog for snipe with Sir J. Mackenzie. Read Timæus. Began Byron's Life. My eyes refused progress. Verses. 15th.—Snipe-shooting with F. in the bog. Began Critias. 22nd.—Haddo. Otter-hunting, senz esito. Finished Plato's Laws. Hunting too in the library.' The mental dispersion of country-house visiting never affects either multifarious reading or multifarious writing. Spanish grammar, Don Quixote in the original, Crabbe, Don Juan, alternate with Augustine de peccatorum remissione or de utilitate Credendi ('beautiful and useful'). He works at an essay of his own upon Justification, at adversaria on Aristotle's Ethics, at another essay upon Rationalism, and to save his eyes, spins verse enough to fill a decent volume of a hundred and fifty pages. He makes a circuit of calls upon the tenants, taking a farming lecture from one, praying by the sick-bed of another.
BUSINESS WITH WELLINGTON
In November he was again in London to be sworn of the new parliament, and at the end of the month he had for the first time an interview on business with the Duke of Wellington—of interest as the collocation of two famous names. 'The immediate subject was the Cape of Good Hope. His reception of me was plain but kind. He came to the door of his room. “Will you come in? How do you do? I am glad to see you.” We spoke a little of the Cape. He said with regard to the war—and with sufficient modesty—that he was pretty well aware of the operations that had taken place in it, having been at the Cape, and being in some degree able to judge of those matters. He said, “I suppose it is there as everywhere else, as we had it last night about Ireland and the House of Lords. They won't use the law, as it is in Canada, as it is in the West Indies. They excite insurrection everywhere (I, however, put in an apology for them in the West Indies), they want to play the part of opposition; they are not a government, for they don't maintain the law.” He appointed me to return to him to-morrow.'
The result of the general election was a slight improvement in the position of the conservatives, but they still mustered no more than 315 against 342 supporters of the ministry, including the radical and Irish groups. If Melbourne and Russell found their team delicate to drive, Peel's difficulties were hardly less. Few people, he wrote at this moment, can judge of the difficulty there has frequently been in maintaining harmony between the various branches of the conservative party. The great majority in the Lords and the minority in the Commons consisted of very different elements; they included men like Stanley and Graham, who had been authors and advocates of parliamentary reform, and men who had denounced reform as treason to the constitution and ruin to the country. Even the animosities of 1829 and catholic emancipation were only half quenched within the tory ranks.76 It was at a meeting held at Peel's on December 6, 1837, that Lord Stanley for the first time appeared among the conservative members.
The distractions produced in Canada by mismanagement and misapprehension in Downing Street had already given trouble during the very short time when Mr. Gladstone was under-secretary at the colonial office; but they now broke into the flame of open revolt. The perversity of a foolish king and weakness and disunion among his whig ministers had brought about a catastrophe. At the beginning of the session (1838) the government introduced a bill suspending the constitution and conferring various absolute powers on Lord Durham as governor general and high commissioner. It was in connection with this proposal that Mr. Gladstone seems to have been first taken into the confidential consultations of the leaders of his party.
CANADIAN SPEECH
The sage marshalling and manœuvring of the parliamentary squads was embarrassed by a move from Sir William Molesworth, of whom we have just been hearing, the editor of Hobbes, and one of the group nicknamed philosophic radicals with whom Mr. Gladstone at this stage seldom or never agreed. 'The new school of morals,' he called them, 'which taught that success was the only criterion of merit,'—a delineation for which he would have been severely handled by Bentham or James Mill. Molesworth gave notice of a vote of censure on Lord Glenelg, the colonial minister; that is, he selected a single member of the cabinet for condemnation, on the ground of acts for which all the other ministers were collectively just as responsible. For this discrimination the only precedent seems to be Fox's motion against Lord Sandwich in 1779. Mr. Gladstone's memorandum77 completes or modifies the account of the dilemma of the conservative leader, already known from Sir Robert Peel's papers,78 and the reader will find it elsewhere. It was the right of a conservative opposition to challenge a whig ministry; yet to fight under radical colours was odious and intolerable. On the other hand he could not vote for Molesworth, because he thought him unjust; but he could not vote against him, because that would imply confidence in the Canadian policy of ministers. A certain conservative contingent would not acquiesce in support of ministers against Molesworth, or in tame resort to the previous question. Again, Peel felt or feigned an apprehension that if by aggressive action they beat the government, a conservative ministry must come in, and he did not think that such a ministry could last. Even at this risk, it became clear that the only way of avoiding the difficulty was an amendment to Molesworth's motion from the official opposition. Mr. Gladstone spoke (Mar. 7), and was described as making his points with admirable precision and force, though 'with something of a provincial manner, like the rust to a piece of powerful steel machinery that has not worked into polish.' The debate, on which such mighty issues were thought to hang, lasted a couple of nights with not more than moderate spirit. At the close the amendment was thrown out by a majority of twenty-nine for ministers. The general result was to moderate the impatience of the Carlton Club men, who wished to see their party in, on the one hand; and of the radical men, who did not object to having the whigs out, on the other. It showed that neither administration nor opposition was in a station of supreme command.
III
At the end of March Mr. Gladstone produced the strongest impression that he had yet made in parliament, and he now definitely took his place in the front rank. It was on the old embarrassment of slavery. Reports from the colonies showed that in some at least, and more particularly in Jamaica, the apprenticeship system had led to harsher treatment of the negroes than under slavery. As it has been well put, the bad planters regarded their slave-apprentices as a bad farmer regards a farm near the end of an expiring term. In 1836 Buxton moved for a select committee to inquire into the working of the system. Mr. Gladstone defended it, and he warned parliament against 'incautious and precipitate anticipations of entire success' (March 22). Six days later he was appointed a member of the apprenticeship committee which at once began to investigate the complaints from Jamaica. Mr. Gladstone acted as the representative of the planters on the committee, and he paid very close attention to the proceedings during two sessions. In the spring of