Released from the labours of office, Gladstone, living in
chambers in the Albany, practically divided his time between
his parliamentary duties and study. Then, as always, his constant companions were Homer and Dante, and it is recorded that he read the whole of St Augustine,Literary work.
in twenty-two octavo volumes. He used to frequent the services at St James’s, Piccadilly, and Margaret chapel, since better known as All Saints’, Margaret Street. On the 20th of June 1837 King William IV. died, and Parliament, having been
prorogued by the young queen in person, was dissolved on the
17th of the following month. Simply on the strength of his
parliamentary reputation Gladstone was nominated, without
his consent, for Manchester, and was placed at the bottom of
the poll; but, having been at the same time nominated at
Newark, was again returned. The year 1838 claims special note
in a record of Gladstone’s life, because it witnessed the appearance
of his famous work on The State in its Relations with the Church.
He had left Oxford just before the beginning of that Catholic
revival which has transfigured both the inner spirit and the
outward aspect of the Church of England. But the revival was
now in full strength. The Tracts for the Times were saturating
England with new influences. The movement counted no more
enthusiastic or more valuable disciple than Gladstone. Its
influence had reached him through his friendships, notably with
two Fellows of Merton—Mr James Hope, who became Mr Hope-Scott of Abbotsford, and the Rev. H. E. Manning, afterwards cardinal archbishop. The State in its Relations with the Church was his practical contribution to a controversy in which his deepest convictions were involved. He contended that the Church, as established by law, was to be “maintained for its truth,” and that this principle, if good for England, was good also for Ireland.
On the 25th of July 1839 Gladstone was married at Hawarden to Miss Catherine Glynne, sister, and in her issue heir, of Sir Stephen Glynne, ninth and last baronet of that name. In 1840 he published Church Principles considered in their Results.
Parliament was dissolved in June 1841. Gladstone was again returned for Newark. The general election resulted in a Tory majority of eighty. Sir Robert Peel became prime minister, and made the member for Newark vice-president of the Board of Trade. An inevitable Enters the cabinet. change is from this time to be traced in the topics of Gladstone’s parliamentary speaking. Instead of discoursing on the corporate conscience of the state and the endowments of the Church, the importance of Christian education, and the theological unfitness of the Jews to sit in parliament, he is solving business-like problems about foreign tariffs and the exportation of machinery; waxing eloquent over the regulation of railways, and a graduated tax on corn; subtle on the monetary merits of half-farthings, and great in the mysterious lore of quassia and cocculus indicus. In 1842 he had a principal hand in the preparation of the revised tariff, by which duties were abolished or sensibly diminished in the case of 1200 duty-paying articles. In defending the new scheme he spoke incessantly, and amazed the House by his mastery of detail, his intimate acquaintance with the commercial needs of the country, and his inexhaustible power of exposition. In 1843 Gladstone, succeeding Lord Ripon as president of the Board of Trade, became a member of the cabinet at the age of thirty-three. He has recorded the fact that “the very first opinion which he ever was called upon to give in cabinet” was an opinion in favour of withdrawing the bill providing education for children in factories, to which vehement opposition was offered by the Dissenters, on the ground that it was too favourable to the Established Church.
At the opening of the session of 1845 the government, in pursuance of a promise made to Irish members that they would deal with the question of academical education in Ireland, proposed to establish non-sectarian colleges in that country and to make a large addition to the Maynooth grant: resignation. grant to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth. Gladstone resigned office, in order, as he announced in the debate on the address, to form “not only an honest, but likewise an independent and an unsuspected judgment,” on the plan to be submitted by the government with respect to Maynooth. His subsequent defence of the proposed grant, on the ground that it would be improper and unjust to exclude the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland from a “more indiscriminating support” which the state might give to various religious beliefs, was regarded by men of less sensitive conscience as only proving that there had been no adequate cause for his resignation. Before he resigned he completed a second revised tariff, carrying considerably further the principles on which he had acted in the earlier revision of 1842.
In the autumn of 1845 the failure of the potato crop in Ireland threatened a famine, and convinced Sir Robert Peel that all restrictions on the importation of food must be at once suspended. He was supported by only three members of the cabinet, and resigned on the 5th of Free trade. December. Lord John Russell, who had just announced his conversion to total and immediate repeal of the Corn Laws, declined the task of forming an administration, and on the 20th of December Sir Robert Peel resumed office. Lord Stanley refused to re-enter the government, and his place as secretary of state for the colonies was offered to and accepted by Gladstone. He did not offer himself for re-election at Newark, and remained outside the House of Commons during the great struggle of the coming year. It was a curious irony of fate which excluded him from parliament at this crisis, for it seems unquestionable that he was the most advanced Free Trader in Sir Robert Peel’s Cabinet. The Corn Bill passed the House of Lords on the 28th of June 1846, and on the same day the government were beaten in the House of Commons on an Irish Coercion Bill. Lord John Russell became prime minister, and Gladstone retired for a season into private life. Early in 1847 it was announced that one of the two members for the university of Oxford intended to retire at the general election, and Gladstone was proposed for the vacant seat. The representation of the university had been pronounced by Canning to be the most coveted prize of public life, and Gladstone himself confessed that he “desired it with an almost passionate fondness.” Parliament was dissolved on the 23rd of July 1847. The nomination at Oxford took place on the 29th of July, and at the close of the poll Sir Robert Inglis stood at the head, with Gladstone as his colleague.
The three years 1847, 1848, 1849 were for Gladstone a period of mental growth, of transition, of development. A change was silently proceeding, which was not completed for twenty years. “There have been,” he wrote in later days to Bishop Wilberforce, “two great deaths, or Naple prisons. transmigrations of spirit, in my political existence—one, very slow, the breaking of ties with my original party.” This was now in progress. In the winter of 1850–1851 Gladstone spent between three and four months at Naples, where he learned that more than half the chamber of deputies, who had followed the party of Opposition, had been banished or imprisoned; that a large number, probably not less than 20,000, of the citizens had been imprisoned on charges of political disaffection, and that in prison they were subjected to the grossest cruelties. Having made careful investigations, Gladstone, on the 7th of April 1851, addressed an open letter to Lord Aberdeen, bringing an elaborate, detailed and horrible indictment against the rulers of Naples, especially as regards the arrangements of their prisons and the treatment of persons confined in them for political offences. The publication of this letter caused a wide sensation in England and abroad, and profoundly agitated the court of Naples. In reply to a question in the House of Commons, Lord Palmerston accepted and adopted Gladstone’s statement, expressed keen sympathy with the cause which he had espoused, and sent a copy of his letter to the queen’s representative at every court of Europe. A second letter and a third followed, and their effect, though for a while retarded, was unmistakably felt in the subsequent revolution which created a free and united Italy.
In February 1852 the Whig government was defeated on a Militia Bill, and Lord John Russell was succeeded by Lord Derby, formerly Lord Stanley, with Mr Disraeli, who now
