, any of those who had
been attached to him as master and as friend, either Mr. Gladstone or
anybody else, could have looked without reprobation and aversion on the
idea of cabinet intimacy with the bitterest and least sincere of all
Peel's assailants.

III

OPENING SKIRMISHES

Mr. Gladstone repaired to London some weeks before the new session, and
though he was not in a position to open direct relations with the
government, he expressed to Lord Hardinge, with a view to its
communication to Lord Derby, his strong opinion that the House of
Commons would, and should, require from ministers a frank and explicit
adoption of free trade through the address, and secondly, the immediate
production of their financial measures. Lord Derby told Hardinge at
Windsor that he thought that neither expectation was far wrong. When the
Peelites met at Lord Aberdeen's to discuss tactics, they were secretly
dissatisfied with the paragraphs about free trade.

Mr. Disraeli had laid down at the election the sonorous maxim, that no
statesman can disregard with impunity the genius of the epoch in which
he lives. And he now after the election averred that the genius of the
age was in favour of free exchange. Still it was pleasanter to swallow
the dose with as little public observation as possible. 'What would have
been said,' cried Lord Derby in fervid remonstrance, 'if shortly after
catholic emancipation and the reform bill had been admitted as
settlements, their friends had come down and insisted not only that the
Houses of parliament should consent to act on the new policy they had
adopted, but should expressly recant their opinion in favour of the
policy that had formerly prevailed? What would the friends of Sir R.
Peel have said in 1835 if, when he assumed the government and when the
new parliament assembled, he had been called upon to declare that the
reform bill was wise, just, and necessary?' The original free traders
were not disposed to connive at Derbyite operations any more than were
the whigs. Notice was at once given by Mr. Villiers of a motion
virtually assailing the ministers, by asserting the doctrine of free
trade in terms they could not adopt. 'Now,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'we came
to a case in which the liberals did that which had been done by the
government in the case of the Four Seats bill; that is to say, they
raised an issue which placed us against them. Lord