other hand, I never
have had any hope of conservative reconstruction except (and that
slender and remote) such as presupposed the co-operation--I am now
speaking for the House of Commons only--of yourself and Graham in
particular. By adopting Reform as a watchword of present political
action he has certainly inserted a certain amount of gap between
himself and me, which may come to be practically material or may
not. If you make a gap upon this opportunity, I believe it will be
a novelty in political history: it will be the first case on record
of separation between two men, all of whose views upon every public
question, political, administrative, or financial, are I believe in
as exact accordance as under the laws of the human mind is
possible....

His leaning towards the conservative party seemed to become more decided
rather than less. Lord Aberdeen had written to him as if the
amalgamation of Peel's friends with the liberal party had practically
taken place. 'If that be true,' Mr. Gladstone replies (April 4, 1857),
'then I have been deceiving both the world and my constituents, and the
deception has reached its climax within the last fortnight, during which
I have been chosen without opposition to represent Oxford under a belief
directly contrary in the minds of the majority of my constituents.' He
saw nothing but evil in Lord Palmerston's supremacy. That was his
unending refrain. He tells one of his constituents, the state of things
'is likely to end in much political confusion if it is not stopped by
the failure of Lord Palmerston's physical force, the only way of
stopping it which I could view with regret, for I admire the pluck with
which he fights against the infirmities of age, though in political and
moral courage I have never seen a minister so deficient.' Cobden asked
him in the course of the first session of the new parliament, to take up
some position adverse to the ministers. 'I should not knowingly,' Mr.
Gladstone replies (June 16, 1857), 'allow any disgust with the state of
public affairs to restrain me from the discharge of a public duty; but I
arrived some time ago at the conclusion, which has guided my conduct
since the dissolution, that the House of Commons would sooner and more
healthily return to a sense of its own dignity and of its proper
functions, if let alone by a person who had so thoroughly worried both
it and the country as myse