_In the great mountain of Mr. Gladstone's papers I have come across an
unfinished and undated draft of a letter written by him for the Queen in
1880 on Sir Robert Peel's government_:--

Mr. Gladstone with his humble duty reverts to the letter which your
Majesty addressed to him a few days back, and in which your Majesty
condescended to recollect and to remind him of the day now nearly
forty years ago, a day he fears not altogether one of pleasure to
your Majesty, when together with others he had the honour to be
sworn of your Majesty's privy council. Your Majesty is pleased to
pronounce upon the government then installed into office a high
eulogy: a eulogy which Mr. Gladstone would presume, as far as he
may, to echo. He values it, and values the recollection of the men
who principally composed it, because it was, in the first place, a
most honourable and high-minded government; because its legislative
acts tended greatly, and almost uniformly, to increase the
wellbeing of the country, and to strengthen the attachment of the
people to the throne and the laws; while it studied in all things
to maintain the reverse of an ambitious or disturbing policy.

It was Mr. Gladstone's good fortune to live on terms of intimacy,
and even affection, with the greater portion of its principal and
more active members until the close of their valued lives; and
although he is far from thinking that they, and he himself with
them, committed no serious errors, yet it is his conviction that in
many of the most important rules of public policy that government
surpassed generally the governments which have succeeded it,
whether liberal or conservative. Among them he would mention purity
in patronage, financial strictness, loyal adherence to the
principle of public economy, jealous regard to the rights of
parliament, a single eye to the public interest, strong aversion to
extension of territorial responsibilities, and a frank admission of
the rights of foreign countries as equal to those of their own.
With these recollections of the political character of Sir R. Peel
and his government Mr. Gladstone has in no way altered his feelings
of regard and respect for them. In all the points he has mentioned
he would desire to tread in their steps, and in many of them, or at
least in some, h