ith modesty and
with courtesy as well as reason. I am sorry to say that, to the
best of my recollection, I did far otherwise, and the pith of my
answer was made to be that I regarded the Anti-Corn Law League as
no better than a big borough-mongering association. Such was my
first capital offence in the matter of protection; redeemed from
public condemnation only by obscurity.

The letters are preserved, but a sentence or two from Mr. Gladstone's to
Cobden are enough. 'The phrases which you quote from a report in the
_Times_ have reference, not to the corn law, but to the Anti-Corn Law
League and its operations in Walsall. Complaining apparently of these,
you desire me to meet you in discussion, not upon the League but upon
the corn law. I cannot conceive two subjects more distinct. I admit the
question of the repeal of the corn laws to be a subject fairly open to
discussion, although I have a strong opinion against it. But as to the
Anti-Corn Law League, I do not admit that any equitable doubt can be
entertained as to the character of its present proceedings; and,
excepting a casual familiarity of phrase, I adhere rigidly to the
substance of the sentiments which I have expressed. I know not who may
be answerable for these measures, nor was your name known to me, or in
my recollection at the time when I spoke.' Time soon changed all this,
and showed who was teacher and who the learner.

By and by the session of 1841 opened, the whigs moving steadily towards
their fall, and Mr. Gladstone almost overwhelmed with floods of domestic
business. He settled in the pleasant region which is to the metropolis
what Delphi was to the habitable earth, and where, if we include in it
Downing Street, he passed all the most important years of his life in
London.[145] Though he speaks of being overwhelmed by domestic business,
and he was undoubtedly hard beset by all the demands of early
housekeeping, yet he very speedily recovered his balance. He resisted
now and always as jealously as he could those promiscuous claims on time
and attention by which men of less strenuous purpose suffer the
effectiveness of their lives to be mutilated. 'I well know,' he writes
to his young wife who was expecting him to join her at Hagley, 'you
would not have me come on any conditions with which one's sense of duty
could not be quieted, and would (I hope) send me back by the next train.
These delays are to you a practical exem