of
his creed at the time to his friend Gaskell, and to modern eyes a
curious list it is. The first place is given to his views on the
relative merits of Pedro, Miguel, Donna Maria, in respect of the throne
of Portugal. The second goes to Poland. The third to the affairs of
Lombardy. Free trade comes last. This was still the lingering fashion of
the moment, and it died hard.

The new ministry contained an unusual number of men of mark and
capacity, and they were destined to form a striking group. At their head
was a statesman whose fame grows more impressive with time, not the
author or inspirer of large creative ideas, but with what is at any rate
next best--a mind open and accessible to those ideas, and endowed with
such gifts of skill, vigilance, caution, and courage as were needed for
the government of a community rapidly passing into a new stage of its
social growth. One day in February 1842, he sent for Mr. Gladstone on
some occasion of business. Peel happened not to be well, and in the
course of the conversation his doctor called. Sir James Graham who had
come in, said to his junior in Peel's absence with the physician, 'The
pressure upon him is immense. We never had a minister who was so truly a
first minister as he is. He makes himself felt in every department, and
is really cognisant of the affairs of each. Lord Grey could not master
such an amount of business. Canning could not do it. Now he is an actual
minister, and is indeed _capax imperii_.' Next to Peel as parliamentary
leaders stood Graham himself and Stanley. They had both of them sat in
the cabinet of Lord Grey, and now found themselves the colleagues of the
bitterest foes of Grey's administration. As we have seen, Mr. Gladstone
pronounces Graham to have known more about economic subjects than all
the rest of the government put together. Such things had hitherto been
left to men below the first rank in the hierarchy of public office, like
Huskisson. Pedro and Miguel held the field.

END OF HIS PROTECTIONIST STAGE

Mr. Gladstone's own position is described in an autobiographic fragment
of his last years:--

When I entered parliament in 1832, the great controversy between
protection or artificial restraint and free trade, of which Cobden
was the leading figure, did not enter into the popular
controversies of the day, and was still in the hands of the
philosophers. My father was an active and effective loc