rs of labour under Peel that he first acquired
principles of administrative and parliamentary practice that afterwards
stood him in good stead: on no account to try to deal with a question
before it is ripe; never to go the length of submitting a difference
between two departments to the prime minister before the case is
exhausted and complete; never to press a proposal forward beyond the
particular stage at which it has arrived. Pure commonplaces if we will,
but they are not all of them easy to learn. We cannot forget that Peel
and Mr. Gladstone were in the strict line of political succession. They
were alike in social origin and academic antecedents. They started from
the same point of view as to the great organs of national life, the
monarchy, the territorial peerage and the commons, the church, the
universities. They showed the same clear knowledge that it was not by
its decorative parts, or what Burke styled 'solemn plausibilities,' that
the community derived its strength; but that it rested for its real
foundations on its manufactures, its commerce, and its credit. Even in
the lesser things, in reading Sir Robert Peel's letters, those who in
later years served under Mr. Gladstone can recognise the school to which
he went for the methods, the habits of mind, the practices of business,
and even the phrases which he employed when his own time came to assume
the direction of public affairs, the surmounting of administrative
difficulties, the piloting of complex measures, and the handling of
troublesome persons.

FOOTNOTES:

[151] Undated fragment of letter to the Queen. See Appendix.

[152] See above, p. 232.

[153] Parker, ii. pp. 499, 529, 533.

[154] _Ibid._, p. 509. Before the end of the session (Aug. 10, 1842) he
had learned enough to do more justice to Hume and the committee.

[155] The editor of Sir Robert Peel's papers was allowed to print three
or four of Mr. Gladstone's letters to his chief at this interesting
date. The reader will find the correspondence in Parker, ii. pp.
497-517, 519, 520.

[156] In 1843 a bill was passed lowering the duty on Canadian corn
imported into England, and Mr. Gladstone says in a memo, of 1851: 'In
1843 I pleaded strongly for the admission of all the colonies to the
privilege then granted to Canada.'

[157] Bright was elected for Durham in July 1843.

[158] The question of the Welsh bishoprics was one of a certain
magnitude in its day. The union of Bangor and St. Asap