n deeply
cherished predilections, to give a deliberate and even anxious support
to the measure.'

The 'dreamer and the schoolman' meanwhile had left behind him a towering
monument of hard and strenuous labour in the shape of that second and
greater reform of the tariff, in which, besides the removal of the
export duty on coal and less serious commodities, no fewer than four
hundred and thirty articles were swept altogether away from the list of
the customs officer. Glass was freed from an excise amounting to twice
or thrice the value of the article, and the whole figure of remission
was nearly three times as large as the corresponding figure in the bold
operations of 1842. Whether the budget of 1842 or that of 1845 marked
the more extensive advance, we need not discuss; it is enough that Mr.
Gladstone himself set down the construction of these two tariffs among
the principal achievements in the history of his legislative works. His
unofficial relations with the colleagues whom he had left were perfectly
unchanged. 'You will be glad to know,' he writes to his father, 'that
the best feeling, as I believe, subsists between us. Although our powers
of entertaining guests are not of the first order, yet with a view
partly to these occurrences we asked Sir R. and Lady Peel to dinner
to-day, and also Lord and Lady Stanley and Lord Aberdeen. All accepted,
but unfortunately an invitation to Windsor has carried off Sir R. and
Lady Peel. A small matter, but I mention it as a symbol of what is
material.'

Before many days were over, he was working day and night on a projected
statement, involving much sifting and preparation, upon the recent
commercial legislation. Lord John Russell had expressed a desire for a
competent commentary on the results of the fiscal changes of 1842, and
the pamphlet in which Mr. Gladstone showed what those results had been
was the reply. Three editions of it were published within the year.[170]

This was not the only service that Mr. Gladstone had an opportunity of
rendering in the course of the session to the government that he had
quitted. 'Peel,' he says, 'had a plan for the admission of free labour
sugar on terms of favour. Lord Palmerston made a motion to show that
this involved a breach of our old treaties with Spain. I examined the
case laboriously, and, though I think his facts could not be denied, I
undertook (myself out of office) to answer him on behalf of the
government. This I did, and Pee