My deep
obligation,' he says, 'to the Duke of Newcastle for the great benefit he
conferred upon me, not only by his unbroken support, but, far above all,
by his original introduction of me to the constituency, made it my duty
at once to decline some overtures made to me for the support of my
re-election, so it only remained to seek a seat elsewhere.' Some faint
hopes were entertained by Mr. Gladstone's friends that the duke might
allow him to sit for the rest of the parliament, but the duke was not
the man to make concessions to a betrayer of the territorial interest.
Mr. Gladstone, too, we must not forget, was still and for many years to
come, a tory. When it was suggested that he might stand for North Notts,
he wrote to Lord Lincoln:--'It is not for one of my political opinions
without an extreme necessity to stand upon the basis of democratic or
popular feeling against the local proprietary: for you who are placed in
the soil the case is very different.'

Soon after the session of 1846 began, it became known that the
protectionist petition against the Peelite or liberal sitting member for
Wigan was likely to succeed in unseating him. 'Proposals were made to me
to succeed him, which were held to be eligible. I even wrote my address;
on a certain day, I was going down by the mail train. But it was an
object for our opponents to keep a secretary of state out of parliament
during the corn law crisis, and their petition was suddenly withdrawn.
The consequence was that I remained until the resignation of the
government in July a minister of the crown without a seat in parliament.
This was a state of things not agreeable to the spirit of parliamentary
government; and some objection was taken, but rather slightly, in the
House of Commons. Sir R. Peel stood fire.' There can be little doubt
that in our own day a cabinet minister without a seat in either House of
parliament would be regarded, in Mr. Gladstone's words, as a public
inconvenience and a political anomaly, too _dark_ to be tolerated; and
he naturally felt it his absolute duty to peep in at every chink and
cranny where a seat in parliament could be had. A Peelite, however, had
not a good chance at a by-election, and Mr. Gladstone remained out of
the House until the general election in the year following.[174] Lord
Lincoln, also a member of the cabinet, vacated his seat, but, unlike his
friend, found a seat in the course of the session.

Mr. Gladstone's brother-in-la