him: 'I wish to be in
parliament but coldly; feeling at the same time that I ought to wish it
warmly on many grounds. But my father is so very keen in his protective
opinions, and I am so very decidedly of the other way of thinking, that
I look forward with some reluctance and regret to what must, when it
happens, place me in marked and public contrast with him.' The thing
soon happened.

I remained, he says, without a seat until the dissolution in June
1847. But several months before this occurred it had become known
that Mr. Estcourt would vacate his seat for Oxford, and I became a
candidate. It was a serious campaign. The constituency, much to its
honour, did not stoop to fight the battle on the ground of
protection. But it was fought, and that fiercely, on religious
grounds. There was an incessant discussion, and I may say
dissection, of my character and position in reference to the Oxford
movement. This cut very deep, for it was a discussion which each
member of the constituency was entitled to carry on for himself.
The upshot was favourable. The liberals supported me gallantly, so
did many zealous churchmen, apart from politics, and a good number
of moderate men, so that I was returned by a fair majority. I held
the seat for eighteen years, but with five contests and a final
defeat.

The other sitting member after the retirement of Mr. Estcourt was Sir
Robert Harry Inglis, who had beaten Peel by a very narrow majority in
the memorable contest for the university seat on the final crisis of the
catholic question in 1829. He was blessed with a genial character and an
open and happy demeanour; and the fact that he was equipped with a full
store of sincere and inexorable prejudices made it easy for him to be
the most upright, honourable, kindly, and consistent of political men.
Repeal of the Test acts, relief of the catholics, the Reform bill,
relief of the Jews, reform of the Irish church, the grant to Maynooth,
the repeal of the corn laws--one after another he had stoutly resisted
the whole catalogue of revolutionising change. So manful a record made
his seat safe. In the struggle for the second seat, Mr. Gladstone's
friends encountered first Mr. Cardwell, a colleague of his as secretary
of the treasury in the late government. Cardwell was deep in the
confidence and regard of Sir Robert Peel, and he earned in after years
the reputation of a