CHAPTER V

GORHAM CASE--SECESSION OF FRIENDS

(_1847-1851_)

It is not by the State that man can be regenerated, and the
terrible woes of this darkened world effectually dealt
with.--GLADSTONE (1894).

The test case of toleration at the moment of the Oxford election of 1847
was the admission of the Jews to sit in parliament, and in the last
month of 1847 Mr. Gladstone astonished his father, as well as a great
host of his political supporters, by voting with the government in
favour of the removal of Jewish disabilities. No ordinary degree of
moral courage was needed for such a step by the member for such a
constituency. 'It is a painful decision to come to,' he writes in his
diary (Dec. 16), 'but the only substantive doubt it raises is about
remaining in parliament, and it is truly and only the church which holds
me there, though she may seem to some to draw me from it.' Pusey wrote
to him in rather violent indignation, for Mr. Gladstone was the only man
of that school who learned, or was able to learn, what the modern state
is or is going to be. This was the third phase, so Gladstone argued, of
an irresistible movement. The tory party had fought first for an
anglican parliament, second they fought for a protestant parliament, and
now they were fighting for a Christian parliament. Parliament had ceased
to be anglican and it had ceased to be protestant, and the
considerations that supported these two earlier operations thenceforth
condemned the exclusion from full civil rights of those who were not
Christians. To his father he explained (December 17, 1847): 'After much
consideration, prolonged indeed I may say for the last two years and a
half, I made up my mind to support Lord John Russell's bill for the
admission of the Jews. I spoke to this effect last night. It is with
reluctance that I give the vote, but I am convinced that after the civil
privileges we have given them already (including the magistracy and the
franchise), and after the admission we have already conceded to
unitarians who refuse the whole of the most vital doctrines of the
Gospel, we cannot compatibly with entire justice and fairness refuse to
admit them.'

His father, who was sometimes exacting, complained of concealment. Mr.
Gladstone replied that he regarded the question as one of difficulty,
and he therefore took as much time as he possibly c