offer to them was to be a persistent attempt in good faith or only a
device to mend the parliamentary case, if the offer were made and
refused. Two or three of the whig ministers, true to the church
traditions of the caste, made great difficulties about the Puseyite
notions of Newcastle and Mr. Gladstone. 'Gladstone,' writes one of them,
'is a Jesuit, and more Peelite than I believe was Peel himself.' In the
end Lord John Russell and his men met parliament without any new
support. Their tottering life was short, and it was an amendment moved
by Palmerston (Feb. 20) on a clause in a militia bill, that slit the
thread. The hostile majority was only eleven, but other perils lay
pretty thick in front. The ministers resigned, and Lord Stanley, who had
now become Earl of Derby, had no choice but to give his followers their
chance. The experiment that seemed so impossible when Bentinck first
tried it, of forming a new third party in the state, seemed up to this
point to have prospered, and the protectionists had a definite
existence. The ministers were nearly all new to public office, and
seventeen of them were for the first time sworn of the privy council in
a single day. One jest was that the cabinet consisted of three men and a
half--Derby, Disraeli, St. Leonards, and a worthy fractional personage
at the admiralty.

Sending to his wife at Hawarden a provisional list (Feb. 23), Mr.
Gladstone doubts the way in which the offices were distributed:--'It is
not good, as compared I mean with what it should have been. Disraeli
could not have been worse placed than at the exchequer. Henley could
not have been worse than at the board of trade. T. Baring, who would
have been their best chancellor of the exchequer, seems to have
declined. Herries would have been much better than Disraeli for that
particular place. I suppose Lord Malmesbury is temporary foreign
secretary, to hold the place for S. Canning. What does not appear on the
face of the case is, who is to lead the House of Commons, and about that
everybody seems to be in the dark....'

IV

FIRST DERBY ADMINISTRATION

The first Derby administration, thus formed and covering the year 1852,
marks a highly interesting stage in Mr. Gladstone's career. 'The key to
my position,' as he afterwards said, 'was that my opinions went one way,
my lingering sympathies the other.' His opinions looked towards
liberalism, his symp