athies drew him to his first party. It was the
Peelites who had now been thrown into the case of a dubious third party.
At the end of February Mr. Gladstone sought Lord Aberdeen, looking 'to
his weight, his prudence, and his kindliness of disposition as the main
anchor of their section. His tone has usually been, during the last few
years, that of anxiety to reunite the fragments and reconstruct the
conservative party, but yesterday, particularly at the commencement of
our conversation, he seemed to lean the other way; spoke kindly of Lord
Derby and wished that _he_ could be extricated from the company with
which he is associated; said that though called a despot all his life,
he himself had always been, and was now, friendly to a liberal policy.
He did not, however, like the reform question in Lord John's hands; but
he considered, I thought (and if so he differed from me), that on church
questions we all might co-operate with him securely.' Mr. Gladstone, on
the contrary, insisted that their duty plainly was to hold themselves
clear and free from whig and Derbyite alike, so as to be prepared to
take whatever of three courses might, after the defeat of protectionist
proposals, seem most honourable--whether conservative reconstruction, or
liberal conjunction, or Peelism single-handed. The last he described as
their least natural position; for, he urged, they might be 'liberal in
the sense of Peel, working out a liberal policy through the medium of
the conservative party.' To that procrastinating view Mr. Gladstone
stood tenaciously, and his course now is one of the multitudinous
illustrations of his constant abhorrence of premature committal, and the
taking of a second step before the first.

After Aberdeen he approached Graham, who proceeded to use language that
seemed to point to his virtual return to his old friends of the liberal
party, for the reader will not forget the striking circumstance that the
new head of a conservative government, and the most trusted of the
cabinet colleagues of Peel, had both of them begun official life in the
reform ministry of Lord Grey. Graham said he had a very high opinion of
Lord Derby's talents and character, and that Lord J. Russell had
committed many errors, but that looking at the two as they stood, he
thought that the opinions of Lord Derby as a whole were more dangerous
to the country than those of Lord John. Mr. Gladstone said it did not
appear to him that the question lay betw