_Corr._ iii. p. 274.

[265] Namely Palmerston, Spring-Rice, F. Baring, Charles Wood, Hobhouse,
Labouchere, Lord Howick.

[266] This, of course, was Charles John Earl Canning, third son of
Canning the prime minister, Mr. Gladstone's contemporary at Eton and
Christ Church, and known to history as governor-general of India in the
Mutiny. Stratford Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, was
cousin of George Canning.

[267] Graham spoke of himself as a tried reformer and as a member of the
liberal party, and as glad to find himself the ally of so faithful a
liberal and reformer as his fellow-candidate. He would not exactly
pledge himself to support the ballot, but he admitted it was a hard
question, and said he was not so blind that practical experience might
not convince him that he was wrong. (Mar. 26, 1852.)

[268] The same question greatly exercised Mr. Gladstone's mind in 1886,
for the same reason, that he again hoped for the reunion of a divided
party.

[269] This was a bill to assign the four disfranchised seats for Sudbury
and St. Albans to the West Riding of Yorkshire and the southern division
of Lancashire. Mr. Gladstone carried the order of the day by a majority
of 86 against the government.

CHAPTER VIII

END OF PROTECTION

(_1852_)

It is not too much to ask that now at least, after so much waste of
public time, after ministries overturned and parties disorganised,
the question of free trade should be placed high and dry on the
shore whither the tide of political party strife could no longer
reach it.--GLADSTONE.

The parliament was now dissolved (July 1) to decide a great question.
The repeal of the corn law, the ultimate equalisation of the sugar
duties, the repeal of the navigation laws, had been the three great free
trade measures of the last half-dozen years, and the issue before the
electors in 1852 was whether this policy was sound or unsound. Lord
Derby might have faced it boldly by announcing a moderate protection for
corn and for colonial sugar. Or he might have openly told the country
that he had changed his mind, as Peel had changed his mind about the
catholic question and about free trade, and as Mr. Disraeli was to
change his mind upon franchise in 1867, and Mr. Gladstone upon the Irish
church in 1868. Instead of this, all was equivocation. The Derbyite, as
was well said, was protectioni