e a sweeping impulse to that steady but
resistless tide of liberal and popular sentiment that ended in the
parliamentary reform of 1867.

The lesson from the active resolution of America was confirmed by the
passive fortitude of Lancashire. "What are the questions," Mr. Gladstone
asked in 1864, "that fit a man for the exercise of a privilege such as the
franchise? Self-command, self-control, respect for order, patience under
suffering, confidence in the law, regard for superiors; and when, I should
like to ask, were all these great qualities exhibited in a manner more
signal, even more illustrious, than in the conduct of the general body of
the operatives of Lancashire under the profound affliction of the winter
of 1862?" So on two sides the liberal channel was widened and deepened and
the speed of its currents accelerated.

Besides large common influences like these, Mr. Gladstone's special
activities as a reformer brought him into contact with the conditions of
life and feeling among the workmen, (M36) and the closer he came to them,
the more did his humane and sympathetic temper draw him towards their
politics and the ranks of their party. Looking back, he said, upon the
years immediately succeeding the fall of Napoleon in 1815, he saw the
reign of ideas that did not at all belong to the old currents of English
history, but were a reaction against the excesses of the French
revolution. This reaction seemed to set up the doctrine that the masses
must be in standing antagonism to the law, and it resulted in severities
that well justified antagonism. "To-day the scene was transformed; the
fixed traditional sentiment of the working man had become one of
confidence in the law, in parliament, even in the executive government."
In 1863 he was busy in the erection of the post office savings banks. A
deputation of a powerful trades union asked him to modify his rules so as
to enable them to place their funds in the hands of the government. A
generation before, such confidence would have been inconceivable. In
connection with the Government Annuities bill a deputation of workmen came
to him, and said, "If there had been any suspicion or disinclination
towards it on the part of the working classes, it was due to the
dissatisfaction with parliament as to suffrage." When he replied with
something about the alleged indifference and apparent inaction of the
working classes as to suffrage, they said, "Since the abolition of the
cor