" had been taken; the Reform Bill was carried, the
sceptre of power had passed away from the aristocracy and the privileged
ranks to the middle and lower middle classes. The Conservative party
were looking eagerly out for young men of promise to stiffen their ranks
in the new parliament, the first elected under the Reform Bill, the
first which the middle class had their due share in creating; the first
in which such cities as Manchester and Liverpool and Birmingham were
allowed to have representation.

Mr. Gladstone was invited to contest the burgh of Newark in the
Conservative interest, and he had the support of the great Newcastle
family. He stood for Newark, and he was elected. He delivered his maiden
speech on a subject connected with the great movement for the
emancipation of the West Indian slaves; but he seems to have confined
himself mainly to a defence of the manner in which his father's estates
were managed, the course of the debate having brought out some charge
against the management of the elder Gladstone's possessions in one of
the West Indian islands. The new orator appears to have made a decided
impression on the House of Commons. His manner, his voice, his diction,
his fluency were alike the subject of praise. Mr. Gladstone evidently
continued to impress the House of Commons with a sense of his great
parliamentary capacity. We get at this fact rather obliquely; for we do
not hear of his creating any great sensation in debate; and to this day
some very old members of the House insist that for a long time he was
generally regarded as merely a fluent speaker, who talked like one
reading from a book. But on the other hand, we find that he is described
by Macaulay, in 1839, as "the rising hope" of the "stern and unbending
Tories," and the whole tone of Macaulay's essay--a criticism of
Gladstone's first serious attempt at authorship, his book on the
relations between church and state--shows that the critic treats the
author as a young man of undoubted mark and position in the House of
Commons.

[Illustration: Hawarden Castle, the home of Gladstone.]

In December, 1834, Sir Robert Peel appointed Gladstone to the office of
a Junior Lord of the Treasury. In the next year Peel, who was quick to
appreciate the great abilities and the sound commercial knowledge of his
new recruit, gave to him the more important post of Under-secretary for
the Colonies. Gladstone looked up to Peel with intense admiration. There
w