e laid open to personal merit.... This is _my_
contribution to parliamentary reform.' On January 26 (1854) the cabinet
was chiefly occupied by Mr. Gladstone's proposition, and after a long
discussion his plan was adopted. When reformers more ardent than
accurate insisted in later years that it was the aristocracy who kept
patronage, Mr. Gladstone reminded the House, 'No cabinet could have been
more aristocratically composed than that over which Lord Aberdeen
presided. I myself was the only one of fifteen noblemen and gentlemen
who composed it, who could not fairly be said to belong to that class.'
Yet it was this cabinet that conceived and matured a plan for the
surrender of all its patronage. There for the moment, in spite of all
his vigour and resolution, the reform was arrested. Time did not change
him. In November he wrote to Trevelyan: 'My own opinions are more and
more in favour of the plan of competition. I do not mean that they can
be more in its favour as a principle, than they were when I invited you
and Northcote to write the report which has lit up the flame; but more
and more do the incidental evils seem curable and the difficulties
removable.' As the Crimean war went on, the usual cry for administrative
reform was raised, and Mr. Gladstone never made a more terse, pithy, and
incontrovertible speech than his defence for an open civil service in
the summer of 1855.[330]

For this branch of reform, too, the inspiration had proceeded from
Oxford. Two of the foremost champions of the change had been
Temple--afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury--and Jowett. The latter was
described by Mr. Gladstone to Graham as being 'as handy a workman as you
shall readily find,' and in the beginning of 1855 he proposed to these
two reformers that they should take the salaried office of examiners
under the civil service scheme. Much of his confident expectation of
good, he told them, was built upon their co-operation. In all his
proceedings on this subject, Mr. Gladstone showed in strong light in how
unique a degree he combined a profound democratic instinct with the
spirit of good government; the instinct of popular equality along with
the scientific spirit of the enlightened bureaucrat.

FOOTNOTES:

[316] July 18, 1850.

[317] Letter to Bishop Davidson, June 11, 1891.

[318] _Life_, i. p. 420.

[319] _Life of Stanley_, i. p. 432.

[320] Letters to Graham, July 30, 1852, and Dr. Haddan, Aug. 14 and
Sept. 29, 1852.

[