y 17th
he was at Newark, canvassing, speaking, hand-shaking, and in lucid
intervals reading Filicaja. He found a very strong, angry, and general
sentiment, not against the principle of the poor law as regards the
able-bodied, but against the regulations for separating man and wife,
and sending the old compulsorily to the workhouse, with others of a like
nature. With the disapprobation on these heads he in great part
concurred. There was to be no contest, but arrangements of this kind
still leave room for some anxiety, and in Mr. Gladstone's case a
singular thing happened. Two days after his arrival at Newark he was
followed by a body of gentlemen from Manchester, with an earnest
invitation that he would be a candidate for that great town. He declined
the invitation, absolutely as he supposed, but the Manchester tories
nominated him notwithstanding. They assured the electors that he was the
most promising young statesman of the day. The whigs on the other hand
vowed that he was an insulter of dissent, a bigot of such dark hue as to
wish to subject even the poor negroes of his father's estates to the
slavery of a dominant church, a man who owed whatever wealth and
consequence his family possessed to the crime of holding his
fellow-creatures in bondage, a man who, though honest and consistent,
was a member of that small ultra-tory minority which followed the Duke
of Cumberland. When the votes were counted, Mr. Gladstone was at the
bottom of the poll, with a majority of many hundreds against him.[74]

Meantime he was already member for Newark. His own election was no
sooner over than he caught the last vacant place on the mail to
Carlisle, whence he hastened to the aid of his father's patriotic
labours as candidate for Dundee. Here he worked hard at canvassing and
meetings, often pelted with mud and stones, but encouraged by friends
more buoyant than the event justified.

_Aug. 1st._--My father beaten after all, our promised votes in many
cases going back or going against us.... Two hundred promises
broken. Poll closed at Parnell, 666; Gladstone, 381. It is not in
human approbation that the reward of right action is to be sought.
Left at 41/2 amid the hisses of the crowd. Perth at 71/4. Left at one
in the morning for Glasgow. _2nd._--Glasgow 81/2. Steamer at 11.
Breeze; miserably sick; deck all night. _3rd._--Arrived at 111/2;
(Liverpool), very sore. _4th._--Out at 81/2 to vote for S