in earnest he was about the negroes, by
strenuously pressing his father to allow him to go to the West Indies
and view the state of things there for himself. Perhaps by prudent
instinct his father disapproved, and at last spoke decidedly against any
project of the kind.

The question of the education of the people was rising into political
prominence, and its close relations with the claims of the church
sufficed to engage the active interest of so zealous a son of the church
as Mr. Gladstone. From a very early stage we find him moving for
returns, serving on education committees in parliament, corresponding
energetically with Manning, Acland, and others of like mind in and out
of parliament. Primary education is one of the few subjects on which the
fossils of extinct opinion neither interest nor instruct. It is enough
to mark that Mr. Gladstone's position in the forties was that of the
ultra-churchman of the time, and such as no church-ultra now dreams of
fighting for. We find him 'objecting to any infringement whatever of the
principle on which the established church was founded--that of confining
the pecuniary support of the state to one particular religious
denomination.'[79]

To Dr. Hook (March 12, 1838), he speaks of 'a safe and precious
interval, perhaps the last to those who are desirous of placing the
education of the people under the efficient control of the clergy.' The
aims of himself and his allies were to plant training schools in every
diocese; to connect these with the cathedrals through the chapters; to
license the teachers by the bishops after examination.

Writing to Manning (Feb. 22, 1839), he compares control by government to
the 'little lion cub in the _Agamemnon_,' which after being in its
primeval season the delight of the young and amusement of the old,
gradually revealed its parent stock, and grew to be a creature of huge
mischief in the household.[80] He describes a divergence of view among
them on the question whether the clergyman should have his choice as to
'admitting the children of dissenters without at once teaching them the
catechism.' How Mr. Gladstone went he does not say, nor does it matter.
He was not yet thirty. He accepted his political toryism on authority
and in good faith, and the same was true of his views on church policy.
He could not foresee that it was to be in his own day of power that the
cub should come out full-grown lion.

IN SOCIETY