oses, of the fact that my connections have an interest in the West
Indies, to throw discredit upon me and the cause which I advocate?'

[76] Parker's _Peel_, ii. pp. 336-8.

[77] See Appendix.

[78] Parker, ii. pp. 352-367.

[79] _Hansard_, June 20, 1839.

[80] _Agam._ 696-716.

Even so belike might one
A lion suckling nurse,
Like a foster-son,
To his home a future curse.

In life's beginnings mild
Dear to sire and kind to child....
But in time he showed
The habit of his blood....
--Gladstone in _Translations_, p. 83.

CHAPTER IV

THE CHURCH

(_1838_)

A period and a movement certainly among the most remarkable in the
Christendom of the last three and a half centuries; probably more
remarkable than the movement associated with the name of Port
Royal, for that has passed away and left hardly a trace behind; but
this has left ineffaceable marks upon the English church and
nation.--GLADSTONE (1891).

It was the affinity of great natures for great issues that made Mr.
Gladstone from his earliest manhood onwards take and hold fast the
affairs of the churches for the objects of his most absorbing interest.
He was one and the same man, his genius was one. His persistent
incursions all through his long life into the multifarious doings, not
only of his own anglican communion, but of the Latin church of the west,
as well as of the motley Christendom of the east, puzzled and vexed
political whippers-in, wire-pullers, newspaper editors, leaders,
colleagues; they were the despair of party caucuses; and they made the
neutral man of the world smile, as eccentricities of genius and rather
singularly chosen recreations. All this was, in truth, of the very
essence of his character, the manifestation of its profound unity.

The quarrel upon church comprehension that had perplexed Elizabeth and
Burleigh, had distracted the councils of Charles I. and of Cromwell, had
bewildered William of Orange and Tillotson and Burnet, was once more
aglow with its old heat. The still mightier dispute, how wide or how
narrow is the common ground between the church of England and the church
of Rome, broke into fierce flame.

THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION

Then by and by these familiar contests of ancient tradition, thus
quickened in the eternal ebb and flow of human t