r kind letter, and to know whether Edward may get
two padlocks for the wicket and large shore gate. They are now
open, and the people make a thoroughfare of the green walk and the
carriage road. I read Mr. Plunket's speech, and I admire it
exceedingly. I enclose a letter from Mr. Rawson to you. He told me
to-day that Mrs. R. was a great deal better. Write to me again as
soon as you can.--Ever your most affectionate and dutiful son, W.
E. GLADSTONE.

In after years he was fond of recalling how the Liverpool with which he
had been most familiar (1810-20), though the second commercial town in
the kingdom, did not exceed 100,000 of population, and how the silver
cloud of smoke that floated above her resembled that which might now
appear over any secondary borough or village of the country. 'I have
seen wild roses growing upon the very ground that is now the centre of
the borough of Bootle. All that land is now partly covered with
residences and partly with places of business and industry; but in my
time but one single house stood upon the space between Primrose brook
and the town of Liverpool.' Among his early recollections was 'the
extraordinarily beautiful spectacle of a dock delivery on the Mersey
after a long prevalence of westerly winds followed by a change.
Liverpool cannot imitate that now [1892], at least not for the eye.'

III

JOHN GLADSTONE AS SLAVEHOLDER

The Gladstone firm was mainly an East India house, but in the last ten
years of his mercantile course John Gladstone became the owner of
extensive plantations of sugar and coffee in the West Indies, some in
Jamaica, others in British Guiana or Demerara. The infamy of the
slave-trade had been abolished in 1807, but slave labour remained, and
the Liverpool merchant, like a host of other men of equal respectability
and higher dignity, including many peers and even some bishops, was a
slaveholder. Everybody who has ever read one of the most honourable and
glorious chapters in our English history knows the case of the
missionary John Smith.[14] In 1823 an outbreak of the slaves occurred in
Demerara, and one of John Gladstone's plantations happened to be its
centre. The rising was stamped out with great cruelty in three days.
Martial law, the savage instrument of race passion, was kept in force
for over five months. Fifty negroes were hanged, many were shot down in
the thicke