ool of Cobden from that of the Benthamites.

[8] Indirectly it has for long limited the hours of men in factories
owing to the interdependence of the adult male with the female and child
operative.

CHAPTER V

GLADSTONE AND MILL

From the middle of the nineteenth century two great names stand out in
the history of British Liberalism--that of Gladstone in the world of
action, that of Mill in the world of thought. Differing in much, they
agreed in one respect. They had the supreme virtue of keeping their
minds fresh and open to new ideas, and both of them in consequence
advanced to a deeper interpretation of social life as they grew older.
In 1846 Gladstone ranked as a Conservative, but he parted from his old
traditions under the leadership of Peel on the question of Free Trade,
and for many years to come the most notable of his public services lay
in the completion of the Cobdenite policy of financial emancipation. In
the pursuit of this policy he was brought into collision with the House
of Lords, and it was his active intervention in 1859-60 which saved the
Commons from a humiliating surrender, and secured its financial
supremacy unimpaired until 1909. In the following decade he stood for
the extension of the suffrage, and it was his Government which, in 1884,
carried the extension of the representative principle to the point at
which it rested twenty-seven years later. In economics Gladstone kept
upon the whole to the Cobdenite principles which he acquired in middle
life. He was not sympathetically disposed to the "New Unionism" and the
semi-socialistic ideas that came at the end of the 'eighties, which, in
fact, constituted a powerful cross current to the political work that he
had immediately in hand. Yet in relation to Irish land he entered upon a
new departure which threw over freedom of contract in a leading case
where the two parties were on glaringly unequal terms. No abstract
thinker, he had a passion for justice in the concrete which was capable
of carrying him far. He knew tyranny when he saw it, and upon it he
waged unremitting and many-sided war.

But his most original work was done in the sphere of imperial relations.
The maligned Majuba settlement was an act of justice which came too
late to effect a permanent undoing of mischief. All the greater was the
courage of the statesman who could throw himself at that time upon the
inherent force of national liberty and international fair dealing. I