sanction a system of legal murder. Commercial enterprise was paralyzed
by prohibitive legislation; public credit was shaken to its base; the
prime necessaries of life were ruinously dear. The pangs of poverty were
aggravated by the concurrent evils of war and famine, and the common
people, fast bound in misery and iron, were powerless to make their
sufferings known or to seek redress, except by the desperate methods of
conspiracy and insurrection. None of the elements of revolution were
wanting, and the fates seemed to be hurrying England to the brink of a
civil catastrophe.

"The general sense of insecurity and apprehension, inseparable from such
a condition of affairs, produced its effect upon even the robust minds.
Sir John Gladstone was not a likely victim of panic, but he was a man
with a large stake in the country, the more precious because acquired by
his own exertion; he believed that the safeguards of property and order
were imperilled by foreign arms and domestic sedition; and he had seen
with indignation and disgust the excesses of a factious Whiggery, which
was not ashamed to exult in the triumph of the French over the English
Government. Under the pressure of these influences Sir John Gladstone
gradually separated himself from the Whigs, with whom in earlier life he
had acted, and became the close ally of Canning, whose return for
Liverpool he actually promoted."

With such surroundings it is not to be wondered at that William E.
Gladstone entered political life a Tory, contending against the
principles he afterwards espoused. His original bent, however, was not
towards politics, but the church; and it was only at the earnest desire
of his father that he ultimately decided to enter Parliament, and serve
his country in the Legislature.