"
It was October 15, 1825, when Gladstone was elected a member of the Eton
Society, and on the 29th of the same month made his maiden speech on the
question "Is the education of the poor on the whole beneficial?" It is
recorded in the minutes of the meeting that "Mr. Gladstone rose and
eloquently addressed the house." He spoke in favor of education; and one
who heard him says that his opening words were, "Sir, in this age of
increased and increasing civilization." Says an eminent writer, by way
of comment upon these words, "It almost oppresses the imagination to
picture the shoreless sea of eloquence which rolls between that exordium
and the oratory to which we still are listening and hope to listen for
years to come."
"The peroration of his speech on the question whether Queen Anne's
Ministers, in the last four years of her reign, deserved well of their
country, is so characteristic, both in substance and in form," that we
reproduce it here from Dr, Russell's work on Gladstone:
"Thus much, sir, I have said, as conceiving myself bound in fairness not
to regard the names under which men have hidden their designs so much
as the designs themselves. I am well aware that my prejudices and my
predilections have long been enlisted on the side of Toryism (cheers)
and that in a cause like this I am not likely to be influenced unfairly
against men bearing that name and professing to act on the principles
which I have always been accustomed to revere.
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