I
have learnt to set the true value upon human liberty, and in whatever I
have changed, there, and there only, has been the explanation of
the change."
It was Mr. Gladstone's Tory principles that led to an invitation from
the Duke of Newcastle, whose son, the Earl of Lincoln, afterwards a
member of Lord Aberdeen's Cabinet during the Crimean War, had been his
schoolmate at Eton and Oxford, and his intimate friend; to return to
England and to contest the representation of Newark in Parliament. In
accordance with this summons he hurried home.
Let us review the national situation. It was a time of general alarm and
uncertainty, from political unrest, commercial stagnation, and
devastating pestilence. "The terrors of the time begat a hundred forms
of strange fanaticism; and among men who were not fanatics there was a
deep and wide conviction that national judgments were overtaking
national sins, and that the only hope of safety for England lay in a
return to that practical recognition of religion in the political sphere
at the proudest moments of English history. 'The beginning and the end
of what is the matter with us in these days,' wrote Carlyle, 'is that we
have forgotten God.'"
England was in a condition of great political excitement and expectancy.
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