"On the commercial side his Liberalism is rampant. With even fanatical
faith he clings to Free Trade as the best guarantee for our national
stability amid the crash of the dynasties and constitutions which went
down in '48. He thunders against the insidious dangers of reciprocity.
He desires, by reforming the laws which govern navigation, to make the
ocean, 'that great highway of nations, as free to the ships that
traverse its bosom as to the winds that sweep it.'
"And so the three years--1847, 1848, 1849--rolled by, full of stirring
events in Europe and in England, in Church and in State, but marked by
no special incidents in the life of Mr. Gladstone. For him these years
were a period of mental growth, of transition, of development. A change
was silently proceeding, which was not completed for twenty years, if,
indeed, it has been completed yet. 'There have been,' he wrote in later
days to Bishop Wilberforce, 'two great deaths, or transmigrations of
spirit, in my political existence--one, very slow, the breaking of ties
with my original party.' This was now in progress. The other will be
narrated in due course."
One of the features of the general election of 1847 that excited the
wildest popular comment was the election of Baron Rothschild for the
City of London.
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