The progress of Germany within the century under review has been very great. The population of the states of the empire, 24,831,000 at the end of the Napoleonic wars, is now over 52,000,000, having more than doubled in number. The wealth of the country has grown in a far greater ratio, and Germany to-day is the most active manufacturing nation on the continent of Europe. Agriculture has similarly been greatly developed, and one of its products, the sugar beet, has become a principal raw material of manufacture, the production of beet-root sugar having increased enormously. The commerce of the empire has similarly augmented, it having become one of the most active commercial nations of the earth. Its imports, considerable in quantity, consist largely of raw materials and food stuffs, while it vies with Great Britain and the United States in the quantity of finished products sent abroad. In short, Germany has taken its place to-day as one of the most energetic of productive and commercial nations, and its wealth and importance have increased correspondingly. CHAPTER XV. Gladstone, the Apostle of Liberalism in England. [=Gladstone's First Political Address=] It is a fact of much interest, as showing the growth of the human mind, that William Ewart Gladstone, the great advocate of English Liberalism, made his first political speech in vigorous opposition to the Reform Bill of 1831. He was then a student at Oxford University, but this boyish address had such an effect upon his hearers, that Bishop Wordsworth felt sure the speaker "would one day rise to be Prime Minister of England." This prophetic utterance may be mated with another one, by Archdeacon Denison, who said: "I have just heard the best speech I ever heard in my life, by Gladstone, against the Reform Bill. But, mark my words, that man will one day be a Liberal, for he argued against the Bill on liberal ground." [=Gladstone in Parliament and the Cabinet=] Both these far-seeing men hit the mark. Gladstone became Prime Minister and the leader of the Liberal Party in England. Yet he had been reared as a Conservative, and for many years he marched under the banner of Conservatism. His political career began in the first Reform Parliament, in January, 1833. Two years afterward he was made an under-secretary in Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet. It was under the same Premier that he first became a full member of the Cabinet, in 1845, as Secretary of State for the Colonies. He was still a Tory in home politics, but had become a Liberal in his commercial ideas, and was Peel's right-hand man in carrying out his great commercial policy. [=The Letters from Naples=]