In December, 1834, Sir Robert Peel appointed Gladstone to the office of a Junior Lord of the Treasury. In the next year Peel, who was quick to appreciate the great abilities and the sound commercial knowledge of his new recruit, gave to him the more important post of Under-secretary for the Colonies. Gladstone looked up to Peel with intense admiration. There was much to draw the two men together. Knowledge of finance, thorough understanding and firm grasp of the principles on which a nation's business must be conducted--perhaps, it may be added, a common origin in the middle class--these points of resemblance might well have become points of attraction. But there were other and still higher sympathies to bring them close. The elder and the younger man were alike earnest, profoundly earnest; filled with conscience in every movement of their political and private lives; a good deal too earnest and serious, perhaps, for most of the parliamentary colleagues by whom they were surrounded. Mr. Gladstone always remained devoted to Peel, and knew him perhaps more thoroughly and intimately than any other man was privileged to do. Peel went out of office very soon after he had made Mr. Gladstone Under-secretary for the Colonies. Lord John Russell had brought forward a series of motions on the ominous subject of the Irish Church, and Peel was defeated and resigned. It is almost needless to say that Gladstone went with him. Peel came back again in office in 1841, on the fall of the Melbourne administration, and Mr. Gladstone became Vice-president of the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint, and was at the same time sworn in a member of the Privy Council. In 1843 he became President of the Board of Trade. Early in 1845 he resigned his office because he could not approve of the policy of the government with regard to the Maynooth grant. The great struggle on the question of the repeal of the Corn Laws was now coming on. It would be impossible that a man with Mr. Gladstone's turn of mind and early training could have continued a protectionist, when once he applied his intellect and his experience to a practical examination of the subject. Once again he went with his leader. Peel saw that there was nothing for it but to accept the principles of the Free Trade party, who had been bearing the fiery cross of their peaceful and noble agitation all through the country, and were gathering adherents wherever they went.