Mr. Gladstone, the fourth son of the late Sir John Gladstone, a prominent and prosperous merchant of Liverpool, was born in 1809. He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, where his scholarship was at once so thorough and so comprehensive as to win for him at his graduation in 1831 the great distinction of a double first-class. Having spent nearly a year in a continental tour, he was elected to the House of Commons in December, 1832, at the election which immediately followed the passage of the great reform bill. In political sympathies he ranked with the Tories, and followed with little reserve the leadership of Sir Robert Peel. The great reputation he had acquired at the university, his mercantile habits, his high character, and his manifest abilities as a speaker, recommended him at once to the favor of the Premier, who admitted him to the ministry as Junior Lord of the Treasury, in December of 1834, and as Under-Secretary for Colonial Affairs in February of the following year. In 1841 Mr. Gladstone became Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint, and in the same year was sworn in as a member of the Privy Council. In the position now held it devolved upon him to explain and defend the commercial policy of the government. The revision of the tariff in 1842 was entrusted to his energy and industry, as a part of this duty, and so admirably was the laborious task executed, not only in its mastery of general principles, but in its command of details, that the bill received the sanction of both Houses with scarcely an alteration. Gladstone’s great abilities as a financier were at once universally recognized; and, accordingly, his appointment as President of the Board of Trade and his admission to the cabinet in 1843 were generally approved. In 1846, Sir Robert Peel, who up to this time had been regarded as the most strenuous opponent of free trade, announced his intention of bringing in a bill to modify the existing Corn Laws. The announcement created great popular agitation. Gladstone determined to support Peel; but holding his seat from Newark, the property of the Duke of Newcastle, who sympathized strongly with the Opposition, he was unwilling to appear to be in a false position, and accordingly he resigned, and remained out of Parliament for about a year. This voluntary withdrawal from the House is worthy of note, not only on account of the honorable motives which prompted it, but also as the only interruption of a parliamentary career of more than half a century. His parliamentary abilities, however, were not long permitted to be idle, for in 1847 he was returned as one of the members for the University of Oxford.