Up to this time he had appeared to sympathize strongly with the principles of the Tory party. His work on “The State in its Relations with the Church,” published in 1838, had not only proved him to be, even when still a young man, a deep and original thinker, but had also shown that his sympathies were unmistakably with the Tories and the High Church. Macaulay, in his elaborate and critical review of the work, introduced Gladstone to his readers as “the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories who follow, reluctantly and mutinously, a leader whose experience and eloquence are indispensable to them, but whose cautious temper and moderate opinions they abhor.” But if the “stern and unbending Tories” had any such “rising hope” in Mr. Gladstone, they were destined to be disappointed. In the four years that followed 1847 the member for Oxford found himself frequently opposed to his former friends; and in 1851 he formally separated himself from the great body of the Conservative party. He was re-elected for Oxford, though as the result of a very bitter contest; and on the defeat of the Derby-Disraeli ministry and the succession of the “Coalition” under Lord Aberdeen in 1852, he was appointed to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, where his thorough knowledge of finance was of the greatest assistance to the government during the Crimean War. In the fifteen years that followed, Mr. Gladstone came to be more and more generally recognized, not only as one of the ablest, but also as one of the most influential members of the House of Commons. Meanwhile his reputation was considerably advanced by the numerous literary productions which came from his pen. On the death of Lord Palmerston in 1865, he became leader of the House of Commons, retaining the Chancellorship of the Exchequer in the second administration of Earl Russell. It was at this time that Gladstone’s career as the leader of the great reformatory movement may be said to have begun. Early in the session of 1866, he brought forward a reform bill designed to extend the franchise substantially on the line of advance that had been adopted in 1832. On the 18th of June, the measure was defeated by a majority of eleven votes, and Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues at once resigned. During the next administration, the ranks of the Liberal party, however, were divided, and therefore it was found impossible to defeat the Derby-Disraeli reform bill, which Mr. Gladstone strenuously opposed. The Conservatives, however, were unable to hold their position, and when the Ministry resigned, in December of 1868, Mr. Gladstone succeeded Disraeli as Prime-Minister.