Untitled - Electric Scotland

1849-53] MR- GLADSTONE IN OFFICE 173
test Mr. Gladstone was returned. 1 A few months later he
accepted office as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord
Aberdeen s Coalition Ministry/ and his re-election was
fiercely opposed by many of his former friends, who dis
trusted and feared his Whig colleagues, especially Lord
John Russell and Lord Lansdowne. His opponent, Mr.
Dudley Perceval, was proposed by Archdeacon Denison,
who had six months before been a member of Mr. Glad
stone s committee. 2 Dean Tait, on the other hand, wrote
as follows :
" MY
The Dean of Carlisle to Mr. G. Portal.
"DEANERY, CARLISLE, ^th January 1853.
DEAR PORTAL, I fully intend to go up to Oxford and
vote for Mr. Gladstone : I have only delayed from the impossi
bility of my leaving this place during the earlier days of the poll.
In answer to your request that my name may appear on the
committee, I beg to state that if the committee think my name
can be of any use it is at their service, as I consider Mr.
Gladstone s having joined a Liberal Government with Lord John
Russell and Lord Lansdowne as a sufficient guarantee for the
principles on which he is to act in office. I must request that
this letter be read to the committee before my name is added to
the list. I remain, yours faithfully, A. C. TAIT."
His hope that Mr. Gladstone, notwithstanding his oppo
sition to the appointment of the Royal Commissioners,
would in the end support their recommendations, was
amply justified
in the result. Lord Aberdeen s Govern
ment, in its second year of office, introduced a sweeping
measure of University Reform, based almost entirely upon
the Report of the Royal Commission, and its champion
and spokesman in the House of Commons was Mr.
1 The numbers were as follows: Sir R. Inglis, 1368; Mr. Gladstone,
1 108 ; Dr. Marsham, 758.
J
See the account given in Archdeacon Denison s Notes of My Life,
pp. roi, etc.