Free Gladstone: A Biography by Roy Jenkins

after the words of the ‘Red
Flag’ had been added to the tune of‘Tannenbaum’ to make a socialist hymn) Morley recorded without irony that the most intense Tory partisan and cheerleader
had proclaimed: ‘I was born Red, I live Red, and I shall die Red.’ 20 The most notable feature of Gladstone’s own speech was an
attempt, based no doubt on the new confidence of having the seat under his belt but also somewhat bumptiously maladroit for twenty-two, to solve the problem of his dependence on the Duke of
Newcastle with a syllogism. ‘You need not ask’, he said, ‘whether I am your man or the Duke’s man, for the answer is that we are both of us, the Duke and I, equally your
men.’
    The new Parliament met two months later, and Gladstone first entered the House of Commons as a member on 7 February 1833. He and his brother Tom walked down together from Jermyn Street, where
they were both temporarily lodging, although removing to Albany a month later, and took their seats side by side among the ranks of 160 which was all that the Tories were able to muster in the
first reformed Parliament. In George Hayter’s painting of the old chamber, done in 1834 a few months before the fire which destroyed most of the Palace of Westminster, they are visible, still
together, sitting on the back row but one. Tom, misleadingly, looks the more distinguished. They were nonetheless shown as being remarkably alike, and Tom’s first speech in that Parliament
(he had been in the previous one for about a year), which he delivered on 21 February, was attributed by Hansard to William. This misattribution created lasting confusion and led to William’s
alleged maiden speech being described as late as 1971 as ‘a dim début’.
    Dim that February speech certainly was, with much of it inaudible and the subject the hardly inspiring one of the defence of the alleged corrupt parties in Liverpool local elections. But it was
not by William Gladstone, who did not make what he and others regarded as his maiden speech until 3 June, although he had uttered a few sentences on both 30 April and 21 May when presenting
petitions. Then (on 3 June) the subject-matter was little more elevating for he chose to speak in opposition to a Slavery Abolition Bill and did so very much as a ‘West Indian’
representative. Both the Gladstone boys made pietistic starts in the House, defending not only their father’s interests but his name as well. However, it was a fully effective speech, which
Gladstone recorded in his diary as having lasted for fifty minutes and being ‘very kindly’ received by the House so that ‘my
friends
were satisfied’. 21
    Thereafter the House of Commons careers of the two Gladstones could hardly have diverged more sharply. William went on to be thedominant parliamentarian of the century,
outpacing Canning, Peel and Disraeli by the sheer length of his span in the House of Commons, and elbowing aside Palmerston and Lord John Russell by the greater fervour of his oratory. Tom
Gladstone’s parliamentary experience, by contrast, was if anything still less glorious than that of his father. He suffered in an extreme form from the family disability of rarely being able
to keep a seat over two elections without either defeat or unseating on petition. For the 1830 election the almost unknown Kent town of Queensborough, lurking in the shadows of the Isle of Sheppey,
had been procured for him. He lost his seat on the poll, but a few months later retrieved it on petition. For the 1832 election he transferred to the Irish Midlands borough of Portarlington and
secured a majority of its 150 electors. But by the next general election in 1835 he had got on to such bad terms with almost every local interest that there was no question of his even contesting
Portarlington. He contemplated both Nottingham and, bizarrely, Orkney, but settled upon Leicester. He sat for this town until 1837, when for the last time a change of sovereign