Parliament.

The year 1843 was one destined to witness a great advance in Mr.
Gladstone's progress towards the front rank among statesmen. June 10th,
Lord Ripon, who was President of the Board of Trade, left this place for
the Board of Control, and Mr. Gladstone was appointed to the position,
and thus became a member of the Cabinet at the age of thirty-three Mr.
Gladstone now became in name what he had been already in fact--the
President of the Board of Trade. He states that "the very first opinion
which he was ever called upon to give in Cabinet" was an opinion in
favor of withdrawing the bill providing education for children in
factories; to which vehement opposition was offered by the Dissenters,
on the ground that it was too favorable to the Established Church. It
seemed that his position was assured and yet in October he wrote to a
friend: "Uneasy, in my opinion, must be the position of every member of
Parliament who thinks independently in these times, or in any that are
likely to succeed them; and in proportion as a man's course of thought
deviates from the ordinary lines his seat must less and less resemble a
bed of roses." Mr. Gladstone possibly felt when he penned these lines
that the time was at hand when his convictions would force him to take a
position that would array against him some of his most ardent friends.

During the session of 1844 Mr. Gladstone addressed the House on a
variety of subjects, including rail ways, the law of partnership, the
agricultural interest, the abolition of the corn laws, the Dissenters'
Chapel Bill and the sugar duties. One very valuable bill he had carried
was a measure for the abolition of restrictions on the exportation of
machinery. Another was the railway bill, to improve the railway system,
by which the Board of Trade had conditional power to purchase railways
which had not adopted a revised scale of tolls. The bill also