by him then, and afterwards repudiated, he, in a speech delivered at the
opening of the Palmerston Club, Oxford, in December, 1878, says: "I
trace in the education of Oxford of my own time one great defect.
Perhaps it was my own fault; but I must admit that I did not learn, when
at Oxford, that which I have learned since, viz., to set a due value on
the imperishable and inestimable principles of human liberty. The temper
which, I think, too much prevailed in academic circles, was that liberty
was regarded with jealousy and fear, which could not be wholly dispensed
with, but which was continually to be watched for fear of excess.... I
think that the principle of the Conservative party is jealousy of
liberty and of the people, only qualified by fear; but I think the
policy of the Liberal party is trust in the people, only qualified by
prudence. I can only assure you, gentlemen, that now I am in front of
extended popular privileges. I have no fear of those enlargements of the
Constitution that seem to be approaching. On the contrary, I hail them
with desire. I am not in the least degree conscious that I have less
reverence for antiquity, for the beautiful, and good, and glorious
charges that our ancestors have handed down to us as a patrimony to our
race, than I had in other days when I held other political opinions. I
have learnt to set the true value upon human liberty, and in whatever I
have changed, there, and there only, has been the explanation of
the change."

It was Mr. Gladstone's Tory principles that led to an invitation from
the Duke of Newcastle, whose son, the Earl of Lincoln, afterwards a
member of Lord Aberdeen's Cabinet during the Crimean War, had been his
schoolmate at Eton and Oxford, and his intimate friend; to return to
England and to contest the representation of Newark in Parliament. In
accordance with this summons he hurried home.