importance came before it until after the Christmas holidays.

In 1838 a bill was presented in both Houses of Parliament for the
immediate abolition of negro apprenticeship. Many harrowing details of
the cruelties practiced were cited. Mr. Gladstone returned to the
championship of the planters with increased power and success. His long,
eloquent and powerful speech of March 30th, although on the unpopular
side of the question, is regarded as having so greatly enhanced his
reputation as to bring him to the front rank among Parliamentary
debaters. Having impassionately defended the planters from the
exaggerated charges made against them, he further said: "You consumed
forty-five millions of pounds of cotton in 1837 which proceeded from
free labor; and, proceeding from slave labor, three hundred and eighteen
millions of pounds! And this, while the vast regions of India afford the
means of obtaining at a cheaper rate, and by a slight original outlay,
to facilitate transport, all that you can require. If, Sir, the
complaints against the general body of the West Indians had been
substantiated, I should have deemed it an unworthy artifice to attempt
diverting the attention of the House from the question immediately at
issue, by merely proving that delinquencies existed in other quarters;
but feeling as I do that those charges have been overthrown in debate, I
think myself entitled and bound to show how capricious are the honorable
gentlemen in the distribution of their sympathies among those different
objects which call for their application."

Mr. Gladstone, "having turned the tables upon his opponents," concluded
by demanding justice, and the motion before the House was rejected.

About one month later Rev. Samuel Wilberforce, afterwards Bishop of
Oxford, and of Winchester, wrote to Mr. Gladstone: "It would be an