The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-07-18

| Then-one fellow was as pleased as punch to get into the sixth. The only relief we noticed in our certainly very oursory perusal of the documents was g. story about some boy whom Keate had just tlogged for going to circus. Wright q think was the boys name oddly enoughD had left his bolster in his bed to represent him, with a night cap neatly arranged at the top of 1t, but in vain. Keate smoked the fake Shocking slangD and sent the deln- quent to the block The story is told with much humor, and Gas is duly pointed ouD without exaggeration. We can see the old man chuckling' over it now.
 But it is the doings of the Debating society and the endless political dis cussons which really fill these pages. Hallam makes brilliant speech, but of an enormous lengthi Gladstone re- ported it and knew. He actually wrote out forty-four pages of the debate, which dealt with the political conduct of Milton. Passage after passage shows how keenly the youthful Clad stone was even in those early days about the proper conduct of debate, about parliamentary forms, votes mo- tions and so forth. He Is fined half a crown for making an illegal motion, viz, the conduct of Warren Hastings to the Rohillas. It was moved and car ried that it was illegal to discuss the question on the ground of the trials having taken place within fifty years He thinks Hastings not guilty on that point at all events He is very con- cerned about the overwhelming load of taxes and debts under which England droops. He does not see how free trade in corn can benefit the country though he admits he does not like the corn laws.
 He is provoked to reply to Farr on the subject of Catholic emancipation Farr is death on the Roman Catholics. Gladstone is vehement on their behalf, and conducts long argument to prove the occasional tolerance of Pope and priests. Do your priesthood (viz., Eng fish clergy) always espouse the cause of civil and religious liberty? he cries Gin ihk) to Farr. He utterly denies the influence of the Pope in Ireland to be dangerous, and so forth. Then he prays God that emancipation may be granted freely before it is extorted There is quite the old Gladstone ring in phrase after phrase. And there is a peroration in which he declares that 1 justice, eternal justice, consistency and expediency demand it. But he is Tory of the Tories, and is very down on one Lava tremendous Radical who in a debate on Wat Tyler boldly pleaded Gin that aristocratic chamber) for the sa- cred rights of insurrection. Man was equal everywhere-there Is nothing sa- cred in a king. This was evidently voted very bad form and decidedly low. 1 Poor law was coughed down. Hallam and Doyle spoke in the same strain. However, the demagogue party was de- feated.
 The 1adstone of those days was no ! ieonoclast. He was against Elizabeth in the matter of Mary Scots head. He I was in favor of hereditary aristocracy He never had much to say for George 11f-chietiy, to be sure, on the ground of his amiable character and his do- mestic virtues. Then he was for king and constitution against the Yorkists, for whom only Law and Doyle had a good word to say. Law Is regular leveller-he makes a positively sedltious speech in favor of Hampden against Clarendon. About this time we find a remark upen Y the substitution of coughing for '1ronical cheering" as a means of suppressing a speaker Coughing is all the go.'' Doubtless it is to these experiences that we may trace MT. Gladstone's extraordinary skill in dealing with Interruptions
 These letters certainly show that his whole soul was absorbed in politics, and the Debates of the Eton society He used to think the Fourth party was & new thing. But here it is, sure enough. In A. D., 1926, in highly de- veloped state. One Gaskell was the Churchill-who had organized a party of three or four to do his behests They were under his thumb These are Gladstone's words, and disciplined for Interruptions, cheers and coughing, all in the most systematic manner. Nigh ty. war of words upon all manner of questions there seem to have been-Sir Robert Walpole, Mahomet, Anne and Elizabeth, Lord Butte Herodotus, Ken ophon, England and Ireland, Epami- nondas and Hannibal, Strafford, Leo x. Lorenzo de Medici in the fine arts what good training 1t must have been though only Gladstone rose to the diz- zy heights. The brilliant Hallam died young and inspired 8. famous poem; SelWyn was the most famous of the muscular Christians; the witty Doyle reposed in the Customs for years; what became of the heretic Law-who knows; Law, Gaskell and, his obstruc- tionists, Pickering, Farr and all the rest of those clever boys?
 There is just one reference to cricket and the river in those letters. It is ev- 1 ident that Gladstone won not his bat ties in the playing fields, but on the floor of some dusty schoolroom when 1 the little Parliament held it's sessions 1 Among a very few references to re- 1igious matters we were struck by one which may be mentioned. The only | true basis of religion, says the boy, lies in the words, 70 Lord, be mercifuI to me sinner" He asks for mercy very earnestly and humbly. How strongly | imbued he was with the teachings of the Established church may be gath cred from his expression of grave as- I 4 r TOsz