. Life and public services of Hon. Wm. E. Gladstone . continued to agi-tate more strenuously than ever, and they were listened to withmore respect at the Colonial Office and in Parliament, since soeminent an Englishman had become impressed with the justiceof their claims. It was some years before the final result ofthis mission was achieved; but when the Ionian Islands at lastbecame a part of the kingdom of Greece, it was in no smallmeasure due to the influence which Mr. Gladstones opinion hadupon the councils of his country. Mr. Gladstone returned to England in February, 1859. TheDerby Minist
. Life and public services of Hon. Wm. E. Gladstone . continued to agi-tate more strenuously than ever, and they were listened to withmore respect at the Colonial Office and in Parliament, since soeminent an Englishman had become impressed with the justiceof their claims. It was some years before the final result ofthis mission was achieved; but when the Ionian Islands at lastbecame a part of the kingdom of Greece, it was in no smallmeasure due to the influence which Mr. Gladstones opinion hadupon the councils of his country. Mr. Gladstone returned to England in February, 1859. TheDerby Ministry had been in office scarcely a year. It was al-ready beginning to show signs of weakness, of that inevitable The Palmerston Ministry. 185 loss of power which sooner or later comes to every Govern-ment. There were two important questions before the public mind atthis juncture: Parliamentary Reform and the state of the foreignrelations of England. The measure which had excited such en-mity in the early thirties had become an insufficient measure for. Mr. Speaker. the progressive champions of the peoples rights; and a furtherextension of the suffrage was loudly demanded. Unable tostruggle against the unmistakable expression of the popular will,tae Government had pledged itself to bring in a Eeform Bill;but this had rather excited than allayed the popular feeling. 186 The Palmerston Ministry. It was hardly a time at which to bring up such a measure;for all Europe was trembling at the innovations which were be-ing introduced, and a country like England would seem to havedesired rather a continuance of the old state of things at thisperiod of revolution. Under the auspices of Cavour, who hadspent some time in England, and was a warm admirer of the En-glish system of Government, the petty state of which he was asubject had been modeled after the great empire, and Sardiniahad, in consequence, attained a rank as a constitutional mon-archy for which she would otherwise have striven in
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