He should at all times be prepared to vote for a free trade on principles of reciprocity, due regard being had to the interests which had grown up under our present commercial system, without which, as he conceived, the rights of the labouring classes could not be protected.  Much had been on various occasions said about the interests of the capitalists and the landlords, but unless the measures of a Government were directed equally to secure the rights of the working classes, they never should be supported by a vote of his.  It was true that the landlord might derive some increased value to his property from the increase of factories and other buildings upon it, and that the capitalist might more advantageously invest his capital, or he might withdraw it from a sinking concern; but the only capital of the labourer was his skill in his own particular walk, and it was a mockery to tell him that he could find a satisfactory compensation elsewhere.

But the most characteristic part of his speech was that in which he commented on the ‘harsh, severe, and unjust terms’ in which it had been the fashion to designate those who had taken an opposite view on these questions to that taken by Her Majesty’s Government:—­

In a day (he said) when all monopolies are denounced, I must he permitted to say that, to my mind, the monopoly which is the most intolerable and odious is the pretension to the monopoly of public virtue.

The amendment was carried by a large majority.  Lord Melbourne resigned, and Sir Robert Peel became Prime Minister.  About the same time, by the death of his father and his own succession to the peerage, the young Lord’s brief career in the House of Commons was closed for ever; no Scottish peer being eligible, according to the commonly received opinion, to sit in the Lower House.  He appears, indeed, to have had at one time an idea of pressing the question; but he abandoned this intention on finding that it had been entertained twenty-five years before by Lord Aberdeen, and given up by him on the ground, that the majority of the Scottish Peers looked upon the proposal as lowering to their body, and as implying inferiority on their part to the English Peers.

[Sidenote:  Governor of Jamaica.]

At this time it seemed as if the fair promise of eloquence and statesmanship had been shown to public life only to be withdrawn from it; but a path was about to be opened, leading to a new field of action, distant, indeed, and often thankless, but giving scope for the exercise of gifts, both of mind and character, which can rarely be exhibited in a Parliamentary career.  In March 1842, at the early age of thirty, he was selected by Lord Stanley, who was then Secretary for the Colonies, for the important post of Governor of Jamaica.

[1] The family seat In Fifeshire.

[2] The most distinguished of all those competitors has borne his
    testimony to the truth of this expression.  ‘I well remember,’ Mr.
    Gladstone wrote after his death, placing him as to the natural gift of
    eloquence at the head of all those I knew either at Eton or at the
    University.’