ABSTRACT
In 1837, at the age of eighteen, Queen Victoria, niece of William, came to the throne. The political/constitutional crisis was therefore behind her, though the economic/political crisis of the Corn Laws lay ahead. Victoria personified continuity in the extraordinary nineteenth-century decades of change that lay ahead. It is well-known that she preferred Disraeli to Gladstone, but no vast constitutional impropriety was involved in such a preference. The queen certainly had views on appointments, episcopal and other, which could not be ignored. As an undergraduate, Gladstone had made his name with a speech at the Union against Reform. Attention to Treasury issues to an extent enabled Gladstone to take his mind off those issues which had so much bothered him after his resignation. It was essential for Gladstone to be able to demonstrate that the motley band of Whigs, Liberals and Radicals who had now been loosely associated for over a decade had indeed come together as 'the Liberal Party'.
