slaves in British Guiana and Jamaica and received a £106,769 payment at the time. After the abolition of slavery, John Gladstone sought indentured labourers from India to work in his sugar plantations. Knowing that a number of Indians had been sent to the island of Mauritius, a British colony in the Indian Ocean, as indentured labour, Gladstone expressed a desire to obtain free labour from India for his plantations in the West Indies in a letter dated 4 January 1836 to Messrs Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co. of Calcutta. The conditions imposed on these indentured labourers were so appalling that they fled in numbers and the 'experiment' was abandoned by Gladstone. Whilst trying to recruit indentured labourers, he wrote that the work in the sugar plantations was light and conditions generally good, including schools and medical attention. This was a picture he had derived from information given by plantation managers, who did not communicate the routine abuse of slaves nor their miserable conditions of malnutrition, overcrowding, and overwork. It ignored the comprehensive and damning evidence on the reality of slavery in the British and French Caribbean, provided by many writers of the time such as missionaries and other returning Britons. The appalling reality of lives on the Gladstone owned plantations in Demerara is well documented. Politics Gladstone was also interested in politics. At first he had been a Whig, but from 1812 onwards his political outlook appears to have changed due to a number of factors. In religion he had long ceased to have any sympathy with Unitarianism or Presbyterianism. He had become alienated from the Whig and Radical circles in Liverpool, and feared the disorder caused by the Napoleonic Wars. The friendships he formed with Tories George Canning and Kirkman Finlay also had a great influence on his changing political outlook, and he became a Tory. In 1812 he presided over a meeting at Liverpool which was called to invite George Canning to represent Liverpool in the House of Commons. In 1817 John Gladstone decided to enter parliament. Although he wanted to stand for election in Liverpool, there was no vacancy, and he was obliged to explore other possibilities, including Ross-shire and Stafford, before deciding to stand for Lancaster in the general election of 1818. At the general election of 1818, Gladstone chose to stand for Woodstock, due to the heavy financial cost of the Lancaster constituency. He made few