would be a substantial benefit to the Irish farmer.

These were subjects which naturally tempted the daring energies of a man
occupying Mr. Gladstone's position in the winter of 1867. Turned out of
office after the death of Lord Palmerston, his subsequent management of
the reform question, as leader of the Opposition, had only increased the
distrust of his party. He was without a constituency at the coming
election, and he went down to Lancashire to seek in that great centre of
hard-headed Englishmen the confiding constituency which he subsequently
found in Midlothian. New legislation on the Irish Church, a reform in
Irish Land Tenure, were subjects for which his party, for which the
majority of Englishmen were pretty well prepared. The Liberal Churchmen,
like Sir Roundell Palmer, who held back on the subject of
Disestablishment, were more than counterbalanced by the Dissenters, who
were attracted by the scheme. Popular Legislation on these subjects
might have been granted to Ireland as the matured outcome of British
opinion. Such a mode of approaching the work in hand did not suit the
exuberant temperament of Mr. Gladstone. Whilst the report of the
Clerkenwell explosion was still echoing through the land, he announced
his policy as one to be recommended, not because the great British
community had examined and adopted the proposed measures, but because
Irish opinion was to be henceforth accepted as our guide in Irish
Legislation. With characteristic recklessness he hurried to turn to the
account of his own ambition the throb of excitement which he saw
traversing the nation. He appealed to his audience to regard the Fenian
outrages as a sort of revelation from heaven, to commune with their own
hearts, not on the state of Ireland, and the remedies sensible men could
offer, but on the sentiments of Irishmen. His final test of legislation
was to be, not its consonance with the judgment of the British people,
but with the demand of the Irish crowd.

'Ireland is at your doors. Providence has placed her there.
Law and legislation have been a compact between you. You
must face these obligations. You must deal with them and
discharge them. As to the modes of giving effect to this
principle I do not now enter upon them. I am of opinion they
should be dictated, as a general rule, by that which may
appear to be the mature, well-considered, and general sense
of the Irish people.'--20th Dec.