commissioners, of whom his brother-in-law,
Lord Lyttelton, was one. In the last case he acted as a leader of an
organised party, but in the more important instance of a bill devised, as
Mr. Disraeli said, to put down ritualism, his dissent from most of those
around him fulfilled all the anticipations that had pointed to retirement.
The House was heartily in favour of the bill, and what is called the
country earnestly supported it, though in the cabinet itself at least four
ministers were strenuously hostile. Mr. Gladstone writes to his wife a
trenchant account of his vigorous dealing with a prominent colleague who
had rashly ventured to mark him for assault. He sent word to the two
archbishops that if they carried a certain amendment he should hold
himself "altogether discharged from maintaining any longer the
establishment of the church." He wrote to Lord Harrowby when the recess
came:--

I think, or rather I am convinced, that the effect _either_ of one
or two more ecclesiastical sessions of parliament such as the
last, or of any prolonged series of contentious proceedings under
the recent Act, upon subjects of widespread interest, will be to
disestablish the church. I do not feel the dread of
disestablishment which you may probably entertain: but I desire
and seek so long as standing ground remains, to avert, not to
precipitate it.

To another correspondent--

Individually I have serious doubts whether the whole of the penal
proceedings taken in this country with respect to church matters
from the day of Dr. Hampden downwards, have not done considerably
more harm than good. There is no doubt at all that all the evils,
of whatever kind, at which they were aimed, exist at this moment
among us in a far more aggravated shape than when they began....
My object and desire has ever been and still is, to keep the
church of England together, both as a church and as an
establishment. As a church, I believe she is strong enough, by
virtue of the prayer-book, to hold together under all
circumstances; but as an establishment, in my opinion, she is not
strong enough to bear either serious secession or prolonged
parliamentary agitation.

Finally, in a letter dated from Whittinghame (Nov. 17)--

There are already too many causes of demoralisation operating upon
the House of Commons. If it is also to become a debased copy of a