n
ecclesiastical council, all the worst men and worst qualities of
the worst men will come to the front, and the place will become
intolerable.

Even any member of parliament who shares none of Mr. Gladstone's theology,
may sympathise to the full with his deep disgust at theologic and
ecclesiastical discussions as conducted in that secular air. We can easily
understand how detestable he found it, and how those discussions fortified
his sense of estrangement from the ruling sentiments of the parliamentary
party of which he was still the titular leader.

Of course the whigs, always for keeping a parliamentary church in its
proper place, disliked his line. Liberals like Thirlwall read his speeches
"with great pain and suspicion," and declared their confidence to be
shaken. Hardly any section was completely satisfied. His mind in the
autumn and winter of 1874 was absorbed, as we shall see within a few
pages, in an assault upon the decrees of the Vatican Council of 1870. This
assault, as he told Lord Granville (Dec. 7, 1874), while tending "to
hearten" the party generally, was against his resumption of formal
leadership, because it widened the breach with the Irishmen in the House
of Commons. Apart from this there were many questions, each with a group
of adherents to a special view, but incapable of being pursued by common
and united action. He ran through the list in writing to Lord Granville.
It has historic interest:--

1. Extension of the suffrage, with redistribution of seats abreast
or in the rear. 2. Disestablishment in Scotland, England. 3. Land
laws. 4. Retrenchment. 5. Colonial policy, territorial extension
of the empire. 6. Reform of local government taxation. 7. Secular
education. 8. Undenominational education. 9. Irish affairs. On no
one of these is there known to exist a plan desired by the entire
party, or by any clear and decisive majority of it.

On the whole, he was persuaded that neither the party generally nor the
country desired another period of active reforms, even if he were fit to
conduct them. Besides this he confessed his "apprehension that differences
would spring up, and great shrinking from any breach with the party, and a
determination, often expressed, never, if he could help it, to lead one
branch of it against another." In many forms he carried Lord Granville
with him round the circle of his arguments. He once sent his points on
half-a-dozen