language and
no want of vindictiveness, what it wanted was finish. Considering that
Lord Cranborne had written anonymous articles against him before and since
they were colleagues--"I do not know whether he wrote them when I was his
colleague"--they really ought to have been more polished. Mr. Lowe, again,
he described as a remarkable man; especially remarkable for his power of
spontaneous aversion; he hates the working classes of England; he hates
the Roman catholics of Ireland; he hates the protestants of Ireland; he
hates ministers; and until Mr. Gladstone placed his hand upon the ark, he
seemed almost to hate Mr. Gladstone.

After Mr. Gladstone's first resolution was carried, the prime minister
acknowledged the change in the relations of the government and the House.
He and his party had conducted the business of the country though in a
minority, just as Lord John Russell between 1846 and 1851 had conducted
business for five or six years, though in a minority, "but being morally
supported by a majority, as we have been supported by a majority." In this
crisis he pursued a peculiar course. He advised the Queen to dissolve the
parliament; but at the same time he told her Majesty that if she thought
the interests of the country would be better served, he tendered his
resignation. The Queen did not accept it, he said; and the ministerial
decision was to dissolve in the autumn when the new constituencies would
be in order. The statement was not clear, and Mr. Gladstone sought in vain
to discover with precision whether the prime minister had begun by
resigning, or had presented two alternatives leaving the decision to the
Queen, and did he mean a dissolution on existing registers? The answer to
these questions was not definite, but it did not matter.

This episode did not check Mr. Gladstone for a moment in his course; in a
week after the resolutions were carried, he introduced a bill suspending
the creation of new interests in the Irish church. This proof of vigour
and resolution rapidly carried the suspensory bill through the Commons.
The Lords threw it out by a majority of 95 (June 29). If we sometimes
smile at the sanguine prediction of the optimist, the gloom of his
pessimist opponent is more ludicrous. "If you overthrow the Irish
established church," cried the Archbishop of Dublin, "you will put to the
Irish protestants the choice between apostasy and expatriation, and every
man among them who has money or position,