animation and ardour to the confidence of his friends. For six or seven
hours a day he astonished the House by his power of attention, unrelaxed
yet without strain, by his double grasp of leading principle and intricate
detail, by his equal command of legal and historic controversy and of all
the actuarial niceties and puzzles of commutation. "In some other
qualities of parliamentary statesmanship," says one acute observer of that
time, "as an orator, a debater, and a tactician he has rivals; but in the
powers of embodying principles in legislative form and preserving unity of
purpose through a multiplicity of confusing minutiae he has neither equal
nor second among living statesmen."(180) The truth could not be better
summed up. He carried the whole of his party with him, and the average
majority in divisions on the clauses was 113. Of one dangerous corner, he
says:--

_May 6._--H of C, working Irish Church bill. Spoke largely on
Maynooth. [Proposal to compensate Maynooth out of the funds of the
Irish church.] The final division on the pinching point with a
majority of 107 was the most creditable (I think) I have ever
known.

By a majority of 114 the bill was read a third time on the last day of
May.

III

(M81) The contest was now removed from the constituencies and their
representatives in parliament to the citadel of privilege. The issue was
no longer single, and the struggle for religious equality in Ireland was
henceforth merged before the public eye in a conflict for the supremacy of
the Commons in England. Perhaps I should not have spoken of religious
equality, for in fact the establishment was known to be doomed, and the
fight turned upon the amount of property with which the free church was to
go forth to face its new fortunes. "I should urge the House of Lords,"
wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury to Mr. Gladstone (June 3), "to give all
its attention to saving as large an endowment as possible."

As at the first stage the Queen had moved for conciliatory courses, so now
she again desired Archbishop Tait to communicate with the prime minister.
To Mr. Gladstone himself she wrote from Balmoral (June 3): "The Queen
thanks Mr. Gladstone for his kind letter. She has invariably found him
most ready to enter into her views and to understand her feelings." The
first question was whether the Lords should reject the bill on the second
reading:--

It is eminently desirable, Mr. G