. Disraeli afterwards said, but "they mentioned it." The
country shrank back from concurrent endowment, though, as Mr. Disraeli
truly said, it was the policy of Pitt, of Grey, of Russell, of Peel, and
of Palmerston. Ever since 1794, catholic students had been allowed to
graduate at Trinity College, and ever since the disestablishment of the
Irish church in 1869, Trinity had asked parliament for power to admit
catholics to her fellowships and emoluments. This, however, did not go to
the root, whether we regard it as sound or unsound, of the catholic
grievance, which was in fact their lack of an endowed institution as
distinctively catholic in all respects as Trinity was protestant.

Such was the case with which Mr. Gladstone was called upon to grapple, and
a delicate if not even a desperate case it was. The prelates knew what
they wished, though they lay in shadow. What they wanted a protestant
parliament, with its grip upon the purse, was determined that they should
not have. The same conclusion as came to many liberals by prejudice, was
reached by the academic school on principle. On principle they held
denominational endowment of education to be retrograde and obscurantist.
Then there was the discouraging consideration of which Lord Halifax
reminded Mr. Gladstone. "You say with truth," he observed when the
situation had developed, "that the liberal party are behaving very ill,
and so they are. But liberal majorities when large are apt to run riot. No
men could have stronger claims on the allegiance of their party than Lord
Grey and Lord Althorp after carrying the Reform bill. Nevertheless, the
large majority after the election of 1832-3 was continually putting the
government into difficulty." So it befell now, and now as then the
difficulty was Irish.

II

(M143) Well knowing the hard work before him, Mr. Gladstone applied
himself with his usual indomitable energy to the task. "We go to Oxford
to-morrow," he writes to Lord Granville (Nov. 12), "to visit Edward Talbot
and his wife; forward to London on Thursday, when I dine with the
Templars. My idea of work is that the first solid and heavy bit should be
the Irish university--some of this may require to be done in cabinet. When
we have got that into shape, I should be for taking to the yet stiffer
work of local taxation--most of the cabinet take a personal interest in
this. I think it will require immeasurable talking over, which might be
done chiefly in an op