" Is the Irish Church to be or not to be? was the question. He
was returned for that borough by a large majority over his Conservative
opponents.
Archbishop Wilberforce wrote in November: "The returns to the House of
Commons leave no doubt of the answer of the country to Gladstone's
appeal. In a few weeks he will be in office at the head of a majority of
something like a hundred, elected on the distinct issue of Gladstone and
the Irish Church."
The feeling was so enormously great in its preponderance for Mr.
Gladstone's policy of Liberal Reform, especially for the
disestablishment of the Irish Church, that Mr. Disraeli did not adopt
the usual course of waiting for the endorsement of the new Parliament,
which he felt sure would be given to Mr. Gladstone, but resigned, and
the first Disraeli Cabinet went out of office, December 2d.
December 4, 1868, the Queen summoned Mr. Gladstone to Windsor to form a
Cabinet. He had now attained the summit of political ambition. He was
the first Commoner in the land--the uncrowned king of the British Empire
--for such is the English Premier. "All the industry and self-denial of
a laborious life, all the anxieties and burdens and battles of five and
thirty years of Parliamentary struggle were crowned by this supreme and
adequate reward.
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