Mr. Gladstone was playful and confident in reply. He remarked
that much of Mr. Disraeli's speech was irrelevant, and much due to the influence of a "heated imagination." He laughed at Sir Stafford Northcote's statement that a Free Church in Ireland would inspire so intense a desire for the dissolution of all State restraint in England as to overthrow our Church here,--comparing it to the classical fable that whenever Bacchus went dancing with his followers in a state of violent excitement into any country, the whole population were invariably smitten with the contagion and began dancing too. So, he supposed, the capers of the Irish Free Churchmen will be so catching, that English Churchmen, in spite of their substantial advantages, will not be able to resist the soft infection. Mr. Gladstone made the curious confession that in the letter to an Oxford University elector in 1865 with which Mr. Hardy had- taunted him, his reference to the Act of Union did not mean that he regarded that Act as a guarantee to the Irish Church of its State property ; but rather as securing to our own House of Lords some of the very few persons who are " there by merit,"—the elected Irish Bishops. This is a significant hint that Mr. Gladstone is in favour of an infusion of new men, not distinguished by rank and wealth, into the House of Lords.
