MR. GLADSTONE.
[To THE EHLTOH OF THE "13PECTATOX”j
Bra,—May I ask you to give your authority for " the frank, and even premature, avowal to the University of Oxford of Mr. Gladstone's change of view as to the Irish Protestant Establish- ment,"—to which you ascribe the loss of his seat in 1865? I voted for him at that election (as I had done from his first return in 1847) without a suspicion of the kind. A few days after, he presented himself to the electors of Lancashire
unmuzzled ;" and I have voted against him ever since. There is no hint of any such" change" in his correspondence at the time with his intimate friend, Bishop Wilberforce. The Bishop, in his letter of condolence, attributes the defeat to " hatred of the Government which gave Waldegrave to Carlisle, and Baring to Durham, and the youngest Bishop on the Bench to York, and supported Westbury in seeking to deny for England the faith of our Lord." (" Life," III., 161.) In reply, Mr. Gladstone writes: —"Therehave been two great deaths, or transmigrations of spirit, inmy political existence,—one very slow, the breaking of ties with my original party ; the other very short and sharp, the breaking of the tie with Oxford. There will probably be a third, and no more." This "oracular sentence" Mr. Gladstone declined to explain, as "having little bearing on present affairs or prospects." When it was developed three years later, the Bishop wrote :—" I am very sorry Gladstone has moved the attack on the Irish Church It is altogether a bad business, and I am afraid Gladstone has been drawn into it from the unconscious influence of his restlessness at being out of office." (p. 241.) Clearly, then, the Bishop knew no more than I of your 4' frank and premature avowal" in 1865.
Archdeacon Denison, who claims the chief hand in unseating Mr. Gladstone, fell away from him in 1853 on political grounds. His main objection was the Conscience Clause and the Educa- tional policy of the Liberal Government, of which Mr. Gladstone was a member. All I can find on Irish Disestablishment is the following :—" Then came the Gladstone Ministry, December 9th, 1868, the crush of 1869, and his Disestablishment and epoilation of the Irish Church. The final ruin of the Church School' was
reserved for 1870, also under his Government." He adds," I had done what I could against Mr. Gladstone's Irish Church policy;" but there is not a trace of any suspicion of it before he was un- seated at Oxford.—I am, Sir, &c.,
A MEMBER OF THE OXFORD COMMITTEE IN 1865.
P.S.—Mr. Gladstone has now undergone a fourth " trans- migration " under similar restlessness at being out of office ; but even you had no warning of it before he failed to get a majority for himself at the General Election.
[Oar correspondent's memory has failed him. The election in the autumn of 1865 for the University of Oxford turned entirely on Mr. Gladstone's announcement in his speech of March 28th of that year, delivered in the debate on Mr. Dillwyn's motion for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, that he could no longer defend the principle of the Irish Chnrch, a speech on which we com- mented at the time (Spectator, April 1st, 1865) as certain to lose him his seat for the University, as it actually did. Mr. Whiteside denounced Mr. Gladstone's speech in fiery language in the same debate. The University is full of amusing anecdotes concerning the wrath which Mr. Gladstone's speech, and his renewed candidature for the University, excited in the minds of Con- servative Churchmen,—the late Bishop Phillpotte, for example. Mr. Gladstone's "Chapter of Autobiography" deals, if we remember rightly, fully with the subject.—ED. Spectator.]
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