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. He was Prime Minister of England—had attained to that goal of the Eton boy's ambition; and, what perhaps was to him of greater consideration, he was looked up to by vast numbers of the people as their great leader."
December 9th the new government was completed and the ministers received their seals from the Queen. Mr. Bright, contrary to all expectation, became President of the Board of Trade. In offering themselves for re-election, the members of the new Cabinet found no trouble—all were returned. Mr. Gladstone was returned by Greenwich.
With the year 1869 Mr. Gladstone entered upon a great period of Reform. The new Parliament was opened December 10th. On the 11th Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone paid a visit to Lord and Lady Salisbury, at Hatfield. Bishop Wilberforce was there and had opportunity to observe his old and honored friend in the first flush of his new dignity. Here are his comments: "Gladstone, as ever, great, earnest, and honest; as unlike the tricky Disraeli as possible." To Dr. Trench the Bishop wrote: "The nation has decided against our establishment, and we bow to its decision, and on what tenure and conditions it is to be held, remains confessedly open." "But his sagacious and statesmanlike counsel was disregarded. The Irish Bishops ranged themselves in bitter but futile hostility to the change. A frantic outbreak of Protestant violence began in Ireland and spread to England." Bishop Wilberforce notes this conversation at Windsor Castle: "The Queen very affable. 'So sorry Mr. Gladstone started this about the Irish Church, and he is a great friend of yours.'"
On the 15th of February Parliament assembled. March 1st Mr. Gladstone introduced his momentous bill in a speech of three hours, his first speech as Prime Minister, which was characterized as "calm, moderate and kindly." It was proposed that on January 1, 1871, the Irish Church should cease to exist as an establishment and should become a free Church.
Mr. Disraeli, in the Commons, moved the rejection of the bill. In opposing the measure he objected to disestablishment, because he was in favor of the union of Church and State.
Mr. Gladstone eloquently concluded as follows: "As the clock points rapidly towards the dawn, so as rapidly flow out the years, the months, the days, that remain to the existence of the Irish Established Church.... Not now are we opening this great question. Opened, perhaps, it was when the Parliament which expired last year pronounced upon it that emphatic judgment which can never be recalled. Opened it was, further, when in the months of autumn the discussions were held in every quarter of the Irish Church. Prosecuted another stage it was, when the completed elections discovered to us a manifestation of the national verdict more emphatic than, with the rarest exceptions, has been witnessed during the whole of our Parliamentary history. The good cause was further advanced towards its triumphant issue when the silent acknowledgment of the late government, that they declined to contest the question, was given by their retirement from office, and their choosing a less responsible position from which to carry on a more desultory warfare against the policy which they had in the previous session unsuccessfully attempted to resist. Another blow will soon be struck in the same good cause, and I will not intercept it one single moment more."
The bill passed by an overwhelming vote—368 against 250—and went up to the Lords, where stirring debates occurred. But there, as well as in the House, the Irish Establishment was doomed. The bill, substantially unaltered, received the Royal assent July 26, 1869.
The Annual Register for 1869 declared that the bill "was carried through in the face of a united and powerful opposition, mainly by the resolute will and unflinching energy of the Prime Minister.... Upon the whole, whatever may be thought of its merits or demerits, it can hardly be disputed that the Act of the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, introduced and carried into a law within somewhat less than five months, was the most remarkable legislative achievement of modern times."
The parliamentary session of 1870 was rendered memorable by the passing of a scarcely less popular and important measure—the Irish Land Bill. Mr. Gladstone, in speaking of Ireland, had referred to three branches of an Upas tree, to the growth of which her present sad condition was largely owing—the Irish Church, the Irish Land Laws, and the Irish Universities. The first branch had fallen with the disestablishment of the Irish Church, and Mr. Gladstone, pressing on in his reform, now proposed to lop off the second branch by his Irish Land Bill, which was in itself a revolution. It was claimed for Mr. Gladstone's new bill, or Land Scheme, that while it insured for the tenant security of holding, it did not confiscate a single valuable right of the Irish land-owner. Mr. Gladstone remarked that he believed there was a great fund of national wealth in the soil of Ireland as yet undeveloped, and said he trusted that both tenant and landlord would accept the bill because it was just. The bill passed, and received the approval of the Queen, August 1, 1870.