The Irish University Bill, which as an attempted compromise between Catholic and Protestant demands satisfied neither party, met with such unexpected opposition that a majority of three was obtained against the government.  Mr. Gladstone was, in accordance with custom, compelled to resign or summon a new Parliament.  He accepted the latter alternative; but he did not seem aware of the great change in public sentiment which had taken place in regard to his reforms.  Not one of them had touched the heart of the great mass, or was of such transcendent importance to the English people as the repeal of the corn laws had been.  They were measures of great utility,—­indeed, based on justice,—­but were of a kind to alienate powerful classes without affecting universal interests.  They were patriotic rather than politic.  Moreover, he was not supported by lieutenants of first-class ability or reputation.  His immediate coadjutors were most respectable men, great scholars, and men of more experience than genius or eloquence.  Of his cabinet, eight of them it is said were “double-firsts” at Oxford.  There was not one of them sufficiently trained or eminent to take his place.  They were his subordinates rather than his colleagues; and some of them became impatient under his dictation, and witnessed his decline in popularity with secret satisfaction.  No government was ever started on an ambitious course with louder pretensions or brighter promises than Mr. Gladstone’s cabinet in 1868.  In less than three years their glory was gone.  It was claimed that the bubble of oratory had burst when in contact with fact, and the poor English people had awoke to the dreary conviction that it was but vapor after all; that Mr. Disraeli had pricked that bubble when he said, “Under his influence [Gladstone’s] we have legalized confiscation, we have consecrated sacrilege, we have condoned treason, we have destroyed churches, we have shaken property to its foundation, and we have emptied jails.”

Everything went against the government.  Russia had torn up the Black Sea treaty, the fruit of the Crimean war; the settlement of the “Alabama” claims was humiliating; “the generous policy which was to have won the Irish heart had exasperated one party without satisfying another.  He had irritated powerful interests on all sides, from the army to the licensed victuallers.”

On the appeal to the nation, contrary to Mr. Gladstone’s calculations, there was a great majority against him.  He had lost friends and made enemies.  The people seemingly forgot his services,—­his efforts to give dignity to honest labor, to stimulate self-denial, to reduce unwise expenditures, to remove crying evils.  They forgot that he had reduced taxation to the extent of twelve millions sterling annually; and all the while the nation had been growing richer, so that the burdens which had once been oppressive were now easy to bear.  It would almost appear that even Gladstone’s transcendent eloquence had lost in a measure its charm