Gladstone had won the General Election by asking the constituencies to approve the Disestablishment of the Irish Church; and this was the first task to which he addressed himself in the Parliament of 1869.  It was often remarked about his speaking that in every Session he made at least one speech of which everyone said, “That was the finest thing Gladstone ever did.”  This was freely said of it he speech in which he introduced the Disestablishment Bill on the 1st of March, 1869, and again of that in which he wound up the debate on the Second Reading.  In pure eloquence he had rivals, and in Parliamentary management superiors; but in the power of embodying principles in legislative form and preserving unity of purpose through a multitude of confusing minutiae he had neither equal nor second.

The Disestablishment Bill passed easily through the Commons, but was threatened with disaster in the Lords, and it was with profound satisfaction that Mrs. Gladstone, most devoted and most helpful of wives, announced the result of the division on the Second Reading.  Gladstone had been unwell, and had gone to bed early.  Mrs. Gladstone who had been listening to the debate in the House of Lords, said to a friend, “I could not help it; I gave William a discreet poke.  ‘A majority of thirty-three, my dear.’  ‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said, and turned round, and went to sleep on the other side.”  After a stormy passage through Committee, the Bill became law on the 26th of July.

So Gladstone’s first great act of legislation ended, and he was athirst for more.  Such momentous reforms as the Irish Land Act, the Education Act, the abolition of religious tests in the University, the abolition of purchase in the Army, and the establishment of the Ballot, filled Session after Session with excitement; and Gladstone pursued each in turn with an ardour which left his followers out of breath.

He was not very skilful in managing his party, or even his Cabinet.  He kept his friendships and his official relations quite distinct.  He never realized the force of the saying that men who have only worked together have only half lived together.  It was truly said that he understood MAN, but not men; and meek followers in the House of Commons, who had sacrificed money, time, toil, health, and sometimes conscience, to the support of the Government, turned, like the crushed worm, when they found that Gladstone sternly ignored their presence in the Lobby, or, if forced to speak to them, called them by inappropriate names.  His strenuousness of reforming purpose and strength of will were concealed by no lightness of touch, no give-and-take, no playfulness, no fun.  He had little of that saving grace of humour which smoothes the practical working of life as much as it adds to its enjoyment.  He was fiercely, terribly, incessantly in earnest; and unbroken earnestness, though admirable, exhausts and in the long run alienates.