It was a mistake, however, to say that the disestablishment of the Irish Church had been an issue in the Oxford election. I compared notes on that point with my friend, Sir John Mowbray, who had been the chairman of the Tory committee, and agreed with me in saying that the Irish Church was not an issue. Gladstone took up disestablishment for Ireland, which had been long on the Liberal programme, when he had been thrown out of power by Disraeli on the question of extension of the suffrage. He was ambitious, happily for the country; and he wanted to recover the means of doing great things. His admirers need not shrink from that avowal. But he was also sincerely convinced, as well he might be, and as all Liberals were, that the State Church of Ireland was about the most utterly indefensible institution in the world. He framed his measure, expounded it, and carried it through Parliament, in his usual masterly way; and the Anglican Church in Ireland, it is believed, has felt herself the better for the operation ever since. Gladstone’s High Church friends in England forgave him with a sigh. The State Church of Ireland was separate from that of England, and was Low Church and opposed to everything Catholic from local antagonism to the Church of Rome. Before his junction with the Liberals, Gladstone had deprecated the interference of Parliament with the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge on the ground that they were private foundations with which Parliament had no right to interfere; and when he brought on his Oxford Reform Bill he had to perform one of his feats of retrospective explanation. But, as usual, he did his work well, though he still left more to be done. By his legislation, clerical as his sympathies were, the universities were set free from clericism, reopened to science, and reunited to the nation. Our Oxford Bill was badly cut up in the Commons, some misguided Liberals playing into the hands of Disraeli, who of course meant mischief. When the Bill in its mutilated state went up to the Lords, it appeared that the Tory leader, Lord Derby, though he felt bound to speak against the Ministerial measure, was not really prepared to throw it out, and that consequently there had not been a whip upon his side. It was then suggested to the Ministers in charge of the Bill that the Commons amendments might be thrown out in the Lords, and the Bill might be sent back in its original state to the Commons, where our friends might by that time be better advised, and the Opposition benches, as it was the end of the session, might be thinned. Russell, then the leader in the Commons, condemned the suggestion as most rash and not unlikely to be the death of the Bill. Gladstone was lying sick of an attack, strange to say, of the chicken-pox. On appeal to him, the signal for battle was at once held out, as I felt sure it would be; and the result was just what we desired.