It was an Irish question which caused the overthrow of the Conservatives and swept the Liberals into their seats, and though this Gladstonian administration (1868-74) and its successors (1880-85, 1886, 1892-94) were rich in progressive measures, they are pre- eminent for what they did and attempted to do for Ireland. The three grievances of Ireland since the granting of Catholic emancipation have related to the Established Church, the tenure of land, and self- government. Mr. Gladstone took them up in succession, removing the first, ameliorating the second, and giving his closing years to a tremendous parliamentary struggle to secure the third. The Church of Ireland, as established by law and maintained by taxation, was an absurdity. Its doctrines were offensive to five-sixths of the Irish people, whose voluntary offerings went to support the Roman Catholic priests, while the absentee Anglican Protestant rectors lived luxuriously in England or the Continent upon the revenues of their Irish parishes. The situation was anomalous. In 1867 Mr. Gladstone, ardent Anglican though he was, espoused the cause of Irish disestablishment, and went to the country on the issue, winning the parliamentary elections by a splendid majority. There was loud outcry from the British Tories, who professed to fear for the existence of the Church of England itself. The majority of the English clergy denounced the proposition, and some even declared its author a madman; but Mr. Gladstone pursued his chosen way with energy and directness. In one of those elevated speeches with which he was accustomed to ennoble debate, he laid the details of his plan open to the Commons. The Irish Church was to be disestablished and disendowed, its bishops were to lose their seats in Parliament, and it was to become a free and independent ecclesiastical body, like the Presbyterian, Wesleyan, or Catholic churches, without further aid from the state. "I trust," said the impassioned advocate, "that when instead of the fictitious and adventitious aid on which we have too long taught the Irish establishment to lean, it shall come to place its trust in its own resources, in its own great mission, in all that it can draw from the energy of its ministers and its members, and the high hopes and promises of the Gospel that it teaches, it will find that it has entered upon a new era of existence--an era bright with hope and potent for good." The Lords did not seriously oppose a measure for which the country had spoken so distinctly, and the bill became a law, July 26, 1869. One standing grievance of Ireland had thus received radical remedy.