In the year we have named he was trying to recover his footing after a heavy fall in his first start as leader of the Liberal Party. A scheme of Parliamentary reform, carried by his political opponent, had marked the commencement of another epoch. In the new arena of public life two centres of political energy were certain to be strongly represented in the organization which Mr. Gladstone hoped to lead back to office. The Spirit of Dissent was all powerful among the English householders. The Irish tenant, whose electoral strength, directed by the Roman priesthood, had been exhibited with much effect in 1852, was sure to receive a great increase of power under the new Reform Bill. To combine these influences was one of the conditions of any prolonged tenure of office by the Liberal party. The Irish Establishment had been forsaken by English opinion in previous years. Its overthrow would be hailed with enthusiasm by the Dissenting communities, whilst the Irish priesthood would regard disestablishment with undoubted satisfaction. The condition of Irish Land Tenure was admitted by all parties to require amendment, and its settlement would be a substantial benefit to the Irish farmer. These were subjects which naturally tempted the daring energies of a man occupying Mr. Gladstone's position in the winter of 1867. Turned out of office after the death of Lord Palmerston, his subsequent management of the reform question, as leader of the Opposition, had only increased the distrust of his party. He was without a constituency at the coming election, and he went down to Lancashire to seek in that great centre of hard-headed Englishmen the confiding constituency which he subsequently found in Midlothian. New legislation on the Irish Church, a reform in Irish Land Tenure, were subjects for which his party, for which the majority of Englishmen were pretty well prepared. The Liberal Churchmen, like Sir Roundell Palmer, who held back on the subject of Disestablishment, were more than counterbalanced by the Dissenters, who were attracted by the scheme. Popular Legislation on these subjects might have been granted to Ireland as the matured outcome of British opinion. Such a mode of approaching the work in hand did not suit the exuberant temperament of Mr. Gladstone. Whilst the report of the Clerkenwell explosion was still echoing through the land, he announced his policy as one to be recommended, not because the great British community had examined and adopted the proposed measures, but because Irish opinion was to be henceforth accepted as our guide in Irish Legislation. With characteristic recklessness he hurried to turn to the account of his own ambition the throb of excitement which he saw traversing the nation. He appealed to his audience to regard the Fenian outrages as a sort of revelation from heaven, to commune with their own hearts, not on the state of Ireland, and the remedies sensible men could offer, but on the sentiments of Irishmen.