In the October of that year Bishop Wilberforce was at Hawarden, and had much talk with Gladstone. He said: ‘I greatly feel being turned out of office. I saw great things to do; I longed to do them. I am losing the best years of my life out of my natural service, yet I have never ceased to rejoice that I am not in office with Palmerston. When I have seen the tricks, the shufflings, he daily has recourse to, as to his business, I rejoice not to sit on the Treasury Bench with him.’ Of course, the Divorce Bill intensified his dislike to the Palmerston regime. Never was there a severer fight than that which took place in Committee. Clause by clause, line by line, almost word by word, the progress of the measure was challenged by an acute and determined opposition. One of the most important amendments was made by Lord John Manners, to give jurisdiction to local courts in cases of judicial separation. A still more important amendment was proposed with the object of extending to the wife the same right of divorce as was given to the husband. On this proposal Mr. Gladstone made a telling speech, founding his argument on the equality of the sexes in the highest relations of life. A further amendment in the same direction was attacked with such ardour by Mr. Gladstone, Lord John Manners, and Mr. Henly, that at length the Attorney-General claimed the right, as having official charge of the Bill, to be treated with some consideration, and then he carried the war into the enemy’s country so as to bring Mr. Gladstone again to his feet. He complained bitterly of Sir Richard Bethell’s charges of inconsistency and insincerity—‘charges which,’ he said, ‘have not only proceeded from his mouth, but gleamed from those eloquent eyes of his which have turned continuously on me for the last ten minutes.’ He commented severely on the Attorney-General’s statement of his duty with regard to the Bill. It was pushed by him through the House as a Ministerial duty; he received it from the Cabinet, for whom he considered it his duty to hew wood and draw water. In the course of the discussion of this clause, which occupied ten hours, Mr. Gladstone made upwards of twenty speeches, some of them of considerable length. He was on his legs every three minutes, in a white heat of excitement. Mr. Gladstone is stated to have told Lord Palmerston that the Bill should not be carried till the Greek Calends, and in reply to the question put to him in the lobby by Sir Richard Bethell—‘Is it to be peace or war?’—fiercely replied, ‘War, Mr. Attorney—war even to the knife.’ ‘Gladstone,’ he wrote to his wife, ‘gives a personal character to the debates.’ One of Mr. Gladstone’s amendments—to the effect that clergymen having conscientious objections to remarrying of divorced persons were to be exempt from any penalty for refusing to solemnize such marriages—which he was unable to move on account of a domestic calamity, was put forward by Sir W.