For many years the subject had been before the public. A Royal Commission had been appointed to deal with the question, and it had given rise to more than one debate in the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone’s own adoption of the policy of Disestablishment had been made evident in a speech delivered July, 1867, although he abstained from voting. His relation to the question had, however, as he indicated, been practically declared for more than twenty years. A year later, on a motion by Mr. Maguire, ‘that this House resolves itself into a Committee with the view of taking into consideration the condition and circumstances of Ireland,’ Mr. Gladstone spoke more decidedly, declaring that, in order to the settlement of the condition of the Irish, the Church as a State Church must cease to exist, and in consequence of this declaration Mr. Maguire withdrew his motion. On the first division on Mr. Gladstone’s resolutions he obtained a majority of sixty against Government. Subsequent divisions having confirmed and increased this majority, Mr. Disraeli announced on May 4 that he had advised Her Majesty to dissolve Parliament in the coming autumn, in order that the opinion of the country might be taken on the great issue put before it. Great was the excitement everywhere, and many were the public meetings held on the subject in all parts of England. At a meeting of Church supporters held in St. James’s Hall in May, Archbishop Longley in the chair, there were twenty-five bishops on the platform, besides an array of peers and M.P.’s. Archbishop Tait, who moved the first resolution, referring to a speech of his own on the Church Rate Bill, writes to his son: ‘Gladstone fell foul of it somewhat roughly on moving his Irish Church resolutions, but last Sunday your mother and I went to the little church in Windmill Street which Mr. Kempe has built for the poor of St. James’s, and there found Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone taking refuge from the glare of London for a quiet Sunday morning; and as we all walked home together, I had some most agreeable conversation with him. I wish he was not so strangely impetuous, for he is certainly a good Christian. . . . I almost hope that something may be done to bring him to reason about reforming, not destroying, the Irish Church. This, no doubt, is what the Old Whigs really desire, if only they could get Disraeli out.’ Mr. Disraeli soon gratified—at any rate, to a certain extent—the Old Whigs. In November the constituencies replied to the appeal made to them by Mr. Disraeli by an almost unprecedented majority for his opponent. The national verdict could no longer be opposed. Mr. Disraeli himself recognised the fact by resigning office without waiting for the meeting of Parliament. When Parliament met in February, Mr. Gladstone was Premier. Defeated in Lancashire, he had been elected for Greenwich.