There were, of course, party cavillings when the member for Greenwich was gazetted in August, 1873, as Chancellor of the Exchequer without vacating his seat for the Metropolitan borough; but the polemics in the press gradually ceased upon the subject, without materially weakening his influence upon his pledged supporters, and the public at large hardly found time to listen to the controversy. Trade was good, and remunerative enterprise continued to advance by leaps and bounds—to borrow one of Mr. Gladstone’s famous phrases. On one occasion, when a Tory member argued against a certain measure that it was not the right time to introduce it, Mr. Bernal Osborne wittily exclaimed: ‘Not the right time, sir? We take our time from Greenwich.’ No sooner had Parliament met than the Queen, in order to smooth the difficulties of the question, wrote to Bishop Tait, who had then become Archbishop of Canterbury: ‘The Queen has seen Mr. Gladstone, who shows the most conciliatory disposition. He really seems to be moderate in his views, and anxious, so far as he properly and consistently can do so, to meet the wishes of those who would maintain the Irish Church. He at once assured the Queen of his readiness—and, indeed, his anxiety—to meet the Archbishop and to communicate freely with him on the subject of this most important question; and the Queen must express her hope that the Archbishop will meet him in the same spirit.’ The Government could do nothing that would tend to raise a suspicion of their sincerity in proposing to disendow the Irish Church, and to withdraw all State endowments from all religious communities in Ireland, but with these conditions accepted, all other matters connected with the question might, the Queen thought, thus become the subject of discussion and negotiation. The interview, when it took place, seems to have much relieved the Archbishop’s mind, especially as Mr. Gladstone at that date had not made public any authoritative statement of the shape which his Disestablishment policy was to assume. The Archbishop used to say in after-years that his position after the interview for about ten days was the most difficult he had ever known. In addition to the necessarily urgent correspondence of such a time, he had to grant interviews to men of every sort and condition who came to consult, inform or interrogate him upon the absorbing topic which was on every lip; and he had not merely to give attention to larger comments and conjectures, and to say something suitable in reply, but to keep entirely secret all the while the scheme which Mr. Gladstone had unfolded to him, and even the fact that such a communication had taken place.