The attempt to carry an Irish University Bill led Mr. Gladstone to resign. Mr. W. E. Forster writes: ‘Gladstone rose with the House dead against him, and made a wonderful speech, easy—almost playful—with passages of great power and eloquence, but with a graceful ease which enabled him to plant daggers into Horsman, Fitzmaurice and Co.’ Again he writes: ‘Gladstone determined to resign; outside opinion very strongly for resignation. Gladstone made quite a touching little speech; he began playfully. This was the last of a hundred Cabinets, and he wished to say to his colleagues with what profound gratitude—and then he broke down, and could only say that he would not enter on the details. Tears came into my eyes, and we were all very touched.’ As Mr. Disraeli was unable to form a Government, Mr. Gladstone, however, soon returned to power, he resuming his old place as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Touching the Irish University Bill, Lord Blachford writes: ‘Coleridge is sanguine about Gladstone’s Irish University Bill. He seems to have started with the Cabinet against him, and to have converted them all (their point being, I suppose, to have something that would _pass_), especially some whom Coleridge describes as full of admiration for the scheme. I don’t understand it, but I imagine that it gives or leaves to everybody enough to stop their mouths without infuriating their neighbours.’ As stated, Mr. Gladstone returned to office, only to leave it in the following year, when he dissolved Parliament and the Tories had a majority. Mr. Gladstone retained his seat for Greenwich, but a local Tory was at the head of the poll. Lord Russell’s charges against Mr. Gladstone of indifference on colonial questions is somewhat borne out by his conduct with regard to the annexation of Fiji, which he opposed in 1873, but which was ultimately carried out by the Government that succeeded his in the following year. In reply to Sir W. M’Arthur’s motion in the House for the annexation of Fiji, Mr. Gladstone said: ‘Nothing was easier than to make out a plausible case of appropriation of this kind, and yet nothing would so much excite the displeasure of those who cheered his honourable friend the member for Lambeth, than when for such appropriations a similar disposition was shown by other countries. It might be the chill of old age that was coming upon him, but he confessed he did not feel that excitement for the acquisition of new territory which animated the hon. gentleman.’ As to commerce, with our inability ‘to cope with expanding opportunities, he did not feel the pressure of the argument for securing special guarantees for our trade in every part of the world.’ He was more discursive in replying to what he called, ‘in no taunting spirit, the philanthropic part of the question.’