with the defeat of Mr. Gladstone at Oxford. I proceed to shew this.

In April, 1864, I was crossing St. James's Park, when I fell in with my good friend, Granville Somerset. He had, as I had, voted for Mr. Gladstone more than once, but had given him up as I had.

I said to him, "Well now, about Gladstone. I think you are playing a very foolish game. You keep on saying that, when he resigns, you will put up Stafford Northcote to fill his place: now he is not going to resign; has not the smallest intention that way. Stafford Northcote will not stand against him; and the end will be, that when election time comes, you will have no candidate ready, and Gladstone will walk over the course. must have a man ready now to put up against him.” Somerset quite agreed with me.

We

"Well, then," I said, "let us lose no more time. Do you get together one or two others, four of us will be quite enough to begin with; and let us lay our heads together. Who shall it be?"

We agreed upon Sotheron Estcourt and Hon. Mr. Lygon. "When shall it be?"

"Next Wednesday."

"Where shall it be?"

"In the Library of the House of Commons."

Wednesday morning I had been with my brother, the Speaker. He had said to me, "What are you going to do about Gladstone?"

I said, "We are going to turn him out if we can." I did not tell him that we were going to meet that afternoon in the Library of his domain.

When we met, I said to Estcourt and Lygon just what I had said to Somerset. They concurred, just as he had.

"Now," I said, "Estcourt, you are the biggest man among us, and have been Cabinet Minister: we owe it to Stafford Northcote to tell him what we are about, and to ask him whether he will let us put him up from this time as against Gladstone. He won't say 'Yes;'

,but, all the same, we owe it to him to ask him. Will you undertake to do it?"

He consented, and we adjourned for a couple of days. When we met again, Estcourt reported that Northcote would not stand against Gladstone.

"Now then," I said, "let us get together a good meeting in London, from London, Oxford, &c." The meeting was fixed for that day week.

It was largely attended by members of the House of Commons, and others. I was sitting in the chair of Committee in the Jerusalem Chamber, and adjourned the Committee, that I might go with my dear friend, the Warden of All Souls, to the meeting.

I got there only just in time. Mowbray was in the chair. When I got into the room, he said, “Oh, Archdeacon, I am glad you are come; I am just going to put a resolution to the meeting, and I should like you to see it before it is put."

He gave it me. It was like a heavy blow in the face, and confused me for a moment: then I got so angry, that I am afraid I was very rude. The resolution began: "In the event of Mr. Gladstone's retiring," &c. The precise foolishness which I had got the meeting together to get rid of, once for all.

I threw the resolution on the table, saying, that I could have nothing to do with it, except to oppose it; adding what I fear was rude enough, but I could not help it, "Gentlemen, I have not the honour of knowing many of you, but I think, and must say, that it seems to me you are mad. If this is all that we are come together

to do, we had better have stayed at home."

There was a silence in the room.

I don't remember to have been more angry any day of my life. I sat myself down by Sir Brook Brydges (Lord Fitzwalter). He said, "What would you recommend?" "Please give me a bit of paper."

I wrote my amendment:

"That it is the opinion of this meeting that the return of Mr. Gladstone for the University of Oxford is to be opposed."

"Now, Mr. Chairman, please to put that to the meeting as my amendment."

In three minutes everybody, I think, in the room held up their hands for it.

We had now got out of the slough of despond in which we had been floundering since 1853, eleven years; and had planted our feet upon the solid ground, where we could stand and walk. We were now in a position to fix upon our candidate, and to take measures for going to him in such force as to make it difficult for him not

to say, "Yes." The meeting was not long in fixing upon Mr. Hardy, and in laying the foundation of Committees in Oxford and London to collect names to a requisition to him. By the end of the Long Vacation we had more than a thousand names; and Mr. Hardy consented to be our candidate, as against Mr. Gladstone.

Nothing of this could have been done, or even reasonably taken in hand, if the meeting had passed the original resolution. We should have collapsed; have fallen back into the precise position of self-stultification, out of which it was the one purpose of those who got the meeting together to escape. You can fight no battle upon an "if" dependent upon the action of an adversary, which action you have not only no ground at all to anticipate, but every ground not to anticipate. This is what we had been doing for some years; it was out of this that we were seeking to escape. You could not go to any man, and ask him to make arrangements affecting his Parliamentary position upon an hypothesis without a basis. I have never been able to understand to this day how the original resolution came to be so much as thought of by the meeting. It became clear enough, when my amendment was put, that the meeting was not sorry to be rid of its puny and feeble infant.

I have always believed, and I think all men who know the facts of the case, and whose judgment is worth having, believe the same, that if I had come into the room three minutes later, Mr. Gladstone would have been Member for the University now. With all the energy, and labour,

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and time which belongs only to definite and settled purpose, and well-considered pre-arrangement, we had in 1865 not much majority to spare.

I have already referred to the meeting at Willis's Rooms, 1868 the last meeting upon "the Schools matter" with which I had anything to do.

The same year I published a letter to Mr. Hardy; I cite the opening sentences:

"MY DEAR HARDY,

"London, Feb. 18, 1868.

"I see we are to have a Government Bill for National Elementary Education.

"I am told, what I can hardly doubt is true, that the Bill contains, or recognises a 'Conscience Clause.'

"Now the proposal for a 'Conscience Clause' rests upon two assumptions; both of them, to say the least, violent.

"1. That 'Secular Education' is a necessity; but that 'Religious Education' is not.

"2. That 'Secular Education' being a necessity, if the religious scruples of Church-people come in the way of giving it, or allowing it to be given, in Church schools, the religious scruples of Church-people must be put aside, if such Church-people are to have any share in the Parliamentary Grant.

"A 'Conscience Clause' is thus a principal instance of combined secular, financial, religious tyranny, and violation of Conscience.

"I have expected this issue some twenty years. Now that its consummation appears to be imminent, I have nothing left to do but to try to persuade as many as I can to have no hand or part in it. Actively, to save themselves from all complicity by vote in Parliament, and by petition out of it; passively, to relinquish what is their own, rather than accept it under the conditions of the Bill, as above anticipated, &c.

"G. A. D."

Seven days later the Whigs were out, and Mr. Disraeli was Minister. Then came the Gladstone ministry, Dec. 9, 1868; the crush of 1869, and his Disestablishment and spoliation of the Irish Church. The final ruin of the

"Church school" was reserved for 1870; also under his Government.

I had done what little I could against Mr. Gladstone's Irish Church policy; but it became clear in the course of 1869, from answer to appeal, and labour, and outlay of London Committee, that, paries cum proximus ardet notwithstanding, English Church - people did not care much about the Irish Church: and certainly, if I had realised then what I realise now about it, I should not have toiled as I did in the furious heat of the summer of 1869, in the attempt to save its position.

The two remaining questions of the time with which I have been publicly concerned, are the "Ritual” question, and the "Confession and Absolution" question. My share in the first dates from 1864; but it is, I think, more conveniently reserved for the next chapter.

June 20, 1870, I fell into sudden and dangerous illness; was ill six months, and did not wholly recover my strength till late in 1871. The mercy of GOD, which restored me, filled every day of my weakness with all the cheer and comfort of most tender and loving care, kindly interest and sympathy; cheer and comfort which cannot be forgotten, and cannot be told.