But it was to the grievances of Ireland that Gladstone bent the
readiest ear, and it was upon that reef that his political career
made shipwreck at the last. In his first ministry he undertook
and carried the disestablishment of the Irish Church, by which
the Irish Catholics were relieved of an odious burden. His Irish
Land Act of 1870 aimed to give the tenant-farmer certain valuable
rights in the land which he rented. The result was rather to
redouble the cry against "landlordism," with its corollary of
agrarian crime. A second Land Act (1881) provided a land court
for adjusting rents. Instead of quieting the disorders this
indulgent legislation was the signal for a fresh outburst of
crime. The Irish Land League was organized to secure the
abolition of landlordism, and when the Irish leader, Charles
Stewart Parnell, was imprisoned he exhorted the tenants to cease
paying rent altogether until the government should grant all
their demands. The Liberals were forced for the moment to use
strong measures to restore order to Ireland, but the Home Rule
party in Parliament, skillfully led by Mr. Parnell, continued to
embarrass legislation and obstruct the ordinary functions of
government. In April, 1886, Mr, Gladstone, having become Prime
Minister for the third time, asked Parliament to grant home rule
to Ireland through an Irish Parliament sitting at Dublin. Parnell
and his following supported the measure, but the Liberal party
was rent in twain. Lord Hartington, Joseph Chamberlain, John
Bright, and others of less note, deserted their old chief. Enough
of these "Liberal Unionists" seceded to defeat the bill. In
August, 1892, the aged Liberal chieftain again carried the
elections and took the seals of office for the fourth time. Home
Rule was again the principal plank in his platform, and all the
energies of the "Grand Old Man" were mustered to carry a new law
differing somewhat from the bill of 1886. Though it passed the
Commons (301 to 267) it was thrown out by the Lords by 419 to 41,
and his successor, Lord Rosebery, had no mind to renew the
contest.
The Gladstonian foreign policy was such as might have been
expected from a leader whose motto was "Peace, Retrenchment, and
Reform." It was never aggressive, and in the opinion of many, it
was lacking in the assertion of British rights. Thus, in 1871,
when Russia refused to be bound longer by the treaty stipulations
forbidding her to maintain a war fleet on the Euxine, Mr.
Gladstone did not hold her to her engagement. In England it was
thought to be a sign of weakness in his government to allow the
"Alabama" and "San Juan Boundary" questions to be settled by
arbitrators instead of by diplomacy or a show of force. In 1881,
when the Boers of the Transvaal had worsted the British at Majuba
Hill, they received from Gladstone an honorable peace instead of
extermination. The abandonment of the Egyptian Soudan, in 1883,
which carried with it the massacre of General Gordon, at
Khartoum, was perhaps the heaviest load that the Gladstonian
foreign policy ever had to bear.