The  general  election  came  on,  and  the  Liberals
returned  to  power.  Mr.  Gladstone  himself  was
defeated  in  his  Lancashire  constituency.  This
was,  as  I  have  already  shown,  almost  a  matter  of


2/0  THE    STORY   OF   GLADSTONE'S    LIFE

certainty,  but  he  had  been  put  up  for  Greenwich,
a  very  Radical  constituency,  and  there  he  was
elected.  Now,  in  the  case  of  the  Irish  State
Church,  as  in  the  other  instances  to  which  I
have  made  allusion,  Mr.  Gladstone's  announce-
ment of  his  policy  was  sudden,  but  it  could  hardly
have  been  unexpected  by  most  people.  Even  in
this  short  volume  I  have  given  evidence  enough
to  show  that  Mr.  Gladstone  had  been  losing  for
a  long  time  all  faith  in  the  spiritual  ministry  of
the  Irish  State  Church.  A  man  may  be  a  per-
fect devotee  of  the  principle  of  a  State  Church,
and  yet  may  be  conscientiously  unable  to  accept
the  idea  that  a  certain  institution  is  a  State  Church
merely  because  it  is  authoritatively  allowed  to  call
itself  a  State  Church,  and  to  pocket  the  money
of  the  State.  Most  people,  therefore,  must  have
fully  understood  that  when  Mr.  Gladstone  had
made  up  his  mind  on  a  certain  principle,  that
principle  was  very  likely  to  be  expressed  in  strong
r political  action.  Mr.  Gladstone  himself  had  given
out  his  ideas  as  to  the  method  with  which  Ireland
[ought  to  be  governed.  He  adopted  the  principle
\announced  long  ago  by  Charles  James  Fox,  that
llreland  ought  to  be  governed  according  to  Irish
ideas,  and  that,  to  quote  the  words  of  Fox,  "  the
more  Ireland  is  under  Irish  government,  the  more
dhe  will  be  bound  to  English  interests."  Mr.  Glad-


IRISH    STATE   CHURCH   AND   LAND   TENURE       271

stone  prepared  for  his  new  task  on  this  principle.
