ABSTRACT
William Ewart Gladstone found in his mass meetings the kind of moral strength that Antaeus found when he was thrown to the ground. It is curious to reflect that a public man, whose democratic ideas came ultimately from his study of ancient literature, should have been brought into a closer relationship than any of his contemporaries to great numbers of men, to whom that world was a closed book. In 1886 Chamberlain used, the argument that all social reform in England was being sacrificed to the Irish, in trying to persuade the working men to follow him rather than Gladstone. The history of Gladstone’s second Government illustrates his lack of any warm interest or strong confidence in the concrete benefit to be expected from municipal enterprise. His Government made a notable contribution to the creation of a general system of local administration in England.
