ABSTRACT
In unforgettable words Gladstone declared, when it became clear in 1868 that he was to become prime minister, ‘My mission is to pacify Ireland.’ He had already acknowledged to John Bright that an attempt to fulfil this ‘mission’ might ‘lead the Liberal party to martyrdom’;1 but he had informed his sister that he would proceed with his task as an agent of ‘the God of truth and justice’. This ‘mission’ of Gladstone’s was to rend and distort the politics of England for most of the next thirty years and his failure to carry it out-a failure perhaps made inevitable by the intemperate, holier-than-thou methods he adopted-was a disaster. Had he employed the rapier of political subtlety he might possibly have succeeded, but given that his favourite political device was to try to bludgeon friend 1 See Philip Magnus, Gladstone (London, Murray, 1954), p. 191, but curiously, see also ibid., p. 196 on this question of ‘martyrdom’.
