ABSTRACT
Ireland had been connected constitutionally to Great Britain (i.e. England and Wales plus Scotland) by the Act of Union in 1800. In the process she lost her own parliament, instead represented at Westminster through 100 MPs in the House of Commons, along with 28 temporal peers and 4 bishops in the House of Lords. The administration in Dublin was appointed directly by the British government. This raised a number of key problems which in one way or another challenged Gladstone and Disraeli throughout their political careers. The difference in their approaches was that one eventually tried to meet the challenge, while the other consistently avoided it (see Analysis 1). Whether Gladstone’s response was entirely altruistic is considered in Analysis 2.
