ABSTRACT
The more Gladstone’s career is studied the more significance will the student attach to the disparity between his power in the country and his power in the House of Commons, and between his power in the House of Commons and his power in the Cabinet. Defeat involved him in the alternative plan of coercion tempered by agrarian reform, as it seemed to some, or of agrarian reform tempered by coercion, as it seemed to others. If Gladstone’s plan of constructive political reform had been accepted, it would have averted or at least modified the struggle between England and the new Irish party into which the House of Commons was drawn. The defeat of Gladstone’s plan had put an end to the hope of reforming procedure by consent. It was fatal also because it threw the Government back on to a policy of combining coercion and agrarian reform.
