ABSTRACT
A study of William Ewart Gladstone’s temperament makes it clear that he was the Englishman best able and most likely to make a serious effort to reconcile England and Ireland. The Irish members knew him best as the Chancellor of the Exchequer who had imposed on Ireland in 1853 the Income Tax that Peel had withheld ten years earlier. Gladstone’s imagination was governed by his strong European sense. Sometimes in his career this sense was absorbed in Ireland; at others it found its field for action and rhetoric elsewhere. Gladstone was conscious of the unfriendliness of the House and his party, and the atmosphere affected his spirit and his self-confidence. Perhaps the first important indication of Gladstone’s new mood of confidence, and his new grasp of the Irish problem, was given in a speech he made at Southport on December 19, 1867.
