130. Pacifying Ireland

“My mission is to pacify Ireland,” Gladstone had declared when he took office as Prime Minister.

This episode looks briefly at Disraeli’s behaviour as he left power, including the peerage he sought for his wife (rather than for himself). Then we move on to Gladstone’s attempts to secure peace in Ireland, first through disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, then through new legislation concerning Irish land ownership. They involved serious and exhausting battles, though they achieved very little in the way of pacifying Ireland...

As the exhaustion of these struggles began to affect the government, and indeed Gladstone, Disraeli found new form and came back to the attack. Notably with one of his best known denunciations of ministers, as a series of dormant volcanoes. The pendulum was swinging back his way.

Illustration: William Ewart Gladstone by Sir John Everett Millais, 1879. National Portrait Gallery 3637
Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.