favouring Irish Disestablishment, and the first was carried by a
majority of sixty-five against the Government.

This defeat involved explanation. Disraeli, in a speech which Bright
called "a mixture of pompousness and servility," described his
audiences of the Queen, and so handled the Royal name as to convey
the impression that Her Majesty was on his side. Divested of verbiage
and mystification, his statement amounted to this--that, in spite of
adverse votes, he intended to hold on till the autumn, and then to
appeal to the new electorate created by the Reform Act of the previous
year. As the one question to be submitted to the electors was that
of the Irish Church, the campaign naturally assumed a theological
character. On the 20th of August Lord Shaftesbury wrote: "Dizzy is
seeking everywhere for support. He is all things to all men, and
nothing to anyone. He cannot make up his mind to be Evangelical,
Neologian, or Ritualistic; he is waiting for the highest bidder."

Parliament was dissolved in November, and the General Election
resulted in a majority of one hundred for Gladstone and Irish
Disestablishment. By a commendable innovation on previous practice,
Disraeli resigned the Premiership without waiting for a hostile
vote of the new Parliament. He declined the Earldom to which, as
an ex-Prime Minister, he was by usage entitled; but he asked the
Queen to make his devoted wife Viscountess Beaconsfield. As a youth,
after hearing the great speakers of the House which he had not
yet entered, he had said, "Between ourselves, I could floor them
all"--but now Gladstone had "floored" him, and it took him five
years to recover his breath.