The second group includes the two great parliamentary reform bills
of 1866 and 1884 and the Redistribution Bill of 1885. The first of
these was defeated in the House of Commons, but it led to the
passing next year of an even more comprehensive bill--a bill which,
though passed by Mr. Disraeli, was to some extent dictated by Mr.
Gladstone, as leader of the opposition. Of these three statutes
taken together, it may be said that they have turned Britain into a
democratic country, changing the character of her government almost
as profoundly as did the Reform Act of 1832.

The third group consists of a series of Irish measures, beginning
with the Church Disestablishment Act of 1869, and including the Land
Act of 1870, the University Education Bill of 1873 (defeated in the
House of Commons), the Land Act of 1881, and the home-rule bills of
1886 and 1893. All these were in a special manner Mr. Gladstone's
handiwork, prepared as well as brought in and advocated by him. All
were highly complicated, and of one--the Land Act of 1881, which it
took three months to carry through the House of Commons--it was said
that so great was its intricacy that only three men understood it--
Mr. Gladstone himself, his Attorney-General for Ireland, and Mr. T.
M. Healy. So far from shrinking from, he seemed to revel in, the
toil of mastering an infinitude of technical details. Yet neither
did he want boldness and largeness of conception. The Home-Rule
Bill of 1886 was nothing less than a new constitution for Ireland,
and in all but one of its most essential features had been
practically worked out by himself more than four months before it
was presented to Parliament.

Of the other important measures passed while he was prime minister,
two deserve special mention, the Education Act of 1870 and the