If the result of the general election had come as a surprise, not less unexpected was its immediate effect upon the Minister who was responsible for having brought it about. Members of the Liberal Opposition were filled with dismay one morning—March 13, 1874—on taking up their newspapers at the purport of a letter addressed by Mr Gladstone, their leader in the House of Commons, to Lord Granville, their leader in the House of Lords.

At my age [it ran] I must reserve my entire freedom to divest myself of all the responsibilities of leadership at no distant time. … I should be desirous, shortly before the commencement of the session of 1875, to consider whether there would be advantage in my placing my services for a time at the disposal of the Liberal Party, or whether I should claim exemption from the duties I have hitherto discharged.

Now Mr Gladstone was at that time but sixty-four, a period of life certainly not beyond the normal limits of parliamentary activity, his health was understood to be unimpaired, and the only construction to be placed upon this precipitate act was that he was suffering from chagrin, if not from pique, at the overthrow of his party. It cannot, indeed, have been pleasant for him to reflect that, in dealing with the Irish Church and in pressing the Ballot Act through the House of Commons, he had, in order to secure support for his party, thrown overboard principles which he had cherished through many years of public life, and that, after all this sacrifice, he had failed of his reward.