INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Salisbury's October 1873 article was written at a period of crisis in the fortunes of the Liberal government and the Liberal party. The great Gladstone ministry which had come into power with so sweeping a majority in 1868 seemed on the verge of collapse. Its legislative achievements had largely exhausted its mandate and its energies, and had raised the feeling of powerful interests against it. Churchmen had had to swallow Irish disestablishment and the abolition of university tests (both stoutly resisted by Salisbury). The holders of landed property had seen their existing rights menaced by the principles of the Irish Land Act. The army had been disturbed by the abolition of purchase, and the publicans and their customers by the Licensing Act of 1872. On the international scene, some felt, the government had failed to uphold the country's prestige in its dealings with Russia over the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris and with the United States over the Alabama claims. In March 1873 the ministry had actually been defeated in the Commons over the controversial Irish University Bill, and had resigned, but Disraeli had prudently refused to take office in a minority, and Gladstone had had to go on. The end of the session had been followed by an attempt to renew the government's vitality through a number of ministerial changes. The unpopular H. A. Bruce left the home office for the presidency of the council and a peerage, and was succeeded by the former chancellor, Robert Lowe, Gladstone himself taking the exchequer; and in September John Bright rejoined the cabinet he had left in November 1870, as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster.