Liberal disunity, 1867–8

Palmerstone's coalition was destroyed within months of his death in October 1865; between June 1866 and March 1868, the Liberal party was disunited and intolerant of leadership. In 1866, radical energy, restrained for so long under Palmerston, was unleashed in the shape of a powerful movement for parliamentary reform. Russell and Gladstone, the party leaders, were too friendly to it for the liking of the whig peers, the Adullamites, and a large, albeit mostly silent, section of the parliamentary party. Grey, Bouverie, Ellice, Elcho, Grosvenor, Lowe, Dunkellin and Horsman led the public resistance, while Brand, Halifax, George Grey, Clarendon and Granville tried, in private, to check the speed of the party's leftward movement. The government was finally overthrown in June 1866, and the old guard further irritated Gladstone by thwarting his attempt to call an election. The Conservatives took office; and Blight's provincial reform campaign in the autumn antagonised the Liberal ‘right’ even more. Relations between the wings of the party were so bad by February 1867 that Gladstone was unable to hold the traditional party dinner. Despite suspicion of, and ultimately revulsion at, Disraeli's own reform proposals, the old whigs and Adullamites remained unsympathetic to Gladstone throughout the 1867 session, distrusting his unpredictability, ecclesiasticism, aloofness and populism. This itself pushed Gladstone further into the hands of the radicals.