Gladstone he doubly repudiated as a High Churchman and a Democrat.

Yet, with more candour than consistency, he always declared that Gladstone was the English statesman who best understood the Irish Land Question, and so he plainly told the Liberal Unionists, speaking as one of themselves.

He had praised Henry VIII for confiscating the Irish estates of absentees, and taunted Pitt with his unreasoning horror of an absentee tax.

He would have given the Irish people almost everything rather than allow them to do anything for themselves.

In 1880 he brought out another edition of his Irish book, with a new chapter on the crisis.