These and other acts of Tory policy in time brought liberalism
again into the forefront, an election held in 1880 resulted in a
great Liberal victory, Disraeli (then Lord Beaconsfield) resigned
and Gladstone was once again called to the head of the ministry.
In the new administration the foreign policy, the meddling in the
concerns of the East, which had held precedence over domestic
affairs under the preceding administration, vanished from sight,
and the Irish question again became prominent. Ireland had now
gained an able leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, founder of the
Irish Land League, a trade union of Irish farmers, and its
affairs could no longer be consigned to the background.
Gladstone, in assuming control of the new government, was quite
unaware of the task before him. When he had completed his work
with the Church and the Land bills ten years before, he fondly
fancied that the Irish question was definitely settled. The Home
Rule movement, which was started in 1870, seemed to him a wild
delusion which would die away of itself. In 1884 he said: "I
frankly admit that I had had much upon my hands connected with
the doings of the Beaconsfield Government in every quarter of the
world, and I did not know - no one knew - the severity of the
crisis that was already swelling upon the horizon, and that
shortly after rushed upon us like a flood.
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