Originally published in 1964, in this work of wisdom, originality, and power, the great Liberal scholar, J. L. Hammond, explores and expounds Gladstone's attempt to secure justice for Ireland against the rising tide of English Imperialist feeling. The origins of the Irish Church crisis of 1869, of the land agitations of the seventies and eighties, and of the Home Rule explosion of 1885-6 that disrupted the British party system, are traced back, by Hammond's mastery of the archives, to their historical causes. His imaginative sympathy accompanies Gladstone on the eight years of political suffering that followed the explosion, till at the age of eighty-four the Grand Old Man could finally retire.

In the new 1964 introduction to this reprint of the rare 1938 edition, this work is described as the most formidable and incisive piece of original research yet published on the history of England and Ireland in the second half of the nineteenth century.