¹ Times Literary Supplement, 27 Aug. 1982, p. 930.

² Not that historians had failed to do so before: see, e.g. Shannon, R. T., Gladstone and the Bulgarian agitation, 1876 (2nd edn, Hassocks, 1975),Google Scholar and his ‘John Robert Seeley and the idea of a national Church’in Robert, Robson (ed.), Ideas and institutions of Victorian Britain: essays in honour of George Kitson Clark (London, 1967), pp. 236–67.Google Scholar

³ However, he makes some repeated slips in the spelling of names and titles (of, e.g., Wilamowitz and W. K. C. Guthrie).

⁴ Anon, , Political portraits: characters of some of our public men (London, 1873), pp. 186–92.Google Scholar

⁵ For example, Derby did not lead the conservative cave in favour of the second reading of the Irish Church Bill in the Lords in 1869 (p. 98); for ‘must’read ‘most’(p. 217, line 6); the Conservatives, not the Liberals, held Horsham before the void election of December 1875, of which that of February 1876 was a re-run - hence Hardy's interest in fate (p. 262); footnote 5 on p. 365 should refer to pp. 61–2 of vol. 11 of the Memoir, not pp. 63–4.

⁶ Derby diary, 28 June 1870, Derby papers, Liverpool Record Office.

⁷ I should query the information given in only one footnote, no. 2 on p. 113 which, perhaps by dating the (undated) letter to which the footnote is appended too late in November, ignores a far more likely cause for O’Donoghue's embarrassment at Tralee, rumours that his attempt to resign his seat and precipitate a by-election on the Home Rule question was connected with a desire to force the government to act upon what he appears to have thought was a promise to give him office. See Hartington's correspondence with Gladstone in late 1873, Gladstone papers, British Library, Add. MSS 44144, fos. 116ff.

⁸ Hilton, A. J. B., Corn, cash, commerce: the economic policies of the tory governments, 1815–1830 (Oxford, 1977),Google Scholar and ‘Peel: a reappraisal’, Historical Journal, xxii (1979), 585–614.Google Scholar

⁹ Paz, D. G., The politics of working-class education in Britain, 1830–50 (Manchester, 1980);Google ScholarMachin, G. I. T., Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, 1832 to 1868 (Oxford, 1977);Google ScholarNowlan, K. B., The politics of repeal: a study in the relations between Great Britain and Ireland, 1841–50 (London, 1965);Google ScholarBest, G. F. A., ‘The religious difficulties of national education in England, 1800–70’, Cambridge Historical Journal, xii (1956), 155–73;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWilliam, Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: nine studies in theory and practice, 1817–1841 (Oxford, 1979).Google Scholar

¹⁰ See Robert, Stevens, Law and politics: the House of Lords as a judicial body, 1800–1976 (London, 1979), PP. 37–76.Google Scholar and Marsh, P. T., The Victorian Church in decline: Archbishop Tail and the Church of England, 1868–1882 (London, 1969), pp. 111–34.Google Scholar

¹¹ Cowling, M., 1867: Disraeli, Gladstone and revolution: the passing of the second Reform Bill (Cambridge, 1967): a close reading of this work can produce many surprises.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² In an impressive, well-researched and detailed contribution: Smith, P., Disraelian Conservatism and social reform (London, 1967).Google Scholar

¹³ Avner, Offer, Property and politics, 1870–1914: landownership, law, ideology and urban development in England (Cambridge, 1981),Google Scholar and Marsh, P. T., The discipline of popular government: Lord Salisbury's domestic statecraft, 1881–1902 (Hassocks, 1978).Google Scholar

¹⁴ James, Bentley, Ritualism and politics in Victorian Britain: the attempt to legislate for belief (Oxford, 1978) covers the Public Worship Regulation Act; Mr Peter Ghosh of St Anne's College, Oxford is working on an extensive study of the financial policies of the period.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Johnson, pp. 215, 229, 376–8; and were the ‘most controversial’debates on the 1876 Act (p. 259) to do with the employment of children under ten, or to do with tory pressure to grant powers to dissolve school boards and to gain other securities for private Anglican tuition? See Sutherland, G., Policy-making in elementary education, 1870–1895 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 141–5.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Henry, Pelling, Popular politics and society in late Victorian Britain (London, 1968), pp. 1–18;Google ScholarVincent, J. R., Pollbooks: how Victorians votedM (Cambridge, 1968);Google ScholarNossiter, T. J., Influence, opinion and political idioms in reformed England: case studies from the north-east, 1832–74 (Hassocks, 1975);Google ScholarHanham, H. J., Elections and party management: politics in the time of Disraeli and Gladstone (2nd edn, Hassocks, 1978);Google ScholarNorman, E. R., Anti-catholicism in Victorian England (London, 1968);Google ScholarPatrick, Joyce, Work, society and politics: the culture of the factory in later Victorian England (Brighton, 1980);Google ScholarDavid, Cannadine, Lords and landlords: the aristocracy and the towns, 1774–1967 (Leicester, 1980).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Turner (p. 242) shows how Gladstone's published views on the capacity of majorities to make wise political decisions changed between 1858 and 1869.

¹⁸ Butler, pp. 151–2, from Morley, J., The life of William Ewart Gladstone (3 vols., London, 1903), 1, 200–1.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Foot, M. R. D. and Matthew, H. C. G. (eds.), The Gladstone diaries III: 1840–1847 (Oxford, 1974), xxiii–xxxiv,Google Scholar and Matthew, H. C. G., ‘Gladstone, Vaticanism, and the question of the east’, Studies in Church History, xv (1978), 417–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ Turner's fascinating chapter on the evolution of critical opinion on the nature and faults of the Athenian constitution includes an account of the dispute on this subject between the Peelite Gladstone and the radical Grote, author of the massive History of Greece. See also Gladstone's criticism, in later life, of the degeneration of the Conservative party, in the H.M.S.O. vol. iv, 103–4.

²¹ Hamer, D. A., Liberal politics in the age of Gladstone and Rosebery: a study in leadership and policy (Oxford, 1972),Google Scholar and The politics of electoral pressure: a study in the history of Victorian reform agitations (Hassocks, 1977),Google Scholar and Stephen, Koss, Nonconformity in modern British politics (London, 1975).Google Scholar

²² For more detail on these men, and on some of the reasons for their defection from Gladstone in 1886, see my article, ‘Religion and the collapse of Gladstone's first government, 1870–1874’, Historical Journal, xxv (1982), 71–101.Google Scholar

²³ Prothero, R. E., ’The national party of the future’, Quarterly Review, CLXIX (1889), 543–72, especially 570.Google Scholar

²⁴ Turner (pp. 252–4) shows very well how Evelyn Abbott's opinions of the political behaviour of the Liberal party changed over time.

²⁵ See, e.g. Oliver, MacDonagh, Early Victorian government 1830–1870 (London, 1977);Google ScholarRoyston, Lambert, Sir John Simon 1816–1904 and English social administration (London, 1963);Google ScholarStokes, E. T., ‘Bureaucracy and ideology: Britain and India in the nineteenth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, xxx (1980), 131–56;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMacLeod, R. M., Treasury control and social administration: a study of establishment growth at the Local Government Board 1871–1905 (London, 1968);Google ScholarGillian, Sutherland (ed.), Studies in the growth of nineteenth-century government (London, 1972);Google ScholarPaul, Addison, The road to 1945: British politics and the second world war (London, 1975).Google Scholar

²⁶ Offer, Property and politics, parts iv and v.

²⁷ Parry, ‘Religion and Gladstone's first government’, especially pp. 98–100.