Gladstone & Ireland 'Ireland, Ireland! That cloud in the west, that coming storm, the minister of God's retribution upon cruel...injustice. Ireland forces upon these great social and great religious questions.' Gladstone, in a letter to his sister, 1845. | To this great country the state of Ireland after seven hundred years of our tutelage is in my opinion so long as it continues, an intolerable disgrace, and a danger so absolutely transcending all others, that I call it the only real danger of the noble empire of the Queen.
Gladstone, in a letter to Queen Victoria, 1870. | His support for the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in his parliamentary resolutions in the spring of 1868 may also have been conceived as a means of reuniting the Liberal Parties after the divisions over parliamentary reform in 1866-7, and also as an attempt - which turned out to be successful, as it led to the 1868 general elections - to regain the political initiative from Disraeli. Paul Adelman and Robert Pearce, Great Britain and the Irish Question, 1798-1922. | What do these sources suggest about
Gladstone’s motives for wanting
to deal with Ireland? |  'Strangling the Monster', Punch, 1881.
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