Roy Jenkins, Gladstone: Chapters 19 and 20, "Irish Land and European War" and "Sovereign and Prime Minister"

Gladstone's first cabinet contained no challengers to his position as prime minister, but was nonetheless full of strong personalities with views in conflict with his own. (In light of the new party's formation out of former Whigs, Radicals, and Peelites, this does seem to some degree inevitable.) War Minister Edward Cardwell, a former Peelite like Gladstone, felt that military expenditure was too stingy, among other differences. Robert Lowe, although a difficult Chancellor of the Exchequer (and later Home Minister), was as keen like Gladstone on civil service reform. Granville as Colonial Minister and later Foreign Secretary, at least made himself useful as an intermediary between Gladstone and the old Whigs. John Bright, as leader of the Radicals, was disposed to want the whole loaf when Gladstone offered half. Even Gladstone himself could seem of two minds, as his old conservative sentiments held back his newer liberal principles.

Many conflicts in his cabinet and party came out over the course of the legistlative program of 1870. This was particularly true of the Irish Land Bill as Whigs, with their traditional support among landed magnates, dreaded the implications for landowners in Great Britain. The bill invested Irish tenants with property rights for the improvements they had made in their leaseholds. In order to make this effective, tenants had to be protected from arbitrary evictions. This in turn required a mechanism to determine whether rents were fair, as the ability of tenants to refuse fair rents would have been unacceptable to Whigs, while allowing landlords to charge unreasonable rents in order to secure evictions would have made the bill meaningless. In order to secure passage through the Lords, Gladstone had to accept a change of terminology, the prohibition of excessive rents being changed to exorbitant ones. This left the measure with few teeth when cases came to court.

In the end, the bill failed to resolve the Irish land question as Gladstone had hoped. Although his own party had been unsettled, neither the Catholic bishops nor the representatives of the Irish public evinced support. Nor should these circumstances have been a surprise. Gladstone had done little to prepare the case for the bill to his own party, for example by creating a commission of inquiry. And he had never directly consulted the Catholic bishops or even the prominent Irish parliamentarian Sir John Gray.

The Elementary Education Bill providing for universal primary education found Gladstone at odds with much of his party again. This was not an issue close to Gladstone's heart -- he was too much of a snob to care about any education but the elite, classical sort. Still, he cared about the religious implications, which is where the key conflicts over the bill emerged. He did not want to endanger religious instruction in existing Anglican schools, or have the state pay for diluted Christian instruction at new state-supported schools (instead wanting denominations to provide any instruction within the schools voluntarily at their own expense). This did not suit the Nonconformists, who wanted mandatory basic Biblical instruction, and proposed this in the Cowper-Temple amendment. Gladstone acceded, and pushed through the amended bill as if it had been all his own. This did not go down well, however, with a large number of Liberals who opposed any denominational tinge to religious instruction in schools, and Gladstone had to rely on Conservative votes to retain his compromise. In fact, the issue of religious instruction at state schools created lasting instability in Gladstone's coalition.

The University Tests bill was more viscerally upsetting for Gladstone. The bill stipulated that no religious affiliation would be required for academic appointments at Oxford and Cambridge, save for theological professorships and other positions of a religious nature. It took several years for Gladstone to shake off his attachment to instruction at Oxford and Cambridge as an Anglican preserve. He had been adamantly opposed in the mid-1860s. Even in the 1870 session, he was only willing to allow it to be introduced by Coleridge, his Solicitor-General, as a private member's bill. After it failed to negotiate the Lords that year, the now quickly evolving Gladstone brought it back as a government bill in 1871, and bludgeoned the Lords into acceptance.

The Franco-Prussian War provided Gladstone's major foreign policy challenge of 1870. He aimed to keep Britain out, save Belgium from invasion, and prevent Germany from annexing Alsace and part of Lorraine. The first two did not prove very challenging. His plan for the latter, collaborating with other neutral European powers to object to the annexation, did not even get the support of his cabinet (and hardly seemed likely to succeed, in my opinion). In the midst of this, he indiscreetly wrote an anonymous article, which did not long remain anonymous, for the Edinburgh Review criticizing the German annexation.

Gladstone's rapport with Queen Victoria deteriorated throughout his first premiership. In part, this reflects how their temperments and politics both changed, and in opposite directions. The natty and more conventional Gladstone of Victoria's early reign became more wild-looking and radical, and ever more earnestly preachy. Victoria, after a more earnest and liberal middle age, much influenced by her husband, Price Albert, became more reserved, prone to hyperchondria, attached to her status, and averse to any hint of leveling. Although Gladstone devoted an inordinate amount of time and effort to cultivating the queen, he was not disposed to be soothing or accomodating on any point which he considered important, or even able just to let disagreements rest.

Nonetheless, early in his term relations were at least amicable. The queen's visit to London for the opening of Blackfriars Bridge in 1869 (much lobbied for by Gladstone) was a great success. Victoria showed herself capable of being accomodating on ecclesistical matters, too, over the Irish Church Bill and the appointment of liberal bishops in 1868 and 1869. She (sensibly) nudged the government to back off a new match tax in 1871, and refrained from jingoism over the Alabama dispute with the United States the next year.

The struggle over the Army Reform Bill in the summer of 1871, which abolished the purchase of commissions and promotions, did vex Victoria, who was close to many in the establishment who were keen on such purchases. Besides being out of sympathy with the policy, the genuinely ailing Victoria was also eager to depart from London and distressed by the prolongation of the parliamentary session due to the disputes. A more serious breaking point came over Gladstone's plan in 1872 to make the Prince of Wales the Viceroy of Ireland. Both prince and queen detested the idea, the former perhaps mostly because he it as a kind of dreary exile, while the latter saw it as an attempt to use the royals to promote the government's Ireland policy, which she dtested. Gladstone fruitlessly belabored his case for it, leading to some lasting bitterness.