Those who knew their precedents were not slow to remark that the ...

Those who knew their precedents were not slow to remark that the Irish had learnt their tactics from the phalanx of Tory Colonels in 1870, bent on opposing the abolition of Army Purchase.

It was one of Lord Salisbury's paradoxes that only uncontentious legislation should be brought before Parliament: if it were contentious, then public opinion was not ripe for it. The notion that a party should enter office with a ready-made list of things it meant to do, begins to take hold in the years just after Palmerston's death, when the press rang with policies and predictions of what the returning spring of Liberalism would bring forth.

This legislative ardour was somewhat checked by the experiences of 1868 to 1874, and not legislation, but relief from legislation, was the promise held out by Disraeli.