When Lord Beaconsfield resigned, the queen sent for Lord Hartington, the titular leader of the Liberals, but he and Lord Granville assured her that no other chief than Gladstone would satisfy the party. Accordingly, on the 23rd of April he became prime minister for the second time. His second administration, of which the main achievement was the extension of the suffrage to the agricultural labourers, was harassed by two controversies, relating to Ireland and Egypt, which proved disastrous to the Liberal party. Gladstone alienated considerable masses of English opinion by his efforts to reform the tenure of Irish land, and provoked the Irish people by his attempts to establish social order and to repress crime. A bill to provide compensation for tenants who had been evicted by Irish landlords passed the Commons, but was shipwrecked in the Lords, and a ghastly record of outrage and murder stained the following winter. A Coercion Bill and a Land Bill passed in 1881 proved unsuccessful. On the 6th of May 1882 the newly appointed chief secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and his under-secretary, Mr Burke, were stabbed to death in the Phoenix Park at Dublin. A new Crimes Act, courageously administered by Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan, abolished exceptional crime in Ireland, but completed the breach between the British government and the Irish party in parliament.
The bombardment of the forts at Alexandria and the occupation of Egypt in 1882 were viewed with great disfavour by the bulk of the Liberal party, and were but little congenial to Gladstone himself. The circumstances of General Gordon's untimely death awoke an outburst of indignation against those who were, or seemed to be, responsible for it. Frequent votes of censure were proposed by the Opposition, and on the 8th of June 1885 the government were beaten on the budget. Gladstone resigned. The queen offered him the dignity of an earldom, which he declined. He was succeeded by Lord Salisbury.