Perhaps he did not know very clearly what he expected.

At any rate he was disappointed, and, though he wrote an enthusiastic letter to Peel alter the abolition of the Corn Laws, he regarded the Reform Act of 1867 with indignant disgust.
Froude had a fitful and uncertain admiration for Disraeli.

Gladstone he never liked or trusted, and did not take the trouble to understand.

He had been brought up to despise oratory, he had caught from Carlyle a horror of democracy, he disliked the Anglo-Catholic party in the Church of England, and Gladstone's financial genius was out of his line.

The Liberal Government of 1868 was in his opinion criminally indifferent to the Colonies.