Gladstone, William Ewart

▪ prime minister of United Kingdom

Introduction

born December 29, 1809, Liverpool, England

died May 19, 1898, Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales

 statesman and four-time prime minister of Great Britain (1868–74, 1880–85, 1886, 1892–94).

Early life

      Gladstone was of purely Scottish descent. His father, John, made himself a merchant prince and was a member of Parliament (1818–27). Gladstone was sent to Eton, where he did not particularly distinguish himself. At Christ Church, Oxford, in 1831 he secured first classes in classics and mathematics.

      He originally intended to take orders in the Church of England, but his father dissuaded him. He mistrusted parliamentary reform; his speech against it in May 1831 at the Oxford Union, of which he had been president, made a strong impression. One of his Christ Church friends, the son of the Duke of Newcastle, persuaded the Duke to support Gladstone as candidate for Parliament for Newark in the general election of December 1832; and the “Grand Old Man” of Liberalism thus began his parliamentary career as a Tory (Conservative Party) member.

      His maiden speech on June 3, 1833, made a decided mark. He held minor office in Sir Robert Peel's (Peel, Sir Robert, 2nd Baronet) short government of 1834–35, first at the treasury, then as undersecretary for the colonies.

      In July 1839 he married Catherine, the daughter of Sir Stephen Glynne of Hawarden, near Chester. A woman of lively wit, complete discretion, and exceptional charm, she was utterly devoted to her husband, to whom she bore eight children. This marriage gave him a secure base of personal happiness for the rest of his life. It also established him in the aristocratic governing class of the time.

The influence of Peel

      Gladstone's early parliamentary performances were strongly Tory; but time after time contact with the effects of Tory policy forced him to take a more liberal view. His conversion from conservatism to liberalism took place in prolonged stages, over a generation. Peel made Gladstone vice president of the Board of Trade, and Gladstone's application astonished even hardworking colleagues.

      He embarked on a major simplification of the tariff and became a more thoroughgoing free trader than Peel. In 1843 he entered the Cabinet as president of the Board of Trade. His Railway Act of 1844 set up minimum requirements for railroad companies and provided for eventual state purchase of railway lines. Gladstone also much improved working conditions for London dock workers. Early in 1845, when the Cabinet proposed to increase a state grant to the Irish Roman Catholic college at Maynooth, Gladstone resigned—not because he did not approve of the increase but because it went against views he had published seven years before. Later in 1845 he rejoined the Cabinet as secretary of state for the colonies, until the government fell in 1846. While at the Colonial Office, he was led nearer to Liberalism by being forced to consider the claims of English-speaking colonists to govern themselves.

Private preoccupations

      The Glynne family estates were deeply involved in the financial panic of 1847. For several years Gladstone was concerned with extricating them. He began charitable work, which was open to a great deal of misinterpretation; he often tried to persuade prostitutes (prostitution) to enter a “rescue” home that he and his wife maintained or in some other way to take up a different way of life.

      Several of Gladstone's closest Oxford friends were among the many Anglicans who converted to Roman Catholicism under the impact of the Oxford Movement. Gladstone had moved to a High Anglican position in Italy just after leaving Oxford. The suspicion that he was Catholic was used against him by his adversaries, of whom he had many in the University of Oxford, for which he was elected MP in August 1847. He scandalized many of his new constituents at once by voting for the admission of Jews (Jew) to Parliament.

      Gladstone made his first weighty speech on foreign affairs in June 1850, opposing foreign secretary Lord Palmerston (Palmerston, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount, Baron Temple Of Mount Temple) in the celebrated Don Pacifico (Don Pacifico Affair) debate over the rights of British nationals abroad. That autumn he visited Naples, where he was appalled by the conditions that he found in the prisons. In July 1851 he published two letters to Lord Aberdeen (Aberdeen, George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of, Viscount Gordon Of Aberdeen, Viscount Of Formartine, Lord Haddo, Methlick, Tarves, And Kellie) describing the conditions, and appealing to all conservatives to set an iniquity right. The Neapolitan prisoners were treated even worse than before, and most conservatives, all over Europe, were deaf to his appeal. But Palmerston circulated the letters to all the British missions on the Continent, and they delighted every liberal who heard of them.

Financial policy

      For nine years after Peel's death in 1850, Gladstone's political position was seldom comfortable. As one of the most eminent of the dwindling band of Peelites, he was mistrusted by the leaders of both parties and distrusted some of them—particularly Palmerston and Disraeli (Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl Of Beaconsfield, Viscount Hughenden Of Hughenden)—in his turn. He refused to join Lord Derby's (Derby, Edward Stanley, 14th earl of) government in 1852. At the end of that year, a brilliant attack on Disraeli's budget brought the government down and Gladstone rose in public estimation. He then joined Aberdeen's coalition as chancellor of the Exchequer. In his first budget speech he put forth a bold and comprehensive plan for large reductions in duties, proposed the eventual elimination of the income tax, and carried a scheme for the extension of the legacy duty to real property.

      His budget provided the backbone of the coalition's success in 1853, a year in which he spent much time devising a scheme for a competitive civil service system. He defended the Crimean War as necessary for the defense of the public law of Europe; but its outbreak disrupted his financial plans. Determined to pay for it as far as possible by taxation, he doubled the income tax in 1854. When Aberdeen fell in January 1855, Gladstone agreed to join Palmerston's Cabinet; but he resigned three weeks later, with two other Peelites, rather than embarrass his party by accepting a committee of inquiry into the conduct of the Crimean War. He was, as a result, unpopular in the country; and he made himself more unpopular still by speeches in Parliament in the summer of 1855, in which he held that the war was no longer justified.

      Gladstone helped to defeat Palmerston in the Commons by a speech on China in March 1857. He twice refused to join Derby's government in 1858, in spite of a generous letter from Disraeli. In June 1859 Gladstone cast a vote for Derby's Conservative government on a confidence motion and caused surprise by joining Palmerston's Whig Cabinet as chancellor of the Exchequer a week later. His sole, but overwhelming, reason for joining a statesman he neither liked nor trusted was the critical state of the Italian question. The triumvirate of Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone did indeed help, over the next 18 months, to secure the unification of almost all Italy (Risorgimento).

      Gladstone was constantly at issue with his prime minister over defense spending. By prolonged efforts, he managed to get the service estimates down by 1866 to a lower figure than that for 1859. A further abolition of import duties was achieved by his budget of 1860. His support of an Anglo-French trade treaty doubled the value of trade. He proposed the abolition of the duties on paper, which the House of Lords declined to do. In 1861 Gladstone included the abolition with all the other budget arrangements in a single finance bill that the Lords dared not amend, a procedure that has been followed ever since. Another useful step was the creation of the post office savings bank. These measures brought him increased popularity with the leaders of working class opinion, as did journeys around the main centres of industry.

      In the general election of July 1865, Gladstone was defeated at Oxford but secured a seat in South Lancashire. When Palmerston died in October and Russell became prime minister, Gladstone took over the leadership of the House of Commons, while remaining at the Exchequer.

      Convinced of the need for a further reform of Parliament, he introduced a bill for the moderate extension of the franchise in March 1866, but it foundered in June, and the whole government resigned. Next year Disraeli introduced a stronger Reform Bill that gave a vote to most householders in boroughs. Disraeli became prime minister early in 1868. Russell had resigned from active politics, and Gladstone was the Liberal mentor during the general election at the end of the year. Though Gladstone lost his Lancashire seat, he was returned for Greenwich; and the Liberal Party won handsomely in the country as a whole. His abilities had made him its indispensable leader, and when Disraeli resigned Queen Victoria called on him to form a government.

First administration (1868–74)

      Gladstone's first Cabinet (1868–74) was perhaps the most capable of the century. Its prime minister tried to supervise the work of each department, devoting his main efforts to Irish and foreign policy. The Irish Protestant church was successfully disestablished in 1869, and a first attempt to grapple with oppressive landlordism in Ireland was made unsuccessfully in 1870; abroad, an attempt to promote disarmament in 1868 failed when Bismarck refused to consider it. The Franco-German War took the government completely by surprise, and the Cabinet would not allow Gladstone to propose to Prussia the neutralization of Alsace and Lorraine. The principal achievements of 1871 and 1872—a London declaration by the great powers that they would not in future abrogate treaties without the consent of all the signatories, and the settlement by arbitration of the “Alabama” claim of the United States—look well in retrospect but were thought pusillanimous at the time. The most useful reforms at home were administrative, except for the Education Act of 1870 and the Ballot Act of 1872. When an Irish University Bill failed to pass the Commons in March 1873, Gladstone resigned but was forced back into office by Disraeli's refusal to form a government. In August he reshuffled his Cabinet and again took on the chancellorship of the Exchequer himself. He dissolved Parliament in January 1874, but his party was heavily defeated and his government resigned. Gladstone gave up the party leadership (though he remained MP for Greenwich) and retired to Hawarden to write pamphlets attacking papal infallibility and articles on Homer.

Bulgarian atrocities

      The indifference of Disraeli's government to the brutality of Turkish reprisals against risings in the Balkans, in 1875–76, brought Gladstone back to active politics. He published a pamphlet, “Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East,” which demanded that the Turkish irregulars should remove themselves from the peninsula. London society and the London mob, the Queen, and the Whiggish elements in his own party all opposed him. Only some radicals really supported him; yet he triumphed. He gave up his Greenwich seat and stood for the Scottish county of Midlothian. In two tremendous outbursts of oratory, in November 1879 and March 1880, Gladstone secured his own return to Parliament, overthrew a government, and secured a large Liberal majority. The Conservative government had to resign.

Second administration (1880–85)

      Gladstone foolishly combined again for two and a half years the duties of prime minister and chancellor of the Exchequer. His large apparent majority in the Commons was unruly. Not until 1884 could he introduce a third Reform (Reform Bill) Act that nearly doubled the electorate by giving votes to householders in country districts. On the Eastern question, he and Granville (Granville, Granville George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl, Viscount Granville Of Stone Park, Baron Leveson Of Stone), the foreign secretary, managed by a brusque naval threat to compel Turkey to cede Thessaly to Greece. Still graver troubles arose in Ireland. The Irish Land Act of 1881, largely Gladstone's own work, in the long run promoted the prosperity of the Irish peasant; but violent crime continued. No alternatives to strong police powers were left, and measures to restrict the freedom of Irish members to obstruct the work of the Commons had to be taken.

      In 1882 the Cabinet was compelled to authorize the occupation of Egypt. Gladstone's settlement of the Egyptian debt question (1885) was honourable to his belief in the concert of Europe but had the unintended effect of tying British foreign policy to that of the Germans. When he allowed Gen. C.G. Gordon (Gordon, Charles George) to go to Khartoum in Sudan and then failed to rescue him, his death cost Gladstone much popularity. Firm handling of a dispute with Russia over the border of Afghanistan somewhat restored his prestige; but when the government was defeated on the budget in June 1885, he was glad to resign. He refused an offer of an earldom from the Queen.

Irish Home Rule

      Gladstone appreciated the full force of Irish nationalism. He had for years favoured Irish Home Rule in the form of a subordinate parliament in Dublin. In 1885 a combination of Irish with Conservative votes had defeated him in June, and he waited silently to see what an Irish–Conservative combination would produce. The general election of November–December 1885 returned a Parliament in which the Liberal members exactly equalled the total of Conservatives plus Irish. At this moment, Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule was revealed, and most Conservatives therefore turned against it. Lord Salisbury's government was defeated, and Gladstone formed his third Cabinet in February 1886. His Home Rule Bill was rejected in Parliament in June by a large secession of Whigs, and in the country at a general election in July, and Gladstone resigned office.

      He had kept his Midlothian seat, unopposed, and carried with him into the new Parliament a personal following 190 strong, supported by the National Liberal Federation, the most powerful political machine in the country. He devoted the next six years to an effort to convince the British electorate that to grant Home Rule to the Irish nation would be an act of justice and wisdom. He spoke at many meetings and cooperated with the Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell (Parnell, Charles Stewart). But in 1890 he had a dangerous quarrel with Parnell about the political consequences of the O'Shea divorce. (Gladstone had not believed the rumours about Parnell's liaison, holding that Parnell would never “imperil the future of Ireland for an adulterous intrigue.”) He never sought to correct the stories Parnell spread about him in Ireland. He sanctioned an extensive program of Liberal reforms drawn up at Newcastle in 1891, because it was headed by Home Rule, and on this platform the Liberals won a majority of 40 in the general election of 1892.

      Gladstone formed his fourth Cabinet in August 1892. Its members were held together only by awe of him. He piloted another Home Rule Bill through 85 sittings of the Commons in 1893; the Lords rejected it by the largest majority ever recorded there to that time, 419–41. The Cabinet rejected Gladstone's proposal to dissolve.

      He disagreed with his colleagues on a large increase in naval expenditure and finally resigned—ostensibly because sight and hearing were failing—on March 3, 1894. He was much mortified by the coolness of his last official interview with the Queen, who by now so frankly detested him that she could hardly conceal her feelings. He retired to Hawarden and busied himself with an edition of the works of Bishop Joseph Butler (3 vol., 1896). Humanitarian to the end, in his last great speech, at Liverpool in September 1896, he denounced Turkish atrocities in Armenia. After a painful illness, he died of cancer of the palate at Hawarden. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

      Gladstone was perhaps the greatest British politician of the 19th century. To him above all others goes the credit for creating a political system and state structure that aimed to function beyond the reach of vested interests, particularly those of the upper classes in British society.

Michael Richard Daniell Foot Ed.

Additional Reading

E.J. Feuchtwanger, Gladstone (1975), an excellent biography; Peter Stansky, Gladstone: A Progress in Politics (1979, reissued 1981), a popular review of the development of Gladstone's political views; John Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, 3 vol. (1903, reissued 1972), a standard biography. Many family points suppressed by Morley are in Sir Philip M. Magnus, Gladstone (1954, reissued 1964); and in S.G. Checkland, The Gladstones, A Family Biography, 1764–1851 (1971). Of his published letters, Agatha Ramm (ed.), The Political Correspondence of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, 1868–76, 2 vol. (1952), and . . . 1876–86, 2 vol. (1962), are important and revealing; Philip Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston (1928, reissued 1971), and his The Queen and Mr. Gladstone (1933, reissued 1969), provide plenty of colour. Of Gladstone's own writings, the Autobiographica, vol. 1 of W.E. Gladstone, 2 vol., ed. by John Brooke and Mary Sorensen (1971), though written in old age, is rewarding; his Chapter of Autobiography (1868) also repays study. Many of his learned articles are collected in Gleanings of Past Years, 1843–78, 7 vol. (1879; reissued in 8 vol., 1976), and in Later Gleanings (1897, reissued 1976). See also The Gladstone Diaries (1968– ).

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