On Palmerston's death in October, Earl Russell formed his second ministry. Russell & Gladstone (now the senior Liberal in the House of Commons) attempted to pass a reform bill, which was defeated in the House of Commons because of the refusal of the "Adullamite" Whigs, led by Robert Lowe, to support it. The Conservatives then formed a ministry, in which after long Parliamentary debate Disraeli passed the Second Reform Act of 1867, more far-reaching than Gladstone's proposed bill had been.
Lord Russell retired in 1867 and Gladstone became leader of the Liberal Party. in 1868 Gladstone proposed the Irish Church Resolutions to reunite the Liberal Party for government (on the issue of disestablishment of the Church of Ireland – this would be done during Gladstone's First Government in 1869 and meant that Irish Roman Catholics did not need to pay their tithes to the Anglican Church of Ireland).[40] When these passed the House of Commons Disraeli called a General Election.
First premiership (1868–1874)
In the next general election in 1868, the South Lancashire constituency had been broken-up by the Second Reform Act into two: South East Lancashire and South West Lancashire. Gladstone stood for South West Lancashire and for Greenwich, it being quite common then for candidates to stand in two constituencies simultaneously.[41] He was defeated in Lancashire and won in Greenwich. He became Prime Minister for the first time and remained in the office until 1874. Evelyn Ashley famously described the scene in the grounds of Hawarden Castle on 1 December 1868, though getting the date wrong:
One afternoon of November, 1868, in the Park at Hawarden, I was standing by Mr. Gladstone holding his coat on my arm while he, in his shirt sleeves, was wielding an axe to cut down a tree. Up came a telegraph messenger. He took the telegram, opened it and read it, then handed it to me, speaking only two words, namely, ‘Very significant’, and at once resumed his work. The message merely stated that General Grey would arrive that evening from Windsor. This, of course, implied that a mandate was coming from the Queen charging Mr. Gladstone with the formation of his first Government. I said nothing, but waited while the well-directed blows resounded in regular cadence. After a few minutes the blows ceased and Mr. Gladstone, resting on the handle of his axe, looked up, and with deep earnestness in his voice, and great intensity in his face, exclaimed: ‘My mission is to pacify Ireland.’ He then resumed his task, and never said another word till the tree was down.[42]
In the 1860s and 1870s, Gladstonian Liberalism was characterised by a number of policies intended to improve individual liberty and loosen political and economic restraints. First was the minimisation of public expenditure on the premise that the economy and society were best helped by allowing people to spend as they saw fit. Secondly, his foreign policy aimed at promoting peace to help reduce expenditures and taxation and enhance trade. Thirdly, laws that prevented people from acting freely to improve themselves were reformed. When an unemployed miner (Daniel Jones) wrote to him to complain of his unemployment and low wages, Gladstone gave what H. C. G. Matthew has called "the classic mid-Victorian reply" on 20 October 1869:
The only means which have been placed in my power of ‘raising the wages of colliers’ has been by endeavouring to beat down all those restrictions upon trade which tend to reduce the price to be obtained for the product of their labour, & to lower as much as may be the taxes on the commodities which they may require for use or for consumption. Beyond this I look to the forethought not yet so widely diffused in this country as in Scotland, & in some foreign lands; & I need not remind you that in order to facilitate its exercise the Government have been empowered by Legislation to become through the Dept. of the P.O. the receivers & guardians of savings.[43]
Gladstone's first premiership instituted reforms in the [45] Some leading Conservatives at this time were contemplating an alliance between the aristocracy and the working class against the capitalist class, an idea called the New Social Alliance.[46] At a speech at Blackheath on 28 October 1871, Gladstone warned his constituents against these social reformers:
...they are not your friends, but they are your enemies in fact, though not in intention, who teach you to look to the Legislature for the radical removal of the evils that afflict human life.... It is the individual mind and conscience, it is the individual character, on which mainly human happiness or misery depends. (Cheers.) The social problems that confront us are many and formidable. Let the Government labour to its utmost, let the Legislature labour days and nights in your service; but, after the very best has been attained and achieved, the question whether the English father is to be the father of a happy family and the centre of a united home is a question which must depend mainly upon himself. (Cheers.) And those who...promise to the dwellers in towns that every one of them shall have a house and garden in free air, with ample space; those who tell you that there shall be markets for selling at wholesale prices retail quantities—I won't say are imposters, because I have no doubt they are sincere; but I will say they are quacks (cheers); they are deluded and beguiled by a spurious philanthropy, and when they ought to give you substantial, even if they are humble and modest boons, they are endeavouring, perhaps without their own consciousness, to delude you with fanaticism, and offering to you a fruit which, when you attempt to taste it, will prove to be but ashes in your mouths. (Cheers.)[47]
He instituted abolition of the Alabama Claims in 1872 in favour of the Americans. He also instituted the Cardwell Reforms in 1869 that made peacetime flogging illegal and, in 1870, the Irish Land Act and Forster's Education Act. In 1871, he instituted the Universities Tests Act. In 1872, he secured passage of the Ballot Act for secret voting ballots. In 1873, his leadership led to the passage of laws restructuring the High Courts. He also passed the 1872 licensing act.
Gladstone unexpectedly dissolved Parliament in January 1874 and called a general election. In his election address to his constituents on 23 January, Gladstone said:
Upon a review of the finance of the last five years, we are enabled to state that, notwithstanding the purchase of the telegraphs for a sum exceeding 9,000,000l., the aggregate amount of the national debt has been reduced by more than 20,000,000l.; that taxes have been lowered or abolished (over and above any amount imposed) to the extent of 12,500,000l.; that during the present year the Alabama Indemnity has been paid, and the charge of the Ashantee War will be met out of revenue; and that in estimating, as we can now venture to do, the income of the coming year (and, for the moment assuming the general scale of charge to continue as it was fixed during the last Session), we do not fear to anticipate as the probable balance a surplus exceeding rather than falling short of 5,000,000l.... The first item...which I have to set down in the financial arrangements proper for the first year is relief, but relief coupled with reform, of local taxation.... It has...been the happy fortune of Mr. Lowe to bring it [the income tax] down, first from 6d. to 4d., and then from 4d. to 3d., in the pound. The proceeds of the Income Tax for the present year are expected to be between 5,000,000l. and 6,000,000l., and at a sacrifice for the financial year of something less than 5,500,000l. the country may enjoy the advantage and relief of its total repeal. I do not hesitate to affirm that an effort should now be made to attain this advantage, nor to declare that, according to my judgment, it is in present circumstances practicable...we ought not to aid the rates, and remove the Income Tax, without giving to the general consumer, and giving him simultaneously, some marked relief in the class of articles of popular consumption.... I for one could not belong to a Government which did not on every occasion seek to enlarge its resources by a wise economy.[48]
Gladstone's proposals went some way to meet working-class demands, such as the realisation of the free breakfast table through repealing the duties on tea and sugar, and reform of local taxation which was increasing for the poorer ratepayers.[49] According to the working-class financial reformer Thomas Briggs, writing in the trade unionist newspaper The Bee-Hive, the manifesto relied on "a much higher authority than Mr. Gladstone...viz., the late Richard Cobden".[50]
The dissolution was reported in The Times on 24 January and on 30 January the names of the first fourteen MPs for uncontested seats were published; by 9 February a Conservative victory was apparent. In contrast to 1868 and 1880 when the Liberal campaign lasted several months, only three weeks separated the news of the dissolution and the election. The working-class newspapers were taken by surprise at the news and had little time to express an opinion on Gladstone's manifesto before the election was over.[51] Unlike the efforts of the Conservatives, the organisation of the Liberal Party had declined since 1868 and they had also failed to retain Liberal voters on the electoral register. [52] The Liberals received a majority of the vote in each of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom and 189,000 more votes nationally than the Conservatives. However they obtained a minority of seats in the House of Commons.[53]
Opposition (1874–1880)
In the wake of Benjamin Disraeli's victory, Gladstone retired from the leadership of the Liberal party, although he retained his seat in the House.
In November 1874, Gladstone published the pamphlet The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, directed at the First Vatican Council's dogmatising Papal Infallibility in 1870, which had outraged him. Gladstone claimed that this decree had placed British Catholics in a dilemma over their loyalty to the Crown and their loyalty to the Pope. Gladstone urged British Catholics to reject papal infallibility as they had opposed the Spanish Armada of 1588. The pamphlet sold 150,000 copies by the end of 1874. In February 1875 Gladstone published a second pamphlet that was a defence of his earlier pamphlet and a reply to his critics, entitled Vaticanism: an Answer to Reproofs and Replies. He described the Catholic Church as "an Asian monarchy: nothing but one giddy height of despotism, and one dead level of religious subservience". He further claimed that the Pope wanted to destroy the rule of law and replace it with arbitrary tyranny, and then to hide these "crimes against liberty beneath a suffocating cloud of incense".[54]
In a speech to the Hawarden Amateur Horticultural Society on 17 August 1876, Gladstone said that "I am delighted to see how many young boys and girls have come forward to obtain honourable marks of recognition on this occasion,—if any effectual good is to be done to them, it must be done by teaching and encouraging them and helping them to help themselves. All the people who pretend to take your own concerns out of your own hands and to do everything for you, I won't say they are imposters; I won't even say they are quacks; but I do say they are mistaken people. The only sound, healthy description of countenancing and assisting these institutions is that which teaches independence and self-exertion".[55] Lord Kilbracken, one of Gladstone's secretaries, said:
It will be borne in mind that the Liberal doctrines of that time, with their violent anti-socialist spirit and their strong insistence on the gospel of thrift, self-help, settlement of wages by the higgling of the market, and non-interference by the State.... I think that Mr. Gladstone was the strongest anti-socialist that I have ever known among persons who gave any serious thought to social and political questions. It is quite true, as has been often said, that “we are all socialists up to a certain point”; but Mr. Gladstone fixed that point lower, and was more vehement against those who went above it, than any other politician or official of my acquaintance. I remember his speaking indignantly to me of the budget of 1874 as “That socialistic budget of Northcote's,” merely because of the special relief which it gave to the poorer class of income-tax payers. His strong belief in Free Trade was only one of the results of his deep-rooted conviction that the Government's interference with the free action of the individual, whether by taxation or otherwise, should be kept at an irreducible minimum. It is, indeed, not too much to say that his conception of Liberalism was the negation of Socialism.[56]
A pamphlet he published in September 1876, Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East,[57] attacked the Disraeli government for its indifference to the Ottoman Empire's violent repression of the Bulgarian April uprising. An often-quoted excerpt illustrates his formidable rhetorical powers:
Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in a European jail, there is not a criminal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and over-boil at the recital of that which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged, which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions which produced it and which may again spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil soaked and reeking with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that the door should be left open to their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the world!
Let me endeavour, very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline what the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mohammedanism simply, but of Mohammedanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mohammedans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as far as their dominion reached, civilization vanished from view. They represented everywhere government by force as opposed to government by law. – Yet a government by force can not be maintained without the aid of an intellectual element. – Hence there grew up, what has been rare in the history of the world, a kind of tolerance in the midst of cruelty, tyranny and rapine. Much of Christian life was contemptuously left alone and a race of Greeks was attracted to Constantinople which has all along made up, in some degree, the deficiencies of Turkish Islam in the element of mind![58]
During the 1879 election campaign, also called Midlothian campaign, he rousingly spoke against Disraeli's foreign policies during the ongoing Second Anglo-Afghan War in Afghanistan. (See Great Game). He saw the war as "great dishonour" and also criticised British conduct in the Zulu War. Gladstone also (on 29 November) criticised what he saw as the Conservative government's profligate spending:
...the Chancellor of the Exchequer shall boldly uphold economy in detail; and it is the mark ... of ... a chicken-hearted Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he shrinks from upholding economy in detail, when, because it is a question of only £2000 or £3000, he says that is no matter. He is ridiculed, no doubt, for what is called saving candle-ends and cheese-parings. No Chancellor of the Exchequer is worth his salt who is not ready to save what are meant by candle-ends and cheese-parings in the cause of his country. No Chancellor of the Exchequer is worth his salt who makes his own popularity either his first consideration, or any consideration at all, in administrating the public purse. You would not like to have a housekeeper or steward who made her or his popularity with the tradesmen the measure of the payments that were to be delivered to them. In my opinion the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the trusted and confidential steward of the public. He is under a sacred obligation with regard to all that he consents to spend.... I am bound to say hardly ever in the six years that Sir Stafford Northcote has been in office have I heard him speak a resolute word on behalf of economy.[59]
Second premiership (1880–1885)
Gladstone in relaxed mood
In 1880, the Liberals won again and the Liberal leaders, Lord Hartington (leader in the House of Commons) and Lord Granville, retired in Gladstone's favour. Gladstone won his constituency election in Midlothian and also in Leeds, where he had also been adopted as a candidate. As he could lawfully only serve as MP for one constituency, Leeds was passed to his son Herbert. One of his other sons, Henry, was also elected as an MP.
Queen Victoria asked Lord Hartington to form a ministry, but he persuaded her to send for Gladstone. Gladstone's second administration – both as Prime Minister and again as Chancellor of the Exchequer till 1882 – lasted from June 1880 to June 1885. He originally intended to retire at the end of 1882, the fiftieth anniversary of his entry into politics, but in the event did not do so.
Foreign policy
Historians have been sharply critical of Gladstone's foreign-policy during his second ministry. Hayes says it, "provides one of the most intriguing and perplexing tales of mobile and in competence in foreign affairs, unsurpassed in modern political history until the days of Grey and, later, Neville Chamberlain."[60] Gladstone had opposed himself to the "colonial lobby" pushing for the scramble for Africa. His term saw the end of the Second Anglo-Afghan War, First Boer War and the war against the Mahdi in Sudan.
On 11 July 1882, Gladstone ordered the bombardment of Alexandria, starting the Anglo-Egyptian War, which resulted in the occupation of Egypt. Gladstone's role in the decision to invade was described as relatively hands-off, and that the decision to invade was made by certain members of his cabinet such as Spencer Cavendish, Secretary of State for India, Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook, First Lord of the Admiralty, Hugh Childers, Secretary of State for War, and Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville, the Foreign Secretary.[61] The reasons for this war are the subject of a historiographical debate. Some historians argue that the invasion was to protect the Suez Canal and to prevent anarchy in the wake of the Urabi Revolt and the riots in Alexandria in June 1882. Other historians argue that the invasion occurred to protect the interests of British investors with assets in Egypt and also to boost the political popularity of the Liberal Party.[61]
Gladstone by Rupert William Potter, 28 July 1884.
Ireland
In 1881 he established the Irish Coercion Act, which permitted the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to detain people for as "long as was thought necessary", as there was much rural disturbance in Ireland and Cavendish, the Irish Secretary, was assassinated by Irish rebels in Dublin.[62] He also passed the Second Land Act (the First, in 1870, had entitled Irish tenants, if evicted, to compensation for improvements which they had made on their property, but had had little effect) which gave Irish tenants the "3Fs" – fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale.[63]
Franchise
He also extended the franchise to agricultural labourers and others in the 1884 Reform Act, which gave the counties the same franchise as the boroughs— adult male householders and £10 lodgers—and added about six million to the total number who could vote in parliamentary elections. Parliamentary reform continued with the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885.[64]
Gladstone was becoming increasingly uneasy about the direction in which British politics was moving. In a letter to Lord Acton on 11 February 1885, Gladstone criticised Tory Democracy as "demagogism" that "put down pacific, law-respecting, economic elements that ennobled the old Conservatism" but "still, in secret, as obstinately attached as ever to the evil principle of class interests". He found contemporary Liberalism better, "but far from being good". Gladstone claimed that this Liberalism's "pet idea is what they call construction, – that is to say, taking into the hands of the state the business of the individual man". Both Tory Democracy and this new Liberalism, Gladstone wrote, had done "much to estrange me, and had for many, many years".[65]
Failure
Sneh Mahajan says, "Gladstone's second ministry remained barren of any achievement in the domestic sphere."[66] However his downfall came in Africa, where his failure to rescue General Gordon's force in Sudan in January 1885 was a major blow to Gladstone's popularity. Queen Victoria sent him a telegram of rebuke which found its way into the press. Critics said Gladstone had neglected military affairs and had not acted promptly enough to save the besieged Gordon. Critics inverted his acronym, "G.O.M." (for "Grand Old Man"), to "M.O.G." (for "Murderer of Gordon"). He resigned as Prime Minister in 1885 and declined Queen Victoria's offer of an earldom.
Third premiership (1886)
Gladstone's conversion to a policy of Home Rule in late 1885 (the "Hawarden Kite") resulted in the fall of Lord Salisbury's Government. The Irish Nationalists, led by Charles Parnell, voted against the Tories on a land Bill. The Irish Nationalists held the balance of power in Parliament at this time, Gladstone's conversion had convinced them to support the Liberal Government by using the 86 seats of Parliament they controlled. The main purpose of this administration was to deliver Ireland a reform which would give them a devolved assembly, similar to that which has been enjoyed by Scotland and Wales since 1998. In 1886 Gladstone's party was allied with Irish Nationalists to defeat Lord Salisbury's government. Gladstone regained his position as Prime Minister and combined the office with that of Lord Privy Seal. During this administration he first introduced his Home Rule Bill for Ireland. The issue split the Liberal Party (a breakaway group went on to create the Liberal Unionist party) and the bill was thrown out on the second reading, ending his government after only a few months and inaugurating another headed by Lord Salisbury.
Opposition (1886–1892)
Gladstone supported the London dockers in their strike of 1889. After their victory he gave a speech at Hawarden on 23 September in which he said: "In the common interests of humanity, this remarkable strike and the results of this strike, which have tended somewhat to strengthen the condition of labour in the face of capital, is the record of what we ought to regard as satisfactory, as a real social advance [that] tends to a fair principle of division of the fruits of industry".[67] This speech has been described by Eugenio Biagini as having "no parallel in the rest of Europe except in the rhetoric of the toughest socialist leaders".[68] Visitors at Hawarden in October were "shocked...by some rather wild language on the Dock labourers question".[69] Gladstone was impressed with workers unconnected with the dockers' dispute who "intended to make common cause" in the interests of justice. On 23 October at Southport, Gladstone delivered a speech where he claimed that the right to combination, which in London was "innocent and lawful, in Ireland would be penal and...punished by imprisonment with hard labour". Gladstone believed that the right to combination used by British workers was in jeopardy when it could be denied to Irish workers.[70] In October 1890 Gladstone at Midlothian claimed that competition between capital and labour, "where it has gone to sharp issues, where there have been strikes on one side and lock-outs on the other, I believe that in the main and as a general rule, the labouring man has been in the right".[71]
On 11 December 1891 Gladstone said that: "It is a lamentable fact if, in the midst of our civilisation, and at the close of the nineteenth century, the workhouse is all that can be offered to the industrious labourer at the end of a long and honourable life. I do not enter into the question now in detail. I do not say it is an easy one; I do not say that it will be solved in a moment; but I do say this, that until society is able to offer to the industrious labourer at the end of a long and blameless life something better than the workhouse, society will not have discharged its duties to its poorer members".[72] On 24 March 1892 Gladstone said that the Liberals had:
...come generally...to the conclusion that there is something painful in the condition of the rural labourer in this great respect, that it is hard even for the industrious and sober man, under ordinary conditions, to secure a provision for his own old age. Very large propositions, involving, some of them, very novel and very wide principles, have been submitted to the public, for the purpose of securing such a provision by means independent of the labourer himself. Sir, I am not going to criticise these proposals, and I am only referring to them as signs that there is much to be done—that their condition is far from satisfactory; and it is eminently, as I think, our duty to develop in the first instance, every means that we may possibly devise whereby, if possible, the labourer may be able to make this provision for himself, or to approximate towards making such provision far more efficaciously and much more closely than he can now do.[73][74]
Gladstone wrote on 16 July 1892 in his autobiographica that "In 1834 the Government...did themselves high honour by the new Poor Law Act, which rescued the English peasantry from the total loss of their independence".[75]
Gladstone wrote to Herbert Spencer, who contributed the introduction to a collection of anti-socialist essays (A Plea for Liberty, 1891), that "I ask to make reserves, and of one passage, which will be easily guessed, I am unable even to perceive the relevancy. But speaking generally, I have read this masterly argument with warm admiration and with the earnest hope that it may attract all the attention which it so well deserves".[76] The passage Gladstone alluded to was one where Spencer spoke of "the behaviour of the so-called Liberal party".[77]
Fourth premiership (1892–1894)
The general election of 1892 resulted in a minority Liberal government under Gladstone as Prime Minister.
Gladstone's electoral address had promised Home Rule and the disestablishment of the Scottish and Welsh Churches.[78] In February 1893 he introduced the Second Home Rule Bill. The Bill was passed in the Commons at second reading on 21 April by 43 votes and third reading on 1 September by 34 votes. However the House of Lords killed the Bill by voting against by 419 votes to 41 on 8 September.
The Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act, passed in 1893, required local authorities to provide separate education for blind and deaf children.[79]
When questioned in the Commons on what his government would do about unemployment by the Conservative MP Colonel Howard Vincent on 1 September 1893, Gladstone replied:
I cannot help regretting that the hon. and gallant Gentleman has felt it his duty to put the question. It is put under circumstances that naturally belong to one of those fluctuations in the condition of trade which, however unfortunate and lamentable they may be, recur from time to time. Undoubtedly I think that questions of this kind, whatever be the intention of the questioner, have a tendency to produce in the minds of people, or to suggest to the people, that these fluctuations can be corrected by the action of the Executive Government. Anything that contributes to such an impression inflicts an injury upon the labouring population.[80][81]
In December 1893 an Opposition motion proposed by [82] In January 1894 Gladstone wrote that he would not "break to pieces the continuous action of my political life, nor trample on the tradition received from every colleague who has ever been my teacher" by supporting naval rearmament.[83] Gladstone also opposed Chancellor Sir William Harcourt's proposal to implement a graduated death duty. In a fragment of autobiography dated 25 July 1894, Gladstone denounced the tax as
...by far the most Radical measure of my lifetime. I do not object to the principle of graduated taxation: for the just principle of ability to pay is not determined simply by the amount of income.... But, so far as I understand the present measure of finance from the partial reports I have received, I find it too violent. It involves a great departure from the methods of political action established in this country, where reforms, and especially financial reforms, have always been considerate and even tender.... I do not yet see the ground on which it can be justly held that any one description of property should be more heavily burdened than others, unless moral and social grounds can be shown first: but in this case the reasons drawn from those sources seem rather to verge in the opposite direction, for real property has more of presumptive connection with the discharge of duty that that which is ranked as personal...the aspect of the measure is not satisfactory to a man of my traditions (and these traditions lie near the roots of my being).... For the sudden introduction of such change there is I think no precedent in the history of this country. And the severity of the blow is greatly aggravated in moral effect by the fact that it is dealt only to a handful of individuals.[84]
Gladstone had his last audience with the Queen on 28 February and chaired his last Cabinet on 1 March, the last of 556 he had chaired. Also on that day he gave his last speech to the House of Commons. Gladstone said that the government would withdraw opposition to the Lords' amendments to the Local Government Bill "under protest" and that it was "a controversy which, when once raised, must go forward to an issue".[85] He resigned the Premiership on 2 March. The Queen did not ask Gladstone who should succeed him but sent for Lord Rosebery (Gladstone would have advised on Lord Spencer).[86] He retained his seat in the Commons until 1895; he was not offered a peerage, having declined an earldom on earlier occasions.
Gladstone is both the oldest ever person to form a government – aged 82 at his appointment – and the oldest person ever to occupy the Premiership – being aged 84 at his resignation.[87]
Final years (1894–1898)
Gladstone at Hawarden with his grandchild Dorothy Drew, daughter of
Mary Gladstone
Gladstone's grave in Westminster Abbey
In 1895, at the age of 85, Gladstone bequeathed £40,000 (equivalent to approximately £4.03 million today)[88] and much of his 32,000 volume library to found St Deiniol's Library in Hawarden, Wales.[89]
On 8 January 1896, in conversation with L. A. Tollemache, Gladstone explained that: "I am not so much afraid of Democracy or of Science as of the love of money. This seems to me to be a growing evil. Also, there is a danger from the growth of that dreadful military spirit".[90] On 13 January Gladstone claimed he had strong Conservative instincts and that "In all matters of custom and tradition, even the Tories look upon me as the chief Conservative that is".[91] On 15 January Gladstone wrote to James Bryce, describing himself as "a dead man, one fundamentally a Peel–Cobden man".[92] In 1896, in his last noteworthy speech, he denounced Armenian massacres by Ottomans in a talk delivered at Liverpool. On 2 January 1897 Gladstone wrote to Francis Hirst on being unable to write a preface to a book on liberalism: "I venture on assuring you that I regard the design formed by you and your friends with sincere interest, and in particular wish well to all the efforts you may make on behalf of individual freedom and independence as opposed to what is termed Collectivism".[93][94]
In the early months of 1897 Gladstone and his wife stayed in Cannes. Gladstone met the Queen, where (Gladstone believed) she shook hands with him for the first time in the fifty years he had known her.[95] One of the Gladstones's neighbours observed that "He and his devoted wife never missed the morning service on Sunday ... One Sunday, returning from the altar rail, the old, partially blind man stumbled at the chancel step. One of the clergy sprang involuntarily to his assistance, but retreated with haste, so withering was the fire which flashed from those failing eyes".[96] The Gladstones returned to Hawarden Castle at the end of March and he received the Colonial Premiers in their visit for the Queen's Jubilee. At a dinner with in November with Edward Hamilton, his former private secretary, Hamilton noted that "What is now uppermost in his mind is what he calls the spirit of jingoism under the name of Imperialism which is now so prevalent". Gladstone said "It was enough to make Peel and Cobden turn in their graves".[97]
Upon the advice of his doctor Samuel Habershon in the aftermath of an attack of facial George Wilkinson recorded when he ministered to him along with Stephen Gladstone:
Shall I ever forget the last Friday in Passion Week, when I gave him the last Holy Communion that I was allowed to administer to him? It was early in the morning. He was obliged to be in bed, and he was ordered to remain there, but the time had come for the confession of sin and the receiving of absolution. Out of his bed he came. Alone he knelt in the presence of his God till the absolution has been spoken, and the sacred elements received.[99]
Gladstone died on 19 May 1898 at Hawarden Castle, Hawarden, aged 88. The cause of death is officially recorded as "Syncope, Senility." "Syncope" means failure of the heart and "senility" in the nineteenth century meant the infirmity of advanced old age rather than a loss in the mental faculties.[100]
The House of Commons adjourned on the afternoon of Gladstone's death, with [102] Two years after Gladstone's burial in Westminster Abbey, his wife, Catherine Gladstone (née Glynne), was laid to rest with him.
Religion
His mother, intensely religious, was an evangelical of Scottish Episcopal origins,[103] and his father joined the Church of England, having been a Presbyterian when he first settled in Liverpool. The boy was baptised into the Church of England. He had previously rejected a call to enter the ministry, and on this his conscience always tormented him. In compensation he aligned his politics with the evangelical faith in which he fervently believed.[104] In 1838 Gladstone nearly ruined his career when he tried to force a religious mission upon the Conservative Party. He wrote The State in its Relations with the Church, a book which argued that England had neglected its great duty to the Church of England. He announced that since that Church possessed a monopoly of religious truth, Nonconformists and Roman Catholics ought to be excluded from all government jobs. The historian Thomas Babington Macaulay and other critics ridiculed his weak arguments to shreds. Sir Robert Peel, Gladstone's chief, was outraged because this would upset the delicate political issue of Catholic Emancipation and anger the Nonconformists. Since Peel greatly admired his protégé, he redirected his focus from theology to finance.[105]
Gladstone altered his approach to religious problems, which always held first place in his mind. Before entering Parliament he had already substituted a High Church Anglican attitude, with its dependence upon authority and tradition, for the evangelical outlook of his boyhood, with its reliance upon the direct inspiration of the Bible. Now in middle life he decided that the individual conscience would have to replace authority as the inner citadel of the Church. That view of the individual conscience affected his political outlook and changed him gradually from a Conservative into a Liberal.[106]
Legacy
The historian H. C. G. Matthew states that Gladstone's chief legacy lay in three areas: his financial policy; his support for Home Rule (devolution) that modified the view of the unitary state of the United Kingdom; and his idea of a progressive, reforming party broadly based and capable of accommodating and conciliating varying interests, along with his speeches at mass public meetings.[107]
Historian Walter L. Arnstein, concludes:
-
Notable as the Gladstonian reforms had been, they had almost all remained within the nineteenth-century Liberal tradition of gradually removing the religious, economic, and political barriers that prevented men of varied creeds and classes from exercising their individual talents in order to improve themselves and their society. As the third quarter of the century drew to a close, the essential bastions of Victorianism still held firm: respectability; a government of aristocrats and gentlemen now influenced not only by middle-class merchants and manufacturers but also by industrious working people; a prosperity that seemed to rest largely on the tenets of laissez-faire economics; and a Britannia that ruled the waves and many a dominion beyond.[108]
Lord Acton wrote in 1880 that he considered Gladstone as one "of the three greatest Liberals" (along with Edmund Burke and Lord Macaulay).[109]
In 1909 the Liberal Chancellor People's Budget", the first budget which aimed to redistribute wealth. The Liberal statesman Lord Rosebery commented on what Gladstone would make of this budget:
This Budget is introduced as a Liberal measure. If so, all I can say is, it is a new Liberalism, and not the one that I have known and practised under more illustrious auspices than these, under one who was not merely the greatest Liberal but the greatest financier that this country has ever known — I mean Mr. Gladstone... Gladstone ranks as the great financial authority of our country.... Mr. Gladstone would be 100 in December if he were alive, but, centenarian as he would be, I am inclined to think that he would make very short work of the deputation of the Cabinet that waited on him with this measure, and that they would soon find themselves on the stairs, if not in the street. Because in his eyes, and in my eyes, too, as his humble disciple, Liberalism and Liberty were cognate terms; they were twin-sisters.[110]
David Lloyd George had written in 1913 that the Liberals were "carving the last few columns out of the Gladstonian quarry".[111]
In 1914 Britain declared war on Germany due to its violation of Belgian neutrality. In December 1916 on unveiling a statue of Gladstone, Lord Rosebery speculated that Gladstone's view of British involvement in the Great War would not have been favourable.[112] In 1916 Lord Kilbracken wrote: "I have often been asked during the present war (1916) what I thought Mr. Gladstone's attitude would have been if he had been alive at this day. I can answer the question without hesitation, bearing in mind the fact he had, as will easily be believed, the strongest possible feeling about the sanctity of treaties and international engagements, and the moral obligation to observe them...from the moment when the Germans violated the neutrality of Belgium, he would...have been for immediate war".[113]
During the Great War the Liberal Party split into those led by former Premier Red Clydeside": "The doctrine of Liberalism is a doctrine that believes that private property, as an incentive, as a means, as a reward, is the most potent agency not merely for the wealth, but for the well-being of the community. That is the doctrine not merely of Peel, of Disraeli, of Salisbury, and Chamberlain; it is the doctrine of Gladstone; it is the doctrine of Cobden; it is the doctrine of Bright; and it is the doctrine of Campbell Bannerman.... It is the doctrine of all the great Liberal leaders of the past and present".[117] Asquith replied to this speech at the National Liberal Club: "...keep faithful to your old traditions.... Think, in a situation such as this, and with appeals such as those which have been made to our fellow Liberals outside, what would have been the attitude of Mr Gladstone. Do you think they would have allowed themselves to be scared by the bogey of Bolshevism, to furl the old flag and march with bowed heads and reversed arms, horse, foot and artillery, into the camp of the enemy?"[118] In July 1922 Asquith said of Gladstone:
Amid all the seeming inconsistencies of his public career, which exposed him to the shallow charge of time-serving and even of hypocrisy, history will discern a steady process of evolution, guided always by certain governing principles. He was the most faithful and enlightened steward there has ever been of our national finance. He abhorred waste. He preferred the remission of burdensome taxation even to the diminution of the public debt. His great aim was that the resources of the country, in the phraseology of those days, should "fructify in the pockets of the people", not to be wasted in public or private extravagance, but to replenish the reservoir from which both capital and industry are fed. He never faltered in his allegiance to the cause of setting free the smaller nationalities, crushed between the upper and the nether millstone of arrogant and militant autocracies. He was the pioneer in the long, arduous, still uncompleted struggle, in the international sphere, of right against might, of freedom against force.[119]
Writing in 1944, the liberal Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek said of the change in political attitudes that had occurred since the Great War: "Perhaps nothing shows this change more clearly than that, while there is no lack of sympathetic treatment of Bismarck in contemporary English literature, the name of Gladstone is rarely mentioned by the younger generation without a sneer over his Victorian morality and naive utopianism".[120]
However Gladstone remained a potent symbol of the Liberal Party and Liberalism for some grassroots Liberal voters. In the 1955 general election an old lady left her house in Shetland to vote Conservative but on returning to her house for her purse saw her father's photograph of Gladstone and instead went to the vote for the Liberal candidate, Jo Grimond.[121] A Liberal activist in Lowdham, Nottinghamshire, during the 1966 general election canvassed a gardener in his seventies and was brusquely informed: "I'm a Gladstone [Liberal] and a Primitive Methodist".[122]
In the latter half of the twentieth-century Gladstone's economic policies came to be admired by Thatcherite Conservatives. Margaret Thatcher proclaimed in 1983: "We have a duty to make sure that every penny piece we raise in taxation is spent wisely and well. For it is our party which is dedicated to good housekeeping—indeed, I would not mind betting that if Mr. Gladstone were alive today he would apply to join the Conservative Party".[123] In 1996, she said: "The kind of Conservatism which he and I...favoured would be best described as "liberal", in the old-fashioned sense. And I mean the liberalism of Mr Gladstone not of the latter day collectivists".[124] Nigel Lawson, one of Thatcher's Chancellors, believed Gladstone to be the "greatest Chancellor of all time".[125]
[127] This is the earliest recording of the voice of a UK prime minister.
The National Library of Wales holds many pamphlets that were sent to Gladstone during his political career. These pamphlets show the concerns of people from all strands of society and together form a historical resource of the social and economical conditions of mid to late nineteenth century Britain. Many of the pamphlets bear the handwriting of Gladstone, which provides direct evidence of Gladstone's interest in various topics.
Monuments
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A statue of Gladstone by Albert Bruce-Joy and erected in 1882, stands near the front gate of St. Marys Church in Bow, London. Paid for by the industrialist Theodore Bryant, it is viewed as a symbol of the later 1888 match girls strike, which took place at the nearby Bryant & May Match Factory. Led by the socialist Annie Besant, hundreds of working girls from the factory had gone on strike to demand improved working conditions and pay, eventually winning their cause. In recent years, the statue of Gladstone has been repeatedly daubed with red paint, suggesting that it was paid for with the "blood of the match girls".[128]
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A statue of Gladstone, in bronze by Sir Thomas Brock, erected in 1904, stands in St John's Gardens, Liverpool.[129]
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A statue of Gladstone, erected in 1905, stands at Aldwych, London, near the Royal Courts of Justice.[130]
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A Grade II listed statue of Gladstone stands in Albert Square, Manchester.[131]
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A monument to Gladstone, Member of Parliament for Midlothian 1880–1895 was unveiled in Edinburgh in 1917 (and moved to its present location in 1955). It stands in Coates Crescent Gardens. The sculptor was James Pittendrigh McGillvray.[132]
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A statue to Gladstone, who was George Square. The sculptor was Sir William Hamo Thornycroft.
Dollis House, Gladstone Park, as seen from the gardens
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Gladstone Park in the Municipal Borough of Willesden, London was named after him in 1899. Dollis Hill House, within what later became the park, was occupied by Sir Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks, who subsequently became Lord Tweedmouth. In 1881 Lord Tweedmouth's daughter and her husband, Lord Aberdeen, took up residence. They often had Gladstone to stay as a guest. In 1897 Lord Aberdeen was appointed Governor-General of Canada and the Aberdeens moved out. When Willesden acquired the house and land in 1899, they named the park Gladstone Park after the old Prime Minister.
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Near Hawarden in the town of Mancot, there is a small hospital named after Catherine Gladstone. A statue of Gladstone stands prominently in the front grounds of the eponymous Gladstone's Library (formerly known as St. Deiniol's), near the commencement of Gladstone Way at Hawarden.
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Gladstone Rock—a large boulder about 12 ft high in Cwm Llan on the Watkin Path on the south side of Snowdon where Gladstone made a speech in 1892. A plaque on the rock states that he "addressed the people of Eryri upon justice to Wales".
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A statue of Gladstone stands in front of the Kapodistrian University building in the centre of Athens.
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Gladstone, Oregon, Gladstone, New Jersey, Gladstone, Michigan, [133]and Gladstone, New Mexico in the United States are named for him. The town of Gladstone, Queensland, Australia, was named after him and has a 19th-century marble statue on display in its town museum.[134]
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Gladstone, Manitoba, was named after him in 1882.[135]
A view of the street named in honour of William Gladstone in
Sofia, Bulgaria ()
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Streets in the cities of Sofia, Plovdiv, Limassol, Springs, Newark-on-Trent, Waterford City, Clonmel, Brighton, Bradford, Scarborough, Vancouver (including a school), and Ottawa. There is also Gladstone Avenue and adjoining Ewart Road in his hometown of Liverpool in a part of the city where he was a landowner.
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There is a Gladstone statue at Glenalmond College, unveiled in 2010 which is located in Front Quad.[136]
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A Gladstone memorial was unveiled on 23 February 2013 in Seaforth, Liverpool by MP Frank Field. It is located in the grounds of Our Lady Star of the Sea Church facing the former site of St Thomas's Church where Gladstone was educated from 1816 to 1821. The Seaglam (Seaforth Gladstone Memorial) Project, whose chairman is local historian Brenda Murray (BEM), was started to raise the profile of Seaforth Village by installing a memorial to Gladstone. Funds for the memorial were raised by voluntary effort and additional funding was provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Sculptor Tom Murphy created the bronze bust.
Gallery
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Statue on the Gladstone Monument in Coates Crescent Gardens, Edinburgh
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In popular culture
A Gladstone bag, a light travelling bag, is named after him.[137]
"The celebrated English caricaturist, Harry Furniss of the London Punch, limits his work on that periodical almost entirely to political caricature, and Gladstone is a favorite subject."[138]
In fiction, Gladstone features prominently in the history of the fantasy Bartimaeus trilogy, in which the British government is run by magicians. Gladstone is said to have been the most powerful magician to ever become Prime Minister, and though he is not included as a character, several objects of his are central plot points. The book provides an alternate history of Gladstone, in which he killed Disraeli in a duel and assisted British forces in colonial expansion.
There is a scene in the Turkish film Free Man about famous Islamic scholar Said Nursi who is deeply affected by Gladstone. It's also mentioned in the biography of Said Nursi. He reads in a newspaper report of a speech made in the British House of Commons by Gladstone:
"So long as the Muslims have the Qur'an, we shall be unable to dominate them. We must either take it from them, or make them lose their love of it." He was filled with zeal. It overturned his ideas and changed the direction of his interest. Thus, the explicit threats of Gladstone to the Qur'an and Islamic world caused a revolution in Nursi's ideas, clarifying them and setting him in the direction he would now follow. The threats caused him to declare: "I shall prove and demonstrate to the world that the Qur'an is an undying, inextinguishable Sun!"[139]
Portrayal in film and television
Since 1937, Gladstone has been portrayed on 37 occasions in film and television, beginning with Montagu Love's appearance as him in the 1937 film Parnell. Other portrayals include Malcolm Keen (Sixty Glorious Years, 1938), Stephen Murray (The Prime Minister, 1941), Arthur Young (The Lady with the Lamp, 1951), Ralph Richardson (Khartoum, 1966), Graham Chapman (Monty Python's Flying Circus, 1969), Michael Hordern (Edward the Seventh, 1975) and Martin Wady (Queen Victoria's Empire, 2001).[140]
Works
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William Ewart Gladstone, Baron Arthur Hamilton-Gordon Stanmore (1961). Gladstone-Gordon correspondence, 1851–1896: selections from the private correspondence of a British Prime Minister and a colonial Governor, Volume 51. American Philosophical Society. p. 116. Retrieved 28 June 2010. (Volume 51, Issue 4 of new series, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society) (Original from the University of California)
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William Ewart Gladstone (1898). On books and the housing of them. M. F. Mansfield, NY. Retrieved 15 June 2012. A treatise on the storing of books and the design of bookshelves as employed in his personal library.
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William Ewart Gladstone (1838). The State in its relations with the Church. London: John Murray Albermarle Street and Hatchard and Son.
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William Ewart Gladstone (1903). The impregnable rock of Holy Scripture (Revised Edition). London: Isbister and Company.
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William Ewart Gladstone (1858). Studies on Homer and the Homeric age (3 vols). The University Press.
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William Ewart Gladstone (1870). Juventus Mundi – The gods and men of 'the heroic' age (2nd edition, revised). Macmillan and Co.
See also
Notes
-
^ Gardham, Duncan (12 June 2008). "David Davis's Victorian inspiration: William Gladstone". The Daily Telegraph (London).
-
^ http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_photograph.jsp?item_id=35335
-
^ a b c Shannon, 1985
-
^ Weyman, Henry T. (1902). "Members of Parliament for Wenlock". Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, Series 3, Volume II. pp. 353–354.
-
^ Viscount Gladstone, After Thirty Years (Macmillan, 1928), pp. 90–91.
-
^ H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone. 1875–1898 (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 90.
-
^ H. C. G. Matthew, ‘Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–1898)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2011, accessed 9 Aug 2014
-
^ Richard Shannon, Gladstone: Heroic Minister. 1865–1898 (Allen Lane, 1999), pp. 583–4.
-
^ Gladstone, p. 436.
-
^ H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone. 1809–1874 (Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 80.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1809–1874, pp. 80–1.
-
^ Raffaele De Cesare, La fine di un regno (Napoli e Sicilia), S. Lapi, 1900, p.66
-
^ John Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone. Volume I (Macmillan, 1903), p. 461.
-
^ Sir Wemyss Reid (ed.), The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (Cassell, 1899), p. 412.
-
^ Reid, p. 410.
-
^ a b Matthew, Gladstone. 1809–1874, p. 127.
-
^ Sydney Buxton, Finance and Politics. An Historical Study. 1783–1885. Volume I (John Murray, 1888), pp. 108–9.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1809–1874, p. 121.
-
^ Buxton, p. 109.
-
^ Buxton, p. 150.
-
^ Buxton, p. 151.
-
^ Buxton, pp. 151–2.
-
^ The British and the Hellenes ... – Google Books. Books.google.com. 9 March 2006.
-
^ "Retrieved 24 November 2009". The Daily Telegraph (London). 7 October 2009. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
-
^ Buxton, p. 185.
-
^ Buxton, p. 187.
-
^ Richard Shannon, Gladstone. 1809–1865 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982), p. 395.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1809–1874, p. 113.
-
^ Buxton, p. 195.
-
^ Reid, p. 421.
-
^ L. C. B. Seaman, Victorian England: Aspects of English and Imperial History, 1837–1901 (Routledge, 1973), pp. 183–4.
-
^ F. W. Hirst, Gladstone as Financier and Economist (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1931), p. 241.
-
^ Hirst, pp. 242–3.
-
^ Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1954), pp. 402–405.
-
^ Eugenio Biagini, "Popular Liberals, Gladstonian finance and the debate on taxation, 1860–1874", in Eugenio Biagini and Alastair Reid (eds.), Currents of Radicalism. Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 139.
-
^ Biagini, "Popular Liberals, Gladstonian finance and the debate on taxation, 1860–1874", pp. 140–141.
-
^ Biagini, "Popular Liberals, Gladstonian finance and the debate on taxation, 1860–1874", p. 142.
-
^ Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (Constable, 1970), p. 563.
-
^ W. D. Handcock, English Historical Documents, p. 168.
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^ Buescher, John. "What Happened to the Fenians After 1866?" Teachinghistory.org. Retrieved 8 October 2011
-
^ "The Coming Elections". The Times. 2 November 1868. p. 4. Retrieved 22 February 2009.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1809–1874, p. 147.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1809–1874, p. 212.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1809–1874, p. 170.
-
^ Charles Loch Mowat, The Charity Organisation Society. 1869–1913 (Methuen, 1961), p. 19.
-
^ Richard Shannon, The Age of Disraeli, 1868–1881: The Rise of Tory Democracy (London: Longman, 1992), pp. 107–110.
-
^ The Times (30 October 1871), p. 3.
-
^ The Times (24 January 1874), p. 8.
-
^ E. F. Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform. Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone, 1860–1880 (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 112.
-
^ Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, p. 112, n. 177.
-
^ Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, pp. 113–114.
-
^ Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, p. 116.
-
^ Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, p. 118.
-
^ Philip Magnus, Gladstone: A Biography (London: John Murray, 1963), pp. 235–6.
-
^ 'Mr. Gladstone On Cottage Gardening', The Times (18 August 1876), p. 9.
-
^ Lord Kilbracken, Reminiscences of Lord Kilbracken (Macmillan, 1931), pp. 83–84.
-
^ Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, Bulgarian horrors and the question of the east by W. E. Gladstone
-
^ Gladstone, William Ewart (1876). Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. London: J Murray. p. 31. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
-
^ W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches. 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 148.
-
^ Paul Hayes, Modern British Foreign Policy: The Twentieth Century: 1880–1939 (1978) p 1
-
^ a b
-
^ Olson, James; Shadle, Robert (1996). Historical Dictionary of the British Empire. Greenwood. pp. 271–72.
-
^ Daniel Webster Hollis (2001). The History of Ireland. Greenwood. p. 105.
-
^ Michael Partridge (2003). Gladstone. Routledge. p. 178.
-
^ Morley, Life of Gladstone: III, p. 173.
-
^ Sneh Mahajan (2003). British Foreign Policy 1874–1914: The Role of India. Routledge. p. 58.
-
^ Michael Barker, Gladstone and Radicalism. The Reconstruction of Liberal Policy in Britain. 1885–1894 (The Harvester Press, 1975), p. 92.
-
^ Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, p. 424.
-
^ Barker, p. 92.
-
^ Barker, p. 93.
-
^ Barker, pp. 93–94.
-
^ The Times (12 December 1891), p. 7.
-
^ "SMALL AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS BILL.— (No. 183.) (Hansard, 24 March 1892)". Hansard.millbanksystems.com. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
-
^ Barker, p. 198.
-
^ John Brooke and Mary Sorensen (eds.), The Prime Ministers' Papers: W. E. Gladstone. I: Autobiographica (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1971), p. 55.
-
^ David Duncan, The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer (Methuen, 1908), p. 302.
-
^ Duncan, p. 302.
-
^ Reid, p. 721.
-
^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NE7fykwlOl8C&pg=PT232&dq=Elementary+Education+(Blind+and+Deaf+Children)+Act,+1893&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MYVyU-qwHsmw7Aae5oHQBg&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Elementary%20Education%20(Blind%20and%20Deaf%20Children)%20Act%2C%201893&f=false
-
^ "THE UNEMPLOYED. (Hansard, 1 September 1893)". Hansard.millbanksystems.com. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1875–1898, p. 322.
-
^ David Brooks, "Gladstone's Fourth Administration, 1892–1894", in David Bebbington and Roger Swift (eds.), Gladstone Centenary Essays (Liverpool University Press, 2000), p. 239.
-
^ Anthony Howe, 'Gladstone and Cobden', in David Bebbington and Roger Swift (eds.), Gladstone Centenary Essays (Liverpool University Press, 2000), p. 115.
-
^ Brooke and Sorensen, pp. 165–166.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1875–1898, p. 355.
-
^ Magnus, p. 423.
-
^ Daisy Sampson, The Politics Companion (London: Robson Books Ltd, 2004), pp. 80, 91.
-
^ UK CPI inflation numbers based on data available from Gregory Clark (2014), "What Were the British Earnings and Prices Then? (New Series)" MeasuringWorth.
-
^ H. C. G. Matthew (1997). Gladstone 1809–1898. Clarendon Press. p. 620.
-
^ Tollemache, pp. 166–67.
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^ Tollemache, p. 123.
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^ Howe, p. 114.
-
^ F. W. Hirst, In the Golden Days (Frederick Muller, 1947), p. 158.
-
^ Six Oxford Men, Essays in Liberalism (Cassell, 1897), p. x.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1875–1898, p. 379.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1875–1898, p. 380.
-
^ Shannon, Gladstone: Heroic Minister, 1865–1898, p. 588.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1875–1898, p. 381.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1875–1898, p. 382.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1875–1898, p. 382, n. ‡.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1875–1898, p. 383.
-
^ "CardinalBook History of Peace and War". Cardinalbook.com. 19 March 1998. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
-
^ M. Partridge, Gladstone (2003) p 18
-
^ Agatha Ramm, "Gladstone's Religion" Historical Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2. (Jun. 1985), pp. 327–340 in JSTOR
-
^ H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone, 1809–1874 (1986), pp. 42, 62, 66.
-
^ David Bebbington, William Ewart Gladstone: Faith and Politics in Victorian Britain (1993).
-
^ H. C. G. Matthew, "Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–1898)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2011. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
-
^ Qalter L. Arnstein, Britain Yesterday and Today: 1832 the Present (6th ed. 1992) p 125
-
^ Herbert Paul (ed.), Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone (George Allen, 1904), p. 57.
-
^ Lord Rosebery, The Budget. Its Principles and Scope. A Speech Delivered to the Commercial Community of Glasgow, Sept. 10, 1909 (London: Arthur L. Humphreys, 1909), pp. 30–31.
-
^ Chris Wrigley, "‘Carving the Last Few Columns out of the Gladstonian Quarry’: The Liberal Leaders and the Mantle of Gladstone, 1898–1929", in David Bebbington and Roger Swift (eds), Gladstone Centenary Essays (Liverpool University Press, 2000), p. 247.
-
^ Wrigley, p. 257, n. 5.
-
^ Kilbracken, p. 136.
-
^ Wrigley, p. 247.
-
^ Wrigley, p. 250.
-
^ Wrigley, p. 251.
-
^ Wrigley, p. 253.
-
^ Wrigley, p. 254.
-
^ Gladstone, p. 86.
-
^ F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Routledge, 2001), p. 188.
-
^ R. B. McCallum, The Liberal Party from Earl Grey to Asquith (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1963), p. 90, n. 1.
-
^ Wrigley, p. 255.
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^ Margaret Thatcher, 'Speech to the Conservative Party Conference', 14 October 1983.
-
^ Margaret Thatcher, ‘Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture', 11 January 1996.
-
^ Nigel Lawson, The View From No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (Bantam, 1992), p. 279.
-
^ Matthew, Gladstone. 1875–1898, p. 300, n. §.
-
^ The Times (16 March 1938), p. 8.
-
^ "London's Hidden History Bow Church". Modern Gent. Retrieved 1 March 2009.
-
^ "St John's Garden". Liverpool City Council. Retrieved 7 September 2008.
-
^ "Statue, W. E. Gladstone Monument". Art and architecture. Retrieved 7 September 2008.
-
^ "Images of England – Gladstone's Statue, Albert Square". Retrieved 19 June 2009.
-
^ "City of Edinburgh Council". City of Edinburgh Council. Retrieved 23 January 2009.
-
^ https://articles/Gladstone,_Michigan#Change_of_name
-
^ "Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum". Retrieved 26 July 2011.
-
^ "History of Manitoban Names". Retrieved 21 May 2010.
-
^ http://www.glenalmondcollege.co.uk/AboutGlenalmond/History/SchoolHistory.aspx
-
^ The secret agent, written by Joseph Conrad, ISBN 978-0-14-119439-4, on notes of chapter IX, at p. 256.
-
^ Evening Bulletin, Honolulu, Hawaii, Saturday, May 14, 1892, Page 1 http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/49963863/
-
^ Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, Translator: Şükran Vahide, Sözler Pub. 2000, ISBN 9754320241 p. 48
-
^ http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0043812/
References
-
Michael Barker, Gladstone and Radicalism. The Reconstruction of Liberal Policy in Britain. 1885–1894 (The Harvester Press, 1975).
-
David Bebbington and Roger Swift (eds.), Gladstone Centenary Essays (Liverpool University Press, 2000).
-
E. F. Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform. Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone, 1860–1880 (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
-
Eugenio Biagini and Alastair Reid (eds.), Currents of Radicalism. Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1991).
-
Sydney Buxton, Finance and Politics. An Historical Study. 1783–1885. Volume I (John Murray, 1888)
-
F. W. Hirst, Gladstone as Financier and Economist (1931).
-
F. W. Hirst, In the Golden Days (Frederick Muller, 1947).
-
Philip Magnus, Gladstone: A Biography (1954).
-
H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone. 1809–1874 (Oxford University Press, 1988); Gladstone. 1875–1898 (Oxford University Press, 1995).
-
John Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (Three volumes, 1903).
-
Sir Wemyss Reid (ed.), The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (1899).
-
Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1954).
-
Richard Shannon, Gladstone: Peel's Inheritor, 1809–1865 (1985), ISBN 0-8078-1591-8; Gladstone: Heroic Minister, 1865–1898 (1999), ISBN 0-8078-2486-0.
Primary sources
-
W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches. 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971).
-
Viscount Gladstone, After Thirty Years (1928).
-
Lord Kilbracken, Reminiscences of Lord Kilbracken (Macmillan, 1931).
-
Herbert Paul (ed.), Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone (George Allen, 1904).
-
G. W. E. Russell, One Look Back (Wells Gardner, Darton and Co., 1911).
-
Lionel A. Tollemache, Talks with Mr. Gladstone (London: Edward Arnold, 1898).
Further reading
Biographies
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Bebbington, D. W. William Ewart Gladstone (1993).
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Biagini, Eugenio F. Gladstone (2000).
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Brand, Eric. William Gladstone (1986) ISBN 0-87754-528-6.
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Jagger, Peter J., ed. Gladstone (2007), 256pp.
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Jenkins, Roy. Gladstone: A Biography (2002) excerpt and text search.
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Magnus, Philip M. Gladstone: A biography (1954) excerpt and text search.
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Matthew, H. C. G. "Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–1898)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004; online edition, May 2006.
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Matthew, H. C. G. Gladstone, 1809–1874 (1988); Gladstone, 1875–1898 (1995) excerpt & text search vol 1
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Morley, J. The life of William Ewart Gladstone, 3 vols. (1903) vol 2 online
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Partridge, M. Gladstone (2003) excerpt and text search.
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Russell, George W. E. The Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone (1891).
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Russell, Michael. Gladstone: A Bicentenary Portrait (2009). ISBN 978-0-85955-317-9
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Shannon, Richard. Gladstone (2 vols, 1984–2000).
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Shut, M. L. (2008). "Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–1898)". In
Special studies
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Aldous, Richard. The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs Disraeli (2007).
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Bebbington, D. W. The Mind of Gladstone: Religion, Homer and Politics (2004).
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Boyce, D. George and Alan O'Day, eds. Gladstone and Ireland: Politics, Religion, and Nationality in the Victorian Age (Palgrave Macmillan; 2011), 307 pages.
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Butler, P. Gladstone, church, state, and Tractarianism: a study of his religious ideas and attitudes, 1809–1859 (1982).
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Derek Beales, Gladstone on the italian question. January 1860 in Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento, a. XL – fasc. IV, pp. 96–104, (1953).
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Guedalla, Philip. Queen and Mr. Gladstone (2 vols, 1933) online edition
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Isba, Anne. Gladstone and Women (2006), London: Hambledon Continuum, ISBN 1-85285-471-5.
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Hammond, J. L. Gladstone and the Irish nation (1938) online edition.
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Jenkins, T. A. Gladstone, whiggery and the liberal party, 1874–1886 (1988).
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Loughlin, J. Gladstone, home rule and the Ulster question, 1882–1893 (1986).
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Parry, J. P. Democracy and religion: Gladstone and the liberal party, 1867–1875 (1986).
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Schreuder, D. M. Gladstone and Kruger: Liberal government and colonial ‘home rule’, 1880–85 (1969).
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Schreuder, D. M. Gladstone and Italian unification, 1848–70: the making of a Liberal?, The English historical review, vol. 85 (n. 336), pp. 475–501 (July 1970).
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Seton-Watson, R. W. Disraeli, Gladstone and the eastern question: a study in diplomacy and party politics (1935).
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Shannon, Richard. Gladstone: God and Politics (2007).
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Vincent, J. Gladstone and Ireland (1978).
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Vincent, J. The Formation of the Liberal Party, 1857–1868 (1966).
External links
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Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by William Gladstone
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Mr. Gladstone (character sketch by W.T. Stead, in the Review of Reviews, 1892).
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William Ewart Gladstone Article Encyclopædia Britannica]
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William Ewart Gladstone Chronology World History Database.
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Works by William Ewart Gladstone at Project Gutenberg
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More about William Ewart Gladstone on the Downing Street website.
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William Ewart Gladstone 1809–98 biography from the Liberal Democrat History Group.
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BBC Radio – Programme Two contains a recording of Gladstone's voice.
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Archival material relating to William Ewart Gladstone listed at the UK National Archives
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Portraits of William Ewart Gladstone at the National Portrait Gallery, London