Mr. Gladstone, the fourth son of the late Sir John Gladstone, a
prominent and prosperous merchant of Liverpool, was born in 1809.
He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, where his
scholarship was at once so thorough and so comprehensive as to win
for him at his graduation in 1831 the great distinction of a double
first-class. Having spent nearly a year in a continental tour, he was
elected to the House of Commons in December, 1832, at the election
which immediately followed the passage of the great reform bill. In
political sympathies he ranked with the Tories, and followed with
little reserve the leadership of Sir Robert Peel. The great reputation
he had acquired at the university, his mercantile habits, his high
character, and his manifest abilities as a speaker, recommended
him at once to the favor of the Premier, who admitted him to the
ministry as Junior Lord of the Treasury, in December of 1834, and as
Under-Secretary for Colonial Affairs in February of the following
year. In 1841 Mr. Gladstone became Vice-President of the Board of
Trade and Master of the Mint, and in the same year was sworn in as a
member of the Privy Council. In the position now held it devolved upon
him to explain and defend the commercial policy of the government.
The revision of the tariff in 1842 was entrusted to his energy and
industry, as a part of this duty, and so admirably was the laborious
task executed, not only in its mastery of general principles, but in
its command of details, that the bill received the sanction of both
Houses with scarcely an alteration. Gladstone’s great abilities as a
financier were at once universally recognized; and, accordingly, his
appointment as President of the Board of Trade and his admission to the
cabinet in 1843 were generally approved.
In 1846, Sir Robert Peel, who up to this time had been regarded as
the most strenuous opponent of free trade, announced his intention of
bringing in a bill to modify the existing Corn Laws. The announcement
created great popular agitation. Gladstone determined to support
Peel; but holding his seat from Newark, the property of the Duke
of Newcastle, who sympathized strongly with the Opposition, he was
unwilling to appear to be in a false position, and accordingly he
resigned, and remained out of Parliament for about a year. This
voluntary withdrawal from the House is worthy of note, not only on
account of the honorable motives which prompted it, but also as the
only interruption of a parliamentary career of more than half a
century. His parliamentary abilities, however, were not long permitted
to be idle, for in 1847 he was returned as one of the members for the
University of Oxford.
Up to this time he had appeared to sympathize strongly with the
principles of the Tory party. His work on “The State in its Relations
with the Church,” published in 1838, had not only proved him to be,
even when still a young man, a deep and original thinker, but had also
shown that his sympathies were unmistakably with the Tories and the
High Church. Macaulay, in his elaborate and critical review of the
work, introduced Gladstone to his readers as “the rising hope of those
stern and unbending Tories who follow, reluctantly and mutinously,
a leader whose experience and eloquence are indispensable to them,
but whose cautious temper and moderate opinions they abhor.” But if
the “stern and unbending Tories” had any such “rising hope” in Mr.
Gladstone, they were destined to be disappointed. In the four years
that followed 1847 the member for Oxford found himself frequently
opposed to his former friends; and in 1851 he formally separated
himself from the great body of the Conservative party. He was
re-elected for Oxford, though as the result of a very bitter contest;
and on the defeat of the Derby-Disraeli ministry and the succession
of the “Coalition” under Lord Aberdeen in 1852, he was appointed to
the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, where his thorough knowledge of
finance was of the greatest assistance to the government during the
Crimean War.
In the fifteen years that followed, Mr. Gladstone came to be more and
more generally recognized, not only as one of the ablest, but also as
one of the most influential members of the House of Commons. Meanwhile
his reputation was considerably advanced by the numerous literary
productions which came from his pen. On the death of Lord Palmerston
in 1865, he became leader of the House of Commons, retaining the
Chancellorship of the Exchequer in the second administration of Earl
Russell. It was at this time that Gladstone’s career as the leader of
the great reformatory movement may be said to have begun.
Early in the session of 1866, he brought forward a reform bill designed
to extend the franchise substantially on the line of advance that had
been adopted in 1832. On the 18th of June, the measure was defeated
by a majority of eleven votes, and Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues at
once resigned. During the next administration, the ranks of the Liberal
party, however, were divided, and therefore it was found impossible to
defeat the Derby-Disraeli reform bill, which Mr. Gladstone strenuously
opposed. The Conservatives, however, were unable to hold their
position, and when the Ministry resigned, in December of 1868, Mr.
Gladstone succeeded Disraeli as Prime-Minister.
And now began that remarkable series of legislative enactments for
which Mr. Gladstone’s career will be remembered. In 1869 was passed
the Irish Church Disestablishment Act; in 1870, the Irish Land Act; in
the same year, the Elementary Education Act; in 1871, the Abolition of
Purchase in the Army Act; in 1872, the Ballot Act; and in 1873, the
Supreme Court of Judicature Act. In 1873 the country seemed disposed
to call a halt. The government was defeated on the Irish University
Education Bill; and, in consequence, Mr. Gladstone tendered his
resignation. The Queen sent for Mr. Disraeli, but as the defeat had
been occasioned by a temporary union of the Roman Catholics with the
Conservatives, Mr. Disraeli saw no hope of commanding a majority, and
therefore declined to attempt to form a ministry. Mr. Gladstone was
recalled, and reluctantly consented to reconstruct a cabinet. He was
unwilling, however, to go forward in any uncertainty, and accordingly,
in January of 1874, he surprised the country by announcing an immediate
dissolution of Parliament.
The result of the ensuing canvass and election was most disastrous to
the Liberal party. The returns, completed in February, showed that
351 out and out Conservatives had been elected; while the Liberals,
including the Home Rulers, who, in fact, declined to identify
themselves with the party, numbered only 302. Mr. Gladstone, of course,
resigned at once, and Mr. Disraeli, for a second time, was appointed
Prime-Minister in his place.
During the next two years, Mr. Gladstone, though retaining his seat,
was not often seen in the House of Commons. In January of 1875 he
announced his determination to retire from the leadership of the
Liberal party, and the Marquis of Hartington was accordingly chosen
to act in his place. For a time he gave himself up to authorship, and
published a considerable number of controversial articles on Church
and State. As Disraeli’s ministry, however, became involved in the
entanglement of Eastern affairs, Gladstone was more and more drawn
back into something like his old parliamentary activity. In 1879 was
invited to become the candidate for Mid-Lothian, and the canvass that
followed was perhaps the most remarkable exhibition of energy and
oratorical skill that the history of British eloquence has to show.
He set out from Liverpool on November 24th, and from that date, with
the exception of two days’ rest, till his return on December 9th, his
journey was a long succession of enthusiastic receptions and unwearied
speech-making in condemnation of the Conservative government. The
addresses delivered in the course of this canvass were printed in
all the leading papers of the kingdom, and were subsequently brought
together in a volume. As a whole, they form what is probably the most
remarkable series of political criticisms ever addressed by one man to
the people of his country. The result was not only the election of Mr.
Gladstone, but also, when in the following spring a general election
took place, the triumphant return of the Liberal party to power. While
the Conservatives had only 243 seats, the Liberals had 349, and the
Home Rulers, 60 in number, were quite likely, in all general measures,
to ally themselves with their old friends.
As Mr. Gladstone had for some years not been at the nominal head of
the Liberal party, it was not certain what policy would be pursued.
The Marquis of Hartington was the leader in the Lower House, and Earl
Granville in the Upper. Either of these might have been called to the
head of the ministry by constitutional usage; but the natural primacy
of Mr. Gladstone was so universally acknowledged that the Queen decided
to hold a consultation with the chiefs of the party. The conference
resulted in recommending the Queen to entrust the forming of a cabinet
to Mr. Gladstone; and accordingly the great leader entered upon the
work of Prime-Minister for a second time in April, 1880. It is a proof
of his extraordinary vigor that at the age of seventy-one he should
choose to superadd to the duties of First Lord of the Treasury, those
of Chancellor of the Exchequer, a position which he continued to hold
till, in 1883, the multiplicity of his duties led him to turn it over
to Mr. Childers.
His second administration will probably be remembered for the
disturbances in Ireland, and the consequent Irish Land Act of 1881; the
Municipal Corporation Act of 1882; the difficulties in Egypt in 1883
and 1884; and the Extension of Suffrage Act, introduced in the spring
of 1884. His career as a whole may be considered as perhaps the most
remarkable illustration of a system which, whatever its faults, brings
the most eminent men into power, and gives them a wide field in which
to exert their continuous influence and power.