Constituency : Newark 1832-45 (Tory ) , Oxford University 1847-65, South Lancashire 1865-8, Greenwich 1868-80, Midlothian 1880-95
Now here's a problem. How do you sum up this guy's career in a blog post - the outstanding politician of his age, perhaps of any age ? No one else has been Prime Minister on four separate occasions. Very few have gone on to become an adjective and in Gladstone's case one that still has political currency even now. Biographies have often had to be multi-volume and historians have varying interpretations of his career. Some argue that Liberalism only began with his first ministry in 1868 ; others that he sowed the seeds of the party's eventual destruction in the Home Rule break-up of 1886. Well here goes ...
William was born in Liverpool in 1809 to a wealthy Scottish merchant. He was educated at Eton and Oxford where he was President of the Oxford Union debating society. He was then a Tory denouncing the Grey ministry's reform proposals. In 1832 William entered Parliament as a protégé of the Duke of Newcastle. He opposed the abolition of slavery and factory legislation. Peel appointed him a whip in December 1834 and a month later Under-Secretary for War and the Colonies. In 1838 he published The State in its Relations with the Church which made the Tory case for protecting the Anglican church. In 1839 he married Catherine Glynne and moved into the Hawarden estate ( though he never actually owned it ) in north Wales. The following year he began his notorious practice of walking into the night and trying to rehabilitate the prostitutes he found there. In 1840 he attacked Palmerston's actions over China.
William resumed office under Peel in 1843 as President of the Board of Trade where he was responsible for the Coal Vendors Act of that year remedying an employment abuse in the London docks. In 1845 he resigned his post and his seat in response to accusations that he had compromised his principles by voting for the Maynooth grant. Peel presciently commented " I really have great difficulty sometimes in exactly comprehending what he means" and persuaded him to return to office later that year as Secretary for War and the Colonies despite him not being in Parliament.
William supported Peel over the Corn Laws and ever after upheld him as the model statesman and administrator. On the other side of the coin he nursed a lifelong antipathy towards Peel's Commons tormentor Disraeli which prevented any rapprochement with the Tories. He returned to the Commons for Oxford University in 1847. While out of office he continued his work with fallen women. In 1850 he spoke against Palmerston in the Don Pacifico debate. In 1851 he visited Naples and was appalled by the repressive measures of the government there with important implications for his future career.
After Peel's death William became , along with Graham, the acknowledged leader of the Peelites in the Commons but eschewed organising them as a party perhaps hoping the Tories would jettison Disraeli. In 1852 he became Chancellor of the Exchequer ( succeeding Disraeli ) in the Whig-Peelite coalition under Aberdeen. By now thoroughly imbued with Free Trade principles, his 1853 budget abolished or reduced many duties earning him the esteem of Cobden and Bright. He funded this by extending the income tax for seven years , However he also lowered the threshold so that more people would pay it and thus support his key economic objective of reducing government expenditure. William's five hour speech on it made his reputation as an orator in the Commons. The diarist Charles Greville wrote "Even those who do not admire the Budget or are injured by it, admit the merit of the performance. It has raised Gladstone to a great political elevation , and, what is of far greater consequence than the measure itself, has given the country assurance of a man equal to great political necessities and fit to lead parties and direct governments". William's subsequent budgets were preoccupied with financing the Crimean War which he did by raising income tax.
William retained his office when Palmerston replaced Aberdeen but resigned with the other remaining Peelites out of loyalty to those being charged with mismanagement of the war. This was a blessing to William for he had a strong antipathy towards Palmerston for his bellicose attitude to smaller nations and warmongering tendencies. He also disliked Palmerston's jaunty approach to political business and disapproved of his moral character. He criticised the budgets of his successor Lewis but was largely fought off. He voted against Palmerston on China and the Conspiracy to Murder Bill. He turned down office under Derby in 1858 but accepted the temporary job of Extraordinary Lord High Commissioner to the Ionian islands ( a British protectorate ).
After the 1859 election most of the remaining Peelites accepted the logic of fusing with the Whigs although William stayed away from the Willis's Tea Room meeting and , still keeping his options open , voted against the no confidence motion in Derby's government. When the government fell Palmerston came calling with the offer of a return to the Exchequer. Although William would have preferred Russell as premier he accepted the logic of the political situation and became, once and for all, a Liberal justifying his surrender by reference to their shared outlook on Italy.
William's relations with Palmerston were never easy and he frequently threatened to resign but never followed through on them. They argued over the need to spend money on defensive fortifications against France, William believing that the commercial treaty being negotiated by Cobden made them unnecessary. He had Palmerston's support for the abolition of paper duties but had to swallow Palmerston's refusal to join battle with the Lords when they rejected the measure. In October 1862 at Newcastle he prematurely called the American Civil War for the South saying Jefferson Davis had "made a nation". During the course of the government the deaths of Lewis and Herbert made Gladstone increasingly look like the PM's successor. Palmerston mused "you will see strange things after me" believing that William might end up in a madhouse. While Gladstone detested Palmerston he did absorb the example of taking one's case to the country and began himself to speak at public meetings. At one such speech in 1864 he appeared rather ambiguously to concede the case for manhood suffrage.
Palmerston admonished him but his time was nearly up. His government won an increased majority in 1865 but he died before the House resumed sitting. William lost at Oxford due to his support for disestablishing the Irish church and had to switch to South Lancashire. Russell was still fit enough to succeed Palmerston and William became Leader in the Commons with the duty of piloting the long-delayed Reform Bill . Unfortunately William's lack of skills in party management were now exposed as a group of dissident Liberals voted with the Tories to bring down the measure. Russell resigned and a minority Tory administration was formed. Thus commenced one of the more remarkable parliamentary episodes as Disraeli produced a more radical Reform Bill. William's impulse to resist it was checked by the so-called Tea Room revolt of centrist Liberals who felt they couldn't oppose it. Disraeli kept accepting Liberal amendments to keep William on the back foot and that became the chief object of the exercise from the Tory point of view particularly as Russell announced that he would not seek office again.
Ironically the immediate result of the Second Reform Act was another resounding Liberal victory in 1868 ( although William lost in South Lancashire ) and William began his first term as Prime Minister. The first Gladstone ministry is a strong contender for the greatest peacetime ministry of all. He surrounded himself with strong talents in the best Peelite tradition notably Cardwell at the War Office and Forster at education and laid the foundations of the modern state. The basic structures laid down in the army, the civil service and education survive to this day. William also made a start in addressing the Irish problem by disestablishing the Irish church and a Land Act which began to address the grievances of the Irish tenants. Disraeli's description of the Liberal frontbench in 1873 as " a range of exhausted volcanoes " is a disguised compliment on their achievements.
Momentous reforms usually come at a political cost. As Palmerston had predicted the moderate Whigs became increasingly uneasy at William's reforming zeal and positively hostile to the interference with their rights as Irish landlords. Many removed their support for Liberal candidates in the 1874 election. This was probably a more important explanation of the Liberal defeat than William's own preferred explanation, resentment of the Licensing Act - "we have been borne down in a torrent of gin and beer".
With Disraeli now in power William ostentatiously retired as Liberal leader to spend time in scholarly pursuits and Hartington took over as party leader. He was quiet for a couple of years then stormed back to the frontline with the pamphlet The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East in 1876 which called for the expulsion of the Turks from Europe in response to atrocities committed in Bulgaria. Although the involvement of Russia soon swung public opinion behind Disraeli's pro-Turkish stance William's retirement was over and would not resume for another 17 years despite frequent expressions of desire to stand down. In 1879 he accepted an invitation to stand for Midlothian and commenced what purported to be a personal election campaign a year early but was really a national campaign to restore him to the party leadership.
When the Liberals won again in 1880 against a worn-out Disraeli Hartington sought a promise from William that he would accept office or behave himself and getting neither advised the queen that she must send for William again. His second ministry was a difficult one. The situation in Egypt necessitated an invasion which offended the Liberal conscience. More radical Liberals were coming through pushing him further than he wanted to go. Above all Ireland was becoming the predominant parliamentary issue. The Home Rule party which had conscripted or defeated nearly all Ireland's Liberal MPs had come under the effective leadership of Parnell. A second Land Act was not enough to placate him and a tactic of obstructing parliamentary business through filibusters paralysed government business although a Third Reform Act got through in 1884 after negotiations with the Tory leader Lord Salisbury. In 1885 the English general Gordon died in Khartoum after ignoring the government's instructions to withdraw. The Queen rebuked William for not doing enough to save him and when this became public knowledge he resigned and Salisbury formed a minority government.
Parnell advised his supporters in England to vote tactically for the Tories in 1885 and the result was a dead heat with the Irish holding the balance of power. Before the new Parliament met William advertised through his son that he had now accepted the case for Home Rule. There have been many explanations for this. Some have accepted that it was a natural extension of his "mission to pacify Ireland". Others have suggested that it gave the Liberal party a cause to divert its attentions away from the socialistic policies he abhorred. Or maybe it was simply a grab for power, William correctly calculating that Parnell would have to fall in behind him.
What it did do was cleave the party. William's first Home Rule bill was defeated by the opposition of 91 Liberal "Unionists" led by Hartington and Joseph Chamberlain. Despite the uncertainties of the new political situation William dissolved and in the 1886 election the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists won a majority over the Gladstonians and Parnellites. Salisbury had to form a minority Conservative administration because the Lib U's anticipating an imminent Gladstone retirement refused to leave the Liberal benches though they kept the Tories in power.
However William had other ideas and used the period of opposition to take control of the institutions of the party ( ironically largely the creation of Chamberlain ) and force the Liberal Unionists to organise as a separate party. The price of doing this was an acceptance of the radical Newcastle Programme of 1891 although how much of it he intended to honour if returned to power is open to question.
The 1892 election gave him and the Irish contingent a small majority of 40 so he returned to power at the age of 82. With nearly all the Whig peers now in the Unionist camp the prospects of getting a Home Rule Bill through the Lords were nil but William honoured his pledges and got the Bill through the Commons with a last bravura performance in 1893. The Lords resoundingly rejected it as expected. The Cabinet would not agree to another election and William spent a difficult last few months as prime minister , barely in contact with his colleagues , before finding an excuse to resign over the naval estimates in 1894. The Grand Old Man finally laid down his seals; the Queen in a last snub ignored his recommendation of Lord Spencer ( a non-entity anyway ) and sent for Lord Rosebery.
William was a deeply religious man of High Church leanings though he despised the papacy and wrote scholarly articles against it. He always believed that God guided all his actions in life including his political judgements.
William stood down as an MP in 1895. His last public intervention was a fierce condemnation of Armenian massacres the following year. He died in 1898 aged 88 and was given a state funeral with the next two monarchs acting as pallbearers. He had utterly transformed the political landscape and his legacy endures.
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