Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Gichtel, Johann" to "Glory" / Volume 12, Slice 1

by Various

The new government was a coalition of Whigs and Peelites. Lord Aberdeen became prime minister, and Gladstone chancellor of the exchequer. Having been returned again for the university of Oxford, he entered on the active Chancellor of the exchequer. duties of a great office for which he was pre-eminently fitted by an unique combination of financial, administrative and rhetorical gifts. His first budget was introduced on the 18th of April 1853. It tended to make life easier and cheaper for large and numerous classes; it promised wholesale remissions of taxation; it lessened the charges on common processes of business, on locomotion, on postal communication, and on several articles of general consumption. The deficiency thus created was to be met by a “succession-duty,” or application of the legacy-duty to real property; by an increase of the duty on spirits; and by the extension of the income-tax, at 5d. in the pound, to all incomes between £100 and £150. The speech in which these proposals were introduced held the House spellbound. Here was an orator who could apply all the resources of a burnished rhetoric to the elucidation of figures; who could sweep the widest horizon of the financial future, and yet stoop to bestow the minutest attention on the microcosm of penny stamps and post-horses. Above all, the chancellor’s mode of handling the income-tax attracted interest and admiration. It was a searching analysis of the financial and moral grounds on which the impost rested, and a historical justification and eulogy of it. Yet, great as had been the services of the tax at a time of national danger, Gladstone could not consent to retain it as a part of the permanent and ordinary finances of the country. It was objectionable on account of its unequal incidence, of the harassing investigation into private affairs which it entailed, and of the frauds to which it inevitably led. Therefore, having served its turn, it was to be extinguished in 1860. The scheme astonished, interested and attracted the country. The queen and Prince Albert wrote to congratulate the chancellor of the exchequer. Public authorities and private friends joined in the chorus of eulogy. The budget demonstrated at once its author’s absolute mastery over figures and the persuasive force of his expository gift. It established the chancellor of the exchequer as the paramount financier of his day, and it was only the first of a long series of similar performances, different, of course, in detail, but alike in their bold outlines and brilliant handling. Looking back on a long life of strenuous exertion, Gladstone declared that the work of preparing his proposals about the succession-duty and carrying them through Parliament was by far the most laborious task which he ever performed.

War between Great Britain and Russia was declared on the 27th of March 1854, and it thus fell to the lot of the most pacific of ministers, the devotee of retrenchment, and the anxious cultivator of all industrial arts, to prepare a war budget, and to meet as well as he might the exigencies of a conflict which had so cruelly dislocated all the ingenious devices of financial optimism. No amount of skill in the manipulation of figures, no ingenuity in shifting fiscal burdens, could prevent the addition of forty-one millions to the national debt, or could countervail the appalling mismanagement at the seat of war. Gladstone declared that the state of the army in the Crimea was a “matter for weeping all day and praying all night.” As soon as parliament met in January 1855 J. A. Roebuck, the Radical member for Sheffield, gave notice that he would move for a select committee “to inquire into the condition of our army before Sevastopol, and into the conduct of those departments of the government whose duty it has been to minister to the wants of that army.” On the same day Lord John Russell, without announcing his intention to his colleagues, resigned his office as president of the council sooner than attempt the defence of the government. Gladstone, in defending the government against Roebuck, rebuked in dignified and significant terms the conduct of men who, “hoping to escape from punishment, ran away from duty.” On the division on Mr Roebuck’s motion the government was beaten by the unexpected majority of 157.

Lord Palmerston became prime minister. The Peelites joined him, and Gladstone resumed office as chancellor of the exchequer. A shrewd observer at the time pronounced him indispensable. “Any other chancellor of the exchequer would be torn in bits by him.” The government was formed on the understanding that Mr Roebuck’s proposed committee was to be resisted. Lord Palmerston soon saw that further resistance was useless; his Peelite colleagues stuck to their text, and, within three weeks after resuming office, Gladstone, Sir James Graham and Mr Sidney Herbert resigned. Gladstone once said of himself and his Peelite colleagues, during the period of political isolation, that they were like roving icebergs on which men could not land with safety, but with which ships might come into perilous collision. He now applied himself specially to financial criticism, and was perpetually in conflict with the chancellor of the exchequer, Sir George Cornewall Lewis.

In 1858 Lord Palmerston was succeeded by Lord Derby at the head of a Conservative administration, and Gladstone accepted the temporary office of high commissioner extraordinary to the Ionian Islands. Returning to England for the session of 1859, he found himself involved in the controversy which arose over a mild Reform Bill introduced by the government. They were defeated on the second reading of the bill, Gladstone voting with them. A dissolution immediately followed, and Gladstone was again returned unopposed for the university of Oxford. As soon as the new parliament met a vote of want of confidence in the ministry was moved in the House of Commons. In the critical division which ensued Gladstone voted with the government, who were left in a minority. Lord Derby resigned. Lord Palmerston became prime minister, and asked Gladstone to join him as chancellor of the exchequer. To vote confidence in an imperilled ministry, and on its defeat to take office with the rivals who have defeated it, is a manœuvre which invites the reproach of tergiversation. But Gladstone risked the reproach, accepted the office and had a sharp tussle for his seat. He emerged from the struggle victorious, and entered on his duties with characteristic zeal. The prince consort wrote: “Gladstone is now the real leader in the House of Commons, and works with an energy and vigour altogether incredible.”

The budget of 1860 was marked by two distinctive features. It asked the sanction of parliament for the commercial treaty which Cobden had privately arranged with the emperor Napoleon, and it proposed to abolish the duty on paper. The French treaty Budget of 1860. was carried, but the abolition of the paper-duty was defeated in the House of Lords. Gladstone justly regarded the refusal to remit a duty as being in effect an act of taxation, and therefore as an infringement of the rights of the House of Commons. The proposal to abolish the paper-duty was revived in the budget of 1861, the chief proposals of which, instead of being divided, as in previous years, into several bills, were included in one. By this device the Lords were obliged to acquiesce in the repeal of the paper-duty.

During Lord Palmerston’s last administration, which lasted from 1859 to 1865, Gladstone was by far the most brilliant and most conspicuous figure in the cabinet. Except in finance, he was not able to accomplish much, for he was met and thwarted at every turn by his chief’s invincible hostility to change; but the more advanced section of the Liberal party began to look upon him as their predestined leader. In 1864, in a debate on a private member’s bill for extending the suffrage, he declared that the burden of proof lay on those “who would exclude forty-nine fiftieths of the working-classes from the franchise.” In 1865, in a debate on the condition of the Irish Church Establishment, he declared that the Irish Church, as it then stood, was in a false position, inasmuch as it ministered only to one-eighth or one-ninth of the whole community. But just in proportion as Gladstone advanced in favour with the Radical party he lost the confidence of his own constituents. Parliament was dissolved in July 1865, and the university elected Mr Gathorne Hardy in his place.

Gladstone at once turned his steps towards South Lancashire, where he was returned with two Tories above him. The result of the general election was to retain Lord Palmerston’s government in power, but on the 18th of October the Leader of House of Commons. old prime minister died. He was succeeded by Lord Russell, and Gladstone, retaining the chancellorship of the exchequer, became for the first time leader of the House of Commons. Lord Russell, backed by Gladstone, persuaded his colleagues to consent to a moderate Reform Bill, and the task of piloting this measure through the House of Commons fell to Gladstone. The speech in which he wound up the debate on the second reading was one of the finest, if not indeed the very finest, which he ever delivered. But it was of no practical avail. The government were defeated on an amendment in committee, and thereupon resigned. Lord Derby became prime minister, with Disraeli as chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. On the 18th of March 1867 the Tory Reform Bill, which ended in establishing Household Suffrage in the boroughs, was introduced, and was read a second time without a division. After undergoing extensive alterations in committee at the hands of the Liberals and Radicals, the bill became law in August.

At Christmas 1867 Lord Russell announced his final retirement from active politics, and Gladstone was recognized by acclamation as leader of the Liberal party. Nominally he was in Opposition; but his party formed the majority Leader of Liberal party. of the House of Commons, and could beat the government whenever they chose to mass their forces. Gladstone seized the opportunity to give effect to convictions which had long been forming in his mind. Early in the session he brought in a bill abolishing compulsory church-rates, and this passed into law. On the 16th of March, in a debate raised by an Irish member, he declared that in his judgment the Irish Church, as a State Church, must cease to exist. Immediately afterwards he embodied this opinion in a series of resolutions concerning the Irish Church Establishment, and carried them against the government. Encouraged by this triumph, he brought in a Bill to prevent any fresh appointments in the Irish Church, and this also passed the Commons, though it was defeated in the Lords. Parliament was dissolved on the 11th of November. A single issue was placed before the country—Was the Irish Church to be, or not to be, disestablished? The response was an overwhelming affirmative. Gladstone, who had been doubly nominated, was defeated in Lancashire, but was returned for Greenwich. He chose this moment for publishing a Chapter of Autobiography, in which he explained and justified his change of opinion with regard to the Irish Church.

On the 2nd of December Disraeli, who had succeeded Lord Derby as premier in the preceding February, announced that he and his colleagues, recognizing their defeat, had resigned without waiting for a formal vote of the new Prime Minister: Irish Church disestablishment. parliament. On the following day Gladstone was summoned to Windsor, and commanded by the queen to form an administration. The great task to which the new prime minister immediately addressed himself was the disestablishment of the Irish Church. The queen wrote to Archbishop Tait that the subject of the Irish Church “made her very anxious,” but that Mr Gladstone “showed the most conciliatory disposition.” “The government can do nothing that would tend to raise a suspicion of their sincerity in proposing to disestablish the Irish Church, and to withdraw all state endowments from all religious communions in Ireland; but, were these conditions accepted, all other matters connected with the question might, the queen thinks, become the subject of discussion and negotiation.” The bill was drawn and piloted on the lines thus indicated, and became law on the 26th of July. In the session of 1870 Gladstone’s principal work was the Irish Land Act, of which the object was to protect the tenant against eviction as long as he paid his rent, and to secure to him the value of any improvements which his own industry had made. In the following session Religious Tests in the universities were abolished, and a bill to establish secret voting was carried through the House of Commons. This was thrown out by the Lords, but became law a year later. The House of Lords threw out a bill to abolish the purchase of commissions in the army. Gladstone found that purchase existed only by royal sanction, and advised the queen to issue a royal warrant cancelling, on and after the 1st of November following, all regulations authorizing the purchase of commissions.

In 1873 Gladstone set his hand to the third of three great Irish reforms to which he had pledged himself. His scheme for the establishment of a university which should satisfy both Roman Catholics and Protestants met with general disapproval. The bill was thrown out by three votes, and Gladstone resigned. The queen sent for Disraeli, who declined to take office in a minority of the House of Commons, so Gladstone was compelled to resume. But he and his colleagues were now, in Disraelitish phrase, “exhausted volcanoes.” Election after election went wrong. The government had lost favour with the public, and was divided against itself. There were resignations and rumours of resignations. When the session of 1873 had come to an end Gladstone took the chancellorship of the exchequer, and, as high authorities contended, vacated his seat by doing so. The point was obviously one of vital importance; and we learn from Lord Selborne, who was lord chancellor at the time, that Gladstone “was sensible of the difficulty of either taking his seat in the usual manner at the opening of the session, or letting ... the necessary arrangements for business in the House of Commons be made in the prime minister’s absence. A dissolution was the only escape.” On the 23rd of January 1874 Gladstone announced A Dissolution of 1874. the dissolution in an address to his constituents, declaring that the authority of the government had now “sunk below the point necessary for the due defence and prosecution of the public interest.” He promised that, if he were returned to power, he would repeal the income-tax. This bid for popularity failed, the general election resulting in a Tory majority of forty-six. Gladstone kept his seat for Greenwich, but was only second on the poll. Following the example of Disraeli in 1868, he resigned without meeting parliament.