William Ewart Gladstone: Governance

“Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 115.
1870s
Context: Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home. My second principle of foreign policy is this—that its aim ought to be to preserve to the nations of the world—and especially, were it but for shame, when we recollect the sacred name we bear as Christians, especially to the Christian nations of the world—the blessings of peace. That is my second principle.

Home

“…there appeared to me to have grown up under the present Government a system of what I called, in regard to the public expenditure, making things pleasant all round. That means going from town to town, granting what this community wants, granting what that community wants, granting what the other community wants, and leaving out of sight that huge public which unfortunately has not got the voices and the advocates ready always to defend it against these local and particular claims, but of which it is our highest boast that we seek to be the advocates and the champions.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Speech in Leigh, Lancashire (20 October 1868), quoted in The Times (21 October 1868), p. 11.
1860s

Communication , Appearance

“Sir, there was once a time when close relations of amity were established between the Governments of England and France. It was in the reign of the later Stuarts; and it marks a dark spot in our annals, because it was an union formed in a spirit of domineering ambition on the one side, and of base and vile subserviency on the other. But that, Sir, was not an union of the nations; it was an union of the Governments. This is not be an union of the Governments; it is to be an union of the nations.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1860/feb/10/customs-acts-committee-the-financial in the House of Commons (10 February 1860) on the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty
1860s

Time

“What is a public meeting? It is not an anarchical combination—it is not a mob—it is an assemblage of rational beings to which, if the invitation be general, every man has a right to go, and the Government reporter has a right to go, but only like others and subject to the ordinary law. But if instead of appealing to the promoters of the meeting…to afford the Government reporter facilities, if instead of that the method of violence is resorted to, then I say the law was broken by the agents of the law. It is idle to speak to the Irish people of the duty of obeying the law, or to bring in Coercion Bills to make them obey the law, if the very Government that so speaks and that brings in these Bills has agents who violate the law by violently breaking up orderly public meetings, and who are sustained by the Ministers of the Crown in this illegal action.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Speech in Nottingham (18 October 1887) referring to the Mitchelstown Massacre, quoted in The Times (19 October 1887), p. 6.
1880s

People , Law

“There ought to be a great effort of the Liberal party to extend the labour representation in Parliament. …. And we affirm that it is among the high and indispensable duties of the party…to proceed to provide for the establishment of district councils and parish councils, and thereby to bring self-government to the very doors of the labouring men throughout the country. Further, I will add boldly that it will be their duty to enact compulsory powers for the purpose of enabling suitable bodies to acquire land upon fair and suitable terms, in order to place the rural population in nearer relations to the land, to the use and profit of the land which they have so long tilled for the benefit of others, but for themselves almost in vain.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Speech in Newcastle (2 October 1891), quoted in A. W. Hutton and H. J. Cohen (eds.), The Speeches of The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh and Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. 1888–1891 (London: Methuen, 1902), pp. 383-384, 386.
1890s

Men , Effort , Country

“On the side adverse to the Government are found…in profuse abundance, station, title, wealth, social influence, the professions, or the large majority of them—in a word, the spirit and power of class. These are the main body of the opposing host. Nor is that all. As knights of old had squires, so in the great army of class each enrolled soldier has, as a rule, dependents. The adverse host, then, consists of class and the dependents of class. But this formidable army is in the bulk of its constituent parts the same…that has fought in every one of the great political battles of the last 60 years, and has been defeated. We have had great controversies before this great controversy—on free trade, free navigation, public education, religious equality in civil matters, extension of the suffrage to its present basis. On these and many other great issues the classes have fought uniformly on the wrong side, and have uniformly been beaten by a power more difficult to marshal, but resistless when marshalled—by the upright sense of the nation.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Address to the electors of Midlothian, Daily Review (3 May 1886), quoted in The Times (4 May 1886), p. 5.
1880s

Education , Sense , Parting , Dependency

“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.”

William Ewart Gladstone

'Early Parliamentary Life 1832–52. 1833–4 in the old House of Commons' (3 June 1897), quoted in John Brooke and Mary Sorensen (eds.), The Prime Minister's Papers: W. E. Gladstone. I: Autobiographica (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1971), p. 55.
1890s

Law , Loss

“I am a member of a Liberal Government. I am in association with the Liberal party. I have never swerved from what I conceived to be those truly Conservative objects and desires with which I entered life. I am, if possible, more fondly attached to the institutions of my country than I was when as a boy I wandered among the sand-hills of Seaforth or the streets of Liverpool. But experience has brought with it its lessons. I have learnt that there is wisdom in a policy of trust, and folly in a policy of mistrust. I have not refused to receive the signs of the times. I have observed the effect that has been produced by Liberal legislation, and if we are told…that all the feelings of the country are in the best and broadest sense Conservative,—that is to say, that the people value the country and the laws and institutions of the country; if we are told that, I say honesty compels us to admit that result has been brought about by Liberal legislation.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Speech at Liverpool (18 July 1865), quoted in The Times (19 July 1865), p. 11.
1860s

Life , Wisdom , People , Law

“[I was] a youth in his twenty third year, young of his age, who had seen little or nothing of the world, who resigned himself to politics, but whose desire had been for the ministry of God. The remains of this desire operated unfortunately. They made me tend to glorify in an extravagant manner and degree not only the religious character of the State, which in reality stood low, but also the religious mission of the Conservative party. There was, to my eyes, a certain element of AntiChrist in the Reform Act and that Act was cordially hated. … It was only under the (second) Government of Sir Robert Peel that I learned how impotent [and] barren was the conservative office for the Church.”

William Ewart Gladstone

'My Earlier Political Opinions. (II) The Extrication' (16 July 1892), quoted in John Brooke and Mary Sorensen (eds.), The Prime Minister's Papers: W. E. Gladstone. I: Autobiographica (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1971), p. 40.
1890s

God , Hate , Youth , Age

“The hopelessness of the Turkish Government should make me witness with delight its being swept out of the countries which it tortures. Next to the Ottoman Government nothing can be more deplorable and blameworthy than jealousies between Greek and Slav and plans by the States already existing for appropriating other territory. Why not Macedonia for the Macedonians as well as Bulgaria for the Bulgarians and Serbia for the Serbians?”

William Ewart Gladstone

Letter quoted in Mr. Gladstone and The Balkan Confederation in The Times (6 February 1897)
1890s

Jealousy , Country

“This is the negation of God erected into a system of Government.”

William Ewart Gladstone

A letter to the Earl of Aberdeen, on the state prosecutions of the Neapolitan government (7 April 1851), p. 9.
1850s

God

“…that Chancellor of the Exchequer is the very man who comes down to corrupt whatever there is of financial virtue in us, and to instil into our minds those seductive and poisonous ideas that it does not, after all, matter very much if there is a deficit, and that it is extremely disagreeable when commerce is not in the most flourishing state to call upon the people to pay. Was that the practice of Sir Robert Peel? … he came to Parliament and stood at his place in the House of Commons, pointed out the figures as they stood, and said to them—I ask you, will you resort to the "miserable expedient" of tolerating deficit, and of making provision by loans from year to year? That which he denounced as the "miserable expedient" has become the standing law, has become almost the financial gospel of the Government that is now in power.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Speech in Edinburgh (29 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 152.
1870s

People , Law , Idea , Housing

“The peculiarity of this strike…has been that a great number of separate trades, which have nothing to do with one another…have shown that they intend to make common cause. You may depend upon it that this is a social fact of the highest importance and of very general importance of the future. I believe that the lesson has been learnt from Ireland, and that it is due to the present Government and to its coercive laws in Ireland, and to the necessity which they have laid upon the people of Ireland in different parts of the country which have no connexion with one another to associate together for an object which they believe to be vital to all. I am much inclined to think that the working men of London have learnt this lesson from Ireland.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Source: Speech in Cheshire (23 September 1889) on the London dock strike, quoted in The Times (24 September 1889), p. 10.

Men , People , Law , Thinking

“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.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1893/sep/01/the-unemployed#S4V0016P0_18930901_HOC_190 in the House of Commons (1 September 1893) in answer to a question from Howard Vincent MP who asked Gladstone "if the Government propose to take any steps to mitigate the consequences to the masses of the people" of unemployment.
1890s

People , Question , Nature , Thinking

“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.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Cheers.
Speech at Blackheath (28 October 1871), quoted in The Times (30 October 1871), p. 3.
1870s

Life , Family , Home , Question

“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!”

William Ewart Gladstone

Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. (1876)
1870s

Life , World , Law , History

“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.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Letter to Daniel Jones, an unemployed collier who complained of unemployment and of low wages (20 October 1869) as quoted in The Gladstone Diaries: With Cabinet Minutes and Prime-ministerial Correspondence: 1869-June 1871 Vol. 7 (1982) by H. C. G. Matthew, p. lxxiv
1860s

Exercises , Country

“…the great duty of a Government, especially in foreign affairs, is to soothe and tranquillize the minds of the people, not to set up false phantoms of glory which are to delude them into calamity, not to flatter their infirmities by leading them to believe that they are better than the rest of the world, and so to encourage the baleful spirit of domination; but to proceed upon a principle that recognises the sisterhood and equality of nations, the absolute equality of public right among them; above all, to endeavour to produce and to maintain a temper so calm and so deliberate in the public opinion of the country, that none shall be able to disturb it.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Speech in Edinburgh (25 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 37.
1870s

People , World , Falseness , Country

“But let the working man be on his guard against another danger. We live at a time when there is a disposition to think that the Government ought to do this and that and that the Government ought to do everything. There are things which the Government ought to do, I have no doubt. In former periods the Government have neglected much, and possibly even now they neglect something; but there is a danger on the other side. If the Government takes into its hands that which the man ought to do for himself it will inflict upon him greater mischiefs than all the benefits he will have received or all the advantages that would accrue from them. The essence of the whole thing is that the spirit of self-reliance, the spirit of true and genuine manly independence, should be preserved in the minds of the people, in the minds of the masses of the people, in the mind of every member of the class. If he loses his self-denial, if he learns to live in a craven dependence upon wealthier people rather than upon himself, you may depend upon it he incurs mischief for which no compensation can be made.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Speech at the opening of the Reading and Recreation Rooms erected by the Saltney Literary Institute at Saltney in Chesire (26 October 1889), as quoted in "Mr. Gladstone On The Working Classes" in The Times (28 October 1889), p. 8
1880s

People , Thinking , Learning , Time

“…the principle of nationality and the principle of reverence for antiquity—the principle of what I may call local patriotism—is not only an ennobling thing in itself, but has a great economic value. … The attachment to your country, the attachment among British subjects to Britain, but also the attachment among Welsh-born people to Wales, has in it, in some degrees, the nature both of an appeal to energy and an incentive to its development, and likewise, no few elements of a moral standard; for the Welshman, go where he may, will be unwilling to disgrace the name. It is a matter of familiar observation that even in the extremest east of Europe, wherever free institutions have supplanted a state of despotic government, the invariable effect has been to administer an enormous stimulus to the industrious activity of the country.”

William Ewart Gladstone

Speech to the Eisteddfod in Wrexham (8 September 1888), quoted in A. W. Hutton and H. J. Cohen (eds.), The Speeches of The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh and Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. 1888–1891 (London: Methuen, 1902), p. 58.
1880s

People , Nature , Country