A Liverpool Exemplar - William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone was born on 29 December 1809, at 62 Rodney Street, the house which was his home until the family moved in 1818. The fourth son of the merchant John Gladstone and his second wife, Anne MacKenzie Robertson, John had decided that he wanted to move his young family away from the city centre so built Seaforth House in 1813, a mansion in Seaforth, four miles north north west of Liverpool. The name Seaforth was taken by Gladstone from the title of Lord Seaforth, the head of the MacKenzie family, to which his second wife's mother belonged.

After attending a small school at Bootle near Liverpool, run by an Evangelical connected with the family, William was educated at Eton and Oxford University. John Gladstone was determined to give his son the educational advantage he himself had lacked, and from a young age William was encouraged to follow a career in politics. During a distinguished spell at Christ Church, Oxford he developed a reputation as a fine orator and after one speech he made on 14th November 1830, a fellow student, Charles Wordsworth, described it as "the most splendid speech, out and out, that was ever heard in our Society." It was here that William expressed the desire to take holy orders, but this was discouraged as John Gladstone's political ambitions were to be realised through his son as he became Tory MP for Newark in 1832, aged 23, and made his mark from the start, holding junior offices in Robert Peel's government of 1834 - 1835.
Described as initially having 'ultra-conservative' views, family loyalty persuaded him to use his maiden speech in the House of Commons to support his father's interests, arguing against the abolition of slavery. His father's sugar and cotton trading, together with Virginian tobacco and American grain, had made him a wealthy man with enslaved estates in British Guiana (Demerara as was) and he expanded his sugar estate holdings in the Caribbean, despite the rise of abolitionism. Furthermore the Gladstones received more than £90,000, about £9.5m in today's terms, as compensation for the slaves they were forced to free. 

William was however slowly moving towards liberalism, as he started his mission of "rescue and rehabilitation" of London's prostitutes in 1840, walking the streets, trying to convince prostitutes to change their ways. He spent a large amount of his own money on this work.and in 1843 he entered Peel's Conservative cabinet. By 1850, this flawed politician was a changed man. He cited the abolition of slavery as one of the great political issues in which the masses had been right and the classes had been wrong. His slow political evolution was bound up with the turmoil of the middle decades of the century.

In 1859, he joined the Liberals, becoming their leader in 1867, and the following year, Prime Minister for the first time, then indeed a Liberal, a believer in peace, economy and reform. His government created a national elementary programme and made major reforms in the justice system and the civil service. In 1869 he disestablished the Irish Protestant church and passed an Irish Land Act to rein-in unfair landlords and in 1872 removed employers intimidation of working class male voters with the open system of voting when his government brought in the Ballot Act. At once, the hooliganism, drunkenness and blatant bribery which had marred all previous elections vanished, however a heavy defeat in the 1874 general election led to his arch-rival Benjamin Disraeli becoming Conservative prime minister, and Gladstone retired as Liberal leader. He remained though a formidable government opponent, attacking the Conservatives over their failure to respond to Turkish brutality in the Balkans - the 'Eastern Crisis'.

In 1880, William became prime minister for the second time, combining this with the office of Chancellor for two years. He increased the number of men eligible to vote in an election under the Representation of the People Act 1884, but his failure to rescue General Charles Gordon from Khartoum and his slow reaction to other imperial issues cost him dear, and in 1885 the government's budget was defeated, prompting him to resign.
His third (1886) and fourth (1892 - 1894) terms as Prime Minister were dominated by his crusade for home rule in Ireland. The years he was out of office were devoted to the issue as well.

His first home rule bill in 1886 split the Liberal Party and was rejected. In 1893, another home rule bill was rejected by the House of Lords and he found himself increasingly at odds with his cabinet so much so that in 1894 he resigned. William died of cancer on 19 May 1898 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Excellent photo of his statue in St. George's Hall

The only person to have been three times Chancellor of the Exchequer and four times British Prime Minister, William Gladstone was one of the dominant political figures of the Victorian era and a passionate campaigner on a huge variety of issues; competitive admission to the civil service, vote by secret ballot, abolition of sales commissions in the army, educational expansion, and court reorganization. He was a superb linguist and classical scholar besides being a prolific author, frequently contributing to reviews and magazines. Articles on a variety of topics, including poetry, constitutional politics, economics, and church history flowed from his pen. He was, Lord Salisbury stated, "a great Christian man."

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