Chapter V - Gladstone and Mill

Summary

From the middle of the nineteenth century two great names stand out in the history of British Liberalism – that of Gladstone in the world of action, that of Mill in the world of thought. Differing in much, they agreed in one respect. They had the supreme virtue of keeping their minds fresh and open to new ideas, and both of them in consequence advanced to a deeper interpretation of social life as they grew older. In 1846 Gladstone ranked as a Conservative, but he parted from his old traditions under the leadership of Peel on the question of Free Trade, and for many years to come the most notable of his public services lay in the completion of the Cobdenite policy of financial emancipation. In the pursuit of this policy he was brought into collision with the House of Lords, and it was his active intervention in 1859–60 which saved the Commons from a humiliating surrender, and secured its financial supremacy unimpaired until 1909. In the following decade he stood for the extension of the suffrage, and it was his Government which, in 1884, carried the extension of the representative principle to the point at which it rested twentyseven years later. In economics Gladstone kept upon the whole to the Cobdenite principles which he acquired in middle life. He was not sympathetically disposed to the ‘New Unionism’ and the semisocialistic ideas that came at the end of the 'eighties, which, in fact, constituted a powerful cross current to the political work that he had immediately in hand.