William Ewart Gladstone

Biography

William Ewart Gladstone was born in Liverpool in 1809, a son of the Scottish merchant and slaveholder Sir John Gladstone. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he entered the Commons in 1832 as a High Tory member for Newark and served under Robert Peel as President of the Board of Trade and Colonial Secretary. After the Conservative split over the Corn Laws he sided with the Peelites, who joined Whigs and Radicals to form the Liberal Party in 1859.

Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer under Aberdeen, Palmerston and Russell, cutting tariffs and taxes in a programme later called Gladstonian liberalism. He became prime minister in 1868; his first government disestablished the Church of Ireland and introduced the secret ballot. Defeated in 1874, he returned through the Midlothian campaign of 1879-80, often seen as Britain's first modern election campaign, and his second ministry passed the Third Reform Act of 1884.

His brief third government in 1886 was consumed by his Irish Home Rule bill, whose defeat split the Liberals. A second Home Rule bill passed the Commons in 1893 during his fourth ministry but was rejected by the Lords, and he resigned in 1894 at 84, the oldest person to hold the office. Over more than sixty years in Parliament he sat for five constituencies. He left the Commons in 1895 and died at Hawarden in 1898.