GOSCHEN, ga'shen, GEORGE JOACHIM (1831 —). An English statesman and financier, born in 1831, and educated at Rugby and Oriel College, Oxford. Entering the mercantile firm of Friih ling & Goschen, he paid especial attention to finance, and in 1856 became Director of the Bank of England. A Liberal member of Parliament for London from 1863, he- took an active share in throwing open the universities to dissenters, and in bringing about the abolition of religious tests. He became a Privy Councilor and vice president of the Board of Trade in 1865, and in the following year Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and a Cabinet Minister, but retired with the Russell Ministry in June of that year. On Gladstone's accession to power in 1868, Go schen was appointed president of the Poor Law Board, and in 1871 First Lord of the Admi ralty. He retired from office with his party in 1874, and in the election of this year he was the only Liberal candidate returned from the City of London. Two years later he and M. Joubert went
as delegates to Cairo, where they planned with the Khedive the conversion of the Egyptian debt. In 1880 and 1881, as special ambassador to the Porte, Goschen lent his services to the settlement of the Grreco-Turkish boundary. Because of his opposition to Gladstone on the extension of the franchise and on home rule for Ireland, he aban doned the Liberal party for that of the Liberal Unionists (q.v.) in 1886, and accepted the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Salis bury's Government, under which he carried a measure for the reduction of the public debt. In 1895 he again became First Lord of the Admi ralty. He was made lord rector of Aberdeen University in 1887, and of Edinburgh University in 1890. Tie has written largely on financial questions, and his treatise on The Theory of the Foreign Exchanges is a standard work.