GLADSTONE, WILLIAM EWART (1809-981. A British statesman. He was born December 29, 1809, of Scotch parentage, in the city of Liver pool, where his father was a wealthy merchant, a member of Parliament, and a baronet. In 1821 he was sent to Eton, and in 1828 he entered Christ Church College, Oxford. Both at Eton and Oxford Gladstone was distinguished for ap plication to his studies, for his religious tenden cies, his love of outdoor life, and his fondness for oratory and debate. He was successively secretary and president of the Oxford Debating Union, and in that society he delivered a power ful oration against the Reform Bill, which had been introduced into the House of Commons in 1831. In that year he took a double first in classics and mathematics.
Gladstone left Oxford in the spring of 1832, and after spending six months in Italy, entered Parliament as a member for- Newark. The House of which he was a member was the first to be seated under the Reform Bill, which he had attacked while in college. He naturally at tached himself to the Tory opposition under Sir Robert Peel, and waited for that party to come into power to win advancement. He delivered his maiden speech on June 3, 1833, in vindication of his father from charges brought against him concerning his conduct toward the slaves on his plantation in Demerara. In the last week of 1834 Peel came into power, and in January, 1835, appointed Gladstone First Junior Lord of the Treasury, and in the following month Under-Sec retary for the Colonies. The Parliament elected in February, however, had a Liberal majority; on April 8th the Tory Government went out and Gladstone again became a private member, which he remained until 1841, when, on Sir Robert Peel's coming back into power, he was appointed vice-president of the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint. In May, 1843, he became president of the Board of Trade, and so gained his first seat in a Cabinet. Both as vice-president and as president he took a leading share in the work of reforming the tariff, and thus got his first lesson in finance. Already he gave unmistakable signs of genius in this direction, both in the work of arranging schedules and in the defense of his pro posals on the floor of the House in exposition and debate. For a moment he endangered his career by resigning his office through uncertainty as to the support he should give an important Government measure concerning an increased grant to May nooth College, the Irish training school for Catholic priests. To Gladstone this seemed op posed to the principles he had supported in a book on the relations of the Church and State, published by him in 1839, in which he had stood for a single Church establishment under the con trol of the State, of which it should be the con science. Rather than run the risk of compromis ing himself before his own conscience he resigned his office (January 28, 1845) and became once more a private member of the House.
In December, 1845, he was appointed by Peel to the office of Colonial Secretary. To accept this he had to vacate his seat. This was the one break in a Parliamentary career extending over more than half a century. Gladstone now gave Peel his assistance in formulating his free-trade measures which led to the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. In 1847 Gladstone resumed his seat in the House as Tory member for Oxford. In 1850 Peel died, and the first period in Glad stone's career, the period of apprenticeship to this great master, was terminated.
The new period extending from 1850 to 1868 may be called Gladstone's period of independent political reform. In 1852 he first came into con flict with his great rival, Disraeli, whose budget in that year he completely annihilated, thus bringing about the fall of the Derby Ministry (December 17th). In 1853 he presented his own first budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Aberdeen's Coalition Cabinet, and scored the first great personal triumph of his career. This bud get was a masterpiece of equable and efficient taxation. It increased the revenues of the State and placed the burden of the impositions where they could best be supported. His plans, how ever, especially in the matter of the income tax, which he was proposing by gradual steps to abolish completely, were somewhat interfered with by the intervention of the Crimean War, which demanded a new budget with increased taxation. In this budget Gladstone insisted that all the funds needed for the prosecution of the war should be raised by taxation, and not by the negotiation of loans. The conduct of the war, however, hurt the prestige of the Aberdeen Gov ernment, and on January 29, 1855, the Ministry resigned. But Gladstone was the `inevitable' Chancellor for any administration, and he accept ed the same office in Lord Palmerston's Cabinet, resigning it, however, at the end of three weeks. He remained out of office for three years, during which time he published his Studies on Homer (1858), and undertook a mission to the Ionian Islands, where a strong agitation was being car ried on for the cessation of British rule and an nexation to Greece. In 1859 he returned to the Exchequer in the Cabinet of Lord Palmerston, and in 1860 and 1861 he issued budgets that were marvels of financial statesmanship. He had now allied himself completely with Bright and Cob den, the latter of whom he had heartily supported in his attempt to negotiate a commercial treaty with France. This was accomplished in January, 1860. By his masterly tactics Gladstone won a complete victory over the House of Lords in 1861 after it had defeated his measure for the aboli tion of the tax on paper in the previous year. This was a great victory for popular education and the free press, and from that time dates the era of cheap newspapers for the people in Eng land.