William Ewart Gladstone

I was born in Liverpool and schooled at Eton and Christ Church, where the ancients taught me order and measure. I entered Parliament in 1832 as a Tory and served under Sir Robert Peel; the hard lesson of the Corn Laws schooled me further—that government must set bread before privilege, and trade before protection. From that turning grew my Liberalism: not license, but duty; not extravagance, but economy.

At the Exchequer I tried to make finance speak plain English. Lower and simpler duties, honest accounts, and thrift in administration were my tools. I held that free trade was a moral as well as an economic cause, and that taxation should be so intelligible that a man could judge it by his own fireside. Budgets, to my mind, were not tricks of arithmetic but instruments of national character.

My first ministry moved at speed: the Irish Church was disestablished (1869) to right a standing wrong; the Irish Land Act (1870) began to restrain arbitrary power; the Elementary Education Act (1870) set the frame for national schooling; the Ballot Act (1872) secured a secret vote; the civil service was opened by examination (1870); and the Judicature Act (1873) recast the courts. Efficiency was not an idol to me—only the handmaid of justice.

I returned in 1880 professing peace, retrenchment, and reform, yet Egypt and the Sudan tried that creed sorely. Still, we widened the franchise (1884) and redistributed seats (1885) to bring Parliament nearer the people. In age I strove for Irish Home Rule—defeated in 1886 and again in 1893—convinced that good government and self-government must be reconciled. Between Midlothian platforms I read Homer and, to quiet the mind, took axe to wood; in office I learned that conscience must work within the limits of law.