Gladstone and the Logic of Victorian Politics by Ian St. John (review)

W. E. Gladstone’s political longevity depended on his ability to reinvent his image as time went by. It helped that he enjoyed not one but several political lives, starting as a Tory idealist in 1832 and ending as the hero of the Liberal left in 1896 (when he delivered his last, famous public speech on the duty of the international community to stop the Armenian massacres). During his sixty-four years in politics, he adopted a range of strategies. From 1846 he moved away from the Tories, when the latter rejected Sir Robert Peel, to whom Gladstone was very close; between 1853 and 1859 he drew closer to the Liberals over the question of the Italian Risorgimento and national unification, the latter being an issue which polarized public opinion and the parties in Parliament. As chancellor of the exchequer from 1853 to 1855 and from 1859 to 1865 he established the free-trade fiscal system which soon resulted in a new consensus, defining the relationship between citizens and the state for the next seventy years. Later, between 1868 and 1885, Gladstone became the great modernizer of British politics and society, presiding over two of the most significant reform governments in the history of the Isles. The separation of church and state in Ireland, a democratically managed system of primary education, the reform of trade-union legislation, the first major steps toward meritocracy in the armed forces, the reform of university education, and the most radical restructuring of the electoral system hitherto attempted (in 1883 through 1885): these were some of the historic achievements of the Gladstone governments.

However, Gladstone’s most lasting legacy, and the ultimate reason for his enduring appeal, is not to be found in his record as a reformer and practical politician. Neither is it solely due to his charisma—although this was sufficiently important to inspire Max Weber when he elaborated his famous leadership theory. Rather, this legacy is based on Gladstone’s ability to use his charisma to launch a new definition of liberalism, one that went beyond laissez-faire, free trade, and constitutional reform, and began to redefine liberalism as the politics of humanitarianism.

Discussing how to conceptualise and explain the logic of such a rich, complex, and protean engagement with contemporary politics is the focus of this new book. Its fourteen chapters are largely chronological in structure. Gladstone’s development is mapped from his “Young Tory” and “High Tory” days to liberalism through Peelite finance (chapters 2 and 3), with the mid-Victorian budget marking his gradual emergence as a “People’s Tribune” by 1865 (chapter 5). However, separate thematic chapters are dedicated to his foreign policy (chapter 8), “Gladstonian Liberalism” (chapter 9), and Ireland and Home Rule (chapters 11 and 12).

Ian St. John has relied primarily on secondary sources to produce a lucid and clearly presented analysis of the ways in which scholars have approached and interpreted the great Victorian. Often St. John captures effectively the main gist of a wide-ranging debate and expresses it in a few concise and memorable sentences. On freedom, for example, he concludes: “Liberty, if it were meaningful and not mere license, must entail voluntary participation in the life of the community with respect for its rules and customs. This was Gladstonian Liberalism: freedom of the individual within institutional continuity; reform to improve, but with no hasty or gratuitous change; toleration of individuals to pursue the spiritual truth through Church organisations; a willingness to innovate within a context formed by custom and tradition. . . . Freedom and order, in other words, were not contradictory principles. God had ordained that they should be mutually reinforcing: liberty rested upon law and good order, and liberty was the surest guarantor of authority” (396–97).

One feature of the book which many readers will appreciate is the bullet-point summaries of each main question analysed. I have more than once found myself questioning...