Gladstone Centenary Essays (review)

The genesis of this book lies in the Gladstone Centenary International Conference that convened at Chester College in the summer of 1998. The conference's international character is not reflected in the volume, all of whose contributors are experienced and accomplished historians affiliated with British academic institutions. They rarely stray from political matters. Given that William Gladstone's impact on the mid- and late-Victorian political scene was epic and enduring, their preoccupation is not to be regretted.

Three of the volume's thirteen essays juxtapose Gladstone with other nineteenth-century notables: Thomas Chalmers, Robert Peel, and Richard Cobden. An eminent Scottish Presbyterian divine, and one of the great preachers of his age, Chalmers hoped to enlist Gladstone's cooperation in an endeavor to bolster the established churches in both England and Scotland. Stewart Brown astutely investigates the thwarting of this aim. Gladstone's embrace of High Church Anglicanism in the 1830s proved incompatible with the defense of a non-episcopal Presbyterian establishment. He had even less sympathy for the sundering of that establishment with the formation of the Scottish Free Church in 1843 (Chalmers took a prominent part in the secession). The religious crisis of the 1830s and 1840s also figures in Eric Evans's cogent treatment of Peel and Gladstone. Evans convincingly argues that Peel was instrumental in drawing "Gladstone's ferocious energies" away from "theocratic speculation" and toward economic questions. He asserts that Peel's success in this venture "probably saved Gladstone's political career" (51). The essay's chief concern, however, is to reveal the divergent attitudes to party evinced by Peel and Gladstone. Although each had an authoritarian streak, the latter grasped the centrality of party whereas the former, shaped by the legacy of William Pitt, saw it as a secondary political agency. Another excellent essay in this mode is authored by Anthony Howe, who examines the political affinity of Gladstone and Cobden that crystallized by the close of the 1850s. In the bellicose Age of Palmerston they forged a bond based on a common commitment to economy in government and a mutual antipathy to military expenditure. Their collaborative pursuit and achievement of the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty deepened Gladstone's appreciation of Cobden's secular political vision. Gladstone's increasingly resonant political voice, Howe forcefully contends, incorporated a vibrant Cobdenite register.

Many individuals find their way into Clyde Binfield's essay on Nonconformist networks and the values their members shared with Gladstone. The author doubtless knows a lot about his chosen subject; regrettably, the knowledge is squandered. Dense detail crammed into a desultory narrative makes for an incoherent and ungainly essay.

Roland Quinault's discussion of Gladstone's thoughts on parliamentary reform from the Great Reform Bill through the Third Reform Act cannot be faulted for aimlessness. It identifies continuities in Gladstone's views from the 1850s, and suggestively links these continuities to a realization that Alexis de Tocqueville might be a better guide than Edmund Burke. Quinault's tidy essay ignores the monographic literature on the Second and Third Reform Acts and the Ballot Act of 1872. Gladstone's public utterances and initiatives on the subject were markedly swayed by a context whose complexities lie beyond the reach of Quinault's analysis. The generalizations he puts forward can obscure as well as clarify the springs of Gladstone's actions.

D. George Boyce's finely wrought "Gladstone and the Unionists of Ireland, 1868-1893" sheds light on the motives and content of Gladstone's Irish actions. A desire to stimulate the patriotism of the Anglo-Irish gentry and to enlarge their scope for benevolent influence tellingly affected Gladstone's quest for a settlement of the Irish question. In advancing this argument, Boyce indicates the distinctive features of Gladstone's position by comparing it with that of W. E. H. Lecky, who concluded that the interests of Unionists would be fatally undermined by the Liberal...