Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
{{infobox prime minister |honorific-prefix	The Right Honourable | name William Ewart Gladstone |honorific-suffix FRS FSS | image 1271754717 william-e.-gladstone.jpg | imagesize 245px | order Prime Minister of the United Kingdom | term_start 15 August 1892 | term_end 2 March 1894 | monarch Victoria | predecessor The Marquess of Salisbury | successor The Earl of Rosebery | term_start2 1 February | term_end2 20 July 1886 | predecessor2 The Marquess of Salisbury | successor2 The Marquess of Salisbury | term_start3 23 April 1880 | term_end3 9 June 1885 | predecessor3 Benjamin Disraeli | successor3 The Marquess of Salisbury | term_start4 3 December 1868 | term_end4 17 February 1874 | predecessor4 Benjamin Disraeli | successor4 Benjamin Disraeli
order5	Leader of the Opposition | term_start5 20 July 1886 | term_end5 11 August 1892 | predecessor5 The Marquess of Salisbury | successor5 The Marquess of Salisbury | term_start6 9 June 1885 | term_end6 28 January 1886 | predecessor6 The Earl of Beaconsfield | successor6 The Marquess of Salisbury | term_start7 17 February 1874 | term_end7 21 April 1880 | predecessor7 Benjamin Disraeli | successor7 The Earl of Beaconsfield
order8	Chancellor of the Exchequer | term_start8 28 April 1880 | term_end8 16 December 1882 | primeminister8 Himself | predecessor8 Stafford Northcote | successor8 Hugh Childers | term_start9 11 August 1873 | term_end9 17 February 1874 | primeminister9 Himself | predecessor9 Robert Lowe | successor9 Stafford Northcote | term_start11 18 June 1859 | term_end11 26 June 1866 | primeminister11 The Viscount Palmerston The Earl Russell | predecessor11 Benjamin Disraeli | successor11 Benjamin Disraeli | term_start12 28 December 1852 | term_end12 28 February 1855 | primeminister12 The Earl of Aberdeen The Viscount Palmerston | predecessor12 Benjamin Disraeli | successor12 George Cornewall Lewis
birth date	December 29, 1809 | birth_place Liverpool, Lancashire, England | death_date May 19, 1898 | death_place Hawarden Castle, Flintshire, Wales | alma_mater Christ Church, Oxford | party Conservative, Peelite and Liberal | religion Church of England (High church) | signature William Ewart Gladstone Signature 2.svg |signature_alt Cursive signature in ink

William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS (29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times (1868–1874, 1880–1885, February–July 1886 and 1892–1894), more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time. He had also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times (1853–1855, 1859–1866, 1873–1874, and 1880–1882).

Gladstone first entered Parliament in 1832. Beginning as a High Tory, Gladstone served in the Cabinet of Sir Robert Peel. After the split of the Conservatives Gladstone was a Peelite – in 1859 the Peelites merged with the Whigs and the Radicals to form the Liberal Party. As Chancellor Gladstone became committed to low public spending and to electoral reform, earning him the sobriquet "The People's William".

Gladstone's first ministry saw many reforms including Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland and the introduction of secret voting. After his electoral defeat in 1874, Gladstone resigned as leader of the Liberal Party, but from 1876 began a comeback based on opposition to Turkey's Bulgarian atrocities. Gladstone's Midlothian Campaign of 1879–1880 was an early example of many modern political campaigning techniques. After the 1880 election, he formed his second ministry, which saw crises in Egypt (culminating in the death of General Gordon in 1885), and in Ireland, where the government passed repressive measures but also improved the legal rights of Irish tenant farmers. The government also passed the Third Reform Act.

Back in office in early 1886, Gladstone proposed Irish Home Rule (devolution); however, this was defeated in the House of Commons in July. The resulting split in the Liberal Party helped keep them out of office, with one short break, for twenty years. In 1892 Gladstone formed his last government at the age of 82. The Second Irish Home Rule Bill passed the Commons but was defeated in the Lords in 1893. Gladstone resigned in March 1894, in opposition to increased naval expenditure. He left Parliament in 1895 and died three years later aged 88.

Gladstone is famous for his oratory, for his rivalry with the Conservative Leader Benjamin Disraeli and his poor relations with Queen Victoria, who once complained, "He always addresses me as if I were a public meeting."

Gladstone was known affectionately by his supporters as "The People's William" or the "G.O.M." ("Grand Old Man", or, according to Disraeli, "God's Only Mistake").

Early life (1809–1840)

Born in 1809 in Liverpool, England, at 62 Rodney Street, William Ewart Gladstone was the fourth son of the merchant Sir John Gladstone from Leith, Midlothian, and his second wife, Anne MacKenzie Robertson, from Dingwall, Ross-shire. Gladstone was born and brought up in Liverpool and was of Scottish ancestry. One of his earliest childhood memories was being made to stand on a table and say "Ladies and gentlemen" to the assembled audience, probably at a gathering to promote the election of George Canning as MP for Liverpool in 1812.

William Gladstone was educated from 1816 to 1821 at a preparatory school at the vicarage of St Thomas's Church at Seaforth, close to his family's residence, Seaforth House. In 1821 William followed in the footsteps of his older brothers and attended Eton College before matriculating in 1828 at Christ Church, Oxford, where he read Classics and Mathematics, although he had no great interest in mathematics. In December 1831 he achieved the double first class degree he had long desired. Gladstone served as President of the Oxford Union debating society, where he developed a reputation as an orator, which followed him into the House of Commons. At university Gladstone was a Tory and denounced Whig proposals for parliamentary reform.

Following the success of his double first, William travelled with his brother John on a Grand Tour of Europe, visiting Belgium, France, Germany and Italy. On his return to England, William was elected to Parliament in 1832 as Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Newark, partly through the influence of the local patron, the Duke of Newcastle. Although Gladstone entered Lincoln's Inn in 1833, with a view to becoming a barrister, by 1839 he had requested that his name should be removed from the list because he no longer intended to be called to the Bar.

In the House of Commons, Gladstone was initially a disciple of High Toryism, opposing the abolition of slavery and factory legislation. In December 1834 he was appointed as a Junior Lord of the Treasury in Sir Robert Peel's first ministry. The following month he was appointed Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, an office he held until the government's resignation in April 1835.

Gladstone published his first book, ''The State in its Relations with the Church'', in 1838, in which he argued that the goal of the state should be to promote and defend the interests of the Church of England. The following year he married Catherine Glynne, to whom he remained married until his death 59 years later. They had eight children together, including Herbert John Gladstone and Henry Neville Gladstone. Gladstone's eldest son William (known as "Willy" to distinguish him from his father) became a Member of Parliament but pre-deceased his father, dying in the early 1890s.

In 1840 Gladstone began to rescue and rehabilitate London prostitutes, walking the streets of London himself and encouraging the women he encountered to change their ways. Much to the criticism of his peers, he continued this practice decades later, even after he was elected Prime Minister.

Minister under Peel (1841–1846)

Gladstone was re-elected in 1841. In September 1842 he lost the forefinger of his left hand in an accident while reloading a gun; thereafter he wore a glove or finger sheath (stall). In the second ministry of Robert Peel he served as President of the Board of Trade (1843–44).

Gladstone became concerned with the situation of "coal whippers". These were the men who worked on London docks, "whipping" in baskets from ships to barges or wharves all incoming coal from the sea. They were called up and relieved through public-houses and therefore a man could not get this job unless he possessed the favourable opinion of the publican, who looked upon most favourably those who drank. The man's name was written down and the "score" followed. Publicans issued employment solely on the capacity of the man to pay, and men often left the pub to work drunk. They spent their savings on drink to secure the favourable opinion of publicans and therefore further employment. Gladstone passed the Coal Vendors Act 1843 to set up a central office for employment. When this Act expired in 1856 a Select Committee was appointed by the Lords in 1857 to look into the question. Gladstone gave evidence to the Committee: "I approached the subject in the first instance as I think everyone in Parliament of necessity did, with the strongest possible prejudice against the proposal [to interfere]; but the facts stated were of so extraordinary and deplorable a character, that it was impossible to withhold attention from them. Then the question being whether legislative interference was required I was at length induced to look at a remedy of an extraordinary character as the only one I thought applicable to the case...it was a great innovation". Looking back in 1883, Gladstone wrote that "In principle, perhaps my Coalwhippers Act of 1843 was the most Socialistic measure of the last half century".

He resigned in 1845 over the Maynooth Seminary issue, a matter of conscience for him. In order to improve relations with Irish Catholics, Peel's government proposed increasing the annual grant paid to the Seminary for training Catholic priests. Gladstone, who previously argued in a book that a Protestant country should not pay money to other churches, supported the increase in the Maynooth grant and voted for it in Commons, but resigned rather than face charges that he had compromised his principles to remain in office. After accepting Gladstone's resignation, Peel confessed to a friend, "I really have great difficulty sometimes in exactly comprehending what he means". Gladstone returned to Peel's government as Colonial Secretary in December.

Opposition MP (1846–1851)

The following year Peel's government fell over the MPs' repeal of the Corn Laws and Gladstone followed his leader into a course of separation from mainstream Conservatives. After Peel's death in 1850 Gladstone emerged as the leader of the Peelites in the House of Commons. He was re-elected for the University of Oxford (ie. representing the MA graduates of the University) at the General Election in 1847 – Peel had once held this seat but had lost it because of his espousal of Catholic Emancipation in 1829. Gladstone became a constant critic of Lord Palmerston.

As a young man Gladstone had treated his father's estate, Fasque, in the county of Angus, southwest of Aberdeen, as home, but as a younger son he would not inherit it. Instead, from the time of his marriage, he lived at his wife's family's estate, Hawarden, in North Wales. He never actually owned Hawarden, which belonged first to his brother-in-law Sir Stephen Glynne, and was then inherited by Gladstone's eldest son in 1874. During the late 1840s, when he was out of office, he worked extensively to turn Hawarden into a viable business.

In 1848 he also founded the Church Penitentiary Association for the Reclamation of Fallen Women. In May 1849 he began his most active "rescue work" with "fallen women" and met prostitutes late at night on the street, in his house or in their houses, writing their names in a private notebook. He aided the House of Mercy at Clewer near Windsor (which exercised extreme in-house discipline) and spent much time arranging employment for ex-prostitutes. In a 'Declaration' signed on 7 December 1896 and only to be opened after his death by his son Stephen, Gladstone wrote:

With reference to rumours which I believe were at one time afloat, though I know not with what degree of currency: and also with reference to the times when I shall not be here to answer for myself, I desire to record my solemn declaration and assurance, as in the sight of God and before His Judgment Seat, that at no period of my life have I been guilty of the act which is known as that of infidelity to the marriage bed.

In 1927, during a court case over published claims that he had had improper relationships with some of these women, the jury unanimously found that the evidence "completely vindicated the high moral character of the late Mr. W. E. Gladstone".

In 1850/51 Gladstone visited Naples for the benefit of his daughter Mary's eyesight. Giacomo Lacaita, legal adviser to the British embassy, was imprisoned by the Neapolitan government, as were other political dissidents. Gladstone became concerned at the political situation in Naples and the arrest and imprisonment of Neapolitan liberals. In February 1851 the government allowed Gladstone to visit the prisons where they were held and he deplored their condition. In April and July he published two ''Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen'' against the Neapolitan government and responded to his critics in ''An Examination of the Official Reply of the Neapolitan Government'' in 1852. Gladstone's first letter described what he saw in Naples as "the negation of God erected into a system of government".

Chancellor of the Exchequer (1852–1855)

In 1852, following the appointment of Lord Aberdeen as Prime Minister, head of a coalition of Whigs and Peelites, Gladstone became Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Whig Sir Charles Wood and the Tory Disraeli had both been perceived to have failed in the office and so this provided Gladstone with a great political opportunity.

His first budget in 1853 almost completed the work begun by Peel eleven years before in simplifying Britain's tariff of duties and customs. 123 duties were abolished and 133 duties were reduced. The income tax had legally expired but Gladstone proposed to extend it for seven years to fund tariff reductions:

We propose, then, to re-enact it for two years, from April, 1853, to April, 1855, at the rate of 7d. in the £; from April, 1855, to enact it for two more years at 6d. in the £; and then for three years more...from April, 1857, at 5d. Under this proposal, on the 5th of April, 1860, the income-tax will by law expire.

Gladstone wanted to maintain a balance between direct and indirect taxation. He also wished to abolish the income tax. He knew that its abolition depended on a considerable retrenchment in government expenditure. He therefore increased the number of people eligible to pay it by lowering the threshold from £150 to £100. The more people who paid income tax, Gladstone believed, the more the public would pressure the government into abolishing it. Gladstone argued that the £100 line was "the dividing line...between the educated and the labouring part of the community" and that therefore the income tax payers and the electorate were to be the same people, who would then vote to cut government expenditure. H. C. G. Matthew has written that Gladstone "made finance and figures exciting, and succeeded in constructing budget speeches epic in form and performance, often with lyrical interludes to vary the tension in the Commons as the careful exposition of figures and argument was brought to a climax". The contemporary diarist Charles Greville wrote of Gladstone's speech:

...by universal consent it was one of the grandest displays and most able financial statement that ever was heard in the House of Commons; a great scheme, boldly, skilfully, and honestly devised, disdaining popular clamour and pressure from without, and the execution of it absolute perfection. Even those who do not admire the Budget, or who are injured by it, admit the merit of the performance. It has raised Gladstone to a great political elevation, and, what is of far greater consequence than the measure itself, has given the country assurance of a man equal to great political necessities, and fit to lead parties and direct governments.

However with Britain entering the Crimean War in February 1854, Gladstone introduced his second budget on 6 March. Gladstone had to increase expenditure on the Services and a vote of credit of £1,250,000 was taken to send a 25,000 strong force to the East. The deficit for the year would be £2,840,000 (estimated revenue £56,680,000; estimated expenditure £59,420,000). Gladstone refused to borrow the money needed to rectify this deficit and instead increased the income tax by one half from sevenpence to tenpence-halfpenny in the pound. Gladstone proclaimed that "the expenses of a war are the moral check which it has pleased the Almighty to impose on the ambition and the lust of conquest that are inherent in so many nations". By May £6,870,000 was needed to finance the war and so Gladstone introduced another budget on 8 May. Gladstone raised the income tax from 10 and a half d. to 14d. in order to raise £3,250,000 and spirits, malt, and sugar were taxed in order to raise the rest of the money needed.

He served until 1855, a few weeks into Lord Palmerston's first premiership, whereupon he resigned along with the rest of the Peelites after a motion was passed to appoint a committee of inquiry into the conduct of the war.

Opposition (1855–1859)

The Conservative Leader Lord Derby became Prime Minister in 1858, but Gladstone – who like the other Peelites was still nominally a Conservative – declined a position in his government, opting not to sacrifice his free trade principles.

Between November 1858 and February 1859, Gladstone, on behalf of Lord Derby's government, was made Extraordinary Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands embarking via Vienna and Trieste on a twelve week mission to the southern Adriatic entrusted with complex challenges that had arisen in connection with the future of the British Protectorate of the Ionian islands.

In 1858, Gladstone took up the hobby of tree felling, mostly of oak trees, an exercise he continued with enthusiasm until he was 81 in 1891. Eventually, he became notorious for this activity, prompting Lord Randolph Churchill to snigger, "The forest laments in order that Mr. Gladstone may perspire." Less noticed at the time was his practice of replacing the trees he'd felled with newly planted saplings. Possibly related to this hobby is the fact that Gladstone was a lifelong bibliophile to the extent that it has been suggested that in his lifetime, he read around 20,000 books, and eventually came to own a Library of over 32,000.

Chancellor of the Exchequer (1859–1866)

In 1859, Lord Palmerston formed a new mixed government with Radicals included, and Gladstone again joined the government as Chancellor of the Exchequer (with most of the other remaining Peelites) to become part of the new Liberal Party.

Gladstone inherited an unpleasant financial situation, with a deficit of nearly five millions and the income tax at 5d. Like Peel, Gladstone dismissed the idea of borrowing to cover the deficit. Gladstone argued that "In time of peace nothing but dire necessity should induce us to borrow". Most of the money needed was acquired through raising the income tax to 9d. Usually not more than two-thirds of a tax imposed could be collected in a financial year so Gladstone therefore imposed the extra four pence at a rate of 8d. during the first half of the year so that he could obtain the additional revenue in one year. Gladstone's dividing line set up in 1853 had been abolished in 1858 but Gladstone revived it, with lower incomes to pay 6 and a half d. instead of 9d. For the first half of the year the lower incomes paid 8d. and the higher incomes paid 13d. in income tax.

On 12 September 1859 the businessman Richard Cobden visited Gladstone, with Gladstone recording in his diary: "...further conv. with Mr. Cobden on Tariffs & relations with France. We are closely & warmly agreed". Cobden was sent as Britain's representative to the negotiations with France's Michel Chevalier for a free trade treaty between the two countries. Gladstone wrote to Cobden: "...the great aim—the moral and political significance of the act, and its probable and desired fruit in binding the two countries together by interest and affection. Neither you nor I attach for the moment any superlative value to this Treaty for the sake of the extension of British trade...What I look to is the social good, the benefit to the relations of the two countries, and the effect on the peace of Europe".

Gladstone's budget of 1860 was introduced on 10 February along with the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty between Britain and France that would reduce tariffs between the two countries. This budget "marked the final adoption of the Free Trade principle, that taxation should be levied for Revenue purposes alone, and that every protective, differential, or discriminating duty...should be dislodged". At the beginning of 1859, there were 419 duties in existence. The 1860 budget reduced the number of duties to 48, with 15 duties constituting the majority of the revenue. To finance these reductions in indirect taxation, the income tax, instead of being abolished, was raised to 10d. for incomes above £150 and at 7d. for incomes above £100.

Some of the duties Gladstone intended to abolish in 1860 were the duties on paper, a controversial policy because the duties had traditionally inflated the costs of publishing and thus hindered the dissemination of radical working class ideas. Although Palmerston supported continuation of the duties, using them and income tax revenues to make armament purchases, a majority of his Cabinet supported Gladstone. The Bill to abolish duties on paper narrowly passed Commons but was rejected by the House of Lords. As no money bill had been rejected by Lords for over two hundred years, a furore arose over this vote. The next year, Gladstone included the abolition of paper duties in a consolidated Finance Bill (the first ever) in order to force the Lords to accept it, and accept it they did.

Significantly, Gladstone succeeded in steadily reducing the income tax over the course of his tenure as Chancellor. In 1861 the tax was reduced to ninepence (£0-0s–9d); in 1863 to sevenpence; in 1864 to fivepence; and in 1865 to fourpence. Gladstone believed that government was extravagant and wasteful with taxpayers' money and so sought to let money "fructify in the pockets of the people" by keeping taxation levels down through "peace and retrenchment". Gladstone wrote in 1859 to his brother who was a member of the Financial Reform Association at Liverpool: "Economy is the first and great article (economy such as I understand it) in my financial creed. The controversy between direct and indirect taxation holds a minor, though important place". He wrote to his wife on 14 January 1860: "I am ''certain'', from experience, of the immense advantage of strict account-keeping in early life. It is just like learning the grammar then, which when once learned need not be referred to afterwards".

The Austrian economist, Joseph Schumpeter, described Gladstonian finance in his ''History of Economic Analysis:

...there was one man who not only united high ability with unparalleled opportunity but also knew how to turn budgets into political triumphs and who stands in history as the greatest English financier of economic liberalism, Gladstone...The greatest feature of Gladstonian finance...was that it expressed with ideal adequacy both the whole civilisation and the needs of the time, ''ex visu'' of the conditions of the country to which it was to apply; or, to put it slightly differently, that it translated a social, political, and economic vision, which was comprehensive as well as historically correct, into the clauses of a set of co-ordinated fiscal measures...Gladstonian finance was the finance of the system of 'natural liberty,' laissez-faire, and free trade...the most important thing was to remove fiscal obstructions to private activity. And for this, in turn, it was necessary to keep public expenditure low. Retrenchment was the victorious slogan of the day...it means the reduction of the functions of the state to a minimum...retrenchment means rationalisation of the remaining functions of the state, which among other things implies as small a military establishment as possible. The resulting economic development would in addition, so it was believed, make social expenditures largely superfluous...Equally important was it...to raise the revenue that would still have to be raised in such a way as to deflect economic behaviour as little as possible from what it would have been in the absence of all taxation ('taxation for revenue only'). And since the profit motive and the propensity to save were considered of paramount importance for the economic progress of ''all'' classes, this meant in particular that taxation should as little as possible interfere with the net earnings of business...As regards indirect taxes, the principle of least interference was interpreted by Gladstone to mean that taxation should be concentrated on a few important articles, leaving the rest free...Last, but not least, we have the principle of the balanced budget.

Due to his actions as Chancellor, Gladstone earned the reputation as the liberator of British trade and the working man's breakfast table, the man responsible for the emancipation of the popular press from "taxes upon knowledge" and for placing a duty on the succession of the estates of the rich. Gladstone's popularity rested on his taxation policies which meant to his supporters balance, social equity and political justice. The most significant expression of working class opinion was at Northumberland in 1862 when Gladstone visited. George Holyoake recalled in 1865:

When Mr Gladstone visited the North, you well remember when word passed from the newspaper to the workman that it circulated through mines and mills, factories and workshops, and they came out to greet the only British minister who ever gave the English people a right because it was just they should have it...and when he went down the Tyne, all the country heard how twenty miles of banks were lined with people who came to greet him. Men stood in the blaze of chimneys; the roofs of factories were crowded; colliers came up from the mines; women held up their children on the banks that it might be said in after life that they had seen the Chancellor of the People go by. The river was covered like the land. Every man who could ply an oar pulled up to give Mr Gladstone a cheer. When Lord Palmerston went to Bradford the streets were still, and working men imposed silence upon themselves. When Mr Gladstone appeared on the Tyne he heard cheer no other English minister ever heard...the people were grateful to him, and rough pitmen who never approached a public man before, pressed round his carriage by thousands...and thousands of arms were stretched out at once, to shake hands with Mr Gladstone as one of themselves.

When Gladstone first joined Palmerston's government in 1859, he opposed further electoral reform, but he changed his position during Palmerston's last premiership, and by 1865 he was firmly in favour of enfranchising the working classes in towns. This latter policy created friction with Palmerston, who strongly opposed enfranchisement. At the beginning of each session, Gladstone would passionately urge the Cabinet to adopt new policies, while Palmerston would fixedly stare at a paper before him. At a lull in Gladstone's speech, Palmerston would smile, rap the table with his knuckles, and interject pointedly, "Now, my Lords and gentlemen, let us go to business".

As Chancellor, Gladstone made a speech at Newcastle on 7 October 1862 in which he supported the independence of the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War, claiming that Jefferson Davis had "made a nation". Great Britain was officially neutral at the time, and Gladstone later regretted the Newcastle speech. In May 1864 Gladstone said that he saw no reason in principle why all mentally able men could not be enfranchised, but admitted that this would only come about once the working-classes themselves showed more interest in the subject. Queen Victoria was not pleased with this statement, and an outraged Palmerston considered it seditious incitement to agitation.

Gladstone's support for electoral reform and disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Ireland had alienated him from his constituents in his Oxford University seat, and he lost it in the 1865 general election. A month later, however, he stood as a candidate in South Lancashire, where he was elected third MP (South Lancashire at this time elected three MPs). Palmerston campaigned for Gladstone in Oxford because he believed that his constituents would keep him "partially muzzled", because many Oxford graduates were Anglican clergymen at that time. A victorious Gladstone told his new constituency, "At last, my friends, I am come among you; and I am come—to use an expression which has become very famous and is not likely to be forgotten—I am come 'unmuzzled'."

On Palmerston's death in October, Earl Russell formed his second ministry. Russell & Gladstone (now the senior Liberal in the House of Commons) attempted to pass a reform bill, which was defeated in the House of Commons because of the refusal of the "Adullamite" Whigs, led by Robert Lowe, to support it. The Conservatives then formed a ministry, in which after long Parliamentary debate Disraeli passed the Second Reform Act of 1867, more far-reaching than Gladstone's proposed bill had been.

Lord Russell retired in 1867 and Gladstone became leader of the Liberal Party. in 1868 Gladstone proposed the Irish Church Resolutions to reunite the Liberal Party for government (on the issue of disestablishment of the Church of Ireland – this would be done during Gladstone's First Government in 1869 and meant that Irish Roman Catholics did not need to pay their tithes to the Anglican Church of Ireland). When these passed the House of Commons Disraeli called a General Election.

First Premiership (1868–1874)

In the next general election in 1868, the South Lancashire constituency had been broken-up by the Second Reform Act into two: South East Lancashire and South West Lancashire. Gladstone stood for South West Lancashire and for Greenwich, it being quite common then for candidates to stand in two constituencies simultaneously. He was defeated in Lancashire and won in Greenwich. He became Prime Minister for the first time and remained in the office until 1874. Evelyn Ashley famously described the scene in the grounds of Hawarden Castle on 1 December 1868, though getting the date wrong:

One afternoon of November, 1868, in the Park at Hawarden, I was standing by Mr. Gladstone holding his coat on my arm while he, in his shirt sleeves, was wielding an axe to cut down a tree. Up came a telegraph messenger. He took the telegram, opened it and read it, then handed it to me, speaking only two words, namely, ‘Very significant’, and at once resumed his work. The message merely stated that General Grey would arrive that evening from Windsor. This, of course, implied that a mandate was coming from the Queen charging Mr. Gladstone with the formation of his first Government. I said nothing, but waited while the well-directed blows resounded in regular cadence. After a few minutes the blows ceased and Mr. Gladstone, resting on the handle of his axe, looked up, and with deep earnestness in his voice, and great intensity in his face, exclaimed: ‘My mission is to pacify Ireland.’ He then resumed his task, and never said another word till the tree was down.

In the 1860s and 1870s, Gladstonian Liberalism was characterised by a number of policies intended to improve individual liberty and loosen political and economic restraints. First was the minimisation of public expenditure on the premise that the economy and society were best helped by allowing people to spend as they saw fit. Secondly, his foreign policy aimed at promoting peace to help reduce expenditures and taxation and enhance trade. Thirdly, laws that prevented people from acting freely to improve themselves were reformed. When an unemployed miner (Daniel Jones) wrote to him to complain of his unemployment and low wages, Gladstone gave what H. C. G. Matthew has called "the classic mid-Victorian reply" on 20 October 1869:

The only means which have been placed in my power of ‘raising the wages of colliers’ has been by endeavouring to beat down all those restrictions upon trade which tend to reduce the price to be obtained for the product of their labour, & to lower as much as may be the taxes on the commodities which they may require for use or for consumption. Beyond this I look to the forethought not yet so widely diffused in this country as in Scotland, & in some foreign lands; & I need not remind you that in order to facilitate its exercise the Government have been empowered by Legislation to become through the Dept. of the P.O. the receivers & guardians of savings.

Gladstone's first premiership instituted reforms in the British Army, Civil Service, and local government to cut restrictions on individual advancement. The Local Government Board Act 1871 put the supervision of the Poor Law under the Local Government Board (headed by G. J. Goschen) and Gladstone's "administration could claim spectacular success in enforcing a dramatic reduction in supposedly sentimental and unsystematic outdoor poor relief, and in making, in co-operation with the Charity Organization Society (1869), the most sustained attempt of the century to impose upon the working classes the Victorian values of providence, self-reliance, foresight, and self-discipline". Gladstone was associated with the Charity Organization Society's first annual report in 1870. At a speech at Blackheath on 28 October 1871, Gladstone warned his constituents against social reformers:

...they are not your friends, but they are your enemies in fact, though not in intention, who teach you to look to the Legislature for the radical removal of the evils that afflict human life...It is the individual mind and conscience, it is the individual character, on which mainly human happiness or misery depends. (Cheers.) The social problems that confront us are many and formidable. Let the Government labour to its utmost, let the Legislature labour days and nights in your service; but, after the very best has been attained and achieved, the question whether the English father is to be the father of a happy family and the centre of a united home is a question which must depend mainly upon himself. (Cheers.) And those who...promise to the dwellers in towns that every one of them shall have a house and garden in free air, with ample space; those who tell you that there shall be markets for selling at wholesale prices retail quantities—I won't say are imposters, because I have no doubt they are sincere; but I will say they are quacks (cheers); they are deluded and beguiled by a spurious philanthropy, and when they ought to give you substantial, even if they are humble and modest boons, they are endeavouring, perhaps without their own consciousness, to delude you with fanaticism, and offering to you a fruit which, when you attempt to taste it, will prove to be but ashes in your mouths. (Cheers.)

He instituted abolition of the sale of commissions in the army as well as court reorganisation. In foreign affairs his overriding aim was to promote peace and understanding, characterised by his settlement of the ''Alabama'' Claims in 1872 in favour of the Americans. He also instituted the Cardwell Reforms in 1869 that made peacetime flogging illegal and, in 1870, the Irish Land Act and the Forster's Education Act. In 1871, he instituted the Universities Tests Act. In 1872, he secured passage of the Ballot Act for secret voting ballots. In 1873, his leadership led to the passage of laws restructuring the High Courts. He also passed the 1872 licensing act.

Gladstone unexpectedly dissolved Parliament in January 1874 and called a general election. In his election address to his constituents on 23 January, Gladstone said:

Upon a review of the finance of the last five years, we are enabled to state that, notwithstanding the purchase of the telegraphs for a sum exceeding 9,000,000''l''., the aggregate amount of the national debt has been reduced by more than 20,000,000''l''.; that taxes have been lowered or abolished (over and above any amount imposed) to the extent of 12,500,000''l''.; that during the present year the Alabama Indemnity has been paid, and the charge of the Ashantee War will be met out of revenue; and that in estimating, as we can now venture to do, the income of the coming year (and, for the moment assuming the general scale of charge to continue as it was fixed during the last Session), we do not fear to anticipate as the probable balance a surplus exceeding rather than falling short of 5,000,000''l''...The first item...which I have to set down in the financial arrangements proper for the first year is relief, but relief coupled with reform, of local taxation...It has...been the happy fortune of Mr. Lowe to bring it [the income tax] down, first from 6d. to 4d., and then from 4d. to 3d., in the pound. The proceeds of the Income Tax for the present year are expected to be between 5,000,000''l''. and 6,000,000''l''., and at a sacrifice for the financial year of something less than 5,500,000''l''. the country may enjoy the advantage and relief of its total repeal. I do not hesitate to affirm that an effort should now be made to attain this advantage, nor to declare that, according to my judgment, it is in present circumstances practicable...we ought not to aid the rates, and remove the Income Tax, without giving to the general consumer, and giving him simultaneously, some marked relief in the class of articles of popular consumption...I for one could not belong to a Government which did not on every occasion seek to enlarge its resources by a wise economy.

Gladstone's proposals went some way to meet working-class demands, such as the realisation of the free breakfast table through repealing the duties on tea and sugar, and reform of local taxation which was increasing for the poorer ratepayers. According to the working-class financial reformer Thomas Briggs, writing in the trade unionist newspaper ''The Bee-Hive'', the manifesto relied on "a much higher authority than Mr. Gladstone...viz., the late Richard Cobden".

The dissolution was reported in ''The Times'' on 24 January and on 30 January the names of the first fourteen MPs for uncontested seats were published; by 9 February a Conservative victory was apparent. In contrast to 1868 and 1880 when the Liberal campaign lasted several months, only three weeks separated the news of the dissolution and the election. The working-class newspapers were taken by surprise at the news and had little time to express an opinion on Gladstone's manifesto before the election was over. Unlike the efforts of the Conservatives, the organisation of the Liberal Party had declined since 1868 and they had also failed to retain Liberal voters on the electoral register. George Howell wrote to Gladstone on 12 February: "There is one lesson to be learned from this Election, that is Organization...We have lost not by a change of sentiment so much as by want of organised power". The Liberals received a majority of the vote in each of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom and 189,000 more votes nationally than the Conservatives. However they obtained a minority of seats in the House of Commons.

Opposition (1874–1880)

In the wake of Benjamin Disraeli's victory, Gladstone retired from the leadership of the Liberal party, although he retained his seat in the House.

In November 1874, Gladstone published the pamphlet ''The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance'', directed at the First Vatican Council's dogmatising Papal Infallibility in 1870, which had outraged him. Gladstone claimed that this decree had placed British Catholics in a dilemma over their loyalty to the Crown and their loyalty to the Pope. Gladstone urged British Catholics to reject papal infallibility as they had opposed the Spanish Armada of 1588. The pamphlet sold 150,000 copies by the end of 1874. In February 1875 Gladstone published a second pamphlet that was a defence of his earlier pamphlet and a reply to his critics, entitled ''Vaticanism: an Answer to Reproofs and Replies''. He described the Catholic Church as "an Asian monarchy: nothing but one giddy height of despotism, and one dead level of religious subservience". He further claimed that the Pope wanted to destroy the rule of law and replace it with arbitrary tyranny, and then to hide these "crimes against liberty beneath a suffocating cloud of incense".

In a speech to the Hawarden Amateur Horticultural Society on 17 August 1876, Gladstone said that "I am delighted to see how many young boys and girls have come forward to obtain honourable marks of recognition on this occasion,—if any effectual good is to be done to them, it must be done by teaching and encouraging them and helping them to help themselves. All the people who pretend to take your own concerns out of your own hands and to do everything for you, I won't say they are imposters; I won't even say they are quacks; but I do say they are mistaken people. The only sound, healthy description of countenancing and assisting these institutions is that which teaches independence and self-exertion". Lord Kilbracken, one of Gladstone's secretaries, said:

It will be borne in mind that the Liberal doctrines of that time, with their violent anti-socialist spirit and their strong insistence on the gospel of thrift, self-help, settlement of wages by the higgling of the market, and non-interference by the State...I think that Mr. Gladstone was the strongest anti-socialist that I have ever known among persons who gave any serious thought to social and political questions. It is quite true, as has been often said, that “we are all socialists up to a certain point”; but Mr. Gladstone fixed that point lower, and was more vehement against those who went above it, than any other politician or official of my acquaintance. I remember his speaking indignantly to me of the budget of 1874 as “That socialistic budget of Northcote's,” merely because of the special relief which it gave to the poorer class of income-tax payers. His strong belief in Free Trade was only one of the results of his deep-rooted conviction that the Government's interference with the free action of the individual, whether by taxation or otherwise, should be kept at an irreducible minimum. It is, indeed, not too much to say that his conception of Liberalism was the negation of Socialism.

A pamphlet he published in September 1876, ''Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East'', attacked the Disraeli government for its indifference to the Ottoman Empire's violent repression of the Bulgarian April uprising. An often-quoted excerpt illustrates his formidable rhetorical powers:

Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in a European jail, there is not a criminal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and over-boil at the recital of that which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged, which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions which produced it and which may again spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil soaked and reeking with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that the door should be left open to their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the world!

Let me endeavour, very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline what the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mohammedanism simply, but of Mohammedanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mohammedans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as far as their dominion reached, civilization vanished from view. They represented everywhere government by force as opposed to government by law. — Yet a government by force can not be maintained without the aid of an intellectual element. — Hence there grew up, what has been rare in the history of the world, a kind of tolerance in the midst of cruelty, tyranny and rapine. Much of Christian life was contemptuously left alone and a race of Greeks was attracted to Constantinople which has all along made up, in some degree, the deficiencies of Turkish Islam in the element of mind!

During the 1879 election campaign, also called Midlothian campaign, he rousingly spoke against Disraeli's foreign policies during the ongoing Second Anglo-Afghan War in Afghanistan. (See Great Game). He saw the war as "great dishonour" and also criticised British conduct in the Zulu War. Gladstone also (on 29 November) criticised what he saw as the Conservative government's profligate spending:

...the Chancellor of the Exchequer shall boldly uphold economy in detail; and it is the mark ... of ... a chicken-hearted Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he shrinks from upholding economy in detail, when, because it is a question of only £2000 or £3000, he says that is no matter. He is ridiculed, no doubt, for what is called saving candle-ends and cheese-parings. No Chancellor of the Exchequer is worth his salt who is not ready to save what are meant by candle-ends and cheese-parings in the cause of his country. No Chancellor of the Exchequer is worth his salt who makes his own popularity either his first consideration, or any consideration at all, in administrating the public purse. You would not like to have a housekeeper or steward who made her or his popularity with the tradesmen the measure of the payments that were to be delivered to them. In my opinion the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the trusted and confidential steward of the public. He is under a sacred obligation with regard to all that he consents to spend...I am bound to say hardly ever in the six years that Sir Stafford Northcote has been in office have I heard him speak a resolute word on behalf of economy.

Second Premiership (1880–1885)

In 1880, the Liberals won again and the Liberal leaders, Lord Hartington (leader in the House of Commons) and Lord Granville, retired in Gladstone's favour. Gladstone won his constituency election in Midlothian and also in Leeds, where he had also been adopted as a candidate. As he could lawfully only serve as MP for one constituency, Leeds was passed to his son Herbert. One of his other sons, Henry, was also elected as an MP.

Queen Victoria asked Lord Hartington to form a ministry, but he persuaded her to send for Gladstone. Gladstone's second administration — both as Prime Minister and again as Chancellor of the Exchequer till 1882 — lasted from June 1880 to June 1885. He originally intended to retire at the end of 1882, the fiftieth anniversary of his entry into politics, but in the event did not do so. Gladstone had opposed himself to the "colonial lobby" pushing for the scramble for Africa. He thus saw the end of the Second Anglo-Afghan War, First Boer War and the war against the Mahdi in Sudan.

On July 11, 1882, Gladstone ordered the bombardment of Alexandria, starting the Anglo-Egyptian War, which resulted in the occupation of Egypt. Gladstone's role in the decision to invade was described as relatively hands-off, and that the decision to invade was made by certain members of his cabinet such as Spencer Cavendish, Secretary of State for India, Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook, First Lord of the Admiralty, Hugh Childers, Secretary of State for War, and Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville, the Foreign Secretary. The reasons for this war are the subject of a historiographical debate. Some historians argue that the invasion was to protect the Suez Canal and to prevent anarchy in the wake of the Urabi Revolt and the riots in Alexandria in June 1882. Other historians argue that the invasion occurred to protect the interests of British investors with assets in Egypt and also to boost the political popularity of the Liberal Party.

In 1881 he established the Irish Coercion Act, which permitted the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to detain people for as "long as was thought necessary", as there was much rural disturbance in Ireland owing to the agricultural depression of the late 1870s. Cavendish, the Irish Secretary, was stabbed to death whilst walking in Phoenix Park in Dublin. He also passed the Second Land Act (the First, in 1870, had entitled Irish tenants, if evicted, to compensation for improvements which they had made on their property, but had had little effect) which gave Irish tenants the "3Fs" – fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale.

He also extended the franchise to agricultural labourers and others in the 1884 Reform Act, which gave the counties the same franchise as the boroughs— adult male householders and £10 lodgers—and added about six million to the total number who could vote in parliamentary elections. Parliamentary reform continued with the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885.

Gladstone was becoming increasingly uneasy about the direction in which British politics was moving. In a letter to Lord Acton on 11 February 1885, Gladstone criticised Tory Democracy as "demagogism" that "put down pacific, law-respecting, economic elements that ennobled the old Conservatism" but "still, in secret, as obstinately attached as ever to the evil principle of class interests". He found contemporary Liberalism better, "but far from being good". Gladstone claimed that this Liberalism's "pet idea is what they call construction, — that is to say, taking into the hands of the state the business of the individual man". Both Tory Democracy and this new Liberalism, Gladstone wrote, had done "much to estrange me, and had for many, many years".

The fall of General Gordon in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1885 was a major blow to Gladstone's popularity. Queen Victoria sent him a telegram of rebuke which found its way into the public domain. Many believed Gladstone had neglected military affairs and had not acted promptly enough to save the besieged Gordon. Critics inverted his acronym, "G.O.M." (for "Grand Old Man"), to "M.O.G." (for "Murderer of Gordon"). He resigned as Prime Minister in 1885 and declined Queen Victoria's offer of an Earldom.

Third Premiership (1886)

Gladstone's conversion to a policy of Home Rule in late 1885 (the "Hawarden Kite")) resulted in the fall of Lord Salisbury's Government. The Irish Nationalists, led by Charles Parnell, voted against the Tories on a land Bill. The Irish Nationalists held the balance of power in Parliament at this time, Gladstone's conversion had convinced them to support the Liberal Government by using the 86 seats of Parliament they controlled. The main purpose of this administration was to deliver Ireland a reform which would give them a devolved assembly, similar to that enjoyed by Scotland and Wales since 1997. In 1886 Gladstone's party was allied with Irish Nationalists to defeat Lord Salisbury's government. Gladstone regained his position as Prime Minister and combined the office with that of Lord Privy Seal. During this administration he first introduced his Home Rule Bill for Ireland. The issue split the Liberal Party (a breakaway group went on to create the Liberal Unionist party) and the bill was thrown out on the second reading, ending his government after only a few months and inaugurating another headed by Lord Salisbury.

Opposition (1886–1892)

Gladstone supported the London dockers in their strike of 1889. After their victory he gave a speech at Hawarden on 23 September in which he said: "In the common interests of humanity, this remarkable strike and the results of this strike, which have tended somewhat to strengthen the condition of labour in the face of capital, is the record of what we ought to regard as satisfactory, as a real social advance [that] tends to a fair principle of division of the fruits of industry". This speech has been described by Eugenio Biagini as having "no parallel in the rest of Europe except in the rhetoric of the toughest socialist leaders". Visitors at Hawarden in October were "shocked...by some rather wild language on the Dock labourers question". Gladstone was impressed with workers unconnected with the dockers' dispute who "intended to make common cause" in the interests of justice. On 23 October at Southport Gladstone delivered a speech where he claimed that the right to combination, which in London was "innocent and lawful, in Ireland would be penal and...punished by imprisonment with hard labour". Gladstone believed that the right to combination used by British workers was in jeopardy when it could be denied to Irish workers. In October 1890 Gladstone at Midlothian claimed that competition between capital and labour, "where it has gone to sharp issues, where there have been strikes on one side and lock-outs on the other, I believe that in the main and as a general rule, the labouring man has been in the right".

On 11 December 1891 Gladstone said that: "It is a lamentable fact if, in the midst of our civilisation, and at the close of the nineteenth century, the workhouse is all that can be offered to the industrious labourer at the end of a long and honourable life. I do not enter into the question now in detail. I do not say it is an easy one; I do not say that it will be solved in a moment; but I do say this, that until society is able to offer to the industrious labourer at the end of a long and blameless life something better than the workhouse, society will not have discharged its duties to its poorer members". On 24 March 1892 Gladstone said that the Liberals had:

...come generally...to the conclusion that there is something painful in the condition of the rural labourer in this great respect, that it is hard even for the industrious and sober man, under ordinary conditions, to secure a provision for his own old age. Very large propositions, involving, some of them, very novel and very wide principles, have been submitted to the public, for the purpose of securing such a provision by means independent of the labourer himself. Sir, I am not going to criticise these proposals, and I am only referring to them as signs that there is much to be done—that their condition is far from satisfactory; and it is eminently, as I think, our duty to develop in the first instance, every means that we may possibly devise whereby, if possible, the labourer may be able to make this provision for himself, or to approximate towards making such provision far more efficaciously and much more closely than he can now do.

Gladstone wrote on 16 July 1892 in his autobiographica that "In 1834 the Government...did themselves high honour by the new Poor Law Act, which rescued the English peasantry from the total loss of their independence".

Gladstone wrote to Herbert Spencer, who contributed the introduction to a collection of anti-socialist essays (''A Plea for Liberty'', 1891), that "I ask to make reserves, and of one passage, which will be easily guessed, I am unable even to perceive the relevancy. But speaking generally, I have read this masterly argument with warm admiration and with the earnest hope that it may attract all the attention which it so well deserves". The passage Gladstone alluded to was one where Spencer spoke of "the behaviour of the so-called Liberal party".

Fourth Premiership (1892–1894)

The general election of 1892 resulted in a minority Liberal government under Gladstone as Prime Minister.

Gladstone's electoral address had promised Home Rule and the disestablishment of the Scottish and Welsh Churches. In February 1893 he introduced the Second Home Rule Bill. The Bill was passed in the Commons at second reading on 21 April by 43 votes and third reading on 1 September by 34 votes. However the House of Lords killed the Bill by voting against by 419 votes to 41 on 8 September.

When questioned in the Commons on what his government would do about unemployment by the Conservative MP Colonel Howard Vincent on 1 September 1893, Gladstone replied:

I cannot help regretting that the hon. and gallant Gentleman has felt it his duty to put the question. It is put under circumstances that naturally belong to one of those fluctuations in the condition of trade which, however unfortunate and lamentable they may be, recur from time to time. Undoubtedly I think that questions of this kind, whatever be the intention of the questioner, have a tendency to produce in the minds of people, or to suggest to the people, that these fluctuations can be corrected by the action of the Executive Government. Anything that contributes to such an impression inflicts an injury upon the labouring population.

In December 1893 an Opposition motion proposed by Lord George Hamilton called for an expansion of the Royal Navy. Gladstone opposed increasing public expenditure on the naval estimates, in the tradition of free trade liberalism of his earlier political career as Chancellor. All his Cabinet colleagues, however, believed in some expansion of the Royal Navy. He declared in the Commons on 19 December that naval rearmament would commit the government to expenditure over a number of years and thus would subvert "the principle of annual account, annual proposition, annual approval by the House of Commons, which...is the only way of maintaining regularity, and that regularity is the only talisman which will secure Parliamentary control". In January 1894 Gladstone wrote that he would not "break to pieces the continuous action of my political life, nor trample on the tradition received from every colleague who has ever been my teacher" by supporting naval rearmament. Gladstone also opposed Chancellor Sir William Harcourt's proposal to implement a graduated death duty. In a fragment of autobiography dated 25 July 1894, Gladstone denounced the tax as

...by far the most Radical measure of my lifetime. I do not object to the principle of graduated taxation: for the just principle of ability to pay is not determined simply by the amount of income...But, so far as I understand the present measure of finance from the partial reports I have received, I find it too violent. It involves a great departure from the methods of political action established in this country, where reforms, and especially financial reforms, have always been considerate and even tender...I do not yet see the ground on which it can be justly held that any one description of ''property'' should be more heavily burdened than others, unless moral and social grounds can be shown first: but in this case the reasons drawn from those sources seem rather to verge in the opposite direction, for real property has more of presumptive connection with the discharge of duty that that which is ranked as personal...the aspect of the measure is not satisfactory to a man of my traditions (and these traditions lie near the roots of my being)...For the sudden introduction of such change there is I think no precedent in the history of this country. And the severity of the blow is greatly aggravated in moral effect by the fact that it is dealt only to a handful of individuals.

Gladstone had his last audience with the Queen on 28 February and chaired his last Cabinet on 1 March, the last of 556 he had chaired. Also on that day he gave his last speech to the House of Commons. Gladstone said that the government would withdraw opposition to the Lords' amendments to the Local Government Bill "under protest" and that it was "a controversy which, when once raised, must go forward to an issue". He resigned the Premiership on 2 March. The Queen did not ask Gladstone who should succeed him but sent for Lord Rosebery (Gladstone would have advised on Lord Spencer). He retained his seat in the Commons until 1895; he was not offered a peerage, having declined an earldom on earlier occasions.

Gladstone is both the oldest ever person to form a government – aged 82 at his appointment – and the oldest person ever to occupy the Premiership – being aged 84 at his resignation.

Final years (1894–1898)

A few days after he relinquished the premiership, Gladstone wrote to George William Erskine Russell on 6 March 1894:

I am thankful to have borne a part in the emancipating labours of the last sixty years; but entirely uncertain how, had I now to begin my life, I could face the very different problems of the next sixty years. Of one thing I am, and always have been, convinced—it is not by the State that man can be regenerated, and the terrible woes of this darkened world effectually dealt with. In some, and some very important, respects, I yearn for the impossible revival of the men and the ideas of my first twenty years, which immediately followed the first Reform Act.

In 1895, at the age of 85, Gladstone bequeathed £40,000 (equivalent to approximately £|0}} today) and much of his library to found St Deiniol's Library in Hawarden, Wales, the only residential library in Britain. Despite his advanced age, he himself hauled most of his 32,000 books a quarter of a mile to their new home, using his wheelbarrow.

On 8 January 1896, in conversation with L. A. Tollemache, Gladstone explained that: "I am not so much afraid of Democracy or of Science as of the love of money. This seems to me to be a growing evil. Also, there is a danger from the growth of that dreadful military spirit". On 13 January Gladstone claimed he had strong Conservative instincts and that "In all matters of custom and tradition, even the Tories look upon me as the chief Conservative that is". On 15 January Gladstone wrote to James Bryce, describing himself as "a dead man, one fundamentally a Peel–Cobden man". In 1896, in his last noteworthy speech, he denounced Armenian massacres by Ottomans in a talk delivered at Liverpool. On 2 January 1897 Gladstone wrote to Francis Hirst on being unable to write a preface to a book on liberalism: "I venture on assuring you that I regard the design formed by you and your friends with sincere interest, and in particular wish well to all the efforts you may make on behalf of individual freedom and independence as opposed to what is termed Collectivism".

In the early months of 1897 Gladstone and his wife stayed in Cannes. Gladstone met the Queen, where (Gladstone believed) she shook hands with him for the first time in the fifty years he had known her. One of the Gladstones's neighbours observed that "He and his devoted wife never missed the morning service on Sunday...One Sunday, returning from the altar rail, the old, partially blind man stumbled at the chancel step. One of the clergy sprang involuntarily to his assistance, but retreated with haste, so withering was the fire which flashed from those failing eyes". The Gladstones returned to Hawarden Castle at the end of March and he received the Colonial Premiers in their visit for the Queen's Jubilee. Upon the advice of his doctor Samuel Habershon in the aftermath of an attack of facial neuralgia, Gladstone stayed at Cannes from the end of November 1897 to mid-February 1898. He gave an interview for ''The Daily Telegraph'' (published on 5 January 1898 as 'Personal Recollections of Arthur H. Hallam'). Gladstone then went to Bournemouth, and a swelling on the palate was diagnosed as cancer by the leading cancer surgeon, Sir Thomas Smith on 18 March. On 22 March he retired to Hawarden Castle. Despite being in pain he received visitors and quoted hymns, especially Cardinal Newman's 'Praise to the Holiest in the Height'. His last public statement was dictated to his daughter Helen in reply to receiving the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford's "sorrow and affection": "There is no expression of Christian sympathy that I value more than that of the ancient University of Oxford, the God-fearing and God-sustaining University of Oxford. I served her perhaps mistakenly, but to the best of my ability. My most earnest prayers are hers to the uttermost and to the last". He left the house for the last time on 9 April and after 18 April he did not come down to the ground floor but still came out of bed to lie on the sofa. The Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane George Wilkinson recorded when he ministered to him along with Stephen Gladstone:

Shall I ever forget the last Friday in Passion Week, when I gave him the last Holy Communion that I was allowed to administer to him? It was early in the morning. He was obliged to be in bed, and he was ordered to remain there, but the time had come for the confession of sin and the receiving of absolution. Out of his bed he came. Alone he knelt in the presence of his God till the absolution has been spoken, and the sacred elements received.

Gladstone died on 19 May 1898 at Hawarden Castle, Hawarden, aged 88. The death of William Ewart Gladstone was registered by Helen Gladstone, his daughter, "present at the death", on 23 May 1898. The cause of death is officially recorded as "Syncope, Senility, certified by Herbert. E. S. Biss M.D" and not metastatic cancer, as is frequently reported. "Syncope" means failure of the heart and "senility" in the nineteenth-century meant the infirmity of advanced old-age rather than a loss in the mental faculties.

The House of Commons adjourned on the afternoon of Gladstone's death, with A. J. Balfour giving notice for an Address to the Queen praying for a public funeral and a public memorial in Westminster Abbey. The day after, both Houses of Parliament approved of the Address and Herbert Gladstone accepted a public funeral on behalf of the Gladstone family. His coffin was transported on the London Underground before his state funeral at Westminster Abbey, at which the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) and the Duke of York (the future George V) acted as pallbearers. Two years after Gladstone's burial in Westminster Abbey, his wife, Catherine Gladstone (''née'' Glynne), was laid to rest with him (see image at right).

Religion

His mother, intensely religious, was an evangelical of Scottish Episcopal origins, and his father joined the Church of England, having been a Presbyterian when he first settled in Liverpool. The boy was baptised into the Church of England. He had previously rejected a call to enter the ministry, and on this his conscience always tormented him. In compensation he aligned his politics with the evangelical faith in which he fervently believed. In 1838 Gladstone nearly ruined his career when he tried to force a religious mission upon the Conservative Party. He wrote ''The State in its Relations with the Church,'' a book which argued that England had neglected its great duty to the Church of England. He announced that since that Church possessed a monopoly of religious truth, Nonconformists and Roman Catholics ought to be excluded from all government jobs. The historian Thomas Babington Macaulay and other critics ridiculed his weak arguments to shreds. Sir Robert Peel, Gladstone's chief, was outraged because this would upset the delicate political issue of Catholic Emancipation and anger the Nonconformists. Since Peel greatly admired his protégé, redirected his focus from theology to finance.

Gladstone altered his approach to religious problems, which always held first place in his mind. Before entering Parliament he had already substituted a High Church Anglican attitude, with its dependence upon authority and tradition, for the narrow evangelical outlook of his boyhood, with its reliance upon the direct inspiration of the Bible. Now in middle life he decided that the individual conscience would have to replace authority as the inner citadel of the Church. That view of the individual conscience affected his political outlook and changed him gradually from a Conservative into a Liberal.

Legacy

Lord Acton wrote in 1880 that he considered Gladstone as one "of the three greatest Liberals" (along with Edmund Burke and Lord Macaulay).

In 1909 the Liberal Chancellor David Lloyd George introduced his "People's Budget", the first budget which aimed to redistribute wealth. The Liberal statesman Lord Rosebery commented on what Gladstone would make of this budget:

This Budget is introduced as a Liberal measure. If so, all I can say is, it is a new Liberalism, and not the one that I have known and practised under more illustrious auspices than these, under one who was not merely the greatest Liberal but the greatest financier that this country has ever known — I mean Mr. Gladstone... Gladstone ranks as the great financial authority of our country... Mr. Gladstone would be 100 in December if he were alive, but, centenarian as he would be, I am inclined to think that he would make very short work of the deputation of the Cabinet that waited on him with this measure, and that they would soon find themselves on the stairs, if not in the street. Because in his eyes, and in my eyes, too, as his humble disciple, Liberalism and Liberty were cognate terms; they were twin-sisters.

David Lloyd George had written in 1913 that the Liberals were "carving the last few columns out of the Gladstonian quarry".

In 1914 Britain declared war on Germany due to its violation of Belgian neutrality. In December 1916 on unveiling a statue of Gladstone, Lord Rosebery speculated that Gladstone's view of British involvement in the Great War would not have been favourable. In 1916 Lord Kilbracken wrote that "I have often been asked during the present war (1916) what I thought Mr. Gladstone's attitude would have been if he had been alive at this day. I can answer the question without hesitation, bearing in mind the fact he had, as will easily be believed, the strongest possible feeling about the sanctity of treaties and international engagements, and the moral obligation to observe them...from the moment when the Germans violated the neutrality of Belgium, he would...have been for immediate war".

During the Great War the Liberal Party split into those led by former Premier Herbert Henry Asquith and the new Premier David Lloyd George. Lloyd George said of Gladstone in 1915: "What a man he was! Head and shoulders above anyone else I have ever seen in the House of Commons. I did not like him much. He hated Nonconformists and Welsh Nonconformists in particular, and he had no real sympathy with the working-classes. But he was far and away the best Parliamentary speaker I have ever heard. He was not so good in exposition". Asquithian Liberals continued to advocate traditional Gladstonian policies of sound finance, peaceful foreign relations and the better treatment of Ireland. They often compared Lloyd George unfavourably with Gladstone. In his first major speech after he had lost his seat in the 1918 general election, Asquith said: "That is the purpose and the spirit of Liberalism, as I learned it as a student in my young days, as I was taught it both by the precept and the example of the great Liberal statesman Mr Gladstone...that remains the same today. Do not forsake for temporary expediencies, for short-lived compromises, for brittle and precarious bridges – do not forsake the great heritage of the Liberal tradition of the past. It is not superstition; it is not a legend; it is founded upon faith and experience, and justified at every stage in our political history". Speaking in November 1920 Asquith quoted Gladstone to show "the only way to escape from the financial morass towards which the government are heading". Lloyd George would invoke Gladstone in March 1920 when speaking out against socialism at "Red Clydeside": "The doctrine of Liberalism is a doctrine that believes that private property, as an incentive, as a means, as a reward, is the most potent agency not merely for the wealth, but for the well-being of the community. That is the doctrine not merely of Peel, of Disraeli, of Salisbury, and Chamberlain; it is the doctrine of Gladstone; it is the doctrine of Cobden; it is the doctrine of Bright; and it is the doctrine of Campbell Bannerman...It is the doctrine of all the great Liberal leaders of the past and present". Asquith replied to this speech at the National Liberal Club: "...keep faithful to your old traditions...Think, in a situation such as this, and with appeals such as those which have been made to our fellow Liberals outside, what would have been the attitude of Mr Gladstone. Do you think they would have allowed themselves to be scared by the bogey of Bolshevism, to furl the old flag and march with bowed heads and reversed arms, horse, foot and artillery, into the camp of the enemy?" In July 1922 Asquith said of Gladstone:

Amid all the seeming inconsistencies of his public career, which exposed him to the shallow charge of time-serving and even of hypocrisy, history will discern a steady process of evolution, guided always by certain governing principles. He was the most faithful and enlightened steward there has ever been of our national finance. He abhorred waste. He preferred the remission of burdensome taxation even to the diminution of the public debt. His great aim was that the resources of the country, in the phraseology of those days, should "fructify in the pockets of the people", not to be wasted in public or private extravagance, but to replenish the reservoir from which both capital and industry are fed. He never faltered in his allegiance to the cause of setting free the smaller nationalities, crushed between the upper and the nether millstone of arrogant and militant autocracies. He was the pioneer in the long, arduous, still uncompleted struggle, in the international sphere, of right against might, of freedom against force.

Writing in 1944, the liberal Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek said of the change in political attitudes that had occurred since the Great War: "Perhaps nothing shows this change more clearly than that, while there is no lack of sympathetic treatment of Bismarck in contemporary English literature, the name of Gladstone is rarely mentioned by the younger generation without a sneer over his Victorian morality and naive utopianism".

However Gladstone remained a potent symbol of the Liberal Party and Liberalism for some grassroots Liberal voters. In the 1955 general election an old lady left her house in Shetland to vote Conservative but on returning to her house for her purse saw her father's photograph of Gladstone and instead went to the vote for the Liberal candidate, Jo Grimond. A Liberal activist in Lowdham, Nottinghamshire during the 1966 general election canvassed a gardener in his seventies and was brusquely informed: "I'm a Gladstone [Liberal] and a Primitive Methodist".

In the latter half of the twentieth-century Gladstone's economic policies came to be admired by Thatcherite Conservatives. Margaret Thatcher proclaimed in 1983: "We have a duty to make sure that every penny piece we raise in taxation is spent wisely and well. For it is our party which is dedicated to good housekeeping—indeed, I would not mind betting that if Mr. Gladstone were alive today he would apply to join the Conservative Party". In 1996 she said in the Keith Joseph memorial lecture: "The kind of Conservatism which he and I...favoured would be best described as "liberal", in the old-fashioned sense. And I mean the liberalism of Mr Gladstone not of the latter day collectivists". Nigel Lawson, one of Thatcher's Chancellors, believed Gladstone to be the "greatest Chancellor of all time".

Thomas Edison's European agent, Colonel Gouraud, recorded Gladstone's voice several times on phonograph. The accent on one of the recordings is North Welsh. When on 15 March 1938 relatives and people who knew Gladstone were gathered at Broadcasting House none were able to voice any certainty on the veracity of the four recordings played. Those present were Lady Gladstone of Hawarden (Gladstone's daughter-in-law), Sir George Leveson-Gower (Gladstone's secretary), William Wickham (Gladstone's eldest grandson), and Canon Edward Lyttleton.

Monuments

The first statue erected in Gladstone's honour after his death was in Blackburn in 1900.

A statue of Gladstone by Albert Bruce-Joy and erected in 1882, stands near the front gate of St. Marys Church in Bow, London. Paid for by the industrialist Theodore Bryant, it is viewed as a symbol of the later 1888 match girls strike, which took place at the nearby Bryant & May Match Factory. Led by the socialist Annie Besant, hundreds of working girls from the factory had gone on strike to demand improved working conditions and pay, eventually winning their cause. In recent years, the statue of Gladstone has been repeatedly daubed with red paint, suggesting that it was paid for with the 'blood of the match girls'.

A statue of Gladstone, erected in 1872, stands in the Great Hall of St. George's Hall, Liverpool. Another, in bronze by Sir Thomas Brock, erected in 1904, stands outside in St John's Gardens.

A statue of Gladstone, erected in 1905, stands at Aldwych, London, near the Royal Courts of Justice.

A Grade II listed statue of Gladstone stands in Albert Square, Manchester.

A monument to Gladstone, Member of Parliament for Midlothian 1880–1895 was unveiled in Edinburgh in 1917 (and moved to its present location in 1955). It stands in Coates Crescent Gardens. The sculptor was James Pittendrigh McGillvray.

A statue to Gladstone, who was Rector of the University of Glasgow 1877–1880 was unveiled in Glasgow in 1902. It stands in George Square. The sculptor was Sir William Hamo Thornycroft.

Gladstone Park in the Municipal Borough of Willesden, London was named after him in 1899. Dollis Hill House, within what later became the park, was occupied by Sir Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks, who subsequently became Lord Tweedmouth. In 1881 Lord Tweedmouth's daughter and her husband, Lord Aberdeen, took up residence. They often had Gladstone to stay as a guest. In 1897 Lord Aberdeen was appointed Governor-General of Canada and the Aberdeens moved out. When Willesden acquired the house and land in 1899, they named the park Gladstone Park after the old Prime Minister.

Near to Hawarden in the town of Mancot, there is a small hospital named after Catherine Gladstone. A statue of her husband also stands near the High School in Hawarden.

Gladstone Rock—a large boulder about 12 ft high in Cwm Llan on the Watkin Path on the south side of Snowdon where Gladstone made a speech in 1892. A plaque on the rock states that he 'addressed the people of Eryri upon justice to Wales.'

Liverpool's ''Crest Hotel'' was renamed ''The Gladstone Hotel'' in his honour in the early 1990s, but in 2006 was renamed again as ''The Liner Hotel''.

Gladstone, Manitoba is a town in central Canada that was named after him in 1882.

Gladstone, Oregon is a city in the northwestern United States named after him.

Gladstone, New Jersey is a town in the northeastern United States named after him.

Gladstone, Queensland, Australia was named after him and has a 19th century marble statue on display in its town museum.

A school and a street in Bulgaria's capital Sofia are named in his honour, as is a street in the city of Plovdiv, and in Limassol, Cyprus.

A street in the neighbourhood of Geduld Extension in the Gauteng town of Springs, South Africa is named after Gladstone

William Gladstone Primary School (Formerly St. Thomas' and recently renamed as Rimrose Hope) is a Primary School located in Seaforth, in which he was raised and educated.

There is a Gladstone Road in Newark-on-Trent where Gladstone was a Member of Parliament

There is a Gladstone Street in Waterford City and also Clonmel in Ireland.

There is a Gladstone Street in the BD3 postcode area of Bradford, West Yorkshire.

There is a Gladstone Road, a Gladstone Street and a Gladstone Lane in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.

There is a Gladstone Avenue in Ottawa, Canada, which was renamed from Ann Street. From 1855 to 1889 it was the southern limit of the city west if the Rideau Canal.

In popular culture

A Gladstone bag, a light travelling bag, is called after him.

In fiction, Gladstone features prominently in the history of the fantasy Bartimaeus trilogy, in which the British government is run by magicians. Gladstone is said to have been the most powerful magician to ever become Prime Minister, and though he is not included as a character, several objects of his are central plot points. The book provides an alternate history of Gladstone, in which he killed Disraeli in a duel and assisted British forces in colonial expansion.

Portrayal in film and television

Since 1937, Gladstone has been portrayed on no fewer than 37 occasions in film and television, beginning with Montagu Love's appearance as him in the 1937 film ''Parnell''. Other portrayals include Malcolm Keen (''Sixty Glorious Years'', 1938), Stephen Murray (''The Prime Minister'', 1941), Arthur Young (''The Lady with the Lamp'', 1951), Graham Chapman (''Monty Python's Flying Circus'', 1969), Michael Hordern (''Edward the Seventh'', 1975) and Martin Wady (''Queen Victoria's Empire'', 2001).

Works

(Volume 51, Issue 4 of new series, American Philosophical Society Volume 51, Part 4 of Transactions Series Volume 51, Part 4 of Transactions of the American Philosophical Society new ser v. 51, no. 4)(Original from the University of California)

Notes

See also

Fasque House

Gladstone Hotel (Toronto)

References

Michael Barker, ''Gladstone and Radicalism. The Reconstruction of Liberal Policy in Britain. 1885–1894'' (The Harvester Press, 1975).

David Bebbington and Roger Swift (eds.), ''Gladstone Centenary Essays'' (Liverpool University Press, 2000).

E. F. Biagini, ''Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform. Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone, 1860–1880'' (Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Eugenio Biagini and Alastair Reid (eds.), ''Currents of Radicalism. Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850–1914'' (Cambridge University Press, 1991).

Sydney Buxton, ''Finance and Politics. An Historical Study. 1783–1885. Volume I'' (John Murray, 1888)

F. W. Hirst, ''Gladstone as Financier and Economist'' (1931).

F. W. Hirst, ''In the Golden Days'' (Frederick Muller, 1947).

Philip Magnus, ''Gladstone: A Biography'' (1954)

H. C. G. Matthew, ''Gladstone. 1809–1874'' (Oxford University Press, 1988); ''Gladstone. 1875–1898'' (Oxford University Press, 1995).

John Morley, ''The Life of William Ewart Gladstone'' (Three volumes, 1903)

Sir Wemyss Reid (ed.), ''The Life of William Ewart Gladstone'' (1899).

Joseph A. Schumpeter, ''History of Economic Analysis'' (George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1954).

Richard Shannon, ''Gladstone: Peel's Inheritor, 1809–1865'' (1985), ISBN 0-8078-1591-8; ''Gladstone: Heroic Minister, 1865–1898'' (1999), ISBN 0-8078-2486-0.

Primary sources

W. E. Gladstone, ''Midlothian Speeches. 1879'' (Leicester University Press, 1971).

Viscount Gladstone, ''After Thirty Years'' (1928).

Lord Kilbracken, ''Reminiscences of Lord Kilbracken'' (Macmillan, 1931).

Herbert Paul (ed.), ''Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone'' (George Allen, 1904).

G. W. E. Russell, ''One Look Back'' (Wells Gardner, Darton and Co., 1911).

Lionel A. Tollemache, ''Talks with Mr. Gladstone'' (London: Edward Arnold, 1898).

Further reading

Biographies

Bebbington, D. W. ''William Ewart Gladstone'' (1993).

Biagini, Eugenio F. ''Gladstone'' (2000).

Brand, Eric. ''William Gladstone'' (1986) ISBN 0-87754-528-6.

Jagger, Peter J., ed. ''Gladstone'' (2007), 256pp

Jenkins, Roy. ''Gladstone: A Biography'' (2002) excerpt and text search

Magnus, Philip M. ''Gladstone: A biography'' (1954) excerpt and text search

Matthew, H. C. G. "Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–1898)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,'' (2004; online edition May 2006

Matthew, H. C. G. ''Gladstone, 1809–1874'' (1988); ''Gladstone, 1875–1898'' (1995) excerpt & text search vol 1

Morley, J. ''The life of William Ewart Gladstone,'' 3 vols. (1903) vol 2 online

Partridge, M. ''Gladstone'' (2003) excerpt and text search

Shannon, Richard. ''Gladstone'' (2 vol, 1984–2000)

Russell, Michael. ''Gladstone: A Bicentenary Portrait'' (2009). ISBN 978-0-85955-317-9

Special studies

Aldous, Richard. ''The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs Disraeli'' (2007)

Bebbington, D. W. ''The Mind of Gladstone: Religion, Homer and Politics'' (2004).

Boyce, D. George and Alan O'Day, eds. ''Gladstone and Ireland: Politics, Religion, and Nationality in the Victorian Age'' (Palgrave Macmillan; 2011) 307 pages

Butler, P. ''Gladstone, church, state, and Tractarianism: a study of his religious ideas and attitudes, 1809–1859'' (1982)

Derek Beales, ''Gladstone on the italian question. January 1860'' in ''Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento'', a. XL – fasc. IV, pp. 96–104, (1953)

Guedalla, Philip. ''Queen and Mr. Gladstone'' (2 vol 1933) online edition

Isba, Anne. ''Gladstone and Women'' (2006)

Hammond, J. L. ''Gladstone and the Irish nation'' (1938)online edition

Jenkins, T. A. ''Gladstone, whiggery and the liberal party, 1874–1886'' (1988)

Loughlin, J. ''Gladstone, home rule and the Ulster question, 1882–1893'' (1986)

Parry, J. P. ''Democracy and religion: Gladstone and the liberal party, 1867–1875'' (1986)

Schreuder, D. M. ''Gladstone and Kruger: Liberal government and colonial ‘home rule’, 1880–85'' (1969)

Schreuder, D.M. ''Gladstone and Italian unification, 1848–70: the making of a Liberal?'', ''The English historical review'', vol. 85 (n. 336), pp. 475–501 (July 1970)

Seton-Watson, R. W. ''Disraeli, Gladstone and the eastern question: a study in diplomacy and party politics'' (1935)

Shannon, Richard. ''Gladstone: God and Politics'' (2007).

Vincent, J. ''Gladstone and Ireland'' (1978)

Vincent, J. ''The Formation of the Liberal Party, 1857–1868'' (1966)

External links

Mr. Gladstone (character sketch by W.T. Stead, in the ''Review of Reviews'', 1892)

William Ewart Gladstone Chronology World History Database

More about William Ewart Gladstone on the Downing Street website.

William Ewart Gladstone 1809–98 biography from the Liberal Democrat History Group

BBC Radio – Programme Two contains a recording of Gladstone's voice

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Coordinates

33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N

{{infobox prime minister | honorific-prefix

The Right Honourable | name The Earl of Beaconsfield | honorific-suffix KG PC FRS | image Benjamin Disraeli by Cornelius Jabez Hughes, 1878.jpg | imagesize 245px | captionDisraeli in 1878 | orderPrime Minister of the United Kingdom | term_start 20 February 1874 | term_end 21 April 1880 | monarch Queen Victoria | predecessor William Ewart Gladstone | successor William Ewart Gladstone | term_start2 27 February 1868 | term_end2 1 December 1868 | monarch2 Queen Victoria | predecessor2 The Earl of Derby | successor2 William Ewart Gladstone | order3 Leader of the Opposition | term_start4 1 December 1868 | term_end4 17 February 1874 | monarch4 Victoria | predecessor4 William Ewart Gladstone | successor4 William Ewart Gladstone | order5Chancellor of the Exchequer | term_start5 6 July 1866 | term_end5 29 February 1868 | predecessor5 William Ewart Gladstone | successor5 George Ward Hunt | term_start6 26 February 1858 | term_end6 11 June 1859 | predecessor6 Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bt. | successor6 William Ewart Gladstone | term_start7 27 February 1852 | term_end7 17 December 1852 | predecessor7 Charles Wood | successor7 William Ewart Gladstone | birth_date December 21, 1804 | death_date April 19, 1881 | birth_place London, England, UK | death_place London, England | spouse Mary Anne Lewis | alma_mater | party Conservative | religion Church of England (for most of his life) Judaism (until age 13) | signature Benjamin Disraeli Signature 2.svg |signature_alt Cursive signature in ink

Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS, (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and literary figure. Starting from comparatively humble origins, he served in government for three decades, twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Although his father had him baptised to Anglicanism at age 12, he was nonetheless Britain's first and thus far only Prime Minister who was born into a Jewish family—originally from Italy. He played an instrumental role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party after the Corn Laws schism of 1846.

Although a major figure in the protectionist wing of the Conservative Party after 1844, Disraeli's relations with the other leading figures in the party, particularly Lord Derby, the overall leader, were often strained. Not until the 1860s would Derby and Disraeli be on easy terms, and the latter's succession of the former assured. From 1852 onwards, Disraeli's career would also be marked by his often intense rivalry with William Ewart Gladstone, who eventually rose to become leader of the Liberal Party. In this feud, Disraeli was aided by his warm friendship with Queen Victoria, who came to detest Gladstone during the latter's first premiership in the 1870s. In 1876 Disraeli was raised to the peerage as the Earl of Beaconsfield, capping nearly four decades in the House of Commons.

Before and during his political career, Disraeli was well known as a literary and social figure, although his novels are not generally regarded as a part of the Victorian literary canon. He mainly wrote romances, of which ''Sybil'' and ''Vivian Grey'' are perhaps the best-known today. He is exceptional among British Prime Ministers for having gained equal social and political renown. He was twice successful as the Glasgow University Conservative Association's candidate for Rector of the University, holding the post for two full terms between 1871 and 1877.

Early life

Disraeli's biographers believe he was descended from Italian Sephardic Jews. He claimed Portuguese ancestry, possibly referring to an earlier origin of his family heritage in Iberia prior to the expulsion of Jews in 1492. His grandmother, Rebeca Rietti, was of Italian descent. After this event many Jews emigrated, in two waves; the bulk fled to the Muslim lands of the Ottoman Empire, but many went to Christian Europe, first to northern Italy, then to the Netherlands, and later to England. One modern historian has seen him as essentially a ''marrano''.

He was the second child and eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli, a literary critic and historian, and Maria Basevi. Benjamin changed the spelling in the 1820s by dropping the apostrophe. His siblings included Sarah (1802–1859), Naphtali (1807), Ralph (1809–1898), and James (1813–1868). Benjamin at first attended a small school, the Reverend John Potticary's school at Blackheath. His father had Benjamin baptised in July 1817 following a dispute with their synagogue. The elder D'Israeli was content to remain outside organised religion. From 1817, Benjamin attended a school at Higham Hill, in Walthamstow, under Eliezer Cogan. His younger brothers, in contrast, attended the superior Winchester College.

His father groomed him for a career in law, and Disraeli was articled to a solicitor in 1821. In 1824, Disraeli toured Belgium and the Rhine Valley with his father and later wrote that it was while travelling on the Rhine that he decided to abandon the law: "I determined when descending those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer." On his return to England he speculated on the stock exchange on various South American mining companies. The recognition of the new South American republics on the recommendation of George Canning had led to a considerable boom, encouraged by various promoters. In this connection, Disraeli became involved with the financier J. D. Powles, one such booster. In the course of 1825, Disraeli wrote three anonymous pamphlets for Powles, promoting the companies.

That same year Disraeli's financial activities brought him into contact with the publisher John Murray who was also involved in the South American mines. Accordingly, they attempted to bring out a newspaper, ''The Representative'', to promote both the cause of the mines and those politicians who supported the mines, specifically George Canning. The paper was a failure, in part because the mining "bubble" burst in late 1825, which ruined Powles and Disraeli. Also, according to Disraeli's biographer, Lord Blake, the paper was "atrociously edited", and would have failed regardless. Disraeli's debts incurred from this debacle would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Before he entered parliament, Disraeli was involved with several women, most notably Henrietta, Lady Sykes (the wife of Sir Francis Sykes, 3rd Bt), who served as the model for ''Henrietta Temple''. It was Henrietta who introduced Disraeli to Lord Lyndhurst, with whom she later became romantically involved. As Lord Blake observed: "The true relationship between the three cannot be determined with certainty ... there can be no doubt that the affair [figurative usage] damaged Disraeli and that it made its contribution, along with many other episodes, to the understandable aura of distrust which hung around his name for so many years."

In 1839 he settled his private life by marrying Mary Anne Lewis, the rich widow of Wyndham Lewis, Disraeli's erstwhile colleague at Maidstone. Mary Lewis was 12 years his senior, and their union was seen as being based on financial interests, but they came to cherish one another.

Literary career

Disraeli turned towards literature after his financial disaster, motivated in part by a desperate need for money, and brought out his first novel, ''Vivian Grey'', in 1826. Disraeli's biographers agree that ''Vivian Grey'' was a thinly veiled re-telling of the affair of ''The Representative'', and it proved very popular on its release, although it also caused much offence within the Tory literary world when Disraeli's authorship was discovered. The book, initially anonymous, was purportedly written by a "man of fashion" – someone who moved in high society. Disraeli, then just twenty-three, did not move in high society, and the numerous solecisms present in his otherwise brilliant and daring work made this painfully obvious. Reviewers were sharply critical on these grounds of both the author and the book. Furthermore, John Murray believed that Disraeli had caricatured him and abused his confidence–an accusation denied at the time, and by the official biography, although subsequent biographers (notably Blake) have sided with Murray.

After producing a ''Vindication of the English Constitution'', and some political pamphlets, Disraeli followed up ''Vivian Grey'' with a series of novels, ''The Young Duke'' (1831), ''Contarini Fleming'' (1832), ''Alroy'' (1833), ''Venetia'' and ''Henrietta Temple'' (1837). During the same period he had also written ''The Revolutionary Epick'' and three burlesques, ''Ixion'', ''The Infernal Marriage'', and ''Popanilla''. Of these only ''Henrietta Temple'' (based on his affair with Henrietta Sykes, wife of Sir Francis William Sykes, 3rd Bt) was a true success.

During the 1840s Disraeli wrote three political novels collectively known as "the Trilogy"–''Sybil'', ''Coningsby'', and ''Tancred''.

Disraeli's relationships with other male writers of his period were strained or non-existent. After the disaster of ''The Representative'', John Gibson Lockhart became a bitter enemy and the two never reconciled. Disraeli's preference for female company prevented the development of contact with those who were otherwise not alienated by his opinions, comportment or background. One contemporary who tried to bridge the gap, William Makepeace Thackeray, established a tentative cordial relationship in the late 1840s only to see everything collapse when Disraeli took offence at a burlesque of him which Thackeray penned for ''Punch''. Disraeli took revenge in ''Endymion'' (published in 1880), when he caricatured Thackeray as "St. Barbe".

Disraeli's writing is generally interesting, and his books teem with striking thoughts, shrewd maxims, and brilliant phrases which stick in the memory; on the other hand, he is often artificial, extravagant, and turgid. Critic William Kuhn argued that much of his fiction can be read as "the memoirs he never wrote", revealing the inner life of a politician for whom the norms of Victorian public life appeared to represent a social straitjacket – particularly with regard to his allegedly "ambiguous sexuality."

Parliament

Disraeli had been considering a political career as early as 1830, before he departed England for the Mediterranean. His first real efforts, however, did not come until 1832, during the great crisis over the Reform Bill, when he contributed to an anti-Whig pamphlet edited by John Wilson Croker and published by Murray entitled ''England and France: or a cure for Ministerial Gallomania''. The choice of a Tory publication was regarded as odd by Disraeli's friends and relatives, who thought him more of a Radical. Indeed, Disraeli had objected to Murray about Croker inserting "high Tory" sentiment, writing that "it is quite impossible that anything adverse to the general measure of Reform can issue from my pen." Further, at the time ''Gallomania'' was published, Disraeli was in fact electioneering in High Wycombe in the Radical interest. Disraeli's politics at the time were influenced both by his rebellious streak and by his desire to make his mark. In the early 1830s the Tories and the interests they represented appeared to be a lost cause. The other great party, the Whigs, was anathema to Disraeli: "Toryism is worn out & I cannot condescend to be a Whig."

Though he initially stood for election, unsuccessfully, as a Radical, Disraeli was a Tory by the time he won a seat in the House of Commons in 1837 representing the constituency of Maidstone.

Although a Conservative, Disraeli was sympathetic to some of the demands of the Chartists and argued for an alliance between the landed aristocracy and the working class against the increasing power of the merchants and new industrialists in the middle class, helping to found the Young England group in 1842 to promote the view that the landed interests should use their power to protect the poor from exploitation by middle-class businessmen. During the twenty years between the Corn Laws and the Second Reform Bill Disraeli would seek a Tory-Radical alliance, to little avail. Prior to the 1867 Reform Bill the working class did not possess the vote and therefore had little tangible political power. Although Disraeli forged a personal friendship with John Bright, a Lancashire manufacturer and leading Radical, Disraeli was unable to convince Bright to sacrifice principle for political gain. After one such attempt, Bright noted in his diary that Disraeli "seems unable to comprehend the morality of our political course."

Protection

Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel passed over Disraeli when putting together his government in 1841 and Disraeli, hurt, gradually became a sharp critic of Peel's government, often deliberately adopting positions contrary to those of his nominal chief. The best known of these cases was the Maynooth grant in 1845 and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The end of 1845 and the first months of 1846 were dominated by a battle in parliament between the free traders and the protectionists over the repeal of the Corn Laws, with the latter rallying around Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck. An alliance of pro free-trade Conservatives (the "Peelites"), Radicals, and Whigs carried repeal, and the Conservative Party split: the Peelites moved towards the Whigs, while a "new" Conservative Party formed around the protectionists, led by Disraeli, Bentinck, and Lord Stanley (later Lord Derby). The context of the fight over free trade was famine in Ireland, which Peel hoped might be remedied by importation of grain.

This split had profound implications for Disraeli's political career: almost every Conservative politician with official experience followed Peel, leaving the rump bereft of leadership. As one biographer wrote, "[Disraeli] found himself almost the only figure on his side capable of putting up the oratorical display essential for a parliamentary leader." Looking on from the House of Lords, the Duke of Argyll wrote that Disraeli "was like a subaltern in a great battle where every superior officer was killed or wounded." If the remainder of the Conservative Party could muster the electoral support necessary to form a government, then Disraeli was now guaranteed high office. However, he would take office with a group of men who possessed little or no official experience, who had rarely felt moved to speak in the House of Commons before, and who, as a group, remained hostile to Disraeli on a personal level, his assault on the Corn Laws notwithstanding.

Bentinck and the leadership

In 1847 a small political crisis occurred which removed Bentinck from the leadership and highlighted Disraeli's differences with his own party. In the preceding general election, Lionel de Rothschild had been returned for the City of London. Ever since Catholic Emancipation, members of parliament were required to swear the oath "on the true faith of a Christian." Rothschild, an unconverted Jew, could not do so and therefore could not take his seat. Lord John Russell, the Whig leader who had succeeded Peel as Prime Minister and like Rothschild a member for the City of London, introduced a Jewish Disabilities Bill to amend the oath and permit Jews to enter Parliament.

Disraeli spoke in favour of the measure, arguing that Christianity was "completed Judaism," and asking of the House of Commons "Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?" While Disraeli did not argue that the Jews did the Christians a favour by killing Christ, as he had in ''Tancred'' and would in ''Lord George Bentinck'', his speech was badly received by his own party, which along with the Anglican establishment was hostile to the bill. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and a friend of Disraeli's, spoke strongly against the measure and implied that Russell was paying off the Jews for "helping" elect him. Every member of the future protectionist cabinet then in parliament (except Disraeli) voted against the measure. One member who was not, Lord John Manners, stood against Rothschild when the latter re-submitted himself for election in 1849. Bentinck, then still Conservative leader in the Commons, joined Disraeli in speaking and voting for the bill, although his own speech was a standard one of toleration.

In the aftermath of the debate Bentinck resigned the leadership and feuded with Stanley, leader in the Lords and overall leader, who had opposed the measure and directed the party whips—in the Commons—to oppose the measure as well. Bentinck was succeeded by Lord Granby; Disraeli's own speech, thought by many of his own party to be blasphemous, ruled him out for the time being. Even as these intrigues played out, Disraeli was working with the Bentinck family to secure the necessary financing to purchase Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire. This purchase allowed him to stand for the county, which was "essential" if one was to lead the Conservative Party at the time. He and Mary Anne alternated between Hughenden and several homes in London for the remainder of their marriage. These negotiations were complicated by the sudden death of Lord George on 21 September 1848, but Disraeli obtained a loan of £25,000 (equivalent to about £}} as of ) from Lord George's brothers Lord Henry Bentinck and Lord Titchfield.

Within a month Granby resigned the leadership in the commons, feeling himself inadequate to the post, and the party functioned without an actual leader in the commons for the remainder of the parliamentary session. At the start of the next session, affairs were handled by a triumvirate of Granby, Disraeli, and John Charles Herries–indicative of the tension between Disraeli and the rest of the party, who needed his talents but mistrusted the man. This confused arrangement ended with Granby's resignation in 1851; Disraeli effectively ignored the two men regardless.

Office

First Derby government

The first opportunity for the protectionist Tories under Disraeli and Stanley to take office came in 1851, when Lord John Russell's government was defeated in the House of Commons over the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851. Disraeli was to have been Home Secretary, with Stanley (becoming the ''Earl of Derby'' later that year) as Prime Minister. Other possible ministers included Sir Robert Inglis, Henry Goulburn, John Charles Herries, and Lord Ellenborough. The Peelites, however, refused to serve under Stanley or with Disraeli so long as the question of free trade remained unsettled, and attempts to form a purely protectionist government failed. Derby supposedly remarked at the time, "Pshaw! These are not names which I can put before the Queen!"

Russell resumed office, but resigned again in early 1852 when a combination of the protectionists and Lord Palmerston defeated him on a Militia Bill. This time Lord Derby (as he had become) took office, and to general surprise appointed Disraeli Chancellor of the Exchequer. Disraeli had offered to stand aside as leader in the House of Commons in favour of Palmerston, but the latter declined.

The primary responsibility of a mid-Victorian chancellor was to produce a Budget for the coming fiscal year. Disraeli proposed to reduce taxes on malt and tea (indirect taxation); additional revenue would come from an increase in the house tax. More controversially, Disraeli also proposed to alter the workings of the income tax (direct taxation) by "differentiating"–i.e., different rates would be levied on different types of income. The establishment of the income tax on a permanent basis had been the subject of much inter-party discussion since the fall of Peel's ministry, but no consensus had been reached, and Disraeli was criticised for mixing up details over the different "schedules" of income. Disraeli's proposal to extend the tax to Ireland gained him further enemies, and he was also hampered by an unexpected increase in defence expenditure, which was forced on him by Derby and Sir John Pakington (Secretary of State for War and the Colonies) (leading to his celebrated remark to John Bright about the "damned defences"). This, combined with bad timing and perceived inexperience led to the failure of the Budget and consequently the fall of the government on 17 December 1852.

Gladstone's final speech on the failed Budget marked the beginning of over twenty years of mutual parliamentary hostility, as well as the end of Gladstone's formal association with the Conservative Party. Disraeli favoured concessions to the "free traders" in order to broaden the support for the Conservative Party. This position brought him into even more unpopularity with the "protectionists" of his own party. Because of this split in the Conservative Party and because of Disraeli's unpopularity, arising from the budget fight of 1852, which is outlined above, no Conservative reconciliation remained possible so long as Disraeli remained leader in the House of Commons. As a result, Disraeli was replaced as leader of the minority Conservative Party by Lord Pakington in March 1853.

Opposition

With the fall of the government, Disraeli and the Conservatives returned to the opposition benches. Derby's successor as Prime Minister was the Peelite Lord Aberdeen, whose ministry was composed of both Peelites and Whigs. Disraeli himself was succeeded as chancellor by Gladstone.

Second Derby government

Lord Palmerston's government collapsed in 1858 amid public fallout over the Orsini affair and Derby took office at the head of a purely 'Conservative' administration. He again offered a place to Gladstone, who declined. Disraeli remained leader of the House of Commons and returned to the Exchequer. As in 1852 Derby's was a minority government, dependent on the division of its opponents for survival. The principal measure of the 1858 session would be a bill to re-organise governance of India, the Indian Mutiny having exposed the inadequacy of dual control. The first attempt at legislation was drafted by the President of the Board of Control, Lord Ellenborough, who had previously served as Governor-General of India (1841–44). The bill, however, was riddled with complexities and had to be withdrawn. Soon after, Ellenborough was forced to resign over an entirely separate matter involving the current Governor-General, Lord Canning.

Faced with a vacancy, Disraeli and Derby tried yet again to bring Gladstone into the government. Disraeli wrote a personal letter to Gladstone, asking him to place the good of the party above personal animosity: "Every man performs his office, and there is a Power, greater than ourselves, that disposes of all this..." In responding to Disraeli Gladstone denied that personal feelings played any role in his decision then and previously to accept office, while acknowledging that there were differences between him and Derby "broader than you may have supposed." Gladstone also hinted at the strength of his own faith, and the role it played in his public life, when he addressed Disraeli's most personal and private appeal:

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With Gladstone's refusal Derby and Disraeli looked elsewhere and settled on Disraeli's old friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who became Secretary of State for the Colonies; Derby's son Lord Stanley, succeeded Ellenborough at the Board of Control. Stanley, with Disraeli's assistance, proposed and guided through the house the India Act, under which the subcontinent would be governed for sixty years. The East India Company and its Governor-General were replaced by a viceroy and the Indian Council, while at Westminster the Board of Control was abolished and its functions assumed by the newly created India Office, under the Secretary of State for India.

The 1867 Reform Bill

After engineering the defeat of a Liberal Reform Bill introduced by Gladstone in 1866, Disraeli and Derby introduced their own measure in 1867. This was primarily a political strategy designed to give the Conservative party control of the reform process and the subsequent long-term benefits in the Commons, similar to those derived by the Whigs after their 1832 Reform Act. It was thought that if the Conservatives were able to secure this piece of legislation, then the newly enfranchised electorate may return their gratitude to the Tories in the form of a Conservative vote at the next general election. As a result, this would give the Conservatives a greater chance of forming a majority government. After so many years in the 'stagnant backwaters' of British politics, this seemed most appealing. The Reform Act 1867 extended the franchise by 938,427 – an increase of 88% – by giving the vote to male householders and male lodgers paying at least 10 pounds for rooms and eliminating rotten boroughs with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, and granting constituencies to fifteen unrepresented towns, and extra representation in parliament to larger towns such as Liverpool and Manchester, which had previously been under-represented in Parliament. This act was unpopular with the right wing of the Conservative Party, most notably Lord Cranborne (later the Marquess of Salisbury), who resigned from the government and spoke against the bill, accusing Disraeli of "a political betrayal which has no parallel in our Parliamentary annals." Cranborne, however, was unable to lead a rebellion similar to that which Disraeli had led against Peel twenty years earlier.

Prime minister

First government

Derby's health had been declining for some time and he finally resigned as Prime Minister in late February 1868; he would live for twenty months. Disraeli's efforts over the past two years had dispelled, for the time being, any doubts about him succeeding Derby as leader of the Conservative Party and therefore Prime Minister. As Disraeli remarked, "I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole."

However, the Conservatives were still a minority in the House of Commons, and the passage of the Reform Bill required the calling of new election once the new voting register had been compiled. Disraeli's term as Prime Minister would therefore be fairly short, unless the Conservatives won the general election. He made only two major changes in the cabinet: he replaced Lord Chelmsford as Lord Chancellor with Lord Cairns, and brought in George Ward Hunt as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Disraeli and Chelmsford had never got along particularly well, and Cairns, in Disraeli's view, was a far stronger minister.

Disraeli's first premiership was dominated by the heated debate over the established Church of Ireland. Although Ireland was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, the Protestant Church remained the established church and was funded by direct taxation. An initial attempt by Disraeli to negotiate with Cardinal Manning the establishment of a Roman Catholic university in Dublin foundered in March when Gladstone moved resolutions to disestablish the Irish Church altogether. The proposal divided the Conservative Party while reuniting the Liberals under Gladstone's leadership. While Disraeli's government survived until the December general election, the initiative had passed to the Liberals, who were returned to power with a majority of 170.

Second government

After six years in opposition, Disraeli and the Conservative Party won the election of 1874, giving the party its first absolute majority in the House of Commons since the 1840s. Under the stewardship of R. A. Cross, the Home Secretary, Disraeli's government introduced various reforms, including the Artisan's and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875, the Public Health Act 1875, the Sale of Food and Drugs Act (1875), and the Education Act (1876). His government also introduced a new Factory Act meant to protect workers, the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875 to allow peaceful picketing, and the Employers and Workmen Act (1875) to enable workers to sue employers in the civil courts if they broke legal contracts. As a result of these social reforms the Liberal-Labour MP Alexander Macdonald told his constituents in 1879, "The Conservative party have done more for the working classes in five years than the Liberals have in fifty."

Imperialism

Disraeli was, according to some interpretations, a supporter of the expansion and preservation of the British Empire in the Middle East and Central Asia. In spite of the objections of his own cabinet and without Parliament's consent, he obtained a short-term loan from Lionel de Rothschild in order to purchase 44% of the shares of the Suez Canal Company. Before this action, though, he had for the most part opted to continue the Whig policy of limited expansion, preferring to maintain the then-current borders as opposed to promoting expansion.

Disraeli and Gladstone clashed over Britain's Balkan policy. Disraeli saw the situation as a matter of British imperial and strategic interests, keeping to Palmerston's policy of supporting the Ottoman Empire against Russian expansion. According to Blake, Disraeli believed in upholding Britain's greatness through a tough, "no nonsense" foreign policy that put Britain's interests above the "moral law" that advocated emancipation of small nations. Gladstone, however, saw the issue in moral terms, for Bulgarian Christians had been massacred by the Turks and Gladstone therefore believed it was immoral to support the Ottoman Empire. Blake further argued that Disraeli's imperialism "decisively orientated the Conservative party for many years to come, and the tradition which he started was probably a bigger electoral asset in winning working-class support during the last quarter of the century than anything else".

A leading proponent of the Great Game, Disraeli introduced the Royal Titles Act 1876, which created Queen Victoria Empress of India, putting her at the same level as the Russian Tsar. In his private correspondence with the Queen, he proposed "to clear Central Asia of Muscovites and drive them into the Caspian". In order to contain Russia's influence, he launched an invasion of Afghanistan and signed the Cyprus Convention with Turkey, whereby this strategically placed island was handed over to Britain.

Disraeli scored another diplomatic success at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, in preventing Bulgaria from gaining full independence, limiting the growing influence of Russia in the Balkans and breaking up the League of the Three Emperors. However, difficulties in South Africa (epitomised by the defeat of the British Army at the Battle of Isandlwana), as well as Afghanistan, weakened his government and led to his party's defeat in the 1880 election.

Title and death

Disraeli was elevated to the House of Lords in 1876 when Queen Victoria made him Earl of Beaconsfield and Viscount Hughenden.

In the general election of 1880 Disraeli's Conservatives were defeated by Gladstone's Liberals, in large part owing to the uneven course of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The Irish Home Rule vote in England contributed to his party's defeat. Disraeli became ill soon after and died in April 1881.

He is buried in a vault beneath St Michael's Church in the grounds of his home Hughenden Manor, accessed from the churchyard. Against the outside wall of the church is a memorial erected in his honour by Queen Victoria. His literary executor, and for all intents and purposes his heir, was his private secretary, Lord Rowton. The Disraeli vault also contains the body of Sarah Brydges Willyams, the wife of James Brydges Willyams of St Mawgan in Cornwall. Her wish to be buried there was granted after she left an estate sworn at under £40,000, of which Disraeli received over £30,000.

Disraeli has a memorial in Westminster Abbey. He is also remembered with a large statue in the market town of Ormskirk where he graces the centre of famous student town.

Judaism

Although born of Jewish parents, Disraeli was baptised in the Christian faith at the age of twelve, and remained an observant Anglican for the rest of his life. Adam Kirsch, in his biography of Disraeli, states that his Jewishness was "both the greatest obstacle to his ambition and its greatest engine." Much of the criticism of his policies was couched in anti-Semitic terms. He was depicted in some antisemitic political cartoons with a big nose and curly black hair, called "Shylock" and "abominable Jew," and portrayed in the act of ritually murdering the infant Britannia. In response to an anti-Semitic comment made by Daniel O'Connell in the British parliament, Disraeli memorably defended his Jewishness with the statement, "Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the Right Honourable Gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the Temple of Solomon." One apocryphal story states that Disraeli reconverted to Judaism on his deathbed.

Disraeli's governments

First Disraeli ministry (February–December 1868)

Second Disraeli ministry (February 1874 – April 1880)

Works by Disraeli

Fiction

''Vivian Grey'' (1826; ) ''Popanilla'' (1828; )

''The Young Duke'' (1831)

''Contarini Fleming'' (1832)

''Alroy'' (1833)

''The Infernal Marriage'' (1834)

''Ixion in Heaven'' (1834)

''The Revolutionary Epick'' (1834)

''The Rise of Iskander'' (1834; )

''Henrietta Temple'' (1837)

''Venetia'' (1837; ) ''The Tragedy of Count Alarcos'' (1839); ''Coningsby, or the New Generation'' (1844; ) ''Sybil, or The Two Nations'' (1845; ) ''Tancred, or the New Crusade'' (1847;) ''Lothair'' (1870; ) ''Endymion'' (1880; )

''Falconet (book)'' (unfinished 1881)

Non-fiction

''An Inquiry into the Plans, Progress, and Policy of the American Mining Companies'' (1825)

''Lawyers and Legislators: or, Notes, on the American Mining Companies'' (1825)

''The present state of Mexico'' (1825)

''England and France, or a Cure for the Ministerial Gallomania'' (1832)

''What Is He?'' (1833)

''The Vindication of the English Constitution'' (1835)

''The Letters of Runnymede'' (1836)

''Lord George Bentinck'' (1852)

References

Bibliography

External links

Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

Disraeli as the inventor of modern conservatism at ''The Weekly Standard''

More about Benjamin Disraeli on the Downing Street website.

BBC Radio 4 series The Prime Ministers

Hughenden Manor information at the National Trust

Bodleian Library Disraeli bicentenary exhibition, 2004

What Disraeli Can Teach Us by Geoffrey Wheatcroft from ''The New York Review of Books''

Another version of the same text at PowellsBooks.blog

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Category:1804 births Category:1881 deaths Category:English people of Italian descent Category:Chancellors of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom Category:Conservative Party (UK) MPs Category:Converts to Anglicanism from Judaism Category:19th-century Sephardi Jews Category:English Jews Category:English Anglicans Category:British biographers Category:British Jews Category:British non-fiction writers Category:British novelists Category:Italian Jews Category:Earls in the Peerage of the United Kingdom Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:Knights of the Garter Category:Leaders of the Conservative Party (UK) Category:Lords Privy Seal Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies Category:People from London Category:People of the Victorian era Category:Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom Category:Rectors of the University of Glasgow Category:UK MPs 1837–1841 Category:UK MPs 1841–1847 Category:UK MPs 1847–1852 Category:UK MPs 1852–1857 Category:UK MPs 1857–1859 Category:UK MPs 1859–1865 Category:UK MPs 1865–1868 Category:UK MPs 1868–1874 Category:UK MPs 1874–1880 Category:Victorian novelists Category:Leaders of the House of Commons Category:Leaders of the House of Lords

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Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
{{infobox writer | name	José Argüelles | image N3U0431.jpg‎ | imagesize | caption | pseudonym | birth_date January 24, 1939 | birth_place Rochester, Minnesota | death_date March 23, 2011 | death_place | occupation Author, visionary, teacher | nationality | period | genre New Age spirituality and metaphysics | subject | movement | influences | influenced | signature
website	}}

Joseph Anthony Arguelles (January 24, 1939 – March 23, 2011), better known as José Argüelles, was a world-renowned author, artist, visionary and educator. He was the founder of Planet Art Network and the Foundation for the Law of Time. He held a Ph.D. in Art History and Aesthetics from the University of Chicago and taught at numerous colleges, including Princeton University and the San Francisco Art Institute. He was the twin brother of poet Ivan Argüelles. As one of the originators of the Earth Day concept, Argüelles founded the first Whole Earth Festival in 1970, at Davis, California.

Artist

As a painter and visual artist, he provided illustrations for numerous books, as well as mural paintings at different universities. However, his scope as an artist included his education as an Art History Professor, and his views on art as a "psychophysical aesthetic" can be found in his doctoral dissertation ''Charles Henry and the Formation of a Psychophysical Aesthetic'' (Chicago University Press, 1972). When teaching as a professor in the University of California, Davis - one of his final exams to his students was to create "something they believed in" - this became a living art event which eventually became the basis for the annual Whole Earth Festival, still held today at the University of California, Davis. After experimenting with LSD in the mid-1960s, Argüelles produced a series of psychedelic art paintings that Humphrey Osmond—who originally coined the work "psychedelic"—named "The Doors of Perception" (after Aldous Huxley's 1954 book of the same name, itself a title drawn from William Blake's 18th-century poem). In a 2002 interview Argüelles says of his artwork, "as fantastic as painting was, it was a limited medium in terms of audience."

Fame

José Argüelles was known for his role in organizing the Harmonic Convergence event of 1987, and his book ''The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology'', published the same year. In ''The Mayan Factor'' Argüelles devises a complicated numerological system by combining elements taken from the pre-Columbian Maya calendar with the ''I Ching'' and other esoteric influences, interspersed with concepts drawn from modern sciences such as "genetic codes" and "galactic convergences". The book first popularized the Hunab Ku design as a symbol within New Age discourse, after altering its appearance from that originally presented by Mexican anthropologist Domingo Martínez Parédez ( 1904–1984 ) in his 1953 publication ''Hunab Kú: Síntesis del pensamiento filosófico maya''.

Argüelles produced "Dreamspell: The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013" and a game/tool "Telektonon: The Talking Stone of Prophesy". The former is the source of Arguelles' 13 Moon/28 Day Calendar. This calendar begins on July 26 (heliacal rising of the star Sirius) and runs for 364 days. The remaining date, July 25, is celebrated in some quarters as the "Day out of Time/Peace through Culture Festival". - celebrated in over 90 countries around the world.

The Law of Time

In his 2002 book ''Time and the Technosphere'', Argüelles devises and promotes a notion that he calls the "Law of Time", in part framed by his interpretations of how Maya calendrical mathematics functioned. In this notional framework Argüelles claims to have identified a "fundamental law" involving two timing frequencies: one he calls "mechanised time" with a "12:60 frequency", and the other "natural [time] codified by the Maya [that is] understood to be the frequency 13:20". To Argüelles, "the irregular 12-month [Gregorian] calendar and artificial, mechanised 60-minute hour" is a construct that artificially regulates human affairs, and is out-of-step with the natural "synchronic order". He proposes the universal abandonment of the Gregorian calendar and its replacement with a thirteen moon, 28 day calendar, in order to "get the human race back on course" by the adoption of this calendar of perfect harmony so the human race could straighten its mind out again."

Criticism

Argüelles stated that his tools and calendar were not the Mayan Calendar, yet criticism has focused on the lack of support for his work by any professional Mayanist scholar. Critics claim that his new interpretation merely co-opts an ancient tradition by recasting it in New Age terms, although his approach could be defined as a Synthesis. Many religious and spiritual concepts throughout history have involved the eclectic syncretism of one or more previously existing worldviews. Many of Dreamspell's influences come from non-Maya sources, such as the 13-moon/28-day calendar, the ''I Ching'', numerology, and assorted mystical and pseudohistorical works like Erich von Däniken's earlier ''Chariots of the Gods?''. Argüelles' calendar is based on a different day-count than the traditional Maya calendar. For example, in the traditional count January 1, 2005 is 5 Muluk, while in the Dreamspell it is 2 Etznab. As mathematician Michael Finley notes:

"Since the 365 day Maya haab makes no provision for leap years, its starting date in the Gregorian Calendar advances by one day every four years. The beginning of Argüelles' year is fixed to July 26. Thus his count of days departs from the haab as it was known to Maya scribes before the Spanish conquest. Argüelles claims that the Thirteen Moon Calendar is synchronized with the calendar round. Clearly, it is not."

In defence Argüelles has stated that his calendar is "correct and biologically accurate...for the whole planet", and that he is the "heir of the legacy of Pacal Votan and the instrument of his prophecy, Telektonon". Argüelles is one of several individuals who have contributed to the spread of Mayanism, a collection of beliefs based on speculation about the ancient Maya.

Planet Art Network

Argüelles co-founded the Planet Art Network (PAN) with Lloydine in 1983 as an autonomous, meta-political, worldwide peace organization engaging in art and spirituality. Active in over 90 countries, PAN upholds the Nicholas Roerich Peace Pact and Banner of Peace, symbolizing "Peace Through Culture".

The Planet Art Network operates as a network of self-organized collectives, centralized by a shared focus of promoting the worldwide adoption of Argüelles' Dreamspell 13-Moon/28 day Calendar. The network upholds the slogan "Time is Art", suggesting that time is a vehicle for our creative experience, instead of the familiar saying "Time is Money".

The British anthropologist and journalist Will Black has investigated the Planet Art Network, 2012 prophecies and other millenarian movements and cults. The experience of attending PAN events is documented in his 2010 book Beyond the End of the World – 2012 and Apocalypse. The book covers the history of millenarian thought and cults from their ancient roots to present day, examining everything from Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Hopi and the Maya.

Having spent years at PAN events and immersed himself in the thinking of Jose Arguelles and other PAN leaders, Will Black strongly satirises the organisation and the leadership. Drawing on the writing of Arguelles, Black points out that prophecies Jose made about the years leading up to 2012 have failed. For example, Argüelles had predicted that the 13 moon calendar would be widely used long before 2012 but it has not been. Having also studied with shamans and the Maya, Will Black contrasts New Age movements, such as PAN, with ancient shamanic cultures, such as the Maya. In that analysis Arguelles is portrayed as someone appropriating and misrepresenting the Maya in an exploitative manner.

Black is rather more sympathetic towards the Maya than to Arguelles and PAN and consequently his book includes a chapter called ‘Returning the Mayan calendar to the Maya’ and sections in which gritty realities of modern Central American life are outlined, including the impact of drug wars and poverty.

First Noosphere World Forum

At the time of his death, he was the director of the Noosphere II project of the Foundation's Galactic Research Institute, inclusive of the First Noosphere World Forum, a project that involves creating a dialogue that unifies a network of organizations working to promote a positive shift of consciousness by 2012 with the vision of the whole earth as a work of art.

Bibliography

(note - the 1st edition of this book was published in 1984, prior to ''The Mayan Factor'', by Shambhala Publications)

Notes

References

: |date=2007-07-01 |title=The Final Days |url=http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/~tkeene/apwhAnastasThe%20(Mayan)%20Final%20Days.htm |format=reproduced online |journal=The New York Times |publisher=The New York Times Company |accessdate=2008-05-18}} : |year=2003 |title=A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America |location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=0-520-23805-2 |oclc=51305869}} : |authorlink=Kenneth Feder |year=1990 |title=Frauds, myths, and mysteries: science and pseudoscience in archaeology |location=Mountain View, CA |publisher=Mayfield Publishing |isbn=0-87484-971-3 |oclc=20692716}} : |year=2002 |title=Jose Arguelles' Calendrical Dreams |url=http://members.shaw.ca/mjfinley/arguelles.html |work=The Real Maya Prophecies: Astronomy in the Inscriptions and Codices |publisher=Maya Astronomy |accessdate=2007-09-24 |archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20070906222903/http://members.shaw.ca/mjfinley/arguelles.html |archivedate = 2007-09-06}} : |year=1993 |title=Science in the New Age: the paranormal, its defenders and debunkers, and American culture |location=Madison |publisher=University of Wisconsin Press |isbn=0-299-13820-8 |oclc=27811150}} : |year=2001 |title=Ufology |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Fundamentalism |editor=Brenda E. Brasher |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |pages=410–413 |isbn=0-415-92244-5 |oclc=46792684}} : |year=2002 |month=November–December |title=Visionary of the New Time: Michael Moynihan Speaks With José Argüelles |url=http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/Interview%20With%20Jose%20Arguelles.html |format=online republication|journal=New Dawn magazine |volume=75|accessdate=2009-06-15}} : |year=2006 |month=February |title=The 2012 Phenomenon New Age Appropriation of an Ancient Mayan Calendar |journal=Novo Religio |location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press |volume=9 |issue=3 |pages=24–38 |doi=10.1525/nr.2006.9.3.024 |oclc=86912726}} : |year=2009 |month=March |title=2012: Biography of a Time Traveler, The Journey of Jose Arguelles |location=New Jersey |publisher=New Page Books |isbn=978-1-60163-065-0 |oclc=2008054800}} : |year=2001 |title=The System of Antichrist: Truth & Falsehood in Postmodernism & the New Age |location=Ghent, NY |publisher=Sophia Perennis |isbn=0-900588-30-6 |oclc=45799654}} : |year=1995 |title=The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-Pagan Movements |location=Lanham, MD |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=0-8476-8000-2 |oclc=31604796}}

External links

Foundation for the Law of Time

Noosphere Forum

13 moon calendar

counterresponses to Argüelles' defense of his interpretation

Distinguishing Dreamspell from the Maya calendar

the Key to Dreamspell, another critical analysis refuting the claims made

Planet Art Network

Video interview with Valum Votan by the Transcendent Nation Foundation on the question of "how to save the world"

Category:People from Rochester, Minnesota Category:Writers from California Category:Writers from Minnesota Category:New Age writers Category:2012 theorists Category:University of Chicago alumni Category:Princeton University faculty Category:1939 births Category:2011 deaths

de:José Argüelles es:José Argüelles fr:José Argüelles ja:ホゼ・アグエイアス

Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
bgcolour	#6495ED
name	Douglas Miles
birth date	December 27, 1963
birth place	Phoenix, Arizona
nationality	San Carlos Apache-Akimel O'odham
field	Street art, skateboard art, stencil art, painting, printmaking
movement	Apache art, Native pop
influenced by	Anime, punk
influenced	Douglas Miles, Jr.
elected	}}

Douglas Miles is a San Carlos Apache-Akimel O'odham painter and printmaker from Arizona, who founded Apache Skateboards and Apache Skate Team.

Background

Douglas Miles grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, then moved back to the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona. He drew images from cartoons, sci-fi, and comic books and attended the Al Collins Graphic Design School in Phoenix. From 1978 to 1980, Miles attended the Boston Alternative High School, when he created street art.

Artwork and Apache Skateboards

Watching his son practice skateboarding, Miles drew corollaries between skateboarding and the Apache warrior tradition, as both involved increase concentration, stamina, and the ability to withstand pain. After finding no skate decks available relevant to Apache culture, Miles painted a skateboard deck himself. He gave it to his son, and this spawned Apache Skateboards.

Founded in 2002, Apache Skateboards is one of the earlier Native American-owned skateboard companies, following Wounded Knee Skateboards and Propaganda, founded in 1997 by Jim Murphy (Lenni Lenape) and Four Wheel Warpony, founded in 2000 by Dustinn Craig (White Mountain Apache). Native artists working on the Apache Skateboard project with Miles include Razelle Bennally; Tracy Polk Jr.; Douglas Miles, Jr.; Keith Secola; Reuben Ringlero; Irwin Lewis; Tony Steele; and Tashadawn Hastings. As Apache Skate Team, the group gives skating demonstrations, organizes skateboard contests and concerts, and curates art shows around the country, and especially on Indian reservations in the American Southwest.

"Painting on the skateboards ... opens up a whole new medium for me," Miles told ''Shade'' magazine. "My skateboards are both traditional and contemporary by design. Are they fine art or pop art? Why can't they be both?” He emphasizes Native American youth, Apache culture, and reservation lifestyles in his work. "You need to show 'Indian people' in the 21st century and not so much as museum pieces," Miles says.

Miles and Apache Skateboards have succeeded in finding new venues for art and skateboarding, blending the arenas of fine art, pop culture, and sport. They have successfully challenged outmoded categorization of Native American art based on anthropological perspectives. Together they have helped form the artist collective, Native Agents, and added visual artists Micah Wesley (Muscogee Creek-Kiowa), Rose Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo-descent), and Yatika Fields (Osage-Muscogee Creek-Cherokee) to the Apache Skateboard group. Native Agents curate "Pop Life" events, which combine visual art, music, and skateboarding, and are informed by the DIY ethic of punk culture.

Apache Skateboards work continually in film, photography, fine art, skateboarding, murals, multimedia projects, community projects, skate park planning, skateboard events, apparel design, television, film, youth conferences and speaking engagements. They produced a documentary, "Walk Like a Warrior: The Apache Skateboards Story," which was co-directed by Douglas Miles and Franck Boistel.

In 2008, Apache Skateboards collaborated with iPath Footwear to create the I-PACHE collection of sneakers, fitted hats, and t-shirts, all of which feature Douglas Miles' original designs.

Notable exhibits

2011 ''Indian Ink II''. Pravus Gallery. Phoenix, Arizona.

2010 ''Indian Ink I''. Legends Santa Fe. Santa Fe, New Mexico.

2008 ''Apache: Douglas Miles.'' Officially Closed: Dead Letter Department. Los Angeles, California.

2005 ''Pop Life.'' Wilson College, Princeton University.

2005 ''Reservation Radical/Apache Skateboards: The Art of Douglas Miles.'' Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. Santa Cruz, California.

2004–2007 ''Native Views: Influences of Modern Culture''. Art Train USA. Traveling exhibit. 2004 ''Native Nollies: Skateboard Deck Art''. Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico. 2003 ''Santa Fe Indian Market''. SWAIA. First Place, Mixed Media. 2003 ''Heard Museum Indian Art Market''. Heard Museum. Phoenix, Arizona. Won Best of Painting.

Apache Skateboards has worked with the Gila River Tribe (twice), Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community,Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, Navajo Nation (twice), White Mountain Apache Tribe, San Carlos Apache Tribe, Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians (twice), Tohono O'Odham Nation, Jicarilla Apache Nation, University of New Mexico-Gallup, Brown University, Harvard University, Peabody Essex Museum, and soon, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum.

Collections

Several pieces of his work are in the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian. His paintings are in private collections in France, Germany, New York, and Los Angeles. Miles' and Apache Skateboard's art is also in the permanent collections of the Montclair Art Museum, Eiteljorg Museum, IAIA Museum, and Warner Brothers Studios.

References

External links

SWAIA video interview with Douglas Miles

Rez Style interview with Douglas Miles, via ''News from Indian Country''

Douglas Miles, Vision Project, by Barry Ace

Apache Skateboards Presents "Tweak Bird (The Bones)", video

Category:Living people Category:Year of birth unknown Category:Apache people Category:Native American painters Category:Artists from Arizona Category:Skateboarding media Category:People from Gila County, Arizona Category:1963 births

Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
Name	Jack Canfield
Birth date	August 19, 1944
Birth place	Fort Worth, Texas
Death date
Occupation	Motivational speaker, author
Nationality	US Citizen }}

Jack Canfield (born August 19, 1944) is an American motivational speaker and author. He is best known as the co-creator of the ''Chicken Soup for the Soul'' book series, which currently has nearly 200 titles and 112 million copies in print in over 40 languages. According to ''USA Today'', ''Chicken Soup for the Soul'' and several of the series titles by Canfield and his writing partner, Mark Victor Hansen, were among the top 150 best-selling books of the last 15 years (October 28, 1993 through October 23, 2008).

In July 2004, Jack Canfield founded the Transformational Leadership Council, a group of thought leaders, speakers, authors, coaches, trainers, researchers, consultants, and other leaders in the fields of personal and professional development. The members of TLC meet semi-annually to network, connect, and learn from each other, to enhance members' effectiveness and contribution in the world. As of January 2009, membership numbered 99.

Biography

Canfield has worked as a teacher, a workshop facilitator, and a psychotherapist. He is a Democrat and a follower of "the secret" and the Law of Attraction, and his hobbies include tennis, travel, skiing, running, billiards, reading, and guitar. In 1962, he graduated from high school at Linsly Military Institute in Wheeling, West Virginia and he received a BA in Chinese History in 1966 from Harvard University and an MEd at University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1973. In 1978 he was named Outstanding Young Man of America by the U.S. Jaycees. On September 9, 1978, he married Georgia Lee Noble, with whom he had a son (Christopher N. Canfield). They divorced in December 1999. On July 4, 2001, Canfield married Inga Marie Mahoney. In the recently released ''Long Past Stopping'', Canfield's first son, Oran, from a previous marriage, details a troubled childhood with a distant father, as well as his skepticism of the entire self-help genre in which his father became famous.

Career

In 1990, Canfield shared with Mark Victor Hansen the idea for the ''Chicken Soup for the Soul'' series and after three years, the two had compiled sixty-eight stories. Canfield has appeared on numerous television shows, including ''Good Morning America'', ''20/20'', ''Eye to Eye'', CNN's ''Talk Back Live'', PBS, ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', ''The Montel Williams Show'', ''Larry King Live'', and the BBC.

Canfield is the founder of "Self Esteem Seminars" in Santa Barbara, and "The Foundation for Self Esteem" in Culver City, California. One of Canfield's most recent books, ''The Success Principles'' (2005), shares 64 principles that he claims can make people more successful. In 2008, he wrote ''The Success'' ''Principles for Teens'' with Kent Healy, as a result of the success of his original book. In 2006, he appeared in the DVD, "The Secret", and shared his insights on the Law of Attraction and tips for achieving success in personal and professional life. In the summer of 2004 Canfield founded The Transformational Leadership Council (TLC), a closed membership, invitation only members' club.

Bibliography

(Other than the ''Chicken Soup for the Soul'' series)

''About Me: A Curriculum for a Developing Self, Encyclopedia Britannica'' (With Harold C. Wells) (Chicago, IL), 1971.

''One Hundred Ways to Enhance Self-Concept in the Classroom: A Handbook for Teachers and Parents'' (With Harold C. Wells), Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1976, revised edition, Allyn & Bacon (Boston, MA), 1993.

''Personalized Learning: Confluent Processes in the Classroom'', privately printed (Newington, CT), 1976, published as ''Loving to Learn, Self-Esteem Seminars'' (Culver City, CA), 1997.

''Self-Esteem in the Classroom: A Curriculum Guide, Self-Esteem Seminars'' (With Marie Reese, Ron Rowland, Sandie Limina, and others) (Culver City, CA), 1986.

''Self-Esteem and Peak Performance: A Transcript'', Career-Track (Boulder, CO), 1991.

''One Hundred and One Ways to Develop Student Self-Esteem and Responsibility in the Classroom'' (With Frank Siccone) , Allyn & Bacon (Boston, MA), Volume 1: ''The Teacher as Coach'', 1992, Volume 2: ''The Power to Succeed in School and Beyond'', 1992, published in one volume, 1994.

''Los Angeles Dodgers Team Esteem Program: A Self-Esteem Curriculum Guide'', Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), 1992.

''Dare to Win'' (With Mark Victor Hansen), Berkley Books (New York, NY), 1994.

''Follow Your Dreams: A Goals-setting Workbook'' (With Karen Goldberg), Dream Time Project (Wayne, PA), 1994.

''The Aladdin Factor: How to Ask for and Get Everything You Want in Life'' (With Mark Victor Hansen), Berkley Books (New York, NY), 1995.

''Heart at Work: Stories and Strategies for Building Self-Esteem and Reawakening the Soul at Work'' (With Jacqueline Miller), McGraw (New York, NY), 1996.

''A Cup of Chicken Soup for the Soul'' (With Mark Victor Hansen and Barry Spilchuk), Health Communications (Deerfield Beach, FL), 1996.

''The Power of Focus, Health Communications'' (With Mark Victor Hansen and Les Hewitt), (Deerfield Beach, FL), 2000.

''The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be'' (With Janet Switzer), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.

Honors awards

Named Outstanding Young Man of America, U.S. Jaycees, 1978

honorary Ph.D., University of Santa Monica, 1981

For ''Chicken Soup for the Soul: One Hundred and One Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit'':

*American Booksellers Book of the Year (ABBY) award 1995

*Storytelling World award for tellable adult stories, 1995

*Body, Mind, and Soul Book award, 1996

*American Family Institute Nonfiction Literary award,

Named Southern California Book Publicist of the Year, 1995

Storytelling World award for tellable adult stories, 1996, for A Second Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul

Distinguished Author award, Radio and Television Interview Report, 1996

Motivator of the Year award, Business Digest, 1999

Chancellor's Medal, University of Massachusetts, 1998

Promise of the Earth Award, National Arbor Day Foundation, 1998

Oprah's Angel Network Award, 1999.

References

External links

Official website

Jack Canfield at the Internet Movie Database

Category:American motivational writers Category:American motivational speakers Category:Living people Category:University of Massachusetts Amherst alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:People from Fort Worth, Texas Category:1944 births

da:Jack Canfield de:Jack Canfield fr:Jack Canfield nl:Jack Canfield