William Ewart Gladstone Quotes (1809-1898)

“I feel with a peculiar sympathy all that relates to Scotland. The natives of Scotland, and all those who have Scotch blood in their veins—particularly if, like me, they only have Scotch blood in their veins—are not apt to forget the country from which they sprang. They know its great qualities. They know the solidity of its character.”

“I affirm that Welsh nationality is as great a reality as English nationality. It may not be as big a reality in that it does not extend over so large a country, but with the traditions and history of Wales, with the language of Wales (hear, hear), with the religion of Wales (cheers), with the feelings of Wales, I maintain that the Welsh nationality is as true as the nationality of Scotland, to which by blood I exclusively belong.”

“[A]s a rule a man not born a Liberal, may become a Liberal; but to be a Whig, he must be a born Whig.”

“The Government of India is the most arduous and perhaps the noblest trust ever undertaken by a nation.”

“I always admired Mrs. Grote's saying that politics and theology were the only two really great subjects.”

“I believe the slave trade to be by far the foulest crime that taints the history of mankind in any Christian or pagan country.”

“To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.”

“A rational reaction against irrational excesses and vagaries of skepticism may * * * readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity.”

“I think that the principle of the Conservative Party is jealousy of liberty and of the people, only qualified by fear; but I think the principle of the Liberal Party is trust in the people, only qualified by prudence.”

“There is a saying of Burke's from which I must utterly dissent. "Property is sluggish and inert." Quite the contrary. Property is vigilant, active, sleepless; if ever it seems to slumber, be sure that one eye is open.”

“Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God, as can be your own.”

“The sovereign is the highest height of the system; is, in that system, like Jupiter among the Roman gods, first without a second... It is the wisdom of the British Constitution to lodge the personality of its chief so high that none shall under any circumstances be tempted to vie, or to dream of vying, with it.”

“If the Government takes into its hands that which the man ought to do for himself it will inflict upon him greater mischiefs than all the benefits he will have received or all the advantages that would accrue from them. The essence of the whole thing is that the spirit of self-reliance, the spirit of true and genuine manly independence, should be preserved in the minds of the people, in the minds of the masses of the people, in the mind of every member of the class. If he loses his self-denial, if he learns to live in a craven dependence upon wealthier people rather than upon himself, you may depend upon it he incurs mischief for which no compensation can be made.”

“It is...beyond question that the century now expiring has exhibited since the close of its first quarter a period of unexampled activity both in legislative and in administrative changes; that these changes, taken in the mass, have been in the direction of true and most beneficial progress; that both the condition and the franchises of the people have made, in relation to the former state of things, an extraordinary advance; that of these reforms an overwhelming proportion have been effected by direct action of the Liberal party, or of statesmen such as Peel or Canning, ready to meet odium and to forfeit power for the public good; and that in every of 15 Parliaments the people of Scotland have decisively expressed their convictions in favour of this wise, temperate, and in every way remarkable policy.”

“He said he had had two great objects always before him in life—one the suppression of the slave trade, the other to put England in a state of defence.”

“December 18.—Read Burke; what a magazine of wisdom on Ireland and America. January 9.—Made many extracts from Burke—sometimes almost divine.”

“[Lord Acton's character] is of the first order, and he is one of the most learned and accomplished, though one of the most modest and unassuming, men of the day.”

“Now and then Sir Robert Peel would show some degree of unconscious regard to the mere flesh and blood, if I may so speak, of Englishmen; Lord Aberdeen was invariably for putting the most liberal construction upon both the conduct and the claims of the other negotiating state.”

“I know nothing more sublime in the writings of Sir Walter Scott—certainly I know nothing so sublime in any portion of the sacred poetry of modern times, I mean of the present century—as the ‘Hymn for the Dead,’ extending only to twelve lines, which he embodied in The Lay of the Last Minstrel.”

“It is, however, a misnomer to call him a demagogue. If I may coin a word for the occasion, he was an ethnagogue. He was not the leader either of plebs or populus against optimates: he was the leader of a nation; and this nation, weak, outnumbered, and despised, he led, not always unsuccessfully, in its controversy with another nation, the strongest perhaps and the proudest in Europe.”

“However true it may be that Macaulay was a far more consummate workman in the manner than in the matter of his works, we do not doubt that the works contain, in multitudes, passages of high emotion and ennobling sentiment, just awards of praise and blame, and solid expositions of principle, social, moral, and constitutional. They are pervaded by a generous love of liberty; and their atmosphere is pure and bracing, their general aim and basis morally sound.”

“I can say that, as a working man, I think no man has stronger claims upon my sympathy, support, and affection than Mr. Gladstone. When the election of 1880 came we had him placed at the helm of affairs. Although I was twitted by weak-kneed Liberals and Tories that he would never concede the franchise, my faith in his honesty, in his sense of justice to the people, and in his love for the people, was not in the slightest degree shaken by these jeers. I was perfectly certain that he would enfranchise my class. In taking off this covering to unveil to you the bust of this great statesman I can say, fearless of contradiction, that he lives in the affections of thousands of men, aye, tens of thousands, who dwell in our rural villages in humble cottages, and who, I believe, whenever a wise Providence shall call him aside from this scene of action, will mourn his loss with a great and profound depth of feeling. I do not believe that Mr. Gladstone or any other living being is free from mistakes; but of this I am certain, that whenever he has made a mistake and has found it out, he has been honourable, he has been manly enough to acknowledge it, and has done his best to rectify it.”

“Mr. Gladstone once said to me: “If you ever have to form a Government, you must steel your nerves, and act the butcher”: a piece of very sound advice (as I learned from experience).”

“He has — and it is one of the springs of great power — a real faith in the higher parts of human nature; he believes, with all his heart and soul and strength, that there is such a thing as truth; he has the soul of a martyr with the intellect of an advocate.”

“Mr. Gladstone [w]as the greatest member of the greatest deliberative assembly which, so far, the world has seen.”

“Many of those who figured prominently in the counsels of the Labour party in the twentieth century bore eloquent testimony to the "uplifting power" of Gladstone's "matchless voice and superb vitality", and confessed how "the thrill of his splendid oratory" bound them to the Liberal party in the old man's twilight years. Frederick Rogers, Arthur Henderson, Robert Smillie, and especially George Lansbury, all acknowledged the debt which they owed to Gladstone. "I can hear his voice and see him now," Lansbury wrote in the 1930s after he had retired from the leadership of the Labour party. These enduring emotions suggest that the presence of Gladstone at the head of the Liberal party constituted the principal obstacle to the emergence of a coherent and independent labour movement.”

“He was the first major British statesman to consider seriously the implications of the parliamentary union between Great Britain and Ireland, and to realize that if Ireland were indeed an integral part of the United Kingdom, it must be governed on the same principles as the rest; and it was this realization that prepared him to accept the policy of home rule. His importance in the history of Anglo-Irish relations lies less in the measures that he actually carried, far-reaching though they were, than in the immense influence that his concern for Ireland had on British public opinion. It was he, more than anyone else, who made the state of Ireland an issue in British politics.”

“Who's the Liberal leader? he Who for us has stood, Stood through triumph and defeat For the people's good; We, the people, have a mind, Well it shall be known, Gladstone, he shall lead us still, He, and he alone. We have votes and let them heed us; Gladstone, he alone shall lead us. Why? because our wrongs he feels And our rights would win; Why? because for us he fights Out of power and in. [...] Voters tell them, they who'll need us, Gladstone, he alone shall lead us.”

“Always there was this huge concentration of force; purpose at white heat roared like a furnace in every action of his life. When once he had convinced himself on any subject, it ceased to be his opinion, and became a cosmic truth, which it was the duty of every right-minded person to uphold... he was convinced, and said so, that the will of the English people was set on giving Home Rule to Ireland, and that he was the appointed instrument to accomplish their will for them: God gave him his health and vitality for that. Thus his conscience was invariably clear of personal ambition: he was working not for his own idea but for some great cause external to him. Never, so Mrs. Gladstone told my mother, did the estrangement and execrations of those who had been his friends cause him to say "I wish I had never done it!" He might regret the bitterness he had aroused, but he never regretted those measures which had caused it.”

“Among the peoples of that Continent [North America] your personality has become identified with the cause of freedom, and you are to them the embodiment of their highest ideal of the statesman.”

“Who is there in the House of Commons who equals him in knowledge of all political questions? who equals him in earnestness? who equals him in eloquence? who equals him in courage and fidelity to his convictions? If these gentlemen who say they will not follow him have any one who is equal, let them show him. If they can point out any statesman who can add dignity and grandeur to the stature of Mr. Gladstone, let them produce him.”