Why did Gladstone lose the election of 1874 and win in 1880?

The Liberal party split over the Home Rule decision of 1886. According to Parry, the “Liberal party did not fall because of sectionalism or Whig inflexibility but because of Gladstone’s distance from the Liberal tradition.”[1] Gladstone was certainly different from most Liberals. He was first and foremost a Peelite and a High Churchman, and many of his views frustrated his counterparts. He held a curious notion of the role of the people in checking executive shortcomings and his rhetoric was often denounced as Jesuitical and democratic. However, if the success of Palmerstonianism was based on its ability to tap middle-class public opinion, then it can also be argued that the success of Gladstone was rooted firmly in the fact, at least he was able to convince contemporaries, so that he had his finger on the pulse of outdoor opinion. After 1867, Britain it appeared had become a quasi-democracy with the establishment of household male suffrage in the boroughs. The electorate and with it the notion of what public opinion was seemed a lot broader. Nor could it be bribed and cajoled so easily by a few solicitors with a personal knowledge of the local oligarchy; a point made more difficult by the Corrupt Practices Act. Rather, public opinion had to be listened to and lead. This was not a new phenomenon for the Liberals, who regularly stressed the importance of didactic aristocratic leadership in representing the interests of public opinion throughout the nineteenth-century. However, now the notion of who made up this public opinion seemed a lot broader and it was largely due to Gladstone that the Liberals were able to reassure outdoor opinion that the party listened to its concerns. In this way, Gladstone does not seem so far removed from the Liberal tradition, but merely a Whig-Liberal one, which stressed anti-clericalism, piecemeal constitutional reform and open debate. This link between popular forces and the party did not begin in earnest until 1876 and only really began to develop into a potent force on the eve of the 1880 election. This more than anything may explain why the Liberals were defeated in 1874 but were able to reestablish their position in 1880 as the natural ruling party in Britain.

The election defeat of 1874 in fact seemed to represent the loss of the traditional Liberal support base. Gladstone must take some blame for this. Though thorough research on the election of 1874 has hitherto yet to be undertaken, it seems likely, as Parry suggests, that the reason for the Liberal defeat was “a church in danger cry” following the various reforms of Gladstone’s ministry, particularly regarding Ireland and state education, which represented Gladstone’s distance from the Whig-Liberal anti-clerical tradition. Paradoxically however Gladstone had been able to unify the party fairly successfully around the issue of Irish church disestablishment in 1868. This may seem less surprising however when it is remembered that appropriation was the tradition rallying cry of the Whig-Liberals from 1835 onwards. Though most Liberals upheld the superiority of the Protestant creed and Reformation principles, it must be remembered that the majority were fairly undogmatic when it came to religion; in fact since the days of the Grand Tour their principles were based more firmly on cosmopolitanism and rationalism than religious bigotry and so it is not surprising that, realizing that the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland seemed to be doing more harm than good, were willing to shrug their shoulders and accept disestablishment. Gladstone however was a religious zealot. He did not necessarily see the Protestant Church as in any way superior to the Catholic one, ultramontism notwithstanding, but instead saw both as members of an original undivided Christian church. It was these views which caused so much controversy and ultimately led to the loss of 1874. Here, I am referring to the problems of his Irish University Bill of 1873. The main issue with it was this it seemed to grant extensive and unprecedented power to the Catholics. Most Liberals felt that the obvious solution to the Irish University problem was either the abolition of the Tests at Trinity, or increasingly the concurrent endowment of both the Catholic colleges and Trinity, advocated by Hartington and Russell, which would please Catholics and at the same time help to prop up Protestantism. Gladstone offered neither but advocated removing the examinational powers of Trinity and instead hand these powers over to a secular authority to which all colleges, regardless of denomination would refer to. It was feared that because the colleges would have an influence on the syllabus, Protestantism would be over-powered; a fear exacerbated by the fact Gladstone argued that topics such as modern history, which were potentially offensive to Catholics should not be taught. Despite Cardwell making most of the points open to committee debate, the Irish Bill fell by three votes. This “church-in-danger” cry was further exacerbated by the Cowper-Temple agreement of the 1870 Education Act; a point which Gladstone ironically hostile to. This agreement facilitated the teaching of undenominational, doctrinally-diluted religious principles by schools established out of the rates. Alternatively, schools could take the “secular” option, which involved the absence of religious teaching with time set aside for the various denominations to come in and teach their own views. The fear therefore of undenominationalism or alternatively secularization that contributed to the “church-in-danger.” Anger at the influence of temporal powers in church affairs was already raised in 1869 over the Endowed Schools Act; an act which the Tories abolished upon entering government. Ironically also it was Gladstone’s High Churchman opposition to the clause 25 agitation which isolated Nonconformist support. This in itself was a major factor for the defeat of 1874.

If the Liberals seemed down and out in 1874 and the mood of the country seemed overwhelmingly “conservative,” then how do we explain the rapid turnaround in 1880? The answer to this is the rise of popular Liberalism. Gladstone had in fact done much to increase his popular credentials before 1874. The income tax had been slashed from 6d to 3d between 1869 and 1873. Sugar duties were slashed between 1870 and 1873. Most symbolic however was his repeal of the paper duty in 1861, which in many ways explains his apotheosis during his tour down the Tyne in 1862. Parry is particularly scathing over his foreign policy, particularly his agreement to submit to international arbitration over the “Alabama” affair though there is no doubt his policy of international peace did strike chords with many, most probably the Nonconformists as Summerton has shown. However this link between popular Liberalism and Gladstone did not begin until after his resignation from party leadership in 1875. Gladstone, much like Garibaldi during his tours of England in 1854 and 1860 and John Bright after the Proclaim of Emancipation in 1862 was able to portray himself as one of the people. He was in many ways, the first “demagogue-statesman.” Hamer refers to the cult of Gladstone after 1876 and this was underpinned curiously by his hobby of tree-felling at his house in Hawarden, despite the fact he only entertained audiences with this on one occasion in August 1877. The appeal of this was twofold. Firstly, as Biagini has shown, the image of the axeman chopping down the tree, which was home to all sorts of serpents and snaked, which were supposed to represent “corruption” was a common iconographic image of early nineteenth-century radicalism and in fact, the axe became a common form of popular Liberal iconography thereafter – for example, the Gladstone Axe Scarf Pin and Souvenir became an unofficial image of the Liberal party during the 1885 election. This seemed to confirm Gladstone’s reformist tendencies. Secondly, and crucially, this confirmed the view that Gladstone, like Lincoln was in America, was one of the people – his rolled up sleeves and breeches slung aside seemed poignantly anti-aristocratic[2] and he could thus be compared favourably with Beaconsfield, who it must be remembered accepted the offer of the peerage, whereas the offer was rejected twice by the G.O.M. The deification of Gladstone reached its during the Midlothian campaigns of November 1879 and March 1880 and was almost directly responsible for the Liberal success during April 1880. Of course Hartington’s speeches in the autumn of 1879 were important in reassuring propertied voters, but this campaign was completely unprecedented. Gladstone made a total of thirty-six speeches during the first tour, speaking to an audience of over 86,000 and his words, as Matthew has shown, must have reached an even larger audience through the every expanding press.

Even more curious is the relationship between Gladstone and the Nonconformists, which was also responsible for the Liberal victory of 1880. At first this may seem bizarre. Part of the reason for the Liberal-Dissenting alliance was the fact that the Liberal party inherited the Whig notions of erastianism, which were surely pleasing to Dissenters as it underpinned their religious and civil liberties. Many Liberals, having imbibed the teaching of Arnold at Rugby and Jowett at Balliol, came to support what Samuel Morley referred to as a moral, doctrinally-diluted version of Protestant. The party had time and time again showed their sympathetic tendencies by the removal of nonconformist grievances, such as church rates in 1868 and subscription to the Thirty-Nine articles at Oxford and Cambridge three years later. Gladstone however did not support a doctrinally-diluted version of Protestantism; in fact he was fairly stubborn over the Athenian articles and was fairly unequivocal on the religious hegemony of the Church of England. His appeal however was twofold. Firstly, his insistence that Parliament should not interfere with church matters, but defer to the decisions of the Convocation, re-established in 1852 (hence his opposition to the Divorce Bill of 1857) meant that he was willing to contemplate the idea of disestablishment in order to safeguard the church’s religious powers, which struck chords with Nonconformist calls for religious independence. Secondly, for Gladstone, the most important fact in life was the innate sinfulness of man and Unitarians and Quakers notwithstanding, nearly all Dissenters too were bitten by the evangelical bug. Gladstone in fact had respect for any man of religious opinion who shared this view regardless of their denomination, which explains his constant scoring of the pages of the Birmingham Congregationalist, R.W. Dale’s sermons. The Dissenter-Gladstonian alliance reached its zenith over the Bulgarian agitation in 1876. Gladstone’s pamphlet The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East sold a staggering 40,000 within two days; many of whom must have been Dissenters. Equally, there was a large Nonconformist presence at the meeting at Black Heath on 9th September. This is not surprising. If Bebbington is correct that in order for a cause to exercise the conscience of the Nonconformist then the current issue must either transcend biblical morality or block the spread of Christianity, then it can be said that the Bulgarian agitation ticked both boxes. In fact, after 1876, Gladstone’s standing within the Dissenting community was second only to Cromwell. His veneration was, according to the Times in 1880 “a fascination amounting to fetishism.” Gladstone’s appeal to the nonconformists was important for two reasons. Firstly, the nonconformists could form the organization basis of local Liberalism. Indeed, after 1876, the chapel often became the organizational base of liberal elections. Secondly, as Bebbington notes, though nonconformity on the whole was declining in numbers in relation to the population in the final quarter of the nineteenth century, its numbers were increasing at a faster rate than those of the established church and it must have held a huge sway over the lives of many non-believers as it was often the basis for social activity.

It was Gladstone’s fiscal policies however that secured his veneration among grassroots Liberals. Indeed, it was more than coincidental that the deification of Gladstone as a popular hero began after his tussle with the Lords over paper duties in 1860 and 1861. This is a point which has recently begun to attract much historiographical attention. Matthew in an influential article has stressed the psychological importance of the mid-Victorian budget in creating a feeling of community and I would like to extend this point further and would probably disagree with him that Gladstone’s reformist tendencies in the 1860s gave way to a more conservative approach. Free trade and retrenchment became a radical cry ever since the days of the Levellers and continued to be pursued throughout the nineteenth century by radicals such as “Orator” Hunt, Francis Place and John Gast. In fact, such was its hold on the imagination of popular politicians that Paine’s principles of social democracy were rejected outright as merely a “Trojan horse” for state repression. Traditionally, hostility was based more towards indirect taxes and heavy expenditure. Gladstone, ever the good Peelite, did much to solve these issues. Between 1859 and 1885, Gladstone smashed a huge £150 million from the unredeemed debt. Equally, he proved his popular credentials and his commitment to cutting indirect taxes over his handling of the matchwokers’ strike of 1879. However from the 1870s onwards, increasingly income taxes, a traditionally popular tax and local rates came under attack. The reason for the former was probably because with inflation artisans and shopkeepers, who formed the vanguard of working-class radicalism, were falling within the first category, while the second was due mostly to the fact that they fell on occupiers, rather than owners of household, even though only property-owners were able to sit on municipal councils until 1878. Gladstone’s finances and his 1874 manifesto, which sought to gain a popular mandate based on reform of local government and a replacement of the burden of the rates with a house tax therefore were heavily praised, however Gladstone never made his views over the income tax in particular and other issues affecting the working-class directly clear and in supporting the Liberals in 1874, many radicals were forced to sign a sort of blank cheque. Some did no doubt but others were not so willing to do so even though Gladstone had looked to replace the income tax from 1853 onwards with further taxation on “visible” property, which most probably meant legacy and license duties. The issue of finance perhaps best sums up why Gladstone lost the election of 1874 but won in 1880. In 1874, mainly because public opinion did not seem “mature” enough yet, he was unwilling to take a leap in the dark and trust the lower orders. In 1880 he was and his decision was vindicated with a majority not only in the boroughs but in the counties also and in twenty-seven of the traditional Conservative strongholds.

This leap into the dark was a consequence of the outcome of the Reform Debates of 1866 and 1867; an outcome which neither Liberal nor Tory really wanted. Disraeli too tried to harness public opinion to the Tory cause. His great speeches in Manchester and Crystal Palace in 1872 appealed to the political sub-conscious of many members of the subaltern class over the themes of monarchy, patriotism, imperialism and Protestantism. Popular Toryism, as Matthew has shown was always more irrational than popular Liberalism. When Gladstone spoke he sought to raise the audience’s awareness of political issues and goad them to greater heights of citizenship. Gladstone however was more successful. The Midlothian campaign set a new precedent where autumn tours of the constituencies were a requisite for any politician with ambitions of national proportions. Gladstone’s willingness to link extra-parliamentary opinion to the Liberal cause, which he did not do in 1874, was the reason for his success six years later. The reasons why he was willing to make this leap into the dark and become the first “statesman-demagogue” are not so clear. It was probably largely a result of his religious conviction: a curious blend of quasi-episcopalianism, which essentially connoted aristocratic service to the poor, as Vincent notes and evangelical notions of the moral superiority of the poor. Frustrations at Palmerstonian extravagance and jingoism and the inability of parliamentary incumbents to rule with Peelite self-denial meant that he sought to tap public sentiment to force the executive to act more responsibly. The conviction with which he pursued this was largely a product of his own self-righteousness. He was thoroughly convinced that he had his finger on the pulse of public opinion and curiously enough public opinion seemed to want what he wanted: liberty, retrenchment and reform. When the leader of the Lords, Lord Granville walked hand-in-hand from the cabinet to parliament during the first day of the 1869 session with the radical Bright, he was symbolizing the unity of aristocratic leadership with middle-class opinion. Gladstone extended this further to include the working-classes and the nonconformists. In many ways, Gladstonianism fitted the new spirit of the age, which as the Trade Union Act and the Licensing Act in 1871 and 1872 respectively seemed to suggest, was based on an “incarnationalist” confidence in the possibility of creating a human brotherhood of all men. Gladstone’s leap in the dark perhaps does not seem so foolish and idiosyncratically perhaps this spirit could have been implemented before 1880 through legislative action if it were not for the decision of Isaac Butt’s Home Rulers to separate themselves from the Liberals during the 1874 election.
[1] J. Parry, The Rise & Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain, p225
[2] This of course did not mean Gladstone was now an unofficial member of the working-class or a representative of the labour community and this point should be kept in mind by historians of Chartism such as Pickering. In fact, as Biagini has shown, popular radicalism at the end of the nineteenth century was always based more on representation of communities, rather than labour as a whole.