Eugenio Biagini the ‘European Mind’ of Late Victorian Liberalism W
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Eugenio Biagini The ‘European Mind’ of Late Victorian Liberalism W. E. Gladstone and Joseph Chamberlain 12 Journal of Liberal History 98 Spring 2018 The ‘European Mind’ of Late Victorian Liberalism W. E. Gladstone and Joseph Chamberlain ew statesmen are more closely identified his frequent travels, albeit to a limited number with the British Liberal political tradition of destinations. Like most contemporaries from Fthan William Ewart Gladstone (1809–98). his social background, his education was rooted His parliamentary career spanned most of the in the study of ancient Greek and Latin and their nineteenth century, and his posthumous influ- classical culture and philosophy. Aristotle and ence stretched well into the twentieth century, Homer were two of his leading lights.4 Under the affecting generations of Liberal, Labour and ‘Pro- Roman Empire, ancient Europe had known polit- gressive’ leaders.1 Though less unambiguously ical and cultural unity, which was coextensive associated with liberalism, Joseph Chamberlain with what Victorians regarded as ‘Civilisation’. (1836–1914) was also very influential – shaping the Though Gladstone decried Disraeli’s invocation outlook both of radical Liberals like David Lloyd of ‘Imperium et Libertas’ as a travesty of bru- George and radical Unionists.2 Both statesmen tal imperialism, he thought that modern Europe engaged with ideas and visions of ‘Europe’ – of should emulate the achievements of the ancients which they believed the United Kingdom was by exporting what he himself called ‘Western and a constituent part, though one which projected beneficent institutions’.5 European influence and values onto a global can- The legacy of the Roman Empire in estab- vass through the British Empire. lishing ideas of international law and liberty had been consolidated by Christianity, which survived the fall of that empire and became Gladstone’s Europe the new framework for European civilisation, Gladstone first took office in 1841, in a govern- defining not only spiritual life, but also moral- ment that included the Duke of Wellington, the ity and standards of social behaviour. Gladstone man who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, after felt that Christianity had created a deeper Euro- a ‘world war’ which had lasted for over twenty pean identity, first through the rise of ‘national’ years. His political career was so long that his last churches, then through the concurrent opera- government (1892–4) included H. H. Asquith, tion of congregational forms of Protestantism, who was to lead the British Empire into the First which, in Britain and elsewhere, became impor- World War. Although in Gladstone’s lifetime the tant expressions of the popular spiritual aspira- catastrophe of another ‘world war’ was averted, tions in a democratising world. In his mature avoiding a recurrence of such a clash of empires years, Gladstone was not perturbed by such was the key concern in nineteenth-century inter- diversity and felt that Christianity was articu- national relations. Like his mentor Lord Aberdeen lated – rather than fragmented – through its (1784–1860), Gladstone operated on the Vienna various churches. As he saw it, denominational Congress idea that European wars were similar to diversity within the overarching Christian civil wars, in so far as they were conflicts between umbrella was extended to include both Jews – as ‘sister’ states, sharing religion, history and cul- an ancestral pre-Christian, prophetic people – ture, and upholding the same system of moral and post-Christian groups such as atheists and William Ewart obligation.3 secularists. In all its variety, Western European Gladstone (1809– His engagement with Europe was facilitated religion was so central to Gladstone’s political 98) and Joseph by both his command of modern languages vision, that in some ways he may be regarded Chamberlain (French, German and Italian in particular) and as a thinker who bridged the gap between (1836–1914) Journal of Liberal History 98 Spring 2018 13 The ‘European Mind’ of Late Victorian Liberalism: W. E. Gladstone and Joseph Chamberlain liberalism and what later came to be known as Europe.11 Like a gentlemen’s club, the Concert In trying to the ‘Christian democratic’ tradition.6 had its rules, the most important of which was A great admirer of Dante Alighieri, Gladstone to avoid unilateralism in foreign policy.12 The understand what was familiar with the poet’s vision of a ‘univer- depth of Gladstone’s well-known disapproval sal monarchy’ as a community of free peoples, of Benjamin Disraeli can only be understood if ‘Europe’ meant a commonwealth.7 Dante’s idea of empires as a we bear in mind that the latter was perceived to rational, and indeed divinely ordained, way of regard ‘the European concert … [as] a delusion to Gladstone, we organising social life was not only still relevant, … the Powers being all selfish and all contemp- must first con- but also even more so than it had ever been. For tuous of humanity’.13 Gladstone believed this in the second half of the nineteenth century the doctrine to be false, immoral and unwise. More- sider that the European empires – the British, the French and over, the British Empire was based on commerce those of the Romanovs, Habsburgs, and Hohen- and as such was vulnerable both to war and the Europe he knew zollern – dominated the world and were set to financial and commercial unrest periodically become more and more powerful through tech- generated in world markets by rumours of war was not primarily nological advances, industrialisation and com- and unilateral action. mercial liberalism. With Dante, Gladstone argued These considerations were important for him, based on nation that empires and liberty were not incompatible, for a key dimension of his Christian, imperial states, but on provided imperial government became the con- and liberal vision was commerce. The latter was duit of civil liberty and regional autonomy. He not only about trade and material advantages, multi-ethnic or thought that the British Empire justified its exist- but also about building bridges between peoples, ence precisely because of its emancipatory and a view popularised by another Victorian Liberal – as Gladstone civilising power – a view that at the time, and for – Richard Cobden (1804–65). In the speech Glad- a generation or two after him, was widely shared stone delivered to the Political Economy Club in came to think in even by humanitarian liberals like the young Irish 1876, on the centenary of the publication of Adam diplomat Roger Casement and the English scholar Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, he said, among later life – multi- Gilbert Murray, as well as by Indian patriots, other things, that ‘[t]he operations of commerce including Mohandas Gandhi.8 are not confined to the material ends … there national states. Thus, in trying to understand what ‘Europe’ is no more powerful agent in consolidating and It was a Europe in meant to Gladstone, we must first consider that knitting together the amity of the nations’, argu- the Europe he knew was not primarily based on ing that free trade served ‘the great moral purpose which legitimate nation states, but on multi-ethnic or – as Glad- of the repression of human passions, and those stone came to think in later life – multi-national lusts and appetites which are the great cause of government states. It was a Europe in which legitimate gov- war’.14 Thus he advocated ‘a view of international ernment relied not on the ‘popular will’, but society which had both an economic and political relied not on the on the dynastic principle. Liberalism stood out dimension – free trade the regulator of the one, from conservatism and absolute monarchism in the Concert of the other’.15 ‘popular will’, but that it argued that dynastic legitimacy should While the views expressed above were partly seek the consensus and support of the people, as derived from Richard Cobden, Gladstone did not on the dynastic represented by the electors, and that good gov- share the latter’s optimism and was not an ‘ideal- principle. ernment was about good stewardship. And the ist’ in terms of international relations. His view UK stood out from other empires because there was ultimately rooted in the hard-nosed calcula- sovereignty was encapsulated in the notion of tions of the Treasury and the Board of Trade. If ‘Queen in Parliament’, which reflected both he was a ‘cosmopolitan patriot’, his understanding Edmund Burke’s idea of dynastic continu- of the best course in foreign policy amalgamated ity married to popular consent, and his insist- realpolitik with Christian humanitarianism.16 ence that a good constitution should be able to He regarded such a combination of ‘realism’ and grow organically through gradual adaptation to moral responsibility as not only good for states- changing circumstances.9 This was a vision that men, but also essential to the message that they Gladstone fully shared. ought to address to their electors, in order to Though he was familiar with contempo- socialise the masses into democratic politics. The rary developments in the natural sciences, and danger for a powerful and successful empire like engaged with evolutionary theory and con- Britain was not a working-class revolution, but temporary scientific developments – which he the blind chauvinism that displayed itself in peri- tried to reconcile with Biblical revelation10 – he odical outbursts of ‘jingoism’ (a term coined in did not see their relevance to politics and espe- 1878). As the franchise was extended to the work- cially to international relations. Instead, as ing classes, Gladstone felt that they too had to be already noted above, Gladstone believed that educated to behave like ‘club members’, and that what brought people together was neither race, foreign policy and free trade finance were the two nor a common language, but rather shared essential disciplines in this school of citizenship beliefs, which ought to engender brotherly feel- whose teachers were statesmen like himself.