GLADSTONE, WILLIAM EWART. - English statesman, b. 29 Dec. 1809, d. 19 May 1898 at Hawarden. Son of a Scottish Presbyterian, he felt a very lively religious sentiment from childhood, which was strengthened during his years of study at Eton and Oxford. He entered political life and was elected as a deputy of the Conservative Party in 1833, thus beginning a brilliant career.
Secretary of State for the Colonies in Peel’s cabinet, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1852 to 1855, he left the Conservatives in 1859 and joined the Liberal Party. Prime Minister four times (from 1868 to 1874; from 1880 to 1885; in 1886; and from 1892 to 1894), he carried out various reforms. He took a great interest in the relations between State and Church (in 1838 he published the work *The State in its relation to the Church*, in which the latter was subordinated to public authority) and in the Roman Question, and although he was personally convinced of the necessity of abolishing the temporal power of the Pope, he was well aware of the moral importance of the papacy, moreover advocating a policy of open tolerance toward Catholics. Thus in 1851 he opposed in Parliament the bill “On Ecclesiastical Titles,” introduced in response to the new arrangement of diocesan boundaries by Pius IX, because he considered the bill contrary to the principle of religious freedom, and he secured its repeal twenty years later when he was in power.
In 1865 he explained to Fr. Tosti his ideas on the solution to the Roman Question, striving to find a compromise between the demands of Italian national and unitary sentiment and the dignity of the visible Head of the Church: “ensuring to the latter full and absolute freedom and independence, together with revenues befitting the dignity of the See of Rome. Under those same guarantees, the King of Italy would also be, with full and perpetual independence, the vicar, forever and irrevocably, of all those States that were or are papal, taking charge of all secular, financial, and municipal affairs; on condition, however, that no Government, beyond the municipality and the necessary administrative offices, has the power to ‘locate’ in Rome without the consent of the Pope, that is to say that Florence would remain the civil capital.”
Gladstone took a great interest in improving the economic conditions of Ireland and worked to obtain autonomy (home rule) for the island. It was during a stay in Naples that he became acquainted with and exposed to the public the conditions of political prisoners under Ferdinand II (1851), in order to create an unfavorable current against the King in Europe. His vehement protests also received wide attention.