William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898)The Mackinac Center notes that today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of British parliamentarian and statesman William Gladstone, and links to a 2003 article from the center’s president, Lawrence W. Reed. Reed points to Gladstone’s long and distinguished political career, which included multiple tenures as prime minister.

What made this son of Scottish parents both great and memorable, however, was not simply a long career in government. Indeed, as a devoutly religious man he always put service to God ahead of service to country and felt that what he did as a politician should be unequivocally faithful to both. What made Gladstone great and memorable was what he actually plished while he served in government. Biographer Magnus says Gladstone “achieved unparalleled success in his policy of setting the individual free from a multitude of obsolete restrictions.”

Today, when a citizen is elected with a mandate to cut the government down to size, but ends up moderating his positions while in power, conventional wisdom credits him with having “grown in office.” Gladstone “grew” but in precisely the opposite direction. When he entered Parliament at age 22 in 1832, Gladstone was a protectionist on trade, a defender of the state-subsidized Church of England, an opponent of reform and a protector of the status quo. By 1850, he had e an ardent advocate of free trade and by 1890 had reduced Britain’s tariffs from 1,200 to just 12.

Gladstone slashed government spending, taxes, and regulations. He ended state subsidies for the Church of England in Ireland. He pushed through reforms that allowed Jews and Catholics to serve in Parliament and that extended the vote to millions of taxpaying workers who had previously been denied the franchise. He extolled the virtues of self-help and private charity. And he lived what he preached. Even as prime minister, Gladstone was so moved by the degraded plight of London prostitutes that he would search the streets of London to talk them out of their destructive occupation.

This photo is of Acton spending time with the Gladstone family at Tegernsee in 1879. Tegernsee was a spa town in the Bavarian Alps. Acton died there in 1902. In the photo Acton is seated at the right with his hat in hand, William Gladstone is seated on the bench at the left. Mary Gladstone is standing just behind her father.A good deal of Lord Acton’s correspondence with Gladstone, which extended over a period of thirty years, is available via Google Books, as is Acton’s correspondence with Gladstone’s daughter Mary.

Update: More on Gladstone at Scriptorium Daily, “Gladstone: The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture.”