Editing William Ewart Gladstone (section)

==Opposition (1874–1880)==
[[File:Franz von Lenbach - Portrait of William Ewart Gladstone (1874).jpg|thumb|right|Gladstone in 1874, painted by [[Franz von Lenbach]]]]
In the wake of [[Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield|Benjamin Disraeli]]'s victory, Gladstone retired from the leadership of the Liberal party, although he retained his seat in the House.

===Anti-Catholicism===
{{Further|Anti-Catholicism in the United Kingdom}}
Gladstone had a complex ambivalence about Catholicism. He was attracted by its international success in majestic traditions. More important, he was strongly opposed to the authoritarianism of its pope and bishops, its profound public opposition to liberalism, and its supposed refusal to distinguish between secular allegiance on the one hand and spiritual obedience on the other.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Josef L. |last=Altholz |title=The Vatican Decrees Controversy, 1874–1875 |journal=Catholic Historical Review |volume=57 |issue=4 |date=1972 |pages=593–605 |jstor=25018950 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25018950 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210612053950/https://www.jstor.org/stable/25018950 |archive-date=12 June 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=H. S. C. |last=Matthew |title=Gladstone: 1809–1898 |date=1997 |page=248}}</ref><!---What does this gave to do with Catholicism? On the other hand, when ritual practices in the Church of England - such as vestments and incense&nbsp;–  came under attack as too ritualistic and too much akin to Catholicism, Gladstone strongly opposed the passage of the [[Public Worship Regulation Act 1874|Public Worship Regulation Act]] in 1874.<ref>{{cite book |first=David W. |last=Bebbington |title=William Ewart Gladstone: Faith and Politics in Victorian Britain |date=1990 |page=226}}</ref>--->

In November 1874, he published the pamphlet ''[[The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance]]'', directed at the [[First Vatican Council]]'s dogmatising [[Papal Infallibility]] in 1870, which had outraged him.<ref>{{cite book|first=William Ewart |last= Gladstone|title=The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation |url=https://archive.org/stream/a628791400gladuoft#page/n3/mode/2up|publisher=John Murray|place=London|year=1874|edition=1 |access-date= 10 June 2016 |via= Internet Archive}}</ref> Gladstone claimed that this decree had placed British Catholics in a dilemma over conflicts of loyalty to the Crown. He urged them to reject papal infallibility as they had opposed the [[Spanish Armada]] of 1588. The pamphlet sold 150,000 copies by the end of 1874. [[Henry Edward Manning|Cardinal Manning]] denied that the council had changed the relation of Catholics to their civil governments, and Archbishop [[James Roosevelt Bayley]], in a letter which was obtained by the ''[[New York Herald]]'' and published without Bayley's express permission, called Gladstone's declaration "a shameful calumny" and attributed his "monomania" to the "political [[seppuku|hari-kari]]" he had committed by dissolving Parliament, accusing him of "putting on 'the [[cap and bells]]' and attempting to play the part of [[Lord George Gordon]]" in order to restore his political fortunes.<ref name="nyherald-infallibility">{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s)/no by-line.--> |title=Infallibility. The Manning-Gladstone Controversy. Archbishop Bayley's Views. |url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030313/1874-11-22/ed-1/seq-5/ |work=New York Herald |location= |date=22 November 1874 |access-date=27 April 2021 |archive-date=27 April 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210427205300/https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030313/1874-11-22/ed-1/seq-5/ |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Yeager |first=M. Hildegarde |author-link= |date=1947 |title=The Life of James Roosevelt Bayley, First Bishop of Newark and Eighth Archbishop of Baltimore, 1814–1877 |url= |location=Washington, D. C. |publisher=The Catholic University of America Press |pages=393–396}}</ref> [[John Henry Newman]] wrote the ''[[Letter to the Duke of Norfolk]]'' in reply to Gladstone's charges that Catholics have "no mental freedom" and cannot be good citizens.

A second pamphlet followed in Feb 1875, a defence of the earlier pamphlet and a reply to his critics, entitled ''Vaticanism: an Answer to Reproofs and Replies''.<ref>{{cite book|first=William Ewart |last= Gladstone|title=Vaticanism: an Answer to Reproofs and Replies|url=https://archive.org/stream/a622102400gladuoft#page/n3/mode/2up|publisher=John Murray|place=London|year=1875|edition=1 |access-date= 10 June 2016 |via= Internet Archive}}</ref> He described the Catholic Church as "an Asian monarchy: nothing but one giddy height of despotism, and one dead level of religious subservience". He further claimed that the Pope wanted to destroy the rule of law and replace it with arbitrary tyranny, and then to hide these "crimes against liberty beneath a suffocating cloud of incense".<ref>{{cite book |first=Philip |last=Magnus |title=Gladstone: A Biography |location=London |publisher=John Murray |date=1963 |pages=235–236}}</ref>
[[File:Portrait of Hawarden 1877 William Gladstone (4672759) (cropped).jpg|thumb|Portrait of Gladstone at Hawarden in 1877]]

===Opposition to socialism===

Gladstone was opposed to socialism after 1842 when he heard a socialist lecturer.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Chris |last=Wrigley |title=Gladstone and the London May Day Demonstrators, 1890 |journal=Historian |volume=105 |date=2010 |pages=6–10}}</ref>  [[Arthur Godley, 1st Baron Kilbracken|Lord Kilbracken]], one of Gladstone's secretaries, commented:
<blockquote>The Liberal doctrines of that time, with their violent anti-socialist spirit and their strong insistence on the gospel of thrift, self-help, settlement of wages by the higgling of the market, and non-interference by the State.... I think that Mr. Gladstone was the strongest anti-socialist that I have ever known....It is quite true, as has been often said, that "we are all socialists up to a certain point"; but Mr. Gladstone fixed that point lower, and was more vehement against those who went above it, than any other politician or official of my acquaintance. I remember his speaking indignantly to me of the budget of 1874 as "That socialistic budget of Northcote's," merely because of the special relief which it gave to the poorer class of income-tax payers. His strong belief in Free Trade was only one of the results of his deep-rooted conviction that the Government's interference with the free action of the individual, whether by taxation or otherwise, should be kept at an irreducible minimum. It is, indeed, not too much to say that his conception of Liberalism was the negation of Socialism.<ref>{{cite book |author=Lord Kilbracken |title=Reminiscences of Lord Kilbracken |publisher=Macmillan |date=1931 |pages=83–84}}</ref></blockquote>

===Bulgarian Horrors===
{{Further|April Uprising of 1876}}

A pamphlet Gladstone published on 6 September 1876, ''Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East'',<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://attackingthedevil.co.uk/related/bulgarian_horrors.php|title=[W]illiam [E]wart Gladstone, "Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East" (1876) &#124; W.T. Stead Resource Site|website=attackingthedevil.co.uk|access-date=11 August 2019|archive-date=4 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190704113544/https://attackingthedevil.co.uk/related/bulgarian_horrors.php|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first=William Ewart |last= Gladstone|title=Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East|url=https://archive.org/details/bulgarianhorrors00gladiala|publisher=John Murray|place=London|year=1876|edition=1 |access-date= 10 June 2016 |via= Internet Archive}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |url=https://www.historytoday.com/archive/gladstone-disraeli-and-bulgarian-horrors|title=Gladstone, Disraeli and the Bulgarian Horrors |via= History Today |journal=History Review |volume=50 |date=December 2004 |access-date=16 November 2019|archive-date=16 November 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191116121028/https://www.historytoday.com/archive/gladstone-disraeli-and-bulgarian-horrors |first=Mark |last=Rathbone|url-status=live}}</ref> attacked the Disraeli government for its indifference to the [[Ottoman Empire]]'s violent repression of the [[Bulgarian April uprising]]. Gladstone made clear his [[Anti-Turkism|hostility focused on the Turkish people]], rather than on the Muslim religion. The Turks he said:
{{blockquote|were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them; and as far as their dominion reached, civilisation disappeared from view. They represented everywhere government by force, as opposed to government by law. For the guide of this life they had a relentless fatalism: for its reward hereafter, a sensual paradise.<ref>{{cite book|first=William Ewart |last= Gladstone|title=Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East|url=https://archive.org/stream/bulgarianhorrors00gladiala#page/9/mode/2up|year=1876|edition=1|page=9|access-date=10 June 2016|via=Internet Archive|publisher= London : J. Murray}}</ref>}}

[[File:Acgladstone2.jpg|thumb|right|Gladstone in 1879, painted by [[John Everett Millais]]]]

The historian [[Geoffrey Alderman]] has described Gladstone as "unleashing the full fury of his oratorical powers against Jews and Jewish influence" during the [[Bulgarian Crisis (1885–88)]], telling a journalist in 1876 that: "I deeply deplore the manner in which, what I may call Judaic sympathies, beyond as well as within the circle of professed Judaism, are now acting on the question of the East". Gladstone similarly refused to speak out against the persecution of Romanian Jews in the 1870s and Russian Jews in the early 1880s.< In response, the ''[[Jewish Chronicle]]'' attacked Gladstone in 1888, arguing that "Are we, because there was once a Liberal Party, to bow down and worship Gladstone&nbsp;– the great Minister who was too Christian in his charity, too Russian in his proclivities, to raise voice or finger" to defend [[Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire|Russian Jews]]...<ref name="Alderman, Geoffrey 1992, p.100">{{cite book |last=Alderman |first=Geoffrey |title=Modern British Jewry |location=Oxford |publisher=Clarendon |date=1992 |pages=100–101}}</ref>

During the 1879 election campaign, called the [[Midlothian campaign]], he rousingly denounced Disraeli's foreign policies during the ongoing [[European influence in Afghanistan#Second Anglo-Afghan War|Second Anglo-Afghan War]] in Afghanistan (see [[Great Game]]). He saw the war as "great dishonour" and also criticised British conduct in the [[Zulu War]]. Gladstone also (on 29 November) condemned what he saw as the Conservative government's profligate spending:
<blockquote>...the Chancellor of the Exchequer shall boldly uphold economy in detail; and it is the mark ... of ... a chicken-hearted Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he shrinks from upholding economy in detail, when, because it is a question of only £2,000 or £3,000, he says that is no matter. He is ridiculed, no doubt, for what is called saving candle-ends and cheese-parings. No Chancellor of the Exchequer is worth his salt who is not ready to save what are meant by candle-ends and cheese-parings in the cause of his country. No Chancellor of the Exchequer is worth his salt who makes his own popularity either his first consideration, or any consideration at all, in administrating the public purse. You would not like to have a housekeeper or steward who made her or his popularity with the tradesmen the measure of the payments that were to be delivered to them. In my opinion the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the trusted and confidential steward of the public. He is under a sacred obligation with regard to all that he consents to spend.... I am bound to say hardly ever in the six years that Sir Stafford Northcote has been in office have I heard him speak a resolute word on behalf of economy.<ref>{{cite book |first=William Ewart |last=Gladstone |title=Midlothian Speeches. 1879 |publisher=Leicester University Press |date=1971 |page=148}}</ref></blockquote>