GLADSTONE, John (1764-1851), of 62 Rodney Street, Liverpool; Seaforth House, Lancs. and 5 Grafton Street, Mdx.

In 1820 Gladstone, a self-made Liverpool merchant prince of indomitable will, relentless energy, short temper and warm affections, had a business fortune of over £333,000, of which more than half was staked in the West Indies. He owned a Demerara sugar plantation, Success, worth £100,000, and had £150,000 invested in loans and his various trading partnerships. The following year he took over the European business of the Vreedenhoop plantation and, after a quarrel with his brother Robert, ended their East Indian commercial partnership and merged his East and West Indian companies into the firm of Gladstone, Grant and Wilson. If slave ownership sat uneasily with the Evangelical Anglicanism for which he had deserted his native Presbyterianism (he was a builder of churches and an active philanthropist), it did not show in his unabashed public stance on the issue, though the dichotomy troubled his beautiful and devoted second wife and sickly daughter Anne. A ship owner and investor in Liverpool urban property, he possessed the Litherland estate at nearby Seaforth, but was on the lookout for a landed base in Scotland. In Liverpool, to whose representation he aspired, he was the principal supporter of its Member Canning, his political hero since 1812, having then renounced his earlier association with the local Whigs and reformers opposed to the corporation’s oligarchical rule, though he was no uncritical apologist for the latter. He was an effective and ruthless election manager in a city notorious for corruption, and made many enemies. He was valued for his commercial experience and expertise by Lord Liverpool’s ministry (in which Canning was president of the board of control), whom he had supported silently as Member for the open and venal borough of Lancaster in the 1818 Parliament. He did not seek re-election there in 1820, when, after toying with the idea of challenging Gascoyne, the corporation-backed Member for Liverpool, he was recommended by Lord Liverpool to the 5th duke of Marlborough, who had asked him to name ‘any eminent commercial person’ for a seat for Woodstock, where he had the dominant interest. Gladstone was returned unopposed with an opportunist Oxfordshire Whig. Add. 38458, ff. 286, 325; 38290, f. 318; 64813, f. 46; St. Deiniol’s Lib. Glynne-Gladstone mss 326, Blandford to Gladstone and reply, 5 Mar.; Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 4, 11 Mar. 1820. Marlborough was desperate for money, and evidently tried to persuade Gladstone to contribute £2,500 towards the payment of his local election debts. (He certainly sought a loan of £300 to meet an immediate emergency three months after the election.) Gladstone parted with no more than £877 to cover essential expenses. VCH Oxon. xii. 404; Glynne-Gladstone mss 290, Marlborough to Gladstone, 8 June 1820.

He was named to the select committees on the royal burghs’ petitions, 4 May 1820 (and again, 16 Feb. 1821), highways, 16 May, and foreign trade, 5 June 1820; he was appointed to the latter in each of the following four years. On 19 June he testified to the select committee of inquiry into agricultural distress on frauds in taking the corn averages in Liverpool. PP (1820), ii. 154-6. In May Marlborough asked him to ‘summon what strength you can collect amongst our ministerial friends’ to oppose the Western Union canal bill. Glynne-Gladstone mss 290, Marlborough to Gladstone, 12 May 1820. He divided with government against economies in revenue collection, 4 July. At a meeting of the Liverpool Canning Club in December 1820 Gladstone, who helped to persuade Canning not to resign his seat along with his place in the ministry over the Queen Caroline affair, denounced the campaign in her support as ‘yet another radical conspiracy’ against the established order, which if not checked would ‘ere long terminate in revolution’. He was active in the concoction of a loyal address to the king. Liverpool Mercury, 15 Dec. 1820. In his maiden speech, 2 Feb. 1821, he defended Liverpool corporation against Creevey’s attack on their resistance to the city’s petition in support of Caroline; claimed that ‘many gentlemen and merchants of Liverpool of great wealth and character ... approved of the measures of government’, and said that the loyal address had been got up in a ‘hole-and-corner’ fashion solely because attempts to promote it openly had been ‘put down by clamour’. On the navy estimates later that day he observed that the merchant navy was in an unprecedentedly flourishing condition. He voted in defence of ministers’ conduct in the prosecution of the queen, 6 Feb. 1821.

On 9 Feb. he attributed agricultural distress largely to an excess of production over consumption, which was held down by low wages, and deprecated casual dissemination of the notion that there was a handy legislative solution. Denying a radical allegation that ‘the friends of many Members of Parliament lived upon the taxes’, he asserted that ‘his support for the present ministers arose from his conviction’ that their ‘system ... was the best and safest for the country’. In the course of his speech, he was called to order for alluding to the previous night’s debate. The Times, 10 Feb.; Glynne-Gladstone mss, T. to J. Gladstone, 14 Feb. 1821. He presented petitions against any alteration in the timber duties, 20, 26, 27 Feb., The Times, 21, 27, 28 Feb. 1821. and on 16 Apr. expressed the approval of ‘the commercial interest’ for the government bill, complaining that he ‘thought it extremely unfair to describe the ship owners as a class of men favoured and enriched at the expense of the community’. He voted, like Canning, for Catholic relief, 28 Feb. He was in the ministerial majorities on the state of the revenue, 6 Mar., repeal of the additional malt duty, 3 Apr., and the disfranchisement of ordnance officials, 12 Apr., when he was named to the select committee on the Scottish malt duty. On 29 Mar. and 2 Apr. he welcomed ministerial proposals to deal with abuses in taking the corn averages. Ibid. 30 Mar., 3 Apr. 1821. Called to give evidence to the Lords committee on foreign trade, 11 Apr., he put the case for opening the Indian trade and allowing private merchants to carry Indian goods to the Far East. LJ, liv. 296-301. On Parnell’s motion for inquiry into Anglo-Irish trade, 30 Apr., he urged the House to accept the ministerial assurance that the subject would be ‘amply discussed’ next session. He voted for the forgery punishment mitigation bill, 23 May, 4 June. He divided with ministers against the omission of arrears from the duke of Clarence’s grant, 18 June 1821.

He did likewise against more extensive tax reductions, 11 Feb., and abolition of one of the joint-postmasterships, 13 Mar. 1822. He supported the prayer of petitions for removal of the restrictions on private trade to the East Indies, 3 May, and against the navigation bill (of which he disapproved), 6 May. The Times, 4, 7 May 1822. A supporter of a more open corn trade, he was in the minorities of 36 against the new duties, 9 May, and of 21 for Canning’s clause to permit the grinding and export as flour of bonded corn, 10 June. He was attacked by the Liverpool radicals as an advocate of high bread prices. He was appointed to the select committee on mercantile law, 15 May, and called for steam packets to be equipped with more lifeboats, 21 May. Ibid. 22 May 1822. The prospect of Canning’s going to India as governor-general seemed to open to Gladstone in the spring of 1822 the prospect of stepping into his shoes at Liverpool, though Huskisson, Canning’s protégé at the board of trade, was an obvious rival. After Lord Londonderry’s* suicide in August, when John Croker* named him as one of the Members who would follow Canning into opposition if he chose that option, Gladstone entertained him at Seaforth, chaired a Canning Club dinner in his honour, and urged him to take the foreign secretaryship. Canning did so and resigned Liverpool for a less demanding seat; but it was on Huskisson that his and the Liverpool Canningites’ choice fell as his successor. Although Gladstone masked his private bitterness and disappointment and worked to secure Huskisson’s unopposed return in February 1823, he vowed to have no more to do with Liverpool politics. He was unable, however, to stay out of them, and became Huskisson’s mainstay in the constituency. Gladstone to his Wife ed. A. Tilney Bassett, 2-3; Add. 38743, ff. 154, 156, 162; 38744, ff. 70, 80, 115; 40319, f. 57; Glynne-Gladstone mss 290, Marlborough to Gladstone, 30 June 1822; Liverpool Mercury, 16, 23, 30 Aug. 1822; J.A. Picton, Mems. Liverpool (1907), i. 381.

Gladstone pressed on ministers in 1823 the need to reduce the British cotton industry’s dangerous dependence on American raw material by increasing the duty on foreign imports and introducing a drawback for exports. Add. 38746, ff. 79, 96, 111, 113. In the House, 26 Feb., he voted for Whitmore’s proposal to reduce the corn import price to 60s.; but he sided with ministers against the repeal of £2,000,000 in taxes, 3 Mar., and of the Foreign Enlistment Act, 16 Apr., inquiries into the prosecution of the Dublin Orange rioters, 22 Apr., and chancery delays, 5 June, and Scottish parliamentary reform, 2 June. He welcomed the merchant vessels apprenticeship bill, which had ‘the unqualified approbation of the ship owners’, 24 Mar., and, in his last known speech in the House, supported its third reading, 18 Apr. 1823. He was consulted by ministers that session on the sugar duties. Add. 38744, ff. 149, 165, 172. In August he made Seaforth available to Huskisson as his base for a round of constituency engagements and in the following months he corresponded extensively with him on plans to remit Liverpool customs revenues. The Times, 30 Aug. 1823; Add. 38744, ff. 253, 283, 290, 311, 319, 323; 38745, ff. 1, 7, 16, 50, 75, 96, 101, 113, 166. In October 1823 he seconded the nomination of the first Whig mayor of Liverpool for time out of mind, and in February 1824 he spoke enthusiastically in support of the Greek cause at a meeting dominated by local Whigs and reformers. The previous month Liverpool merchants and civic leaders had started a public subscription to recognize his services to the city; and he was presented with an elaborate service of plate the following autumn. Picton, i. 388-91; Liverpool Mercury, 20 Feb. 1824; A.F. Robbins, Early Public Life of W.E. Gladstone, 34.

In late 1823 Gladstone learnt of the August slave revolt in Demerara, which had been centred on his own plantation and been savagely put down. He sent reports from his agent to Huskisson, who expressed agreement with his view that the abolitionists were to blame and that the only safe way forward was that set out in Canning’s resolutions of May 1823 in favour of amelioration in preparation for emancipation. Gladstone, who attempted to have enlightened practices and spiritual and moral improvement put into effect on his own plantations, was ‘not sorry’ to hear of the death in prison of the Methodist missionary John Smith, who had been arrested for incitement, ‘as his release would have been followed by much cavil and discussion here’. Robbins, 35-46; Add. 38745, ff. 77, 199. He had already entered into an extensive Liverpool newspaper controversy, under his customary pseudonym of ‘Mercator’, with the local abolitionist James Cropper. Published as Corresp. between John Gladstone and James Cropper on the Present State of Slavery (Liverpool, 1824). See Add. 38745, f. 166. He was placed on the West India Planters’ standing committee, 10 Feb. 1824. The Times, 11 Feb. 1824. Gladstone, who was added to the select committee on artisans and machinery, 13 Feb., voted against reform of Edinburgh’s representation, 26 Feb. 1824. He divided for repeal of the usury laws, 8 Apr. Later that month, to his own embarrassment and the fury of Huskisson, the latter’s letter of 2 Nov. 1823 attacking the abolitionists, of which Gladstone had sent a copy to his brother-in-law Robertson, who had allowed it to be transmitted to Jamaica, was leaked to the press there and given publicity in Britain. Gladstone carried out a damage limitation exercise. Ibid. 27, 30 Apr., 3 May 1824; Add. 38745, ff. 263-85. He of course voted with ministers on the Missionary Smith affair, 11 June 1824, when his name was kept out of the debates. Far from reducing his stake in the West Indies, he made major investments there in the next two years, when he bought Vreedenhoop for £80,000 and acquired property in Jamaica and Guyana. By 1828 he owned directly 1,050 slaves and was indirectly responsible for many more. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Liverpool and Manchester railway scheme. Add. 38746, f. 50; Berwick Advertiser, 13 May 1826. He was granted a fortnight’s leave on account of ill health, 18 Feb. 1825, having recently taken a residence at Gloucester Spa, where the waters were supposed to be beneficial to his ailing wife and daughter. Add. 38746, ff. 261, 271. He was named to the select committee on the export of machinery, 24 Feb. He was present to vote for Catholic relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., and paired for it, 10 May. From Gloucester, 6 July, he congratulated Huskisson on the close of a session which had been ‘the most fruitful of good and important measures than any that ever preceded it’. His youngest son William Gladstone† found him at Gloucester ‘looking well, but fatigued’ at the end of August 1825. Add. 38747, f. 5; Gladstone Diaries, i. 6.

In March 1824 Gladstone had received the following letter from Marlborough:

I am sorry that the only request I have troubled you with on parliamentary matters since your election for Woodstock should meet with so determined a refusal. I cannot give up my opinion as to the question at issue, but as your opinion is as good as mine and mine perhaps as good as yours, there is an end to the matter. I confess I detest monopolies and will always support a competition, whether it may be between inn keepers or lamp lighters.

While it is not clear precisely what issue prompted this remonstrance (it may have been the beer duties bill) Gladstone, who absented himself from Liverpool but commissioned his son Robertson to act as a tour guide when Marlborough visited the city in December 1824, knew that he could not expect to come in again for Woodstock at the next general election. Glynne-Gladstone mss 290, Marlborough to Gladstone, 10 Mar., 8 Nov., 24 Dec. 1824. In the autumn of 1825 he decided, after some deliberation, to accept an invitation to stand for the venal and open borough of Berwick, which seems to have originated with the London out-voters. One of the sitting Members, Sir John Beresford, a supporter of government, who had only recently established his interest there, planned to make way at the dissolution for his nephew Marcus Beresford. Gladstone kept an open mind as to whether he should stand separately or seek to coalesce with the Beresfords against the other sitting Member Sir Francis Blake, a Whig; but he told his Berwick contact R.A. Clunie that whatever course he adopted ‘my great object would be to endeavour to bring those ... who approve of the public policy and conduct of His Majesty’s present ministers to draw together’. On the eve of his first appearance in Berwick, 26 Oct., after a visit to Scotland, he was warned by his friend and correspondent Kirkman Finlay*, a Glasgow cotton merchant, to consider well ‘the certainty of expense and the uncertainty of an unchallengeable future’. Glynne-Gladstone mss 342, Clunie to Gladstone, 5 Oct., reply, 8 Oct., Finlay to Gladstone, 25, 30 Oct. 1825. In his initial address he claimed to be ‘unfettered by any party’, but praised the ‘liberal and enlightened policy’ pursued by ministers, ‘by which our country has been raised to its present state of unexampled influence and prosperity’. A family illness at Gloucester obliged him to leave Berwick after a week’s canvassing, but his supporters continued to promote his cause among the London and Northumberland out-voters. Berwick Advertiser, 29 Oct., 5, 12 Nov., 3, 17 Dec.; The Times, 12 Nov. 1825; Gladstone Diaries, i. 16. The Beresfords were furious at his intervention and complained to Peel, the home secretary, who, fully taking their side, urged Liverpool to get Lushington, the patronage secretary, to ‘do everything’ to support their ‘established interest’. While Liverpool agreed, he observed that ‘though Gladstone is a supporter of government, he is a perfectly independent man, and one over whom we have never attempted to exercise any influence or authority. The Beresfords should be made to feel this’. To Lushington, whom he asked to exert government influence on their behalf, he commented that they had ‘no right to dictate’ to Gladstone, and that it was ‘a pity that a seat could not be found for him in some other quarter’. Lushington, who complied, explained that

we have no power of controlling Mr. Gladstone. He is independent of the government, and having no chance at Woodstock, thought it for his interest to close with an offer from Berwick. This he did without consulting me, and when he announced his departure for Berwick I warned him that he was embarking amongst a very troublesome and expensive set of constituents ... and I distinctly told him that the aid of government would be given in every possible way to the Beresfords. Even now I do not see that it is practicable to do more. If he had not voted for the Catholic question, it had been possible to find him a popular seat elsewhere at less expense, and little hazard. Add. 38195, f. 182; 38301, f. 12; 40305, f. 128; Wellington mss WP1/831/11.

In December 1825 Gladstone, notwithstanding his recent criticisms of ‘the cursed systems of country banking’, which he largely blamed for the current commercial crisis, responded favourably to an approach from the Gloucester and Cheltenham bank of Turner, Turner and Morris, which had suspended payments, to invest £10,000 in a new partnership. While he was keen to set up the venture as an ideal example of what a sound and profitable country bank should be, he also thought it would enable him to ‘establish for myself an important political interest’ in Gloucester, which might be of use to himself or one of his sons. In the event he withdrew from the scheme after his potential associates, who were ‘not altogether reconciled to the strictness of my system’, had prematurely made it public. Add. 38747, ff. 149, 176. He was still in Gloucester on 17 Feb. 1826, when he wrote to Huskisson of his qualms over the government’s proposal to issue exchequer bills, which he feared would benefit and encourage the speculator rather than the ‘regular merchant’. Add. 38747, f. 178. He was named to the select committee on the Irish butter trade, 9 Mar., but may have spent most of the 1826 session in Gloucester, for his only known parliamentary activity was his appearance as a witness before the select committee on promissory notes, 26, 28 Apr. PP (1826), iii. 473-9; (1826-7), vi. 511-20. He and his wife returned to Seaforth, after an absence of over 18 months, in late May 1826.

Chairing a Liverpool election meeting in support of Huskisson soon afterwards, he was given a hard time by a disgruntled ship’s carpenter, who denounced Huskisson’s support of the 1825 Combination Act. There was no substance to the usual rumours of his own candidature for the city. The Times, 5 June 1826; Picton, i. 398-9; Gladstone Diaries, i. 52-53. He went to Berwick, where he faced a contest with Beresford and Blake, who eventually coalesced against him. On the hustings, he portrayed himself as an independent supporter of government. The local press reported him as opposing free trade in corn and criticizing the new Navigation Act, as well as taking a stance on slavery in accordance with the 1823 resolutions in favour of progressive amelioration combined with compensation for the proprietors when emancipation was effected. After a desperate and protracted contest, he beat Blake into third place by six votes in a poll of 860. Gladstone Diaries, i. 54-56; Berwick Advertiser, 10, 17, 24 June 1826. Recriminations soon started. Gladstone sought to correct in both Liverpool and Berwick what he considered to be a distorted report in the Berwick Advertiser of his hustings pronouncements on the corn and navigation laws. He insisted that while he had acknowledged the need to give fair protection to domestic agriculture and would never agree to ‘a permanent unrestricted trade in foreign corn’, he had advocated the adoption of a sliding scale of duties between fixed maximum and minimum prices, and pointed out that his strictures on the Navigation Act had had reference only to the British shipping industry’s relationship with the Northern European powers. He had also to defend himself against an accusation of duplicity on the question of slavery, in that he had in a letter to a supporter in Berwick expressed support for the prayer of the borough’s petition of February 1826 calling for immediate implementation of the resolutions of 1823, whereas in a letter of 5 Nov. 1823 to the Liverpool Courier (his organ) he had said that the Demerara revolt had awakened ministers to the folly of those resolutions, which had been forced on them by misguided and, in some cases, malevolent abolitionists. His retort was that while he had heartily supported the resolutions, and still did so, ministers had been compelled to adopt them, whereas if they had been left alone to deal with the slavery problem by administrative means, the uprising would never have taken place. Berwick Advertiser, 1, 8, 15, 29 July, 12 Aug.; Robbins, 49-51; Glynne-Gladstone mss 342, Clunie to Gladstone, 14, 19, 20 July, replies, 17, 19 July 1826 Gladstone, who felt that he had been duped into expecting a comparatively easy return, resented attempts to identify him as a partisan in the borough’s politics, and was angered by the expectation that he would procure patronage for large numbers of those who had supported him, fell out with Clunie. He soon came to regret that he had ever become involved at Berwick, the more so when his return was petitioned against, 28 Nov. 1826, on the grounds of bribery, treating and reliance on illegal votes. Glynne-Gladstone mss 342, Clunie to Gladstone, 19 July, 7, 21 Aug., replies, 20 July, 3, 12 Aug. 1826; Gladstone Diaries, i. 64; Add. 38748, f. 208; Glynne-Gladstone mss 194, T. to J. Gladstone [14 Mar. 1827]. He paired for Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827, but was unseated by the election committee on the 19th. William Gladstone* loyally noted that Berwick had ‘lost ... a representative ten times too good for it’. Gladstone Diaries, i. 107.

A month later Canning, who probably found Gladstone rather tiresome, was prime minister. Gladstone, for his part, felt neglected by Canning, complaining in a letter drafted to Huskisson but not sent, 24 Mar. 1827, that he had been cool towards him ever since becoming foreign secretary. Nothing came of a rumour that Canning was to give him a peerage. Nevertheless, he was a sincere well-wisher to Canning’s administration, and chaired a Liverpool meeting in its support, 9 May, though he cavilled at some of his commercial policies and called for ‘the timely concession of the just claims of the Catholics’ to ‘prevent Ireland from being deluged in blood’. Add. 38749, ff. 177, 207, 229, 315; The Times, 11 May 1827. Following Canning’s death he remained loyal to Huskisson, seconding his nomination on his re-election for Liverpool after taking office in the Wellington ministry in February 1828. Add. 38750, ff. 210, 257; 38751, f. 17; 38756, f. 263; The Times, 6, 7 Feb. 1828. A year later his daughter Anne died. He warmly welcomed Catholic emancipation. Wellington mss WP1/1001/21; 1002/13. In December 1829, three months after taking in his eldest son as a partner in the Liverpool firm, from which Wilson departed, he bought the Kincardineshire estate of Fasque for £80,000. Because of his wife’s poor health, which led them to move to Leamington in search of a cure, they did not take up permanent residence there until the summer of 1833. Robertson Gladstone remained at Seaforth to run the business and represent the family in Liverpool affairs. At the general election of 1830, when he again put his weight behind Huskisson at Liverpool, Gladstone helped to secure the return of his eldest son Thomas for Queenborough. After Huskisson’s death at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway in September (he had written to Huskisson two weeks before the fatal event that ‘I for one cannot help thinking there is more made of this railroad opening business than it deserves’) he made a final bid for his seat, but got nowhere. Add. 38758, f. 226; Gladstone Diaries, i. 323-4; Add. 40401, f. 256; 44720, ff. 46-57. He published at this time A Statement of Facts on slavery, addressed to Peel, in which he reiterated his customary warnings of the dangers of ill-considered and precipitate abolition. In 1831 he investigated the possibility of standing for the district of burghs containing Leith, his birthplace, when it was enfranchised by the Reform Act, but nothing came of this. In the course of that year he came to accept that a modicum of reform was necessary, but at a Liverpool meeting to address the king against the creation of peers, 21 Nov., he argued that the borough property qualification was set too low for safety. Picton, i. 440. The following year he encouraged his son Robertson in the formation of a Conservative Association in Liverpool, and was involved in the launch of the Liverpool Standard. At the general election of 1832 Thomas was returned for Portarlington and William embarked on his long and distinguished political career as Conservative Member for Newark, where his stern but doting father paid half his expenses. Gladstone, who was widowed in 1835, stood for Dundee as one who was ‘liberally Conservative’ in 1837, but he was pelted with mud and stones and humiliatingly beaten by the Liberal sitting Member. Gladstone Diaries, ii. 306-7; The Times, 4, 10, 11 July, 1 Aug 1837. He published pamphlets against repeal of the corn laws in 1839, 1841, 1843 and 1846. His third son John Neilson, a naval officer, began a parliamentary career as Conservative Member for Walsall in February 1841. Gladstone accepted invitations to stand for Aberdeen and the Leith district at the general election that year, when he was almost 77, but neither scheme came to fruition; and he rejected an invitation from Berwick four years later. On leaving office in 1846 Peel, who had promoted William Gladstone’s early ministerial career, offered a baronetcy to his father, dismissing his punctilious scruples about acceptance because of his conscientious opposition to repeal of the corn laws. Add. 40594, ff. 82, 84. Gladstone later admitted that Peel had been right to carry that measure.

He substantially reduced his investment in the West Indies after emancipation, which cost him between £150,000 and £250,000. After experimenting with the import of Coolie labour from Bengal to the Caribbean as he concentrated more on trade with the East, he sold Vreedenhoop in 1840 and largely wound up his West Indian estates the following year, having earlier transferred his Demerara assets to his children. He invested heavily in domestic transport ventures. In 1843 he gifted £74,000 to his children. Five years later he gave them a further £250,000 and made a will (8 Dec. 1848) to deal with the remainder. His surviving daughter Helen, who had turned Catholic in 1842, went through a phase of opium addiction and dementia and died in continental exile, received a life interest in £50,000, while the three younger sons were given an additional £10,000 each. The Scottish estates had already been made over to Thomas, whose stake in the will amounted to £126,000, plus a quarter share with his brothers in a residue of £216,000. PROB 11/2151/301; IR26/1930/203. Gladstone was described by William in the spring of 1851 as being ‘very like a spent cannon ball, with a great and almost frightful energy left in him’. In the autumn he went into swift decline, and he died at Fasque in December 1851. His son wrote:

Though with little left either of sight or hearing, and only able to walk from one room to another or to his brougham for a short drive, though his memory was gone, his hold upon language even for common purposes imperfect, the reasoning power much decayed and even his perception of personality rather indistinct, yet so much remained about him as one of the most manful, energetic, affectionate, and simple-hearted among human beings, that he still filled a great space to the eye, mind, and heart, and a great space is accordingly left void by his withdrawal. W.E. Gladstone ed. J. Brooke and M. Sorensen (Prime Ministers’ Pprs.), iii. 80-102; J. Morley, Life of Gladstone, i. 388.

He had more to say on his father, whose fortune at his death (about £600,000) was less than that of ‘others who in native talent and energy he much surpassed’:

It was a large and strong nature, simple though hasty, profoundly affectionate and capable of the highest devotion in the lines of duty and of love. I think that his intellect was a little intemperate, though not his character ... He could not understand nor tolerate those who, perceiving an object to be good, did not at once and actively pursue it; and with all this energy he joined a corresponding warmth and ... eagerness of affection, a keen appreciation of humour, in which he found a rest, and an indescribable frankness and simplicity of character, which, crowning his other qualities, made him, I think (and I strive to think impartially), the most interesting old man I have ever known. Morley, i. 10, 19.