Posted on 12/29/2009 1:11:24 PM PST by C19fan
Gladstone was born 200 years ago next Tuesday, and I salute his memory. It is always good to start with a provocation, and so let me assert that in the 300 and more years between Cromwell and Mrs Thatcher, he was the finest political leader this country had. He had a combination of wisdom, scruple, erudition, perspective, integrity and dedication that possibly no statesman in our history has been able to match. I am well aware of the cheap jibes about him as a prig, the sniggering about his saving of fallen women and penchant for auto-flagellation, and his hobby of cutting down trees. None is relevant to the ultimate contention about him: which is that he was a very great man, and Britain benefited hugely from being governed by him.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
What was once a Liberal is now a Conservative.
A rose by any other name...
"Yet his was an ideology driven not by self-gratification, but by a determination to see the country prosper and its people brought as far as possible out of poverty.
"Today, this is done by providing them with a welfare state at the expense of a diminishing number of taxpayers.
"Gladstone chose to do it by putting people into work and allowing them to keep all or much of what they earned."
What a novel idea! I wonder why our politicians can't think of it? And to think, in those days, that was called "liberalism."
Classical liberalism - basically a belief in Free Trade, negotiation over imperialism, low taxation and minimal government interference in people’s lives. My how times have changed. I’ve been to his house, now a residential Library, a place called St Deniol’s. Its incredible. He was incredible. Read up on him. Truly amazing man.
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