Liberal Party's Split of 1886 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

prominent societys Split of 1886 - Essay ExampleThe classes, by which he meant the dukes ... the squires ... the Established clergy ... the officers of the army, or ... a number of other bodies of very respectable people, were against the masses, the remainder of the population. His headspring was that in exclusively matterswhere the leading and determining consideration that ought to lead to a conclusion are truth, justice, and humanity, at that place, gentlemen, all the world over, I will back the masses against the classes. (Matthew 1999, 348-9)But Gladstone faced an uphill travail for all kinds of reasons were causing many of the previously Liberal voters to abstain or even to turn come on and vote against them. Memories of Gordon and anti-Catholic prejudice erupted throughout the country, while his fiery rhetoric, as in Liverpool, might have affright off as many electors as it encouraged.The main problem for Gladstone and his friends was that there were two Liberal parti es to vote for in 1886. The MPs who had opposed Gladstone in the Commons made no transcendental of their opposition to him in public, and these Liberal Unionists actually formed an electoral pact with the Conservatives by the time the elections were over there were seventy-eight of them in the House of Commons. The Conservative Party itself did very well, securing 314 seats, while the Gladstonian Liberals trailed well behind them, cosmos reduced to just 181 MPs. Not even Parnells Irish Nationalists, with eighty-five seats, could make a difference to the boilersuit balance of power in this Parliament. The defeat, Gladstone ruefully recorded in his diary is a smash. (Matthew 1990, 585) On 30 July he tendered his resignation to the Queen. The underlying cause of this disastrous split in the Liberal Party has been long debated. (Searle 1992, 1-5) Gladstone himself believed, and historians have long maintained, that it represented a revolt of the Whigs. (Magnus 1954, 245) In general basis it is fair to say that most of the aristocratic Whig elements in the party deserted Gladstone at this stop consonant over the Irish question, while the majority of the middle-class Radicals stayed loyal to him in spite of it. But it has to a greater extent recently been stressed that many better-off Whig members of the Liberal Party had been showing signs of disillusionment with it since the time of Gladstones first ministry. It is similarly true that some moderate Liberals, including some of those who might be considered better off, remained loyal to Gladstone even at this time, while, on the other hand, one of the leaders of the revolt was Joseph Chamberlain, the personification of middle-class radicalism. In any case, it does not see to matter very much enough voters had deserted Gladstone to give the Conservatives an overall majority in the Commons and put Lord Salisbury back into office, even without the Liberal Unionists support. It was the Conservatives who were to d ominate British political relation until the twentieth century. (Pugh 2002, 7-8) When Gladstone resigned as prime minister in 1886 he had no intention of