"When Mr Gladstone visited the North, you well remember when word passed from the newspaper to the workman that it circulated through mines and mills, factories and workshops, and they came out to greet the only British minister who ever gave the English people a right because it was just they should have it...and when he went down the Tyne, all the country heard how twenty miles of banks were lined with people who came to greet him. Men stood in the blaze of chimneys; the roofs of factories were crowded; colliers came up from the mines; women held up their children on the banks that it might be said in after life that they had seen the Chancellor of the People go by. The river was covered like the land. Every man who could ply an oar pulled up to give Mr Gladstone a cheer. When Lord Palmerston went to Bradford the streets were still, and working men imposed silence upon themselves. When Mr Gladstone appeared on the Tyne he heard cheer that no other English minister ever heard...the people were grateful to him, and rough pitmen who never approached a public man before, pressed round his carriage by thousands...and thousands of arms were stretched out at once, to shake hands with Mr Gladstone as one of themselves."
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Prime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandTheologians from EnglandAcademics from the United KingdomNon-fiction authors from England
Original Language: English
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George Holyoake, 'The Liberal situation, or the parliamentary treatment of the people. II.', Newcastle Weekly Chronicle (18 March 1865), p. 4, quoted in Eugenio F. Biagini, ‘Popular Liberals, Gladstonian finance and the debate on taxation, 1860-1874’, in Eugenio F. Biagini and Alastair J. Reid (eds.), Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850–1914 (1991), p. 142
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Ewart_Gladstone
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William Ewart Gladstone
1868 – 1874
William Ewart Gladstone (29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British Liberal politician and Prime Minister (1868–1874, 1880–1885, 1886 and 1892–1894). He was a notable political reformer, known for his populist speeches, and was for many years the main political rival of Benjamin Disraeli.
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