Europe in the Belle Époque, 1871–1914511suffrage remained far from acceptance. Despite greater
labor violence and equally large demonstrations, the
forty-hour workweek remained a utopian dream. De-
spite their electoral successes, the Radicals were unable
to win a majority for proportional representation, the
right of government employees to strike, a graduated
income tax, maternity leaves for new mothers, or the
abolition of the death penalty. Simply debating such is-
sues, however, made France a leader of European demo-
cratic thought.
Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain
Great Britain also remained a leader in the evolution of
liberal-democratic institutions. Smaller states were of-
ten pioneers in adopting radical reforms—as the Scan-
dinavian states were with women’s rights—but Britain
and France defined the model of parliamentary democ-
racy for the great powers. The British model remained
one of gradual evolution, but the years before 1914 wit-
nessed two important periods of rapid change.
The first period of intensive reform came during a
Liberal government of 1868–74, elected after the ex-
pansion of the franchise in 1867. The leader of this
government was one the greatest figures of nineteenth-
century liberalism, William E. Gladstone. Gladstone
had been elected to Parliament at twenty-two, follow-
ing a brilliant career at Oxford in which he had won
first-class honors in two separate fields. He began his
career as a cabinet minister at thirty-four and served as
an M.P. for more than sixty years. Gladstone served
four terms as prime minister of Britain, beginning with
his “great ministry” (1868–74) and ending with a cabi-
net in his eighties (1892–94). He brought to govern-
ment a religious scholar’s moralistic temperament that
made him resemble an Old Testament patriarch. Glad-
stone supported his moralism with an intellect that
dominated Parliament. He could speak for three hours
without a break or summarize an arduous debate with a
long quotation in untranslated Latin, leaving few M.P.s
to match him.
Gladstone’s great ministry adopted nearly a dozen
major reforms. He did not attempt another expansion
of the franchise (although that was on his agenda) or to
give women the vote (which was not in his plans). He
did, however, enhance British democracy with a Secret
Ballot Act of 1872. The Elementary Education Act of
1870 (known as the Forster Act for its author, William
Forster) made primary schooling available to all chil-
dren in England and Wales, from age five to thirteen. In
contrast to the Ferry laws in France, the Forster Act
subsidized private, tuition-paying schools and created
state schools only, as Forster put it, “to complete the
present voluntary system, to fill up the gaps.” In Britain
as in France, adult illiteracy quickly fell, from 20 per-
cent of adult males (1870) to 2 percent (1900). Glad-
stone similarly opened higher education. A University
Tests Act (1871) abolished religious barriers to enroll-
ment at Oxford and Cambridge, permitting Catholics,
Jews, and nonbelievers to matriculate. At the same
time, two colleges at Cambridge were opened to
women, although women remained ineligible for de-
grees until after World War I.
Gladstone’s government also tackled army reform,
judicial reform, trade union rights, the civil service, and
the Irish question. The sale of commissions as officers
in the army was abolished, and the term of military en-
listment was reduced from twelve years to six. Judicial
reforms ended imprisonment for debt and created ap-
pellate courts. Workers won the complete legalization
of unions and the recognition of their right to strike,
but not the right to picket their employers. Civil ser-
vice reforms created a modern bureaucracy by abolish-
ing the patronage system of giving jobs to friends and
supporters in favor of competitive examinations for all
posts except those in the Foreign Office. Gladstone’s
great ministry also began to address the Irish question.
An Irish Land Act gave some protection to Irish farmers
who rented lands and could be evicted after poor har-
vests. Gladstone also disestablished the Church of Ire-
land (the Anglican Church in Ireland), meaning that
the people of Ireland (90 percent Catholic) were no
longer required to provide tax support for a Protestant
state church. Such reforms built cooperation between
the Liberal Party and Irish M.P.s, who pressed Glad-
stone to take the next logical step—grant the Irish
home rule in domestic matters.
The end of Gladstone’s great ministry returned to
office his long-time rival, the conservative prime minis-
ter Benjamin Disraeli. In contrast to Gladstone’s sober
strengths, Disraeli sparkled with wit and style. He de-
rided Gladstone’s much-praised oratory as “hare-
brained chatter.” Disraeli had flirted with reforms in his
earlier career, but in his second term as prime minister
(1874–80), he steered a more traditional course, satisfy-
ing conservatives opposed to liberal reformism. As one
conservative essayist, Thomas Carlyle, had summarized
the attack on Gladstonian liberalism: Britain was a na-
tion of “mostly fools” and it was dangerous to “believe
in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.” Dis-
raeli shrewdly turned the government’s attention away