George Goschen, 1st Viscount Goschen

"George Goschen" redirects here. For his son, see George Goschen, 2nd Viscount Goschen.

The Right Honourable The Viscount Goschen PC
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
In office 26 January – 26 June 1866
Monarch	Victoria
Prime Minister	The Earl Russell
Preceded by	The Earl of Clarendon
Succeeded by	Thomas Edward Taylor
Chancellor of the Exchequer
In office 14 January 1887 – 11 August 1892
Monarch	Victoria
Prime Minister	The Marquess of Salisbury
Preceded by	Lord Randolph Churchill
Succeeded by	Sir William Vernon Harcourt
Personal details
Born	10 August 1831 (2024-04-24UTC06:01:36) London
Died
Nationality	British
Political party	Liberal Liberal Unionist Conservative
Alma mater	Oriel College, Oxford

George Joachim Goschen, 1st Viscount Goschen (10 August 1831 – 7 February 1907) was a British statesman and businessman best remembered for being "forgotten" by Lord Randolph Churchill. He was initially a Liberal, then a Liberal Unionist before joining the Conservative Party by the time of the 1895 General Election.

While Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1888 he introduced the Goschen formula to allocate funding for Scotland and Ireland.

Background, education and business career

He was born in London the son of William Henry Goschen, a merchant of German extraction. He was educated at Rugby under Tait, and at Oriel College, Oxford, where he took a first in classics. He entered his father's firm of Fruhling & Goschen, of Austin Friars, in 1853, and three years later became a director of the Bank of England.

Political career, 1863–1885

In 1863 he was returned without opposition as one of the four MPs for the City of London in the Liberal interest, and he was reelected in 1865. In November of the same year he was appointed Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Paymaster-General, and in January 1866 he was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with a seat in the cabinet. When Gladstone became prime minister in December 1868, Goschen joined the cabinet as President of the Poor Law Board, until March 1871, when he succeeded Childers as First Lord of the Admiralty. In the 1874 general election he was the only Liberal returned for the City of London, and by a narrow majority. Being sent to Cairo in 1876 as delegate for the British holders of Egyptian bonds in 1876, he concluded an agreement with the Khedive in order to arrange for the conversion of the debt.

In 1878 his views on the county franchise question prevented him from voting consistently with his party. With the City of London becoming more Conservative, Goschen did not stand there at the 1880 general election, but was instead returned for Ripon in Yorkshire, which he represented until 1885, when he was returned for the Eastern Division of Edinburgh. He declined to join Gladstone's government in 1880 and also refused the post of Viceroy of India, but he did become special ambassador to the Porte, where he settled the Montenegrin and Greek frontier questions in 1880 and 1881. He was made an Ecclesiastical Commissioner in 1882. When Sir Henry Brand was raised to the peerage in 1884, Goschen was offered the role of Speaker of the House of Commons, but he declined. During the parliament of 1880–1885 he frequently found himself at odds with his party, especially over franchise extension and questions of foreign policy. When Gladstone adopted Home Rule for Ireland, Goschen followed Lord Hartington (afterwards 8th Duke of Devonshire) and became one of the most active of the Liberal Unionists. He failed to retain his seat for Edinburgh at the election in July of that year.

Political career, 1885–1895

On the resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill in December 1886, Goschen, though a Liberal Unionist, accepted Lord Salisbury's invitation to join his ministry as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Churchill had assumed he could not be replaced, and famously commented that he had "forgotten Goschen" was a potential alternative. Goschen needed a seat in Parliament and so first stood in a by-election in the Liverpool Exchange constituency, but was defeated by seven votes in January 1887. He was then elected for the strongly Conservative St George's, Hanover Square, in February. His chancellorship was memorable for his successful conversion of the National Debt in 1888. He also introduced the first UK road tax, implemented in the form of two vehicle duties, on locomotives and carts.

The University of Aberdeen again conferred upon him the honour of the rectorship in 1888, he received an honorary LL.D from the University of Cambridge in the same year, and he received a similar honour from the University of Edinburgh in 1890.

Following the defeat of Salisbury's government in 1892, Goschen moved into opposition. Though he had been a leading Liberal Unionist as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Goschen did not stand against Joseph Chamberlain for the leadership of the party in 1892 following the departure of Hartington to the House of Lords as the Duke of Devonshire. Unable to work with Chamberlain, Goschen left the Liberal Unionists and joined the Conservatives in 1893. One obvious sign of his change of allegiance within the Unionist alliance was when he joined the exclusively Conservative Carlton Club in the same year.

Political career, 1895–1907

Caricature from Punch, 13 August 1881: "This is a Joke-'im picture of a Wise Man from the East, at present ascertaining which way the wind blows"

From 1895 to 1900 Goschen was First Lord of the Admiralty. He retired in 1900 and was raised to the peerage as Viscount Goschen of Hawkhurst, Kent. Though retired from active politics he continued to take a great interest in public affairs, and when Chamberlain started his tariff reform movement in 1903, Lord Goschen was one of the weightiest champions of free trade on the Unionist side.

Other public positions

In educational subjects Goschen had always taken the greatest interest, his best known, but by no means his only, contribution to popular culture being his participation in the University Extension Movement. His first efforts in parliament were devoted to advocating the abolition of religious tests and the admission of Dissenters to the universities. His published works indicate how ably he combined the wise study of economics with a practical instinct for business-like progress, without neglecting the more ideal aspects of human life. In addition to his well-known work on The Theory of the Foreign Exchanges, he published several financial and political pamphlets and addresses on educational and social subjects, among them being that on Cultivation of the Imagination, Liverpool, 1877, and that on Intellectual Interest, Aberdeen, 1888. He was President of the Royal Statistical Society, 1886-8.

He also wrote a biography of his grandfather, The Life and Times of George Joachim Goschen, publisher and printer of Leipzig (1903). This culminated a long-standing project to refute allegations of Jewish ancestry, giving his earliest ascertainable ancestor as a Lutheran pastor named Joachimus Gosenius, recorded in 1609. (It did not apparently prevent his family being classed as of Jewish origin in the German genealogical work known as The Semi Gotha, first published 1913.)

Goschen died on 7 February 1907 and was succeeded by his son George Joachim (1866–1952), who was Conservative M.P. for East Grinstead from 1895 to 1900 and married a daughter of Lord Cranbrook.

Cultural references

• Goschen appears as a minor character in the historical-mystery novel Stone's Fall, by Iain Pears.
• He is referenced in the poem 'Away from It All' by New Zealand poet A. R. D. Fairburn:

I want to leave behind me all rancid emotion.
I want to be alone. I want to forget Goschen.

Further reading

• Thomas J. Spinner: George Joachim Goschen: the transformation of a Victorian liberal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973  ISBN 0-521-20210-8
• Arthur D. Elliot: The life of George Joachim Goschen, First Viscount Goschen, 1831–1907. 2v. London: Longmans Green, 1911

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Viscount Goschen
• Portraits of George Joachim Goschen, 1st Viscount Goschen at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• Archival material relating to George Goschen, 1st Viscount Goschen listed at the UK National Archives
• Works by or about George Goschen, 1st Viscount Goschen in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Baron Lionel de Rothschild Sir James Duke, Bt Robert Wigram Crawford Western Wood	Member of Parliament for City of London 1863–1880 With: Robert Wigram Crawford 1863–1874 Sir James Duke, Bt 1863–1865 Baron Lionel de Rothschild 1863–1868 William Lawrence 1865–1874 Charles Bell 1868–1869 Baron Lionel de Rothschild 1869–1874 William Cotton 1874–1880 Philip Twells 1874–1880 John Hubbard 1874–1880	Succeeded by John Hubbard William Cotton William Lawrence Sir Robert Nicholas Fowler
Preceded by Frederick Oliver Robinson	Member of Parliament for Ripon 1880–1885	Succeeded by William Harker
New constituency	Member of Parliament for Edinburgh East 1885–1886	Succeeded by Robert Wallace
Preceded by Lord Algernon Percy	Member of Parliament for St George, Hanover Square 1887–1900	Succeeded by Heneage Legge
Political offices
Preceded by Sir William Hutt	Paymaster-General 1865–1866	Succeeded by William Monsell
Preceded by The Earl of Clarendon	Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 1866	Succeeded by The Earl of Devon
Preceded by The Earl of Devon	President of the Poor Law Board 1868–1871	Succeeded by James Stansfeld
Preceded by Hugh Childers	First Lord of the Admiralty 1871–1874	Succeeded by George Ward Hunt
Preceded by The Lord Randolph Churchill	Chancellor of the Exchequer 1887–1892	Succeeded by Sir William Harcourt
Preceded by The Earl Spencer	First Lord of the Admiralty 1895–1900	Succeeded by The Earl of Selborne
Academic offices
Preceded by Marquess of Lothian	Rector of the University of Edinburgh 1890–1893	Succeeded by Baron Robertson
Preceded by Marquess of Salisbury	Chancellor of the University of Oxford 1903–1907	Succeeded by Baron Curzon of Kedleston
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New title	Viscount Goschen 1900–1907	Succeeded by George Joachim Goschen

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