Goschen, George Joachim, Viscount (1831–1907)

Abstract

British statesman and financier of German origin, born in London on 10 August 1831; died at Seacox Heath, Surrey, on 7 February 1907. Goschen joined his father’s firm of merchant bankers in London on leaving Oxford University. He became a director of the Bank of England in 1858 and an MP in 1863. He was given his first cabinet appointment in 1866. As Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Salisbury, Goschen’s brilliant political career is chiefly remembered for his conversion and consolidation of the greater part of the National Debt and his reform of the gold coinage. He also set up two important Royal Commissions – that on the Depression of Trade and Industry in 1886, and the Gold and Silver Commission of the following year. Alfred Marshall’s written Memoranda and Oral Evidence for both Commissions remained for nearly 40 years the half-forgotten source from which grew the Cambridge ‘oral tradition’ in monetary theory.