What is morally wrong cannot be politically right.

Gladstone used this maxim in the heat of Victorian debates over Britain’s foreign policy, especially the “Eastern Question” and the Bulgarian atrocities of 1876. As Liberal leader and former prime minister, he argued that national interest and diplomatic expediency could not justify complicity in oppression or the toleration of cruelty by allied or strategically useful regimes. The line encapsulates his broader “moral” approach to politics: public policy, including imperial and international conduct, should be judged by ethical standards rather than by power calculations alone. It became closely associated with his campaign speeches and pamphleteering that helped return him to office in 1880.

The statement insists on the unity of ethics and public action: political success or legality does not convert wrongdoing into “right.” Gladstone’s formulation rejects the idea that politics operates by a separate, amoral logic; instead, it treats moral standards as prior to and binding upon statecraft. The aphorism also functions as a warning against rationalization—policies defended as “necessary,” “practical,” or “in the national interest” may still be condemnable if they violate fundamental moral principles. In a broader sense, it expresses a liberal-conscience tradition in which legitimacy depends not only on power or procedure but on justice, restraint, and accountability.