Charles Gilpin (31 March 1815 – 8 September 1874) was a Quaker, orator, politician, publisher, and railway director.

Among his many causes were repeal of the Corn Laws, establishing world peace through the Peace Society, abolition of the death penalty,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] abolition of slavery, enfranchisement by providing freehold land for purchase, liberation of Hungary from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungarian exiles in England, the Poor Law, prison reform, and foreign relations.

The British Library Integrated Catalogue lists 76 titles printed by Charles Gilpin, including works by Elihu Burritt, Henry Clarke Wright, Jonathan Dymond, Pestalozzi, George William Alexander, Thomas Clarkson, György Klapka, William Wells Brown,[18] George Copway and Giuseppe Mazzini.

He also published a large number of memoirs of the lives of Quakers, including those of Elizabeth Fry and William Allen.

[15] Since 1841, the Perth constituency had been represented in Parliament by Fox Maule, the heir apparent of his father, Baron Panmure.

He was Secretary at War from July 1846 to January 1852, when for two or three weeks he was President of the Board of Control (overseeing the British East India Company).

[26] Gilpin challenged him, supported by local reformers and a meeting to nominate the candidate was held on Monday 9 February 1852.

Mr. Gilpin was also greeted by cheers and hisses and stated that 150 to 200 electors had invited him to stand as "the Rt Hon Gentleman had not fulfilled his profession of reform".

The bill sought to increase the penalty for conspiring to murder persons abroad from a misdemeanour to a felony.

He also strongly condemned the massacre during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 of hundreds of disarmed Indian sepoys at Ajnala in Punjab on the orders of Frederick Henry Cooper, the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, declaring "one such atrocity as this would do more to excite burning hatred to our power and to our faith, everything multiplied a hundred fold, than the missionaries could eradicate in the next century".

This appointment did not please his fellow Quaker, John Bright MP, who remarked "Thou'd better have a rope put around your neck".

our Friend's sphere of action often seemed more political than religious, but we believe the motive power that influenced him was his acceptance of Christianity as a spiritual reality .

[51] His will left everything to his wife (except 50 guineas to several persons), and after her death, to their daughter, Mrs Anna Crouch Pigott.

[52] At the by-election, following his death, Charles George Merewether (Conservative) was elected for the Northampton Constituency, which Gilpin had represented for seventeen years.

In 1968, Duke University bought a large quantity of Charles Gilpin's papers, which are now carefully catalogued and available to scholars.