A Short History of English Liberalism

This book attempts to trace the varying but persistent course of Liberalism in British politics during the last hundred and fifty years. It is not so much a history of events as...

Modern English politics may be fairly said to begin about the accession of George III. The conflict of Liberalism and Toryism can no doubt be traced farther back. But though the...

Three great events, or series of events, combined to produce the process of individual emancipation, which is the subject of this book. The first was the economic transformation...

The Revolution affected English society in two directly opposite ways. It is unquestionable that its violence drove the majority into hostility not only to Revolution, but to Re...

The conclusion of the war closed the outlet through which the national energies had been so long strained, and left the people free to contemplate their own situation. Popular d...

The significance of the victory of 1832 was immense. It broke up and reconstructed the whole of the machinery by which the old Toryism had managed the people, and it involved th...

While Peel was thus, with the co-operation of the Whigs, making some approach towards Liberalism, the real control of Liberal policy was passing out of the hands of the old gove...

The Palmerston era was now at an end, and that of Gladstone was beginning. The first had been a period of domestic indifference and external agitation. Energy at home and restra...

The history of the Disraeli Ministry which in 1874 followed that of Gladstone is almost entirely a history of foreign policy. The new Premier had described the domestic activity...

The condition of Ireland was now forced upon the attention of both parties. The Irish Nationalist party had demanded Home Rule since Parnell assumed the leadership in 1879. The...

The policy of the Liberal Government which came into power in 1906 was the policy of those who had followed the old course during the Imperialist reaction. The general principle...

[108] I use the term "Radicals" for these early extremists because it is the most convenient. But the word was not actually introduced till the end of the French War in 1816.