Jones G.S., Claeys G. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought
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James Thompson
primarily on interpretations of the nature of market competition (Jevons
1882). Growing emphasis upon the rise of monopolies, and the role of
the state as an engine of economic development, led some new liberals to
emphasise a greater role for government and co-operatives (Hobhouse 1974,
pp. 72, 77–8). The advent of marginalism reinforced the view that max-
imising utility required attention to distribution, particularly through the
taxation system. Late Victorian individualists often relied upon an outmoded
view of political economy, which took little account of the implications of
both marginalism and Marshallianism (Taylor 1992,p.49).
Moral arguments, however, especially those cast in terms of the dic-
tates of character, continued to exercise real influence. Proponents of state
action sought to demonstrate that their proposals would facilitate rather than
frustrate the development of character (Collini 1993,pp.92–3). This was
especially evident in the emphasis of Hobson on the detrimental impact of
environment upon character, and in criticism of the Charity Organisation
Society (hereafter COS) for neglecting the dangers to character imposed
by the idleness of the wealthy (Hobson 1974,pp.206, 199). Moral con-
cerns could, of course, also justify intervention in the face of suffering and
incapacity. Attitudes to state provision of education provide useful insights
into the changing contours of debate. Mill retained real doubts about the
extent to which government should intervene in education, but his stress
on the power of education to elevate morality and to develop individuality
seemed to many of his successors to require an enhanced role for the state in
propagating education (Mill 1965a, pp. 947–50). Liberal doctrines of char-
acter stressed the importance of informed choice and self-development, and
economic realities suggested the dangers of leaving education to parental
choice and the market. The politics of education policy was shaped by reli-
gious differences over the place of the Established Church. Nonconformist
perspectives played a significant role in deter mining liberal opposition to
measures like the 1902 Education Act that appeared to privilege Anglican
interests. These confessional cleavages, evident in conflict between Dis-
senting and Catholic trade unionists, should not, though, distract from the
growing conviction that the state had an essential part to play in elevating
educational standards and empowering those groups traditionally excluded
from full access to knowledge.
The proper role of the state was the subject of considerable debate
amongst liberals in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. This discussion was
complex, but some general features of the rapprochement between some
forms of liberalism and the state may be noted. The increasingly broad
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basis for the suffrage served to defuse some kinds of hostility to state action
which were rooted in suspicion of aristocratic power, though for some liber-
als doubts about plutocracy and the impartiality of the judiciary endured. In
charting more abstract developments, much emphasis has been placed upon
idealism and evolutionary doctrines in fostering a more organicist view of
the relationship between the state and the people (Collini 1979; Freeden
1978). Idealists, like Green, Ritchie and Bosanquet, were certainly prolific
and significant contributors to late nineteenth-century debates. Evolution-
ary motifs are prominent in the work of Ritchie, Hobhouse and Hobson.
There are, however, two difficulties in evaluating the impact of these intel-
lectual trends. First, both idealist and evolutionary perspectives were taken to
support a range of positions, both within liberalism, as the contrast between
Bosanquet and Ritchie suggests, and also outside liberalism, as manifest
in the work of the conservative political commentator, Arthur Boutwood
(Green 2002,pp.63–4). Second, these fashionable idioms may have been
deployed to bolster positions essentially adopted for other reasons, rather
than acting as independent sources of new thinking. Historians have dif-
fered, on a case-by-case basis, about both the relative impact of idealist and
evolutionary tropes, and over the status of liberal appeals to these strands of
thinking. It should not be assumed, however, that new trends in political
argument were important only if they led liberals consciously to recast their
positions. Constructing political language constitutes an important element
of political debate in itself, and the impact of novel modes of argument in
changing the terms of debate was often both pervasive and lasting.
The rise of more strongly organicist approaches to politics importantly
altered the character of arguments about the relationship between the people
and the state. This occurred in two main ways. First, revisionist liberals came
to portray the work of their predecessors, most obviously Mill, as vitiated by
an undue emphasis upon the separateness of persons. This historiographical
manoeuvre, as we have seen, underestimated the significance of sociability
in earlier liberal positions, and came in a variety of forms, ranging from
the more abrupt account of Ritchie to the more appreciative assessment
apparent in some of Hobhouse’s work (Ritchie 1891,p.12; Hobhouse
1911,p.107). Organicist approaches were used to challenge the distinction
between self and other-regarding action, and to advance the claims of the
community. Hobson and Hobhouse in particular stressed the social creation
of wealth and the entitlement of the community to its proper share in
that wealth. This claim of the community related to the second aspect
of organicism, which emphasised the role of the state as the fulcrum of an
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ethical polity. Idealist prog ressives like Ritchie portrayed central government
as the embodiment of the ethical life of the community (Ritchie 1891,
pp. 16–17, 22). Evolutionary organicists presented the state as the highest
expression of moral progress, and often gave special attention to the claims
of expertise in guiding state action. Changing attitudes to the state did not,
however, eliminate arguments about bureaucracy, expertise and democracy.
It is to these debates that we now turn.
3 Citizenship, democracy and the constitution
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed a protracted dis-
cussion amongst liberals about representative government. The scope of the
franchise, the role of the second chamber and the relationship between par-
ties, representatives and voters were keenly contested. Debate was accom-
panied by and contributed to significant changes in the boundaries of the
franchise, the powers of the House of Lords and the relationship between
executive and legislature. Historians have often analysed these developments
and disputes in terms of the emergence of democracy, the rise of cabinet
government and the advent of mass parties. In recent years, important mod-
ifications have been made in our understanding of the political history of
this period. Greater emphasis has been placed on the restrictions in the fran-
chise before 1918 (Parry 1993). Historians of party have noted increasingly
the limits to party power, and the widespread scepticism about mass organ-
isation (Lawrence 1998, 2009). Older narratives of the rise of democracy
have shaped much of the historiography of liberalism in this period, which
has often stressed liberal disquiet in the face of popular government. Recent
emphasis on continuity over change in the political history of the period
suggests the need to reconsider liberal perception of and prescription for
developments in representative government.
Liberal constitutionalism supplied an enduringly powerful language for
discussing political structures and processes. Established liberal conceptions
of the constitution emphasised its adaptability and functionality, often by
contrast to arrangements elsewhere, especially the USA and France (Parry
2006; Varouxakis 2002b). Whig histories of the constitution traced the
development of liberty though the proper order ing of political forms (Bur-
row 1981,p.35). Radical conceptions of the constitution had traditionally
emphasised the loss of popular liberties, and the need for constitutional
renovation (Stedman Jones 1983a; Taylor 1995). While Whigs lauded the
Reform Act of 1832 for its supposed incorporation of the middle classes
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into the polity, radicals and Chartists bemoaned its exclusion of labouring
people. However, the repeal of the Corn Laws and the passage of the 1867
Reform Act served to reconcile many radicals to an optimistic view of
constitutional progress. This was facilitated by the more populist and inclu-
sive tenor of late nineteenth-century constitutional history (Burrow 1981,
pp. 72–3).
Tensions remained, however, within the family of liberal understandings
of the constitution. Attitudes to the judiciary nicely encapsulate these. Whig
historians applauded the rise of common law, often contrasted with Roman
law abroad, as a safeguard of liberty superior to the whims of autocratic
government. Liberal acclaim for the rule of law could, though, sustain strong
criticism of judicial tyranny in earlier centuries, especially the seventeenth.
Radicals retained a strong sense of the failures of ‘judge-made law’. This
was very apparent in the popular reaction to the Taff Vale decision in 1901,
which fanned radical disdain for the class law of the judiciary (Thompson
1998). In his influential textbook on constitutional law, Dicey, by contrast,
cast judicial sobriety and independence as the chief bulwark of liberty and
constitutional progress (Dicey 1915,p.192).
The most celebrated liberal portrait of the constitution from this period
has, of course, been that of Bagehot. It is, however, important to recognise
that Bagehot’s account was less novel than it purported to be, and that its
immediate reception was considerably more muted than its subsequent rep-
utation might suggest. Eighteenth-century conceptions of the separation of
powers, and of the mixed constitution matching in its tripartite form the
divisions within society and between types of government, were firmly in
retreat before Bagehot’s attack on them (Bagehot 1867). By mid-century,
eulogies of the mixed constitution had yielded to more dynamic accounts
of the balance of social forces within the House of Commons, evident
in the work of Earl Grey which also anticipated Bagehot’s emphasis on
fusion between the executive and legislative branches (Vile 1967). Bagehot’s
famous book was intended as a contribution to two debates: the fir st on
parliamentary reform, the second on the relative merits of presidential and
ministerial government. Aside from his financial expertise, Bagehot’s con-
temporary fame as a political writer lay as a comparative analyst of social
and political forms as given more theoretical form in his Physics and Politics
(Bagehot 1872). Drawing upon evolutionary ideas and informed by his view
of the American Civil War, The English Constitution celebrated the greater
coherence of parliamentary over presidential government (Bagehot 2001;
Craig 2007a). In this, as well as its distinction between the dignified and
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the efficient aspects of the constitution, it married functional analysis with
a modish evolutionary idiom.
Much late nineteenth-century debate focused on the role of party. Sus-
picion of party, particularly amongst radicals, endured, but widespread
recognition existed, especially amongst advanced liberals, of its necessity
for effective executive government (Biagini 1992; Lawrence 1998). This
was combined, however, with the enduring attraction of the ‘independent’
member, and a Burkean understanding of party that stressed the impor-
tance of shared principles (Hawkins 1989). Liberals frequently portrayed the
Conservative Party as merely a creature of organised interests, but tended
to view their own party as embodying, or needing to embody, the living
faith of its creed. Arguments over the caucus in the 1880s often turned on
whether organisational development was perceived as broadening or nar-
rowing the distribution of power within the party. Opponents of the caucus
often argued that its rise would convert representatives into delegates, and so
damage the operation of representative government. Comparisons with the
machine politics of American cities abounded. Enthusiasts for the caucus,
however, saw organisational reform as an instrument of direct democracy,
which rather than replicating the politics of Tammany Hall, would provide
an Athenian sense of connection between leaders and led within the party
(Biagini 2007;Owen2008).
New work on nineteenth-century conceptions of ‘civil society’ has
insisted on the primarily political connotations of the term in Britain,
and hence distinguished strongly its use in the nineteenth century from
contemporary invocation of civil society as a realm distinct from formal
politics (Harris 2003,pp.14, 22, 26, 29). It was once commonly argued
that the nineteenth century witnessed the supplanting of traditional polit-
ical theory by a new emphasis on the social (Wolin 1961). Much recent
work on nineteenth-century political thought has emphasised instead the
widespread aspiration towards a science of politics, while acknowledging
the challenge posed by a growing awareness of social and economic devel-
opment. This sor t of approach, apparent in the work of Collini, Burrow and
Winch, noted the impact of historicism and the discovery of the ‘social’,
but dissented from the view that the political was reduced to the social in
this period (Collini et al. 1983). Much light is shed on these debates by
an examination of the role of ‘public opinion’ in liberal conceptions of
parliamentary government.
Constitutional history, as epitomised by Erksine May’s canonical volumes,
set great store by the rise of ‘public opinion’, usually located in the second
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half of the eighteenth century (May 1871, ii,p.268). ‘Public opinion’ was the
organic product of a process of debate and deliberation in which views were
weighed rather than counted. In a series of articles on the revolution of the
nineteenth century, published in 1870, J. R. Seeley clearly articulated these
assumptions. Seeley’s work drew upon the legacy of liberal Anglicanism,
supplemented by an admiration for the achievements of Bismarck, but his
account of ‘public opinion’ embodied more widely shared doctrines about
socialandpoliticalchange.Heinsistedthat‘publicopinion...isnotmerely
the sum of the opinions of the individuals composing the public’. This was
because ‘the individuals must be brought into relation with each other,
and be formed into some sort of organic whole, before anything worthy
to be called a public opinion can spring up among them’ (Seeley 1870,
pp. 349–50).
The implications of this approach were made plain in the Gladstonian
liberal George Carslake Thompson’s anatomy of attitudes to Disraeli’s for-
eign policy in his study of Public Opinion and Lord Beaconsfield, issued in
1886. Carslake Thompson insisted that true public opinion required vol-
ume, persistence, reasonableness and earnestness (Thompson 1886, i,p.32).
The first two of these are reasonably familiar from contemporary evaluation
of ‘public opinion’, though his emphasis on persistence already begins to
reveal the normative character of his conception of ‘public opinion’. The
latter attributes, however, exemplify the distinctive nature of nineteenth-
century liberal understandings of ‘public opinion’. Thompson’s emphasis
on the requirement of ‘reasonableness’, which should not be conflated with
the stricter demand for rationality, registers the legacy of earlier accounts of
‘public opinion’ as the embodiment of the new political intelligence forged
by commerce and urbanisation. His advocacy of ‘earnestness’ reflects liberal
respect for deeply held and publicly displayed convictions, which were both
more influential and more worthwhile than weaker, private beliefs. This
insistence on the primacy of reasonable and bravely articulated convictions
was both common and enduring in liberal circles. Liberal sympathy for
platform politics, especially evident on, but not restricted to, the left of the
party, was coloured by the importance attached to the clash of strongly held
ideas in the agora of public debate (Thompson 2000,pp.108–90).
While late nineteenth-century liberals appealed to a broadly shared
account of ‘public opinion’, the meaning and reference of the term was var-
iously defined. Opponents of the ballot presented open voting as a crucial
mechanism for incorporating ‘public opinion’ into the constitution (Cox
1854,pp.216–17). Some supporters of the ballot, like Thorold Rogers,
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rejoined that the ‘public opinion’ of the hustings was merely that of a mob
(Guttsman 1967,p.113). It was more common, however, to argue that
open voting subjected holders of the franchise to the tyranny of the power-
ful rather than ensuring accountability to the public (Kinzer 1982). There
was broad acceptance amongst liberals of the claim that ‘public opinion’
was the four th component of the constitution.
Discussion of the duties of voters to the public entailed that the scope of
the latter exceeded those of the former. Political notions of ‘public opinion’
rarely treated the public as synonymous with the population as a whole.
The ranks of the political public were often defined, as by Mill in 1848,in
terms of reading and debate (Mill 1965a, p. 764). This intellectualist way
of conceiving of the public was apparent in mid-century discussion of the
intelligent artisan, and inflected later debate about women and the suffrage.
These portraits of the public often placed, in Aristotelian fashion, middle-
class male opinions at its core. They tended to do so, however, by weighting
such opinions more heavily rather than by equating the public with the
middle classes. Many liberals, including Gladstone, emphasised instead the
political wisdom of the masses over that of the classes (Gladstone 1879, iii,
pp. 138–71, 176–213). Intellectualist approaches became more inclusive in
gender, as well as class, terms over time. Of course, some opponents of
female enfranchisement argued throughout our period that women were
intellectually and emotionally incapable of proper political deliberation.
Proponents of the suffrage unsurprisingly differed, often emphasising, as
did the conservative Lord Robert Cecil, that women’s membership of the
public demonstrated their possession of the qualities needed in a voter.
5
More interestingly, some anti-suffragists, such as Dicey, argued that since
women already contributed to the formation of public opinion, they had
no need for the vote (Dicey 1909).
Nineteenth-century observers differed especially over the location of
‘public opinion’. The leading candidates were the constitutional triumvi-
rate of press, platform and petition. There was considerable debate over
their relative importance and changing character. The growth of a mass
readership daily press, and the declining significance of petitioning, altered
views. At the end of the century, popular support for the Boer War
led many liberals to argue that the public had become a mere crowd.
There was, however, a significant revival in the reputation of the public
among liberals following the 1906 election. Considerable faith, apparent in
5 Hansard, 5th series, xix (1910), col. 102.
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Modern liberty redefined
discussions of industrial bargaining, was invested in the moral efficacy of
‘public opinion’, increasingly distinguished from the less cerebral move-
ments of ‘mass opinion’ (Thompson 2000,pp.279–336). The importance
attributed to ‘public opinion’ was apparent in liberal emphasis, drawing on
the celebrated example of the Anti-Corn Law League, upon the mobil-
isation of popular support through campaigns and associations. The con-
stitutional significance of opinion lay in its ability to link government to
the public, and to align political developments with social change. It is thus
the language of ‘public opinion’, rather than discussion of ‘civil society’,
that best illuminates the relationship between politics and society in this
period.
The debate about ‘public opinion’ is crucial to understanding arguments
about the suffrage and about the changing nature of politics in Britain.
Historians have differed over the extent to which Britain was viewed as a
democracy in the period before 1914. While Pugh and McKibbin argue
that democracy was generally seen as something that happened elsewhere,
and probably for the worse, Jones and Nicholson have suggested that by the
1880s Britain was widely regarded, for good or ill, as a democracy, or at least
a democracy in the making (Pugh 2002,p.4; McKibbin 1998, p. v; Jones
2000,p.63; Nicholson 1990,p.288). All these commentators acknowl-
edge the variety of ways in which democracy was defined in the period.
‘Democracy’ could be used to refer to a particular social group, as in ‘the
democracy’, which was identified with the mass of the population; talk of
‘the growth of democracy’ often denoted a reduction in deference and an
increase in ‘the self-consciousness of the masses’ (Stephen 1875). ‘Democ-
racy’ was also employed in more explicitly political terms, but, again, these
differed. It could be deployed to refer to full adult, or at least male, suf-
frage, or to direct rule on the Athenian model. It could be utilised, less
precisely, to denote rule by the poor, or the many. Further complications
arise from the tendency of contemporaries to combine these variants. After
1884, rather than 1867, discussion of the advent of democracy, or popular
government, certainly became more prevalent. By the Edwardian period,
reference to democracy had become common, although by no means
universal.
Many historians, influenced in particular by Harvie, have emphasised
the disillusionment of educated liberals confronted by the consequences of
an enlarged suffrage and the related emergence of organised mass parties.
Harvie has traced the growing consternation of university liberals, like Sidg-
wick and Dicey, about the evolution of politics (Harvie 1976,pp.141–74;
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Vo n A r x 1985). It has been suggested that this produced a more favourable
attitude to the limitations on the popular will imposed by the separation of
powers and judicial review in the American system (Tulloch 1977). Many
mid-century liberals were certainly unimpressed by the new politics, and
Dicey’s famous study of law and public opinion gave influential expression
to this disappointment. However, some members of this generation, notably
Green and Bryce, were more sanguine about popular government (Tyler
2003).
It is important to distinguish scepticism about institutional developments
from pessimism about the moral health of the electorate. Those liberals
affected by the second, like Sidgwick, were more likely to adopt the first,
and, fur thermore, more likely, as Sidgwick did, to gravitate towards liberal
unionism. Social liberals, such as Hobson and Hobhouse, whose faith in
the popular judgement, while scarcely unvarying, was more robust, viewed
institutional issues differently. Like many radicals, they argued energetically
for reform of the second chamber, especially after 1909, and, unlike most
radicals, they advocated the use of referenda in Britain (Hobhouse 1911,
pp. 245–6; Hobson 1974,p.32). Support for the referendum was generally
confined to a small and diverse minority. Some, like Dicey, urged its adop-
tion, partly in order to blunt the power of party government, and so protect
the constitution and the union (Qvortrup 1999,p.533). For its new liberal
proponents, however, the referendum reflected greater faith in the popu-
lar judgement on well-defined issues. New liberals worried by the power
of party leant towards proportional representation rather than the written
constitution, fearing that the latter would provide a basis for reaction, much
as they thought it had in America.
Liberal support for enfranchising women grew in the late nineteenth
century. Mill’s attachment to votes for women had proven highly contro-
versial. Some liberals, including commentators on Mill like Stephen and
Dicey, regarded his position as impractical and sentimental. Many liberals,
however, came to advocate some form of enfranchisement, whether on
terms comparable with those current for men, or as part of a move towards
universal adult suffrage. The growth of education for women, a cause dear
to many liberals, challenged previously dominant conceptions of female
abilities and potential. Evidence of successful participation by women in
local politics became increasingly relevant as the national agenda moved
towards more social issues. The complexities of party politics, combined
with differences over the form enfranchisement should take, obstructed
parliamentary action on the issue. This was exacerbated for some liberals
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Modern liberty redefined
by the spectacle of suffragette action. Overall, however, there was a clear
growth of suppor t for some measure of reform.
The labour question emerged with renewed force as an issue in British
politics from the 1880s onwards. Liberal engagement with these devel-
opments offers significant insights into the changing character of liberal-
ism in this period. The return of labour issues to the top of the polit-
ical agenda presented a significant challenge to liberals, raising questions
about the state, civil society and social justice. There were a number of
dimensions to the ensuing debates. The role of trade unions within the
polity came more sharply into focus with the rise of new unionism and
a series of high-profile industrial disputes. Research into poverty, espe-
cially by Booth and Rowntree, produced troubling evidence of its extent in
urban Britain (Booth 1902;Rowntree1901; see also Englander and O’Day
1995). Growing awareness of unemployment as an economic problem, evi-
denced by the increased use of the term, produced sustained discussion of its
causes, consequences and possible remedies (J. Harris 1972). The appearance
from the 1880s of socialism, previously considered by liberals a pr imarily
continental phenomenon, ignited discussion on the role and capacity of
government to effect social change. This debate ranged from the signifi-
cance of Marx’s labour theory of value to the validity of Henry George’s
proposals for land taxation and nationalisation, with the latter provoking
the more intense response amongst liberals. The challenge of socialism
intensified the need to formulate distinctively liberal answers to the labour
question.
Liberal attitudes to trade unions reveal the intermingling of social, polit-
ical and economic aspirations. By the late nineteenth century, craft unions
commanded considerable respect amongst liberals. Marshall described these
organisations as ‘a greater glory to England than her wealth’.
6
Liberal
observers, influenced by the work of the German historical economist Lujo
Brentano, regarded the Amalgamated Society of Engineers as the model for
a new breed of disciplined and peaceful trade union. Trade unions were
praised for their welfare functions, for their role as schools of collective
action, and for their adherence to collective bargaining in the sphere of civil
society rather than the German adherence to more politicised methods.
Economists, like Marshall and Langford Price, emphasised the beneficial
impact of unions upon industrial relations. The kind of skills safeguarded
and fostered through apprenticeship by craft unions were presented as a
6 Marshall to Caird (5 December 1897), in Marshall 1925,p.400.
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