Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone, 1860-1880

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Cambridge University Press, 1992 - Biography & Autobiography - 476 pages
In common with republicanism or socialism in continental Europe, Liberalism in nineteenth-century Britain was a mass movement. By focussing on the period between the 1860s and the 1880s, this book sets out to explain why and how that happened, and to examine the people who supported it, their beliefs, and the way in which the latter related to one another and to reality. Popular suport for the Liberal party was not irrational in either its objectives or its motivations: on the contrary, its dissemination was due to the fact that the programme of reforms proposed by the party leaders offered convincing solutions to some of the problems perceived as being the most urgent at the time. This is a revealing, innovative synthesis of the history of popular support for the Liberal party, which emphasises the extent to which Liberalism stood in the common heritage of European and American democracy.
 

Contents

The language of popular liberalism
31
The social contract
84
The social question
139
Anticlericalism
192
The Franchise Question
257
Parliament and Community
313
The charismatic leader
369
Bibliography
426
Index
463
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