This is a study of British political culture from the 1790s to c.1900. It explores the public values animating electoral activity, partisan attitudes, and political organization. It describes the varied and shifting beliefs and attitudes informing the understanding of power, status and authority. Notions of the past, morality, and community, it argues, were fundamental to shaping Liberalism, Conservatism, radicalism, and Socialism during this period. They framed competing understandings of the constitution, the vote, the political nation, representation, party, democracy, public opinion, arist ... More

This is a study of British political culture from the 1790s to c.1900. It explores the public values animating electoral activity, partisan attitudes, and political organization. It describes the varied and shifting beliefs and attitudes informing the understanding of power, status and authority. Notions of the past, morality, and community, it argues, were fundamental to shaping Liberalism, Conservatism, radicalism, and Socialism during this period. They framed competing understandings of the constitution, the vote, the political nation, representation, party, democracy, public opinion, aristocracy, and the people. Particular attention is given to the language of Victorian politics. How politicians interpreted the social experience of their audiences as the basis for competing appeals to an expanding electorate. The transition from eighteenth-century ideas of ‘mixed government’ to ‘parliamentary government’ and then a political party system traces the shift of constitutional sovereignty from Westminster to a ‘popular’ electorate, increasingly mediated by formal party organization. Victorian politics was about the management of change. In managing ‘progress’ the creation of moral communities rooted in readings of the past lay at the heart of Victorian political debate. The Victorian age is often hailed as an example of Liberal modernity. But, as this study shows, fundamental public values gave a distinctive cast to Liberalism, Conservatism, radicalism, and Socialism, which defy the neat categorization of Victorian Britain as an exemplar of the Liberal modern state.