A Short History of English LiberalismBlease, W. Lyon (Walter Lyon)
History
A Short History of English Liberalism
Blease, W. Lyon (Walter Lyon)
Great Britain -- Politics and government; Liberal Party (Great Britain); Liberalism
These different points of view determine the different attitudes of the two
parties to political problems as they arise. The pure Tory is of course as
rare as the pure Liberal, and neither of the two groups, which are at any
particular time described as Liberal and Tory, corresponds exactly with the
habit of mind associated with its name.[10] Self-styled Tories are
occasionally strongly Liberal in particular cases. Windham, who thought
that the abolition of bull-baiting was a dangerous revolution, voted
against the Slave Trade. Peel, the greatest man whom the old Tory party
ever produced, was Liberal in finance, in legislation about crime and
factories, and in foreign policy. In the same way, men who are Liberal in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred show {23} themselves to be Tory in the
last. Robert Lowe, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the great Liberal
Ministry of 1868, had as fierce a contempt for the working classes as Lord
Salisbury himself. The question of Woman Suffrage, appearing unexpectedly
on the surface of politics in 1906, has divided both parties, though in
different proportions. The true Liberal supports the demand for
enfranchisement. The true Tory opposes it. But the agitation has discovered
some of the most bitter of sexual egoists on the Radical benches of the
House of Commons, and champions of the individual's right to control her
own government even among the Cecils.[11] The division between the members
of the schools is thus not sharply defined. But the schools always exist,
and it is in the perpetual conflict between them that the progress of the
nation takes place.
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