TheVictorians

"We had always been convinced that Victorianism was a myth, engendered by the long life of the sovereign and of her most illustrious subjects. We were constantly being told that the Victorians did this, or the Victorians thought that, while my own difficulty was to find anything on which they agreed: any assumption which was not at some time or other fiercely challenged. 'Victorian History'.


We can observe the areas of special tension: there is the Far ...

We can observe the areas of special tension: there is the Far East, there is the North-West Frontier; there are always the Balkans; and in anyone the discharging spark may suddenly flash.

The

service vote for 1890 was £131,000,000 showing

an increase of no more than £16,000,000 since the death of Palmerston twenty-five years before.

But by 1895 it was close on £137,000,000 and in 1899, the last year of Victorian peace, it had reached £147,000,000. These figures are evidence of the same preoccupation which discloses itself in the immense contemporary

literature devoted to problems of Empire

and defence,' a nervous and ranging preoccupation which seems at times to be reflected in a nervous and bewildered diplomacy, conforming to circumstances which no man could control.

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But we may easily censure the diplomacy of the Imperialist age too ...

But we may easily censure the diplomacy of the Imperialist age too harshly if we forget in what Titanic chaos it was involved. A still increasing population supported increas

Whether elements so disparate would fall apart by mutual consent, or reunite ...

Whether elements so disparate would fall apart by mutual consent, or reunite in a new order; of what shape or nature that order would be-a Customs Union or Union for De

One is the determination which, fifteen years after Waterloo, drove England past ...

One is the determination which, fifteen years after Waterloo, drove England past all barriers into a resolute Liberalism.