The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

26

more
formal methods of recruitment and political representation which will be
seen.

“In
the course of the nineteenth century, England adopted peacefully
and without violent shocks almost all the
basic civil and political
reforms that France paid so heavily to achieve through the great
revolution.
Undeniably, the great advantage of England lay in the
greater energy, the greater practical wisdom, the
better political
training that her ruling class possessed.”33 So
said Gaetano Mosca in
1923.

For the
first part of the nineteenth century the national political rulers were
drawn exclusively from the landed
class and the City fraction of the commercial
class, with the manufacturers and provincial merchants pursuing
their interests in
the towns and cities. It was in the middle of the century that the old partisan
style
of national politics began to break down as the changing balance of power within
the privileged
classes led to changes in the composition of the political leadership.
The paradoxical situation which
existed in 1819 has been summarised by Halevy
in the following terms: “It was the Tories… who secured
the triumph of the old
Whig doctrine of supremacy of parliament… It was the leaders of the
Whig
opposition who… were battering to pieces the old edifice of Whig aristocracy.”34
It could be said that the Tory’s policy was essentially a negative protection
of the
established social order. The changing balance of power between the landed class
and the
manufacturing class meant that some economic reforms were eventually
forced on the government. “But the
pace of economic reforms was not as rapid as
the manufacturers wanted. It was not until the change of
government in 1830 that
this changed. The Whig government, faced with the tension between
maintaining
the political power of the landed class and satisfying their commercial and
manufacturing
supporters, speeded up the move towards a laissez-faire,
facililative state.”35

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