Keyword: Liberal

In the 1820s liberalism was associated with political tolerance, Catholic emancipation, the abolition of slavery, and the reform of Parliament, although not all liberals embraced all of these issues. In the coming decades liberalism did not necessarily mean extending the franchise either. As Edward Luce writes, ‘the most self-improving Victorian liberals recoiled in horror at the notion the labouring classes would get to choose who governed Britain’. By 1839 the Spanish associations of Liberales were forgotten, and Lord John Russell was writing to Queen Victoria calling the Whigs the ‘Liberal party’, although the change of name for the party did not occur until 1859. In the 1820s liberal was a dirty word to many in the upper classes. It represented a growing middle class who saw themselves as neither Tory nor working class. During this decade the middle ranks recognised more fully that they now constituted a distinct class. Liberalism was an expression of the middle classes becoming a class for itself.