British History in the Nineteenth Century 1782-1901 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from British History in the Nineteenth Century 1782-1901

The object of this book is to enable the student or general reader to obtain, in the compass of one volume, a picture of change and development during the hundred and twenty years when things certainly, and probably men and women with them, were undergoing a more rapid change of character than in any previous epoch of our annals. I have tried to give the sense of continuous growth, to show how economic led to social, and social to political change, how the political events reacted on the economic and social, and how new thoughts and new ideals accompanied or directed the whole complicated process.

For such a purpose, it would be a mistake to confuse the narrative with too much detail, but I have put into the story the main events which directed the course of the current, or were regarded as specially symbolic of each passing age. I cannot hold the epicurean doctrine, sometimes favoured nowadays, that because history increasingly deals with generalisation it is safe for the student to neglect dates, which are the bones of historical anatomy. Still less is it safe, in pursuit of generalised truth, to overlook the personality and influence of great men, who are often in large measure the cause of some 'tendency' which only they rendered 'inevitable.'

Political writers, social philosophers and founders of movements must take their place beside warriors and statesmen in any account of social and political changes in modern times. But religion, literature and science are only mentioned here in connection with social or political developments of which they were in some degree the cause or the symbol. I have made no attempt to appreciate their real significance in a century of British history famous for all three of these supreme efforts of the human spirit.

I have called the book 'British History,' because, though it cannot claim to be a History of the Empire, it is more than a…