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From the families of dockside London to the cautious cabinets of the Edwardian 'new liberals,' the search was on, after 1889, for a class of men Charles Booth characterized as so low in moral character as to require elimination from society-at-large. Responding as best they could, the poorest third of England's workers attempted desperately, yet usually failed, to avoid the stigma of the 'loafer' as they weathered economic downturn, increased policing, the fallout of deskilling, and the hatred and hysteria of a society, particularly in the wake of the Boer War, that refused them the status even of 'men'. In laws and literature, England's reforming and governing classes found their answers in Idealism, a philosophical movement taking progressive, moderate and labour leaders under its fold, and encouraging an understanding of poverty, and responses to it, on the basis of character alone. Piecemeal programmes and partial remedies for a host of principally urban, predominantly working-class social problems were the result, and they point---in a period of ostensibly 'progressive' housing and unemployment reform---to a disturbing, quasi-authoritarian policy demanding nothing less than social apartheid.

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This thesis will trace the development of Conservative ideology in Great Britain between 1906 and 1914. During these years the Conservative party was defeated by the Liberal party on three separate occasions. Many historians believe that this string of electoral contretemps offers convincing evidence that Conservatism, as an evolving pattern of beliefs, was fundamentally unsuited to the political climate of Great Britain at the turn of the century. According to this interpretation of Edwardian Conservatism, it was only the timely onset of war which saved the party from having to come to terms with the democratic impulse of an unfamiliar era. This is a gross exaggeration of the plight of Conservatism before the war, for the party's unwavering commitment to the economic status quo was not in itself a recipe for electoral catastrophe. What may well have turned out to be fatal to the party's well-being was Joseph Chamberlain's Tariff Reform campaign. In 1903 Chamberlain offered the party an all-encompassing creed, a total solution to Britain's problems, both domestic and foreign, and a positive platform to sustain the party in office. Balfour sensed the dangers of a comprehensive ideology that was inherently of its own time. He, and Bonar Law after him, helped to rehabilitate Conservative ideology by limiting its scope and suggesting that Tariff Reform was merely one weapon among many in a large Conservative arsenal.

This thesis examines the writing in poetry and prose of a small group of English feminist writers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The best known of these authors was Mary Astell (1666-1731). The influence on the feminists' ideas of the philosophies of Descartes and of the most prominent English thinkers of the period, the Cambridge Platonists, is described. / The thesis focuses on three main themes in the seventeenth century feminists' writing. These were occupation, education and marriage. Emphasis is put on education as the most important of the feminists' concerns. They believed that the poor education women received in comparison with that received by men put women at a disadvantage in society in general and in personal relationships with men. They also believed that education was vital for personal happiness and spiritual fulfillment. In their writing about occupation, the feminists stated that the things that middle and upper class women were expected to do were unfulfilling. They wanted the right to occupy themselves with reading and writing without facing ridicule. On the subject of marriage the feminists' main concern also centred around education. They believed that women were at a disadvantage in the marriage relationship because they were not as well educated as their husbands. They thought that more equitable marriages were desirable, and that they would exist if women were better educated.

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No description available.