698 Ch. 18 • The Dominant Powers in the Age of Liberalismuneducated children. Yet considerably more than altruism lay behind a shift
in middle-class attitudes. Manufacturers also knew that demand for theirproducts depended on workers having money to spend. In Great Britain,
the “age of optimism” became the “age of improvement.”
Queen Victoria once asked someone to define “bureaucracy,” a term she
did not know. “That, Madam,” came the reply, “is something that they have in
France.” Yet the Victorian state expanded. In 1841, the British government—
the least centralized of the major European powers—had employed 40,000
men and 3,000 women; by 1911, 271,000 men and 50,000 women worked
for the state. The administration of the Poor Law itself served to strengthen
the role of government in local affairs. Municipal councils took over the task
of administering local government from the justices of the peace, who had
served in such capacity since the sixteenth century. Municipalities were now
responsible for education, as well as for health, housing, roads, and policing.
Service in local government, once little more than another honor awarded a
landed gentleman, now required the participation of paid officials.
With increased responsibilities, the British civil service became profes
sionalized. The government administered competitive examinations on
which appointment and promotion depended. However, these exams did not
democratize entry into the civil service. Applicants who had attended one of
the expensive, elite public schools (so called because they accepted students
from all over Britain, provided their families could afford the steep tuition)
had a far greater advantage on the examinations than those who had not.
As the role of the British state thus expanded considerably during the
middle decades of the century, the era of laissez-faire liberalism came to a
close. Speaking of her father, Gladstone’s daughter remembered, “I was
accustomed to hear him utter the word ‘Government’ in a tone that charted
it with awe and made it part of my effective religion.”
Mass Politics Come to Britain
Out of office following passage of the 1867 Reform Act, Benjamin Disraeli
sought to accommodate Conservatives to the era of mass political life. Real
izing that his party, long closely tied to the British landed elite and the Angli
can Church, would have to outbid their Liberal rivals for votes, he created a
modern national party organization. Disraeli made British nationalism and
imperialism part of the Conservative Party platform, suggesting that the Lib
erals would weaken Britain. When the Turks and Russians began to quarrel
over the Balkans, Disraeli supported the Turks, despite the massacre of
about 10,000 to 15,000 Bulgarians in 1876 by Turkish troops. Gladstone,
however, was horrified by the bloodbath and made a political issue of the
Balkans. It was easy enough for him to do so: Britain had less to fear from
the Ottoman Empire in decline than from an aggressively expansionist
Russia.