ABSTRACT
Studies in Mid-Victorian Imperialism (1925) - a classic survey o f the separationist movement - have pointed out, few o f the so-called ‘Little Englanders’ o f the 1850s and 1860s wanted less empire. Most wanted an empire that was better governed and thus a sounder business proposition.1 Secondly, and less obviously, the Manchester School was not so much a continuous grouping, nor a set o f doctrines, but rather a style o f uncompromising radical politics peculiar to the decade after 1846. It was only later in the nineteenthTcentury that through the writings of, in particular, Thorold Rogers, Goldwin Smith and John Morley, Cobden and Bright’s pacifism, economic liberalism and humanitarianism were conflated together into the principles o f a ‘Manchester School’ and reconstituted as an integral part o f the dissenting liberal tradition in English foreign policy.2
