ABSTRACT
Gender bias cut across the virtues and values trumpeted as distinctively British or English: independence, self-reliance, a belief in progress through commerce and free trade. Declining hostility between different ethnic groups might suggest that a distinctive British identity emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century, European observers saw a nation whose citizens enjoyed relative liberty and greater general levels of wealth. Representative government and a population able to afford meat as well as bread and cheese were distinctive features in an era of absolute rule. That observers exaggerated the extent both of Englishman's liberties and the dispersal of growing national wealth is a relatively minor blemish. Enlightenment thinkers emphasised the liberal, the optimistic and the progressive in their quest to improve the condition of mankind. They found in England the closest European approximation to their ideal.
