Popular enthusiasm for the Liberal party derived its greatest impetus from nonconformist commitment – and this was reflected in the eagerness with which Anglican MPs sitting for large urban constituencies upheld the sects' grievances. Any analysis of the basis of mid and late Victorian radicalism must therefore devote considerable attention to the nonconformist contribution. But another religious tradition also helped to define the outlook of urban constituency Liberalism: that which rejected institutional Christianity in favour of freethinking and ethical inspiration. This in turn brought leading working-men into contact with two classes of intellectuals, those positivists who were the disciples of the Frenchman Comte, and rationalist academic agnostics. In this chapter, nonconformists, urban radical MPs, spokesmen of the working-men, positivists and academic liberals are discussed in turn. The perspective of each group was different from that of the others, and most were also divided within themselves; but this discussion is intended primarily to display the extent to which they shared common values.

The academic liberals apart, all these groups, however diverse in outlook, were undoubtedly attracted by Gladstone, in much the same way as he was attracted by most of them. The cry which, with occasional difficulties, sustained Liberal unity at popular level was, simply, that of ‘Gladstone’; the mass of the Liberal party supported him in 1886 despite lukewarmness on the issue of home rule itself.