"The really notable thing about the elections is the political "cleavage" they denote. It will be an ill day when, as in France, our political lines of division coincide with our social and religious lines. Yet that is what this election points to. Liberalism is becoming more and more coincident with Nonconformity; it is becoming less and less common among men of the higher social class. The bulk of the nobles and the gentry, almost all the parsons, the bulk of the lawyers, I fear an increasing number of doctors, are all Conservative. I see that Liberals have an intellectual work to do as well as a directly political. I mean that they must convert the upper classes as well as organise the lower. And this perhaps may force on us soon a higher and a more intelligent Liberalism than we have now."
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People from OxfordHistorians from EnglandNon-fiction authors from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomLibrarians from England
Original Language: English
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Letter to Humphry Ward (8 April 1880), quoted in Letters of John Richard Green, ed. Leslie Stephen (1901), pp. 480-481
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Richard_Green
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John Richard Green
John Richard Green (12 December 1837 – 7 March 1883) was an English historian chiefly known for his 1874 work A Short History of the English People.
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