"The Victorian Age was in its essence liberal, a time of continuous progress in humanity, in enlightenment, in the welfare of the masses; a time in which an aristocracy was, on the whole, in power but was continually resigning its privileges or extending them to classes hitherto excluded. The statesmen of that time thought of themselves not as leaders of a class, but rather as ‘Shepherds of the People’, concerned with the good of the flock but somewhat aloof from it."