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Britian's booming economy and rapid expansion encouraged great optimism. Profiting from its early industrial revolution, Britian became the world leader in manufacturing. Factories dotted the land. Factory towns grew into large cities. Banks, retail shops, and other businesses expanded. These changes in turn spurred the growth of two important classes~an industrial working class and a modern middle class, able to live a better life of the low cost and large variety of mass~produced factory goods.

As its industry and commerce prospered, Britian expanded its merchant fleet and its powerful navy. Economic and military power helped Britain to acquire new colonies in far~flung parts of the globe. Victorians could quite literally boast that "the sun never sets on the British empire.

For all its self~satisfaction, the Victorian Age was also a time of social concern. Victorian writers exposed a dark underside of the industrial age~brutal factory conditions and stinking slums that bred poverty and disease. Goaded by reformers and radicals of many sorts, Victorian leaders took steps to expand democracy and better the lot of the poor. By the time Victoria died in 1901, Britain had shed some of its complacency and was grappling with the social and economic problems industrialization had caused.

The prime ministers who govern Britain serve at the sufferance of Parliament, and can be dismissed at any time by a vote of no confidence. Such a system produces a more rapid turnover of leadership than does our own presidential system.

The years of Victoria's reign brought a change in the policies and even the names of the two parties that had dominated eighteenth~century politics. The Whig party formerly had championed Britain's commercial dominance and colonial empire. Gradually, the Whigs adopted new attitudes and became known as the Liberal party. Liberals often attacked colonial expansion and, under the leadership of William Gladstone, pressed for reforms at home and in Ireland. Meanwhile, the Tory party began to abandon its old stance of isolationism in foreign affairs and stubborn resistance to social change. The Tories (or Conservatives, as they came to be called) now supported imperialism~the expansion of empire. Under leaders like Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservatives also supported electoral reform. It was Disraeli who helped push through the Second Reform Bill of 1867, doubling the electorate by granting voting rights to tenant farmers and to better~paid male workers.

The Liberals and Conservatives alternated in power. Each party had its die~hard followers, but each had to compete for the same middle~of~the~road "swing" voters. As a result, Victorian politics emphasized compromise and slow reform.

Trade policy and electoral reform were the two key issues that dominated domestic politics during the first half ot the Victorian era. Trade debate centered on the Corn Laws. This discouraged food imports and helped British landlords and farmers. It also tended to keep food prices high, which angered consumers and the poorer classes. At stake was not just money but life itself, as became evient in 1845, when a failure of Ireland's potato crop caused a massive famine in which as many as one million Irish people died.

Seeking to increase the supply of food, Parliament repealed the Corn Laws in 1846. Britain now adopted a policy of free trade (allowing imports and exports with few or no restrictions). The new policy relected the interests of rising British industries, which prospered by importing raw materials and exporting finished goods. Times had changed, and Britain was gast becoming an industrial rather than an agricultural nation.

Many Britons thought that electoral reform had been settled in 1832, when the Reform Law gave the vote to middle-class males. They were wrong; working-class people wanted further reform. In 1838, a group of radicals drew up a "People's Charter" demanding, among other things, universal suffrage for males. This so-called Chartist movement fizzled out after a decade or so, but new demands for electoral change led to the Second Reform Bill of 1867 and to almost complete male suffrage in 1885.

The urge to reform also affected the many other areas. Women, although still not eligible to vote, began to attend universities. Parliment passed laws to reduce the working day for women and children, to establish a system of free grammar schools, and to legalize trade unions. It voted to improve pubic sanitation and to regulate factories and housing. Still, such measures did not go far enough to suit everyone, and agitation continued for further reform.

One of the most important issues left unresolved in the Victorian Age was the future of Ireland, where widespread poverty had bred bitter opposition to British control. In the 1880's and 1890's, the Liberal leader William Gladstone supported Irish demands for home rule (self~government). However, a hard~line faction of Liberals joined Conservatives to block action on Gladstone's proposals.

In the last three decades of Victoria's rule, Britain reached new heights of wealth and power. It gained control of the new Suez Canal in Egypt. It acquired Cyprus, and island in the eastern Mediterranean. It joined other European powers in a scramble to carve up Africa, acquiring such territories as Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe).
Also, Britain expanded its control over what is now South Africa, defeating Dutch settlers there in the Boer War of 1899~1902.

Even in those years of expansion, Britons could not help worrying about the future. Other nations, especially the United States and Germany, were rapidly building up industry and competing with Britain in world markets. How long could Britain maintain its economic superiority? How would economic changes affect the balance of power? For how long would Britain's navy "rule the waves"? By the end of Victoria's reign in 1901, British leaders had many disturbing questions to ponder.

At the same time they were debating the political problems posed by industrialization, the Victorians were grappling with the religious and philosophical implications of modern life. A religious movement called evangelicalism infulenced many Victorians. The movement linked strict personal morality with a strong commitment to social reform, leading to the founding of such institutions as the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and the Salvation Army. The Liberal leader William Gladstone was among those inspired by evangelicalism to devote his life to public service and social reform. The Oxford Movement expressed a second strain of religious thought, seeking a return to more traditional church ritual.

Other Victorians turned to science for answers. The theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin (1809~1882) in On the Origin of Species (1859) stirred bitter controversy. Some Victorian thinkers saw Darwin's theory as a direct challenge so Biblical truth and traditional religious faith. Some accepted both Darwin's theory and religion, striving to reconcile scientific and religious insights.