Liberalism

The modern State is the distinctive product of a unique civilization. But it is a product which is still in the making, and a part of the process is a struggle between new and old principles of social order. To understand the new, which is our main purpose, we must first cast a glance at the old. We must understand what the social structure was, which--mainly, as I shall show, under the inspiration of Liberal ideas--is slowly but surely giving place to the new fabric of the civic State. The older structure itself was by no means primitive. What is truly primitive is very hard to say. But one thing is pretty clear. At all times men have lived in societies, and ties of kinship and of simple neighbourhood underlie every form of social organization. In the simplest societies it seems probable that these ties--reinforced and extended, perhaps, by religious or other beliefs--are the only ones that seriously count. It is certain that of the warp of descent and the woof of intermarriage there is woven a tissue out of which small and rude but close and compact communities are formed. The modern State is the distinctive product of a unique civilization. But it is a product which is still in the making, and a part of the process is a struggle between new and old principles of social order. To understand the new, which is our main purpose, we must first cast a glance at the old. We must understand what the social structure was, which--mainly, as I shall show, under the inspiration of Liberal ideas--is slowly but surely giving place to the new fabric of the civic State. The older structure itself was by no means primitive. What is truly primitive is very hard to say. But one thing is pretty clear. At all times men have lived in societies, and ties of kinship and of simple neighbourhood underlie every form of social organization. In the simplest societies it seems probable that these ties--reinforced and extended, perhaps, by religious or other beliefs--are the only ones that seriously count. It is certain that of the warp of descent and the woof of intermarriage there is woven a tissue out of which small and rude but close and compact communities are formed.

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (8 September 1864 - 21 June 1929) was a British liberal political theorist and sociologist, who has been considered one of the leading and earliest proponents of social liberalism. His works, culminating in his famous book Liberalism (1911), occupy a seminal position within the canon of New Liberalism. He worked both as an academic and a journalist, and played a key role in the establishment of sociology as an academic discipline; in 1907 he shared, with Edward Westermarck, the distinction of being the first professor of sociology to be appointed in the United Kingdom, at the University of London. He was also the founder and first editor of The Sociological Review. His sister was Emily Hobhouse, the British welfare activist. Hobhouse was born in St Ive, near Liskeard in Cornwall,[1] the son of Reginald Hobhouse, an Anglican clergyman, and Caroline Trelawny. He attended Marlborough College before reading Greats at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he graduated with a first-class degree in 1887. Upon his graduation, Hobhouse remained at Oxford as a prize fellow at Merton College before becoming a full fellow at Corpus Christi.[2] Taking a break from academia between 1897 and 1907, Hobhouse worked as a journalist (including a stint with the Manchester Guardian) and as the secretary of a trade union.[2] In 1907, Hobhouse returned to academia, accepting the newly created chair of sociology at the University of London, titled the Martin White Professor of Sociology, where he remained until his death in 1929.[2] Hobhouse was also an atheist from an early age, despite his father being an Archdeacon.[3] He believed that rational tests could be applied to values and that they could be self-consistent and objective.[3] Hobhouse was never religious. He wrote in 1883 that he was "in politics... a firm radical. In religion... an (if possible yet firmer) agnostic."[4] In terms of his political and philosophical views, Hobhouse was Gladstonian, a devoted follower of the philosopher John Stuart Mill, and an admirer of Morley, Bradlaugh, and Dilke. These influences him to various feminist, democratic, and secularist political stances. He often proposed republican and democratic motions at debating societies while at school