New Liberalism

New Liberalism was a late nineteenth-century movement that favored state action to address poverty and improve social conditions while retaining liberal commitments to individual freedom.

Laissez-faire: An economic doctrine favoring minimal government intervention in markets and private affairs. New Liberals rejected laissez-faire as an adequate response to poverty and social hardship.
Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse: British sociologist and political theorist who developed a systematic account of social liberalism. Hobhouse became one of New Liberalism's clearest theorists, notably in Liberalism (1911).
Positive liberty: The capacity to act and develop one's abilities, rather than merely the absence of external restraint. New Liberals used this idea to argue that freedom requires more than noninterference.
Classical liberalism: A liberal tradition emphasizing individual rights, private property, free exchange, and limited government. New Liberalism retained liberal aims but widened government's role in securing them.
Liberal welfare reforms: British social legislation enacted by Liberal governments from 1906 to 1914, including pensions and national insurance. These reforms were the clearest early legislative expression of New Liberal influence.
Industrial Revolution: The transformation from agrarian economies to mechanized industry and factory production, beginning in Britain in the eighteenth century. Industrialization created urban poverty and labor conditions that sharpened New Liberal demands for reform.
John Atkinson Hobson: British economist and social theorist who criticized economic inequality and imperial expansion. Hobson connected New Liberal social reform to critiques of concentrated wealth and imperialism.
Welfare state: A system in which government assumes responsibility for social protection and public welfare. New Liberal policy helped establish principles later associated with the welfare state.
Socialism: A family of political and economic ideas advocating social or collective control over production and resources. New Liberals pursued social reform without adopting socialism's broader challenge to private ownership.
People's Budget: The 1909 British budget proposed by David Lloyd George, raising taxes to fund social programs and naval expansion. It financed reform and provoked a constitutional conflict over taxation and the House of Lords.

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