AS WE HAVE SEEN, Graham’s time in parliament was preoccupied by what he saw, fundamentally, as the chronic results of industrialisation at home. More significantly, he would stand out from most of his political contemporaries as a man who had first-hand experience of the deleterious effects of capitalism and empire on developing countries. He would also stand out among the vast bulk of the British population, at a time of imperial expansion and pride, as an imperial sceptic, and later, as a vociferous anti-imperialist. This chapter considers Graham’s early moral concerns over the acquisition and expansion of this empire, before moving on to the effects of colonialism and capitalism on indigenous peoples, however, his anti-imperial and anti-racist writings would not reach a vitriolic crescendo until 1896 and 1897, described in Chapter 10.

Britain’s imperial justification and hubris found no better expression than in the works of two authors, Brooke Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, and John Robert Seeley. Westcott, who wrote extensively on religious and imperial matters, believed that it was the spiritual duty to spread ‘the spirit of England’, and he extolled Seeley’s 1883 book, The Expansion of England. In this, Seeley set out the equivalent of a manifest destiny for Britain, justifying imperialism as a benefit to the world with the words, ‘The English State then, in what direction and towards what goal has that been advancing? The words which jump to our lips are Liberty, Democracy.’ Duncan Bell reminded us that Seeley’s book had been an instant success, ‘helping to set the terms of late Victorian debate about empire and remaining a standard reference point for decades to come. It remained in print until 1956, the year of Suez.’ It was the ideas expressed by Seeley that typified much of late nineteenth-century thinking on empire, so that the radical Liberal, and arch-imperialist, Joseph Chamberlain could say in 1897, ‘We feel now that our rule over their territories can only be justified if we can show that it adds to the happiness and prospects of the people.’ Bell commented, however, that ‘the professed principles and the grubby reality were very different’.

In his early speeches, any extreme sentiments that Graham may have harboured against the empire were necessarily mitigated by the prevailing national mood and his desire to become a Member of Parliament.