Wow, great question. Let me do the best I can with the limited time I have at the moment. First, you should check out some books, because there's a pretty developed literature on this.

• Bernard Porter's The Absent-Minded Imperialists asks basically this question and he concludes that most people just did not think about the empire all that much, that it was simply not a big topic of discussion.

• On the other hand, lots of scholars have argued that Porter was looking for references that were too explicit, and finding that every other newspaper column doesn't announce "Here are my thoughts on the empire" does not mean that people weren't conscious of it. These scholars tend to take a more cultural history approach in which what's important is how the various conversations about nationhood, race, gender, Britishness, as well as explicitly about empire, are all "imbricated" in society (Antoinette Burton's phrase, if I recall). When you take a broader and more flexible view of "empire," then it's kind of everywhere in British culture in the late nineteenth century. Authors who have written about this include Burton, Anne McClintock, and Catherine Hall.

The lesson to take away from this tiny and superficial sampling of authors is that "the empire" is a difficult thing to really pin down. It was a massive bureaucracy, an expanse of territory that covered a major fraction of the earth's surface, a political unit that included a major portion of the human race, as well as a thing that people could talk about and experience both directly--"Those Boers are a threat to the empire!"--or indirectly--"Come in and 'ave a cuppa tea!"

Now, for some guesses, he's a rough estimate of what some people at different strata might say. Please understand that these are highly speculative, and that no group of people would be homogeneous in their views and experiences of something as massive, heterogeneous, and pervasive as "the empire."

• Working class: These people are probably not especially impressed with the "civilizing mission," since working class Britons in places like the industrial districts of Glasgow, Manchester, or east London were also subjected to "civilizing missions." There were certainly later Labour politicians who regarded imperialism as a problem, a drain on the British economy and a useless at best, harmful at worst venture that oppressed people whom Britons had no business dealing with (see the other answers below, especially /u/CanadianHistorian and /u/pinesap). On the other hand, we also know that Benjamin Disraeli used appeals to the empire, in particular getting Victoria crowned "Empress of India," to great effect in appealing to new working-class voters after the expansions of the franchise in 1867 and 1884. Certainly many working-class Britons attempted to take a direct role in the empire during the Boer war in the late 1890s, although 40-60% of them were rejected as unfit.

• A substantial portion of the working class was also directly or indirectly involved with the empire through their work. Some would have joined the army or navy, others might have emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or South Africa (although you needed fairly substantial resources on your own to emigrate in the 1890s). Some would have worked directly with imperial products, such as dockworkers in London or Liverpool, while others would have relied on imperial products and markets for their livelihood, even if it was not obvious to them, such as Lancashire textile workers. It's also the case the many products were marketed to Britons through the empire (I'll post some pictures this evening if you like). So, working class people may have thought of the empire as a "Good Thing," although their views and experiences of it were quite heterogeneous, covering directly or indirectly many different parts of their lives.

• Middle class: Educated Britons and those involved in trade probably had the most opportunities to directly benefit from the empire. These people would have had chances to work in different parts of the imperial civil service, whether as administrators in India, shipping clerks in London, or for the Colonial Office. These positions could be quite lucrative and could provide a remunerative and prestigious career for people willing to live outside Britain for extended periods; had they stayed in Britain, they might not have such opportunities. Further, the idea of a civilizing mission would most appeal to this group, as middle class Britons were interested in reforming all kinds of things. They frequently had a technocratic view, saw scientific and industrial "progress" as very Good Things, and things that should be exported to the world. This is not particularly surprising, since this was the group that benefited most from those things in Britain, being themselves the technocrats. Their positions as medical, industrial, or scientific experts meant that their cultural values were reflected in their expertise and their politics, and to an extent they dominated the questions of culture and politics. They were as likely to support vaccinations in Shoreditch as in Calcutta, for example, and equally likely to dismiss or misunderstand resistance to those vaccinations generated in both places.

• Upper class: This is hard to say. Certainly some of them took great pride in being part of the empire, often in very interesting ways. See David Cannadine's (useful but problematic) Ornamentalism for more on this. At the same time, landed aristocrats were by nature cultural, socially, and politically conservative. To the extent that the empire could threaten the status quo, they would oppose it; further, they did not stand to benefit particularly from the empire, since proper aristocrats made their wealth from the land. Indeed, imperial expansion, to the extent that it provided agricultural imports, could and did undermine the economic base of the landed aristocracy.

So, there's a few suggestions. I'm positive we could find all manner of counter examples, but that's the nature of the beast.

In addition, be sure to check out the contributions of /u/Canadianhistorian, /u/MancombQSeepgood, /u/pinesap, and /u/ctesibius, all of whom make very important points which illustrate the depth and breadth perceptions of empire.

There's several different perspective of Imperialism that were debated during the 1890s and 1900s, so they might have referenced one of these ideas... Though I don't have any detailed information about distinction between classes in regards to their position.

“Constructive Imperialism” was a term coined by W.A.S. Hewins in 1899 and it described “the deliberate adoption of the Empire as distinguished from the United Kingdom as the basis of public policy” and its adherents advocated “those principles of constructive policy on all constitutional, economic, defensive, and educational questions which will help towards the fulfilment of that ideal.” It could also be called “Conservative Imperialism,” though opponents and supporters were not always split along ideological lines. This brand of unifying imperialism emerged out of the changing international context of the late 19th century as rising states like Germany, France, Russia and the United States ballooned into global powers themselves. Britain was no longer the sole power spread across the world and it became clear, some argued, that the centre and the periphery of Empire required each other for future prosperity.

Constructive Imperialism reached the peak of its support in Britain and abroad during the two decades before the First World War. Some policies, like Imperial Preference regarding trade and tariffs in the colonies, were pushed without much success. Most of the Dominions considered any changes to tariffs conditional on other political concerns, not inherently appealing as a means of expressing imperial patriotism alone. Discussion of Imperial defence was more popular, as both Britain and its colonies sought solutions to increasing defence costs while increasingly using military power as a means of achieving international security.

This brand of imperialism was epitomized through Joseph Chamberlain's time as Colonial Secretary from 1895 to 1903. Chamberlain advocated for an active British presence in imperial management, accelerating the process of Constructive Imperialism which had already begun. Until the last quarter of the 19th century, imperial governance had often been left to private concerns. Under Chamberlain, the idea of a enlightened, united Empire seemed to be justified by the Boer War in 1899. Imperial unity offered a solution to the apparent weakness of an Empire that took three years to defeat the disparate Boer Republics. The enthusiastic contribution of soldiers for the Boer War by the self-governing Dominions of the Empire suggested that there was popular support for stronger imperial relations. Colonial-nationalism did not necessarily mean opposition to Empire. The strength at which the British people favoured intervention in the Boer Republics seemed to demonstrate that there was much support for imperial unity at home as well. On the other hand, the success of the Boer's guerrilla tactics and examples of British barbarism during the conflict also helped discredit Chamberlain's particular vision of constructive imperialism. Unfortunately for the supporters of Constructive Imperialism, without the military necessity of defending the empire, broad enthusiasm for it waned during peacetime. In the end, as E.H. Green writes, the idea that “general support for the Empire could be translated into enthusiasm for a particular concept” proved false. As a result, Construtive Imperialism never gains the public momentum required to make large scale changes to imperial governance.

On the other side from Constructive Imperialism, there were Liberals. At the time, laissez-faire liberalism was identified as the opposite of Constructive Imperialism. Not only did it reject imperial consolidation, it rejected any large scale government intervention. "Little Englanders" was a dismissive term first applied to those who favoured "Little England" over "Great Britain" in the Gladstonian era, though it has survived to the present day. In the aftermath of the Boer War's lacklustre victory and increasing disagreement over tariff reform (that caused Winston Churchill to leave the Conservative Party for the first time), Liberal Imperialists were seen as a more reasonable option for governing the Empire and the country. They offered cohesion and stability, which may have been more appealing than Chamberlain's impassioned campaign to unite such a disparate collection of states and colonies. This helped the Liberals form a government under Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1906, who was succeeded by Henry H. Asquith in 1908.

Liberal intellectual critics of Imperialism rejected it outright. The most famous example is probably J.A. Hobson's Imperialism: A Study, which argued that the Empire had negative economic and socio-political consequences for Britain and its colonies. Effectively, the desire for Imperialism to exploit and profit from its holdings is a reflection of capitalist society that further distributes wealth unequally but on a global scale. Hobson ties Imperialism to Capitalism, much like Lenin would a few decades later, as would many of his fellow liberal British intellectuals. These critics of imperialism would become far more influential in the years after the First World War.

I'm looking forward to a little scholarly debate on this topic.

I wrote my MA thesis on European and American anti-colonial thought in INTELLECTUAL circles during this period (1890s-1914), but I'm afraid I'm a bit uninformed on the "man-on-the-street" perspective. In "The Absent-Minded Imperialists" Bernard Porter argues that most Europeans' were not concerned with the world's periphery. He claims that their day-to-day lives had "little sympathetic contact with the Empire" and in fact "Their lifestyles and alternative discourses alienated then from it" (164). Yet, rather convincingly, John Mackenzie in "Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880-1960" shows how intertwined empire was to British life (e.g. imperial souvenirs, post cards, etc.).

We have huge celebratory events like the 1897 Diamond Jubilee that commemorated Queen Victoria's 60th year of rule by celebrating, in the words of Colonial Sec. Chamberlain, a "Festival of the British Empire." Here 3 million British citizens in the metropole watched hours of parades where colonial troops from across the world marched in formation to showcase Britain as THE world power.

But how did the individual citizens feel about empire? What about growing anxiety over a weakening colonial mission (such as the South African War against the Boers, where whites fought against whites, using concentration camp tactics)? How about a post-colonial reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), where the loss of British overseas markets, the economic rise of Germany and the US, and the loss of a sense of paternalistic protection as it was replaced with a sense of dominance came in the form of an Eastern invader who eroded Victorian values? What about in Wells' War of the World's (also published in 1897- the same year as the diamond Jubilee), where Wells' later wrote: "before we judge [the martians] too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought...upon its own inferior races." And of course Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" as problematic but detailed accountant of man-on-the-spot colonial conquest (released as serial in 1899- but then as a bound book in 1902- also the year of the horrific details of the second South African War was being widely reported). How can we explain the popularity of these books if not for a general interest in colonialism by the reading public?

I'm looking forward to reading further comments on this exciting topic.

This is a very partial answer, but I think it's relevant. Kipling's The White Man's Burden was published in 1899. While it was subtitled "The United States and the Philippine Islands", it was both informed by the British Empire, and popular within the British Isles, and for that reason I think that its idealism and call to duty did reflect the thinking of at least part of the population who would not have been familiar with more academic or political analysis of the role of Empire.

BTW, I hope I don't have to point out in this forum that identifying someone as an idealist does not imply that I agree with their point of view.

I can't really add anything to the excellent answers that already appear here, however I know that even a few decades earlier imperialism was explicitly connected to perpetual war and mass production / the division of labor, in London intellectual circles. One of my favorite people in all of history is William Morris: famous designer, labor reformer, poet, founder of the modern historic preservation movement, co-founder of the first socialist party. Morris was obsessed (this was the 1860s and 1870s) with the waste of resources and the shoddiness of modern mass production. As an artist, architect and designer his scathing criticisms of capitalism and imperialism were directed through a lens of aesthetics and the material and natural landscapes - he was incredibly ahead of his time.

He saw, for example, the tropical-y and orientalist knick-knacks that were trendy in Victorian bourgeois society as obscene. If you look at his still-produced fabric prints today, it is impossible to tell how radical they were for their time. A simple floral print wallpaper - look closely and you see common English weeds - milk thistle, clover. This was a statement: Look no further than your own garden for "art."

Morris was pretty much the most famous designer in the world in his lifetime, legendary in England - had audience with prime ministers - turned down the offer of poet laureate, launched what is still today the most famous small-press publishing house in the UK (Kelmscott) - his influence in the arts and politics was vast vast vast - it cannot be overstated. I don't know how many of the "common people" were familiar with his works but he was definitely familiar with their works. And there is something intuitively obvious about his perspective - Morris was never academic or elitist. He would host the socialist party elites at his home and hold forth while carving his garden hedges into topiary dragons. Eventually they gave up on him and he on them.

I am living overseas and don't have access to my library but I know Morris made trenchant speeches about imperialist war and plunder. A good source is the seminal biography William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary by the renowned socialist historian EP Thompson. Morris was such a major figure that even in the 1890s people were still coming to grips with him, although he was by then dead.

If the moderators are eager to delete disruptive posts on this sub, then the least they could do is edit these titles .. to the OP, either your question is interesting enough without the embellishment, or it isn't.