The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed an evangelical revival, of which Methodism was one product. Another was the conscious aim by the evangelicals to reform the manners of the aristocracy. For example if you look at the cartoons of Gillray around 1800, they're full of biting satire and coarse imagery. Compare these to those of John Doyle around 1840. His caricatures are much more mild and tamer.

Similarly, whereas foreign visitors to England in the eighteenth century remarked on the quarrelsome nature of the English, the nineteenth century increasingly witnessed growing civic virtue, the elimination of "Old Corruption", the outlawing of cruel animal sports such as bull baiting and a generally law-abiding society (except in lower working class areas), along with liberal reforms of the penal code.

This Christian revival influenced nearly all sections of society, from the "respectable" upper working class moralised by Nonconformity to the High Church Anglican public school boys. The British ruling class in Victorian England was taken mostly from the public schools. Apart from young Communists and Nazis, few ruling classes have had such a uniform moulding of character. The influence of Thomas Arnold (headmaster of Rugby, 1828-1841) was widespread. He wrote:

Rather than have [physical science] the principal thing in my son's mind, I would gladly have him think that the sun went round the earth, and that the stars were so many spangles set in the bright blue firmament. Surely the one thing needful for a Christian and an Englishman to study is Christian and moral and political philosophy.

"The Gospel", said Arnold, "is nothing less than a system directing and influencing our conduct, principles and feelings". Dr. Moberly, who graduated from Oxford in 1825 and was headmaster of Winchester 1835-1866, wrote this of his time at university:

The tone of the young men at the University, whether they came from Winchester, Eton, Rugby, Harrow or wherever else, was universally irreligious. A religious undergraduate was very rare, very much laughed at when he appeared; and I think I may confidently say, hardly to be found among public-school men...A most singular and striking change has come upon our public schools...This change is undoubtedly part of a general improvement of our generation in respect of purity and reverence.

As the historian R. C. K. Ensor wrote:

No one will ever understand Victorian England who does not appreciate that among highly civilised countries...it was one of the most religious that the world has ever known. Moreover its particular type of Christianity laid a peculiarly direct emphasis on conduct...it became after Queen Victoria's marriage practically the religion of the court, and gripped all ranks and conditions of society. After Melbourne's departure it inspired nearly every front rank public man, save Palmerston, for four decades...nothing is more remarkable than the way evangelicalism in the broader sense overleaped sectarian barriers and pervaded men of all creeds...Even Disraeli, by nature as remote from it as Palmerston, paid every deference to it in politics.

The working classes, as mentioned above, did not escape this moralising. As Trevelyan had written, Nonconformist chapels "regarded life (including politics and foreign policy) as a branch of personal religion". The Reform Act 1867 enfranchised this section of the nation and it became increasingly influential. Whereas earlier statesmen such as Palmerston regarded foreign policy as horse-trading in the tradition of eighteenth century diplomacy, this was increasingly denounced as immoral and sinful.

For example when in 1876 the Turks massacred Bulgarian Christians, the Liberal leader Gladstone was able to rouse the middle classes in moral indignation. To Disraeli, however, the national interest seemed to require Britain maintain its traditional policy of supporting Turkey against Russian expansion. To Gladstone and for much of the nation, the question was a moral one and he defeated Disraeli in the 1880 election.

In what aspects was it similar to ours. And how was it different?

This belief in a moral foreign policy conducted on ethical lines has had a long lasting effect. Of course Britain today is nowhere near as religious but the influence of what was originally a Christian worldview was translated into secular ideologies such as liberalism. As Herbert Butterfield wrote:

Humanism and Humanitarianism, Liberalism and Internationalism...emerge as a result of a tendency to translate into secular terms certain movements and aspirations which had characterised a Christian civilisation...humanitarianism, for example, is an anaemic substitute for the doctrine of New Testament love.

Much of the left-liberal attitude towards foreign policy evolved from what was originally an evangelical, Nonconformist view of looking at the world from a moral point of view.

Sources:

*Herbert Butterfield, Christianity in European History (London, 1951).

*R. C. K. Ensor, England 1870-1914 (Oxford, 1966).

*A. R. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold D.D. (London, 1890).

*G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History (London, 1942).