 Although Bosanquet is sometimes regarded as a conservative, recent studies have pointed out that he was an active Liberal and, in the 1910s, supported the Labour Party. He insisted on the positive role that the state can have in the promotion of social well being, he was in favour of worker ownership, he supported Irish Home Rule, and, during the Second Boer War, was initially sympathetic to Boer independence (see Sweet [1997]: 233–234; for a nuanced recent account, see Boucher [2020]: 325). It is also worth noting that Bosanquet’s audience was as much the professional social worker or the politician, as the philosopher. He was well-informed of the political situation in Britain, on the continent, and in the United States. His interests extended to economics and social welfare, and his work in adult education and social work provided a strong empirical dimension to his work. This background supplied him with a broad base from which to reply to challenges from many of his critics—e.g., from philosophers, like Mill and Spencer, and from social reformers, such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb and the founder of the Salvation Army, General William Booth. Despite charges that Bosanquet’s political philosophy is simplistic, inconsistent, or naive, Adam Ulam notes that The Philosophical Theory of the State 