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The article focuses on late-Victorian revolution in government that was emphatically a revolution carried out through local means, and chiefly for local reasons. The attention to the primacy of the local suggests following four points: one, that the localist solution to arguably the biggest challenge thrown up by intensive industrialization and urbanization, circumstances; two, that the gradual inclusion of poor men and women at the local level and not simply their formal exclusion at the national level; three, that it was the locality and not the central state that became the chief site where collectivism and national efficiency exerted itself and was contested; four, that the obsession with imperial identity needs to be tempered by an appreciation for the enduring power of the local, which probably did more to block than to facilitate awareness.