"Very dangerous to use wikipedia as a font of all knowledge. It can lead a person to believe it explains everything. IT DOES NOT!"

Please, Iains, you're not going to claim that the 19th Century was NOT the age of scientific racism, or that the figures I mentioned were not among its leading theorists, or that Disraeli did not write what I quoted, are you? Really?

Beddoe, the chief English ideologue, comes from another source anyway.

I'd say that if there's prima facie evidence that the dominant ideology portrayed a class as sub-human, and it suffered horribly, then if you want to defend its treatment by a governing class that openly despised them, it's your turn to amass some evidence yourself.