If you consider the conditions of English workers in the 1840s & 1850s as described by Marx & Engels, and if in addition you consider the _change_ for the worse of that condition between (say) 1750 and 1840, also as described by Marx & Engels, and if, finally, you consider that the engine of that change had been the textile industry (fueled by exploitation of the u.s. south, India, & China), then it becomes fairly obvious that the "Empire" was an utter disaster for English workers. In fact, the Empire could be regarded as a huge, terroristic machine designed primarily to pump surplus labor out of English workers.
I know we've covered this territory before, but at a certain point the Empire begins to benefit English and other western European workers. This is the material explanation for Bernsteinism, after all.
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