4 - From social control to self-control, 1834–1857

Summary

The post-war era of economic and cultural turmoil and of institutional experiment ended, as we have now seen, with a burst of decisive public action, which carried a variety of long-contested issues to settlement. Catholic Emancipation, the New Police, the Beer Act, parliamentary reform, the abolition of colonial slavery and the New Poor Law all aroused varying degrees of passion and resentment as they made their way towards parliamentary acceptance between 1829 and 1834. Yet each proved to be the basis of a lasting adjustment. And, cumulatively, the measures helped to bring about a reshaping of public life into a form which proved remarkably resilient against challenge. It is true, as noted in the conclusion to chapter 3 above, that this resilience could not be certified in advance. ‘Reactionaries’ dislodged from the old institutions of government, and ‘radicals’ excluded from the new, continued to question the legitimacy of the reform settlements. Yet, as it proved, the early Victorian middle-class public, on the whole, did not. The challenge, from their point of view, was to make the new system work.

State, society and moral reform in an age of free trade

How might the new system work to help or hinder the work of committed moral reformers? What adjustments of expectation would need to be made? A first major ‘political fact’ which unavoidably shaped expectations was the re-emergence of executive government as a committed participant in moral reform activity.