The wars with France also exacerbated the tensions stemming from the industrial and demographic changes that had been building in England in the second half of the eighteenth century. The displacement of rural farm labor associated with the commercialization of agriculture combined with rapid overall population increase from the mid-eighteenth century onward to create a class of displaced and desperate laborers. The mass migration of labor to urban and industrial centers disrupted previous patterns of rural social organization, with new systems to take their place in the ever-expanding cities at best improvised and at worst nonexistent.22 Over these years Britain went from being primarily a rural to primarily an urban society, and yet the historic British reluctance to create state institutions that could impinge on British liberty meant that many problems associated with urbanization were not addressed until they became acute. Britain’s path to industrialization and urbanization was thoroughly unplanned, with no foreign model to copy as a positive example, to learn from as a negative example, or even to prove that society could weather such upheavals. Benjamin Disraeli was only the most famous of the many authors and social commentators who grappled with the “condition of England” question in these decades, seeking solutions to the urgent and fundamental question of how society might be reorganized.
The shift to a capitalist industrial economy involved an ideological shift in moral values as well as physical relocation. Institutions such as wage labor and the factory system were initially denounced by many in the upper ranks as well as in the lower orders as shocking innovations that ignored the mutual obligations inherent in the relationship between property owners and those who worked for them. The idea that employers dispatched all their obligations to workers simply with a cash payment, regardless of the short-term or long-term needs of those workers or their families, might be one means by which the middle class was increasing its wealth, but it was not a value held by the gentry or the aristocracy.23 In arguing against such a system and for the reciprocal responsibility inherent in the relationship between workers and employers, the lower class was seemingly on solid ground. They could claim not only the sanction of religion but also that of long-standing upper-class practices that had governed much of rural life.
And yet, in this struggle over the fundamental economic relationship among the classes, the middle class succeeded in claiming the language of morality as its own. The crisis of the French Revolution and the need to maintain both public order and economic production over a decades-long period of social upheaval were credited with helping to ease upper-class objections to middle-class economic and social innovations. But it was the growth of the Evangelical movement within the Church of England, and the strong identification of the middle class with this rigorous version of the official faith, that allowed them to establish the ground of morality as their own. Although there were many working-class Evangelicals, and the movement within the Church of England was pioneered by many powerful members of the upper class, such as William Wilberforce, in its emphasis on personal morality, responsibility to family, and loyalty to established authorities, Evangelical religion was well suited to the economic and social interests of the middle class, and over time it became most strongly identified with that group. For Evangelical men, the test of a man’s character was his personal morality and his success at supporting his family, rather than his fulfillment of obligations to the community at large, and in this way Evangelical religion helped create the first generations of Britain’s industrial middle class.24 The Evangelical movement had been growing in strength even before the outbreak of the French Revolution, yet it was the fundamental threat that the revolution represented that increased the influence and power of Evangelicals within English governing circles. Evangelical religion proved a successful vehicle for shoring up a greater base of support for the aristocratic government in England and was a substantial factor in the English upper class’s weathering the challenges of the wars intact and in control.25
The growing power of Evangelicals in society had implications for personal as well as economic morality. Michael Mason, Roy Porter, Lesley Hall, and Linda Colley have discussed the reformation of manners that British society underwent during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars and how it affected individual behavior at all class levels.26 Modes of public behavior associated with the upper class in the eighteenth century defined individual propriety differently. Men and women in the upper classes had latitude for indiscretions within marriage, so long as certain rules of etiquette and decorum were observed, and this period in general is associated with greater freedom of expression on sexual topics.27
Although these patterns were suppressed in the nineteenth century, the manners and morals at the highest levels of British society remained different from and often antagonistic to those of the middle class. Upper-class masculinity, especially, retained its distinct character, tolerating activities such as gambling, the consumption of alcohol, and the enjoyment of violent physical sports. Although some upper-class men attempted to better justify their privileged position in society through the adoption of aspects of the middle-class work ethic, it was equally acceptable to emphasize that only those who did not have to earn their fortunes had the leisure and broad perspective necessary for the governance of society as a whole. The upper-class dandy of the early nineteenth century did not fit a middle-class man’s definition of an individual of good character, but the dandy’s conviviality and manners could secure his reputation among his upper-class peers: reputation was more central to an upper-class man’s status than was the more middle-class concept of character.28 The distinctions and antagonisms between upper- and middle-class men’s ideas of morality and masculinity remained sharp.
Also affected by the changing moral climate at the start of the century, even working-class individuals strongly influenced by Methodism drew the lines of responsibility governing relations within the family and the community differently from members of the middle and upper classes. Among the working class, for example, greater tolerance was displayed toward premarital sexual relations, provided a couple intended to marry, and a higher value was placed on obligations to the local community.29 Increasingly in the nineteenth century, these and other working-class values came under attack as not only different from middle-class understandings of morality but also as inferior to them and the cause of the economic distress of the working class.
Middle-class notions of economic and personal morality combined in the reform of the Poor Law in 1834. One result for the working class was the abolition of a previous system of “outdoor” assistance on which many periodically depended and which many considered integral to the system of mutual obligations between the classes. The New Poor Law also stigmatized working-class women who became pregnant out of wedlock, making a woman solely responsible for the maintenance of her illegitimate children. Yet in an age when divorce was attainable only through an act of Parliament, pregnancy before marriage served an important function for the working class. Because the labor of children was vital to the survival of the working-class household, pregnancy before marriage offered evidence that a couple could have children together; it was therefore compatible with working-class morality and often seen as an economic survival strategy. Without a voice in Parliament, the working class had no opportunity to articulate the logic and morality of such practices in Westminster. The final legislation, which affected the lives of millions of Britons for generations, was framed around Evangelical notions of morality and middle-class economic imperatives.
The Poor Law reform was only one of many examples of the nineteenth-century reworking of institutions of government and the implementation of new ideas about its responsibility and scope. The state’s new authority in shaping the role of the individual in society was also evident in the modest protections offered by the first Factory Acts and in the development of new systems of policing and new experiments in incarceration designed to modify behavior through surveillance and discipline. Underpinning these changes were newly ascendant ideologies stemming from liberal political and economic philosophy and the Evangelical revival, and the new concentrations of wealth and state power stemming from industrialization and wartime government expansion made such experiments possible. In an era when many felt that the old ties of local community and deference were fast coming undone, the search for new systems that