Introduction to the Victorian Age (1830 - 1890)

QUEEN VICTORIA

Victoria, the daughter of the duke of Kent and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, was born in 1819. She inherited the throne of Great Britain at the age of eighteen, upon the death of her uncle, William IV in 1837, and reigned until 1901, bestowing her name upon her age. She married her mother's nephew, Albert (1819-1861), prince of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, in 1840, and until his death he remained the focal point of her life (she bore him nine children). Albert replaced Lord Melbourne, the Whig Prime Minister who had served her as her first personal and political tutor and instructor, as Victoria's chief advisor. Albert was moralistic, conscientious and progressive, if rather priggish, sanctimonious, and intellectually shallow, and with Victoria initiated various reforms and innovations; he organised the Great Exhibition of 1851, for example which was responsible for a great deal of popularity later enjoyed by the British monarchy. (In contrast to the Great Exhibition, housed in the Crystal Palace and viewed by proud Victorians as a monument of their own cultural and technological achievements, however, we may recall that the government over which Victoria and Albert presided had, in the midst of the potato famine of 1845, continued to permit the export of grain and cattle from Ireland to England while over a million Irish pessards starved to death).

After Albert's death in 1861 a desolate Victoria remained in self-imposed seclusion for ten years. Her genuine but obsessive mourning, which would occupy her for the rest of her life, played an important role in the evolution of what would become the "Victorian" mentality. Thereafter she lived at Windsor or Balmoral, travelling abroad once a year, but making few public appearances in Britain itself. Although she maintained a careful policy of official political neutrality, she did not get on at all well with Gladstone.  Eventually, however, she succumbed to the flattery of Disraeli, and permitted him (in an act which was both symbolic and theatrical) to have her crowned Empress of India in 1876. (As Punch noted at the time, "one good turn deserves another" and Victoria reciprocated by making Disraeli Earl of Beacousfield). She tended as a rule to take an active dislike of British politicians who criticised the conduct of the conservative regimes of Europe, many of which were, after all, run by her relatives. By 1870 her popularity was at its lowest ebb, (at the time the monarchy cost the nation [MD1] L 400,000 per annum, and many wondered whether the largely symbolic institution was worth the expense) but it increased steadily thereafter until her death. Her golden jubilee in 1887 was a grand national celebration, as was her diamond jubilee in 1897 (by then, employing the imperial " we", she had long been Kipling's " Widow of Windsor ", mother of the Empire). She died, a venerable old lady, at Osborne on January 22, 1901, having reigned for sixty-four years.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

MAJOR HISTORICAL EVENTS. During the Victorian Age, England reached its pinnacle of power and prestige. Not since ancient Rome had any nation so dominated Western society and the entire world. The basis for this glory was England's economic productivity. As the inaugurator of the Industrial Revolution, England itself along with the rest of the world marvelled at the grimy Midlands, "Workshop of the world". Between 1839 and 1849 the West Riding of Yorkshire alone expanded its fabric exports up to 2,400,000 yards. In 1848 Great Britain produced as much iron as all the rest of the world put together but, that figure was trebled by 1880. Between 1850 and 1872 the annual value of British exports soared from L 90,000,000 to L 315,000,000. By the latter year the country's foreign trade exceeded that of France, Germany and Italy combined and was almost four times that of the United States.

Trade was the stimulus to the growth of the vast empire. The private merchant adventures of the East India Company had brought under 'British control an India that was thirty-four times the size of England in area and 15 times in population. The practically empty continent of Australia almost 40 times the size of England was open to colonisation and commerce, as was Canada the 2-nd largest part of the world. Indeed English colonisation expanded in the 19^th century with almost the rapidity of the 20^th century. No other country emerged as a rival of England in territorial requisition until the century close and the relatively small English armed forces who, able to conquer over a forth of the globe, although tombs and plaques in many a quiet English church commemorating a son who died fighting, testify to the cost of empire building.

The economic power of England extended not merely within the empire but throughout the earth. The pound sterling was the standard money exchange of the globe, and world prices of all major commodities from grain to furs, and from cotton to steel, were determined in London. Almost every country was a debtor to England: much of 19^th century construction and development in the United States was financed from London and the British owned buildings in Shanghai, mines in Mexico, and the entire railroad system of the Argentine. This wealth and imperial grandeur mounted to unprecedented heights during the reign (1837-1901) of Queen Victoria, and the English faculty for transforming institutions while maintaining their outward semblance is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the noble lords of this era. For in the 19^th century, peerages were no longer conferred on the landed gentry as in the past but on the moguls of textile and railroad, steel and finance. Moreover, the reform spirit of the earlier 1830s continued under Victoria. The Poor Law Bill of 1838 extended benefits to the Irish, and the Tithe Law of the same year reduced the money sums paid by landowners to the Church of England. The Municipal Act (1840) further extended voting privileges. But reform had not kept pace with the discontent of workers. Britain's enormous productivity had been achieved by a frightful exploitation of the labouring classes, which were usually condemned to dire poverty, filthy conditions of work and living, debility, and painfully short life spans. Popular resentment had caused a Workingmen's Association in London to submit a charter to parliament in 1836, calling for universal manhood suffrage, vote by secret ballot, abolition of property qualifications for members of parliament, payment of salaries to members of parliament, equal electoral districts and annual parliaments. When the first national convention of the Chartists had its ham, Newport (Wales), and elsewhere, the second national convention of the Chartists in 1842 again presented its petition in vain, and the long-threatened "turn-out" followed. In the first great strike of modern industrialism the vast machinery of the Midlands ground to a stop. The new railroads, however, quickly poured troops into the troubled Midlands and the insurrection petered out before armed might. The goals of the Chartists were to be obtained but not by violence.

The English genius for pragmatism and compromise turned what might have become a bloody revolution into peaceful evolution. Moderate elements among the workers in 1845 formed the National Association of the United Traders for the Protection of Labour. This group was a revival of trade unionism, abandoning strikes and violence in favour of conciliation and arbitration. Prime Minister Peel, although a Conservative, in 1848 pushed through parliament the repeal of the Corn Laws. British agriculture thus lost its protectionist. Tariffs decreased and the workers were able to buy cheaper imported foodstuffs. Economic reality had compelled England to a position it has maintained ever since: unable to feed its own people, it must import food as well as raw materials to keep its industrial system functioning.

Crop failures in Ireland during the 1840s caused widespread suffering and forced multitudes of the Irish to emigrate to the Americas. The first great modern figure in the struggle for Irish nationalism was the moderate Daniel O'Connell, but after his death in 1847 radical groups stirred up an abortive rebellion the next year.

Chiefly at the urging of Prince Albert, the German husband of Victoria, the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London lavishly displayed the riches of the world. This was the prototype of all subsequent "world's fairs ". Prosperity was the keynote, and Victorian England saw the exhibition as the summit of human ingenuity and productivity. The breathtaking focus of the exhibition was the gigantic Crystal palace, fabricated from iron girders and vast expanses of glass.

The Crimean War (1854-1856) was the only European conflict directly involving the British between the Napoleonic period and World War I. Although Russia was not a major military power, the Allies (England, France, Turkey, Sardinia) fought against her inconclusively .The British army showed itself tragically outmoded and inadequate; the famous Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava demonstrating incredible courage and incredible administrative bungling. The horrible suffering of the troops due to unsatisfactory supplies was only partly alleviated by the Herculean nursing efforts of Florence Nightingale.

The Sepoy Rebellion of native Indian troops in 1857 impelled the British government in the next year to remove India from the political jurisdiction of the East India Company and place it under the crown. England's war with China (1857-1858) was part of the European manoeuvres for power in a rich but weakly governed land. General Charles George Gordon led the Ever-Victorious Army of Chinese against the T'ai P'ing rebels, finally crushing them by 1863.

The Companies' Act of 1862 has been termed as momentous as any parliamentary measure in history. This act permitted the formation of corporate entities with limited liability of stockholders (hence the Ltd.-"limited" - after the title of most English business firms). Previously a share-holder in a firm was entitled to his proportion of a company's profits and was also obligated to his proportion of its liabilities. When the City of Glasgow Bank (not Ltd) failed in 1879, shareholders were called upon to meet obligations hundreds of times greater than the value of their shares. Under limited liability a shareholder can lose no more than his initial investment. Limited liability therefore encouraged fantastic creation and expansion of concerns and produced the modern phenomenon of the multitudes of shareholders completely ignorant of the business in which they have invested and for all practical purposes excluded or self-excluded from the operation of the business. The modern corporation thus developed as an enterprise conducted by salaried executives and financed by vast sales of stock to many investors.

Benjamin Disraeli emerged as the dominant Conservative politician, but he surprisingly "dished the Whigs" by the Second Reform Bill (1867), which doubled the number of eligible voters and reapportioned more equitably the seats in parliament. With the triumph of the Liberal Party under William Gladstone, the reform movement continued: the Disestablishment Act of 1869, removing government support from the Church of Ireland (Protestant); the Irish Land Act of 1870, mollifying some of the evils of Irish land tenure; the Education Act of the same year, providing minimum essential education for all English children for the first time in history; the introduction in 1870 of competitive examinations for civil service posts; the University Tests Act of 1871, removing most of the religious restrictions upon students and faculty at Oxford and Cambridge; the Army Regulation Bill of the same year, reorganizing the military largely in the light of deficiencies revealed by the Crimean War; and the Ballot Act of 1872, first introducing the secret ballot. Under Gladstone the government followed chiefly a "Little England " policy, seeking to avoid foreign entanglements.

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Disraeli returned to office in 1874 avowing a "Big England" policy to further British prestige and interest throughout the world. By purchase of Suez Canal shares in 1875 Disraeli established English dominance of the link between East and West and initiated English penetration of Egypt. In the next year, Disraeli by the Royal Titles Bill had Victoria proclaimed Empress of India. Domestic measures during the second Disraeli ministry included: the Public Health Act (1875), still the backbone of English sanitary law; the Artisans' Dwelling Act (1875), the first real attempt of the government to improve housing of the poor; and the Merchant Shipping Act (1876) to regulate seaworthiness and loading of vessels. Unpopular colonial wars against the Afghans in Central Asia and the Zulus in South Africa, coupled with the poorest harvest of the century in 1879 caused Disraeli's ministry to fall.

The second Gladstone ministry, starting in 1880, was highlighted by two spectacular personalities. Pious Victorians were shocked at the 1880 election to parliament of the militant atheist Charles Bradlaugh. The long quarrel about his taking of the oath (including "So help me God") finally resulted in his seating in 1886 and the passage under his sponsorship of the Affirmation Bill of 1888, removing all religious qualifications for membership in parliament. Charles Parnell, though a Protestant led the Home Rule for Ireland Party in repeated and eloquent demands for a separate legislature for Ireland. Parnell suffered political disaster in 1890, when named as co-respondent in a divorce suit and he died the next year.

Under Gladstone the Employer's Liability Act (1880) for the first time assured compensation for workers injured at their employment, and the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act (1883) limited the expenditures of political parties in campaigning. Gladstone's Franchise Bill of 1884 virtually provided manhood suffrage, excluding only domestic servants, bachelors living with their families, and men of no fixed abode.

As the century neared conclusion, England's dominance of the world was being challenged. Industrialization of continental nations was belatedly catching up with England's production, and Gemany, united for the first time in 1870, was rising with the greatest rapidity. A worried Conservative administration, led by Lord Salisbury after Disraeli's death in 1881, saw the key to global power in the British fleet. The Naval Defense Act of 1889 stipulated that Britain should maintain a navy equal to the combined fleets of the next two strongest powers; this policy was followed until World War I.

Further to worry the Conservatives was the rising tide of English socialism. In 1883 the Fabian Society (named for the ancient Roman conqueror of Hannibal, Fabius "the delayer") was founded, sparked by Sidney and Beatrice Webb along with George Bernard Shaw. The group believed that universal suffrage and fully representational government would eventually insure socialism. Labour showed its mounting strength and self-awareness with the London dock strike of 1889. The Independent Labour Party, frankly socialistic, was founded in 1893; by 1906 it had twenty-nine members in parliament.

In the Diamond Jubilee of 1897 the British empire and the entire world lavishly celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of Victoria's accession, and Kipling's words of warning in the "Recessional" sounded hollow to an England intoxicated with majestic power and world dominance. Sobering was the onset in 1899 of the Boer War in South Africa, where a small number of resolute white Afrikanders fought the empire almost to a stand-still. The death of Queen Victoria in 1901 deeply affected the empire. Hardly any of her subjects could remember a previous English monarch, for her reign was the longest in European history, except for that of Louis XIV. During her reign England had achieved prosperity and power previously unparalleled in human history, but England's star, almost imperceptibly, was on the wane, and even the least sensitive of Englishmen knew that an era had passed.

Victoria, ascending the throne in 1837, counted about seventeen million subjects in the United Kingdom; at her death the population of the United Kingdom exceeded thirty-seven-and-a-half million. Most of the huge increase took place in the cities. Although many English villages in 1837 still looked much as they were in Chaucer's day, before the century's end almost every village had been transformed. Arnold Bennett recalled from his childhood the separate "Five Towns" that in 1910 were united into the giant Stoke-on-Trent. Into many a sequestered village the railroads breathed the soot of coal dust and lured village youth to the mushrooming industrial cities. Whole counties were blanketed with the smoke pouring from factory into a nation of factory workers.

The real beneficiaries of this labour were the members of the triumphant middle class. Even a sophisticated French author and critic like Hippolyte Taine, visiting England in the 1870s, was awed by the display of national wealth. "Paris", he declared, is mediocre compared with these squares, these crescents, these circles and tows of monumental buildings of massive stone, with porticos, with sculptured fronts, these spacious streets. Assuredly Napoleon III demolished and rebuilt Paris only because he had lived in London. But even this London splendor paled before the baronial magnificence of Midlands manufacturers, where the magnates of the north ruled industrial empires from palaces that a Roman emperor would have envied.

The foreign world disliked the English merchant, but it greatly envied him and grudgingly admired him. The honesty and integrity of the English manufacturer and merchant were a global byword; to this day Argentinians assert palabra ingles (the word of an Englishman) when they mean the unqualified truth. Thus, we can see that Victorian repressive morality was largely due to deep-seated conviction, not to hypocrisy as it has often seemed to the 20^th century. The Victorians possessed an English conscience and were not exclusively unfeeling exploiters of their fellows; the hosts of reform measures in the era testify to a humanity behind the wall of stock-holders. Private charity and public service often showed the bourgeois to be worthy inheritors of the best traditions of a superseded aristocracy and bulwarks of a stable England.

CULTURAL CONDITIONS

"Victorian", as we use the word, is wholly accurate as a label simply for the chronological period 1837-1901, the reign of Queen Victoria. Much more dubious is the use of Victorian to characterize the British spirit during this era. In the inevitable reaction of the early 20^th century the term meant smug, stuffy, narrow-minded, prudential, moral, hypocritically righteous, and naively optimistic. The later 20^th Century has tended to see Victorianism as moral earnestness, astounding material progress, confidence, and a serenity strange to our troubled times. In truth, the Victorian age was an era of extraordinary complexity and variety of viewpoint, as its writers demonstrate. But, oversimplified, the spirit of the period falls into three broad categories: Victorian Orthodoxy, Traditionalists, and Innovators.

VICTORIAN ORTHODOXY

The orthodoxy of the period (what we usually mean when employing the term Victorian) is the middle-class spirit of the 19^th Century. It is this spirit that dominated the age and put its impress upon the queen herself. The early Victoria was a vivacious girl who was a bit annoyed by the repressions of the time, such as the dull, pious Sundays, but the aged woman had fully conformed to the sedate image desired by her middle-class subjects.

The principal factor in the mind-set we usually term "Victorian" was Evangelical Protestantism, as noted by the Frenchman, Halevy, perhaps the greatest authority upon this era. A sizeable proportion of the middle class consisted of Wesleyans (Methodists), intent upon transforming all society into a decorous, moral institution consonant with the preachings of John Wesley. The nonconformist groups (Baptists, Congregationalists, etc.) were almost all staunchly middle class and evangelical. Within the Church of England itself, the same evangelical forces were manifest; the sporting and drinking clerics of the 18^th Century (as Trollope notes in his novels) vanished in favour of sober and moralistic parish clergymen. Evangelicanism invested 19^th Century English nobility (frequently middle-class in origin) with a dignity and rectitude seldom found even as late as the Regency. Evangelicalism also established amid the proletariat a number of the age sprang not from the radicalism of a Shelley or an Owen but from the Evangelicals. Indifferent to tradition, the Evangelicals sought to form the Holy Society right here and now in each heart. This spirit exuded Protestant individualism.

Only slightly less instrumental than evangelicalism in forming Victorian orthodoxy was the economic and political philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. Benthamite reform was as potent during the "Conservative" regimes of Peel and Disraeli as during the "Liberal" administrations. Benthanism worked in two directions, (occasionally at cross-purposes). In its insistence upon laissez faire it sought to insure freedom of action for all individuals capable of useful and intelligent conduct. Hence such measures as the repeal of the Corn Laws; but, even more important here, was its firm support for the unrestrained competition of a free enterprise system. Thus it worked hand-in-glove with the triumphant bourgeoisie, who benefited spectacularly under free capitalism. On the other hand, the insistence of Bethamism upon "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" called for the restraint of criminals and lunatics and the protection of women, children, and paupers in the interest of a wholesome society. It must be remembered, therefore, that the reform spirit of the era was fundamentally a defence, (a shoring-up) of the bourgeois capitalistic system, intent not upon altering the system but upon strengthening and smoothing its operation.

Most Victorians were conditioned, by Bethamism and their own bourgeois origins, to view art and literature with two entirely different attitudes, which led to two entirely different expressions of popular art.

On one hand, average Victorians frequently looked upon art as a pleasant superfluity that provided occasional enjoyable relief from the persistent drive for wealth. The taste of the populace therefore often equated art with a treacly romanticism, a glamorous escapism devoid of the rebellious and disturbing characteristics of the great Romantics. This demand resulted in an abundant supply of sweet, coy, sentimental art of the type Meredith called "rose-pink". The medievalism of the age distilled the colourful and charming aspects of the past, avoiding the vulgar, violent, and sensual. Perhaps the ultimate of romanticism in the era, possible only with the complete victory of the bourgeoisie, was the romanticizing of the middle-class career itself.

On the other hand, many Victorians of the practical middle-class considered realism as "the real art". Properly, 19^th Century realism is best termed "bourgeois realism", and it demonstrated the following aspects:

Bourgeois characters central to the portrait. Most Victorian novels depict the middle-class and ascribe bourgeois viewpoints to the admirable aristocrat and proletarian. Even in historical fiction and poetic medievalism the characters in effect are transplanted in Victorian bourgeoisie.

Bourgeois experience of life. It is the everyday vicissitudes of bourgeois struggle, the urge to financial security and social acceptance, and the problems of domestic and commercial life that preoccupy these realistic characters.

Bourgeois ethics. Realistic 19^th Century literature demonstrates the success of those who conform to the middle class concepts, and the failure of the unconventional and rebellious.

Bourgeois surroundings. Middle class places of residence, work and resort dominate the backgrounds. Solid, comfortable often cluttered and tasteless settings mirror the possessive goals of the characters and symbolize their purposes and natures.

Largely a middle-class product anyway, the novel in the Victorian period became the most popular form of literature and, for most writers, the only reasonably certain way to earn a living. Through the bourgeois realistic novel the Victorian age offers a fuller picture of its life than we find in the literature of any previous epoch.

The most admired writers of this age obviously were those who supported the Victorian orthodoxy. Tennyson was the poet laureate of the bourgeoisie, Macaulay - its historian and Spencer - its philosopher. When Tennyson in irate fashion deplores the passing of "old England", it is actually the weakening of the Victorian orthodoxy that he regrets. In his military reform spirit, Dickens is really a true Benthamite, resolutely working to maintain the middle class. The so-called "laughing critics", like Gilbert and Sullivan, are generally attacking the deviations from the bourgeois orthodoxy, and Matthew Arnold sought not to overthrow the bourgeois ascendancy but to render it more enlightened.

Broadly it can be hazarded that the majority of English writers reaching their maturity between 1837 and 1875 accepted the Victorian orthodoxy and in essence expressed it.

TRADITIONALISTS

We would label this group conservative, but the term is avoided because 19^th Century conservatism differs significantly in meaning from 20^th Century conservatism. Essentially what is meant here is that the intoxication with material progress in Victorian England did not entirely eradicate a persistence of traditionalism and a desire for institutions unaffected by change. To some, Evangelical Protestantism and its individualism seemed an abandonment of structure in favour of chaos. The powerful religious need for an unchanging rock amid the convulsions of the era produced, most notably, the Oxford Movement (detailed more fully under Cardinal Newman). Newman himself entered the Roman Catholic Church, and many other religious and intellectual figures of the period were also converted to Roman Catholicism. Within the Church of England, the same spirit produced Anglo-Catholicism (often termed "High Episcopal" in the United States), which differed essentially from Roman Catholicism only in ritual and Mass in English instead of Latin, optional vows of celibacy for secular clergy, and refusal to admit primacy of the Bishop of Rome (the Pope). To many moderate Englishmen (as Trollope reveals of himself in his Barsetshire novels) Anglo-Catholicism proved more attractive than Evangelicalism because of its dignity, colour and sense of long-continuing tradition. Within the last one hundred years Anglo-Catholicism has probably been the most dynamic element in the Church of England, has moved the entire Established Church in a more Catholic direction, and has tended to diminish the English antipathy to Roman Catholicism.

Traditionalist reaction to Benthamism produced, especially in Carlyle, a distrust of and a distaste for a free competitive society and extended franchise. Carlyle deeply regretted the passing of a paternalistic, agricultural system in favour of wage-slavery, and he contrasted the protected peasant of the past with the rootless proletarian of the industrial age, concluding that modern society had produced far less happiness and security for the average man. Carlyle saw the vast increase in the electorate as producing vulgarity and demagoguery, for he deeply believed that men must be led by great leaders rather than electing officials to be mere tools of the popular voice. In many respects he was a belated feudalist or possibly a protofascist. His age listened to him respectfully, but continued on the Benthamite path.

Both of the reactions discussed in this section are fundamental criticisms of the Victorian middle-class dominance, not for the sake of its correction but rather with an eye to its demise and a desire to return to an earlier pattern of life, either real or supposed.

INNOVATORS

We might label this trend liberalism, but again the term is avoided because of the great difference between 19^th Century liberalism and 20^th Century liberalism. As early as 1859 Fitzgerald in The Rubaiya expressed the intellectual's scorn for Victorian Evangelicalism and, in fact for orthodox faith generally. It can be said, broadly speaking that most of the significant English writers reaching their maturity between 1875 and World War I had lost religious faith. Some, like Hardy, were deeply pained by the loss; others, like Wilde, professed faith at the approach of death or in severe psychological disturbances; most, however, had abandoned any sincerely felt conventional religion and were not much incommoded thereby. The major causes for this break with orthodoxy can be found in the emergence of the intelligentsia and in the contentions of science.

At the century's end many intellectuals were sufficiently disillusioned with the middle-class ascendancy to sympathize with or vigorously advocate socialism. This, of course, was a native English brand; relatively few Englishmen became Marxian socialists, even though Das Kapital (1867-94) by Karl Marx was written in London. English socialists were intent not upon a complete change to a regulated economy, a nationalized industry, and a transfer of power from the middle class to the workers.

Both these "leftist" tendencies (seeking an overthrow of the Victorian) orthodoxy and looking to a new and different system ahead) may be traced largely to the development of the 19^th Century intelligentsia. We use this latter term in the sense of the rebellious intellectuals of recent generations who are at odds with their age impatient with any orthodoxy whatsoever. The major Victorian authors (Tennyson, Arnold) had made the transition from being voices of an educated elite, as were 18^th Century authors, to being voices for and to the triumphant Victorian middle-class. By the last quarter of the century, however, most young writers and thinkers had lost sympathy with the bourgeoisie even though the intelligentsia had itself developed from the middle-class. Since the spectacle of the intelligentsia bitterly railing against current society is still with us deep into the 20^th Century, it is advisable to explore the reasons for this hostility.

The 19^th and 20^th centuries have produced more educated and articulate persons than there are jobs commensurate with their abilities. Many of the intelligentsia (as yet greater in percentage in Europe and England than in United States) are annoyed with every aspect of a system that will not support them adequately or provide them with the artistic and creative expression they desire.

In conclusion, the Reform Act of 1832 had transformed political power from the upper to the middle classes, but failed to benefit the labouring classes. The economic depression that had begun about four years later, the Poor Law of 1834, and the ruthlessness of the manufacturing classes (laissez - faire, iron law of wages, Malthusianism) excited discontent among the working classes, which attributed their hardships to the exclusion of politics. The "People's Charter" of 1838 advocated:

1) universal manhood suffrage;

voting by secret ballot;

annual election of Parliament;

abolition of the property qualification for membership in the House of Commons;

payment of salary to the members of the House of Commons;

equal electoral districts.

After 1840 the movement lost a large part of its parliamentary and took on a more socialistic and revolutionary character. Demonstrations occurred in industrial centres. On several occasions the general strike was measurably effective. As trade improved and economic conditions became more settled, the movement languished and died. By 1881, however, all the objectives of the "People's Charter" had been obtained, excepting that of an annual parliament. The significance of the Chartist movement is that for the first time in England the people were class - conscious in their opposition to the half - way, class - inspired measures of bourgeois reformism; it was the vanguard of the radical working - class movement.

The age is remarkable for its scientific progress. The century was an age of inventions. In medicine, the figures of Pasteur, Lister, Paget, and Koch stand out; in the field of natural science, those of Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, Herbert Spencer, A. R. Wallace, Mill, and Tyndall. In communication and transportation came the greatest advance in material progress; the building of railways, communication by telephone, telegraph and the wireless, the beginning of the automobile and of transportation by air. Industry was revolutionized by the application of machinery, steam and electricity. The art of photography was perfected. Despite all aspects of scientific progress, however, very little was accomplished in ameliorating industrial slavery of men, women and children.

It was an era of peace. The few colonial wars that broke out during the Victorian epoch did not seriously disturb the national life. There was one continental war that directly affected Britain; The Crimean War - and one that affected her indirectly, though strongly - The Franco - German struggle; yet neither of those caused any performed changes. In America the great civil struggle left scars that were soon to be obliterated by the wise statesmanship of her rulers. The whole age may therefore generally be described as one of peaceful activity. In the earlier stages the lessening surges of The French revolution were still felt; but by the middle of the century they had almost completely died down, and other hopes and ideals, largely pacific, were gradually taking place.

The material development in the period is remarkable. It was an age alive with her activities. There was a revolution in commercial enterprise, due to the great increase of available markets, and, as a result of this, an immense advance in the use of mechanical devices. The new commercial energy was reflected in the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was greeted as the inauguration of a new era of prosperity. On the other side of this picture of commercial expansion, we see the appalling social conditions of the new industrial cities, the filthy slums, and the exploitation of cheap labour (often of children), the painful fight by the enlightened few to introduce social legislation and the slow extension of the franchise. Such writers as Dickens and Elisabeth Gaskell vividly painted the evils of the Industrial Revolution, and they called forth the missionary efforts of men like Charles Kingsley.

As far as intellectual development is concerned there can be little doubt that in many cases material wealth produced a hardness of Temper and an impatience of projects and ideas that brought no return in hard cash; yet it is to the credit of this age that intellectual activities were so numerous. There was quite a revolution in scientific thought following upon the works of Darwin and his school, and an immense outburst of social and political theorising which was represented in England by the writings of men like Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill. In addition, popular education became a practical thing. This, in its turn produced a new hunger for intellectual food, and resulted in a great increase in the production of a press and of other more durable species of literature.