Young England
Encyclopedia
Young England was a Victorian era
political group. The group was born on the playing fields of Cambridge and Eton
. For the most part, its unofficial membership was confined to a splinter group of Tory
aristocrats who had attended public school together, among them George Smythe
, Lord John Manners
, Henry Thomas Hope
and Alexander Baillie-Cochrane
. The group's leader and figurehead, however, was Benjamin Disraeli, who bore the distinction of having neither an aristocratic background nor an Eton or Cambridge education.
Richard Monckton Milnes is credited with coining the name Young England, a name which suggested a relationship between Young England and the mid-century groups Young Ireland
, Young Italy, and Young Germany
. However, these political organizations, while nationalistic like Young England, commanded considerable popular support and were socially liberal and politically egalitarian.
Young England promulgated a conservative and romantic species of Social Toryism. Its political message described an idealized feudalism
: an absolute monarch
and a strong Established Church
, with the philanthropy
of noblesse oblige
as the basis for its paternalistic form of social organization.
philosophy, which they blamed equally for Victorian social injustices.
Thus, Young England was inspired by the same reaction to individualistic and rationalistic Radicalism that engendered the Oxford Movement
, the Evangelical movement, and the Social Toryism of Robert Peel
and Lord Ashley. The association of Young England with Tractarianism can be traced to the early influence of Frederick Faber (1814-1863), a follower of John Henry Newman, upon Lord John Manners and George Smythe.
Like the founders of the Oxford Movement who ardently opposed the Victorian Radicalism centered in competitive economic self-determination, the founders of Young England rejected utilitarian ethics, blamed the privileged class for abdicating its moral leadership, and blamed the church for neglecting its duties to the poor, among them alms-giving. Expanding the Tractarians' reverence for the religious past to include a reactionary political agenda, Young England claimed to have found the model for a new Victorian social order in England's Christian feudal past.
Like Evangelicalism
, Young England reflected the enthusiasm for confronting the middle-class crisis of Victorian
conscience. In their advocacy of an exclusive, though tolerant, ecclesiastical authority, Young England's plan for a revitalized state church followed Coleridge's conception of an English clerisy.
Like Manners' England's Trust and Plea for National Holy-days (1843), George Smythe's Historical Fancies (1844) earnestly imagines a revival of feudalism, but the solutions both Manners and Smythe offer for industrial disorder are, in spite of the increasingly urban character of Victorian society, chiefly agrarian.
Disraeli's trilogy Coningsby
(1844), Sybil
(1845), and Tancred
(1847) details the intellectual arguments of Young England while showing an informed sympathy for England's poor. Tancred, however, noted a move away from the ideals of Young England and was published at a time when Young England as a political group was largely defunct.
The three novels respectively elaborate the political, social, and religious message of Young England, which included reform of industrial working conditions and, along with a strong Established church, the religious toleration of Catholics and Jews
.
. Fighting against the New Poor Law with the Social Tories, they also at times sided with the Benthamites, as in 1844, when Young England helped the radicals defeat a bill which would have strengthened the powers of magistrates dealing with labor disputes.
, although a tempering of his unqualified support for Young England's social-political ideals surfaces in his novel Tancred, or the New Crusade.
At least two years earlier, Disraeli's political opportunism already had damaged Young England's credibility. In 1845, Disraeli opposed the Maynooth Grant Bill
, a legislative act that permanently increased the funding of the Roman Catholic seminary at Maynooth in Ireland.
Further, Disraeli's opposition to the repeal of the Corn Laws
in 1846 tied him more closely to the landed aristocratic interests.
The utopian, neo-feudal dreams of Manners, Smythe, and Disraeli reflect the same crisis of Victorian conscience that inspired the similarly utopian Owenite socialism of the political left. Like Owenism, Young England soon failed, but too ambitiously conservative in a new democratic era, it quietly failed without experiment.
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
political group. The group was born on the playing fields of Cambridge and Eton
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
. For the most part, its unofficial membership was confined to a splinter group of Tory
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
aristocrats who had attended public school together, among them George Smythe
George Smythe, 7th Viscount Strangford
George Smythe, 7th Viscount Strangford , styled The Honourable George Smythe until 1855, was a British Conservative politician, best known for his association with Benjamin Disraeli and the Young England movement...
, Lord John Manners
John Manners, 7th Duke of Rutland
|-...
, Henry Thomas Hope
Henry Thomas Hope
Henry Thomas Hope was a British MP and patron of the arts.-Biography:He was the eldest of Thomas Hope and Louisa de la Poer Beresford's three sons, but was estranged from his brothers when he inherited their father's art collections, wealth and property along with...
and Alexander Baillie-Cochrane
Alexander Baillie-Cochrane
Alexander Dundas Ross Cochrane-Wishart-Baillie, 1st Baron Lamington , better known as Alexander Baillie-Cochrane, was a British Conservative politician perhaps best known for his association with Young England in the early 1840s.The son of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Thomas John Cochrane, he succeeded...
. The group's leader and figurehead, however, was Benjamin Disraeli, who bore the distinction of having neither an aristocratic background nor an Eton or Cambridge education.
Richard Monckton Milnes is credited with coining the name Young England, a name which suggested a relationship between Young England and the mid-century groups Young Ireland
Young Ireland
Young Ireland was a political, cultural and social movement of the mid-19th century. It led changes in Irish nationalism, including an abortive rebellion known as the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848. Many of the latter's leaders were tried for sedition and sentenced to penal transportation to...
, Young Italy, and Young Germany
Young Germany
Young Germany was a group of German writers which existed from about 1830 to 1850. It was essentially a youth ideology . Its main proponents were Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt and Ludolf Wienbarg; Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne and Georg Büchner were also considered part of the movement...
. However, these political organizations, while nationalistic like Young England, commanded considerable popular support and were socially liberal and politically egalitarian.
Young England promulgated a conservative and romantic species of Social Toryism. Its political message described an idealized feudalism
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
: an absolute monarch
Absolute monarchy
Absolute monarchy is a monarchical form of government in which the monarch exercises ultimate governing authority as head of state and head of government, his or her power not being limited by a constitution or by the law. An absolute monarch thus wields unrestricted political power over the...
and a strong Established Church
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
, with the philanthropy
Philanthropy
Philanthropy etymologically means "the love of humanity"—love in the sense of caring for, nourishing, developing, or enhancing; humanity in the sense of "what it is to be human," or "human potential." In modern practical terms, it is "private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of...
of noblesse oblige
Noblesse oblige
Noblesse oblige is a French phrase literally meaning "nobility obliges".The Dictionnaire de l’Académie française defines it thus:# Whoever claims to be noble must conduct himself nobly....
as the basis for its paternalistic form of social organization.
Expansion
Through countryside speeches and pamphlet distribution, Young England attempted sporadically to proselytize to the lower classes. However, the few tracts, the poetry, and the novels that embodied the social vision of Young England were directed to a "New Generation" of educated, religious, and socially conscious conservatives, who, like Young Englanders, were appalled at the despiritualizing effects of industrialization and the perceived amorality of BenthamiteJeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...
philosophy, which they blamed equally for Victorian social injustices.
Thus, Young England was inspired by the same reaction to individualistic and rationalistic Radicalism that engendered the Oxford Movement
Oxford Movement
The Oxford Movement was a movement of High Church Anglicans, eventually developing into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose members were often associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of lost Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy...
, the Evangelical movement, and the Social Toryism of Robert Peel
Robert Peel
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to 29 June 1846...
and Lord Ashley. The association of Young England with Tractarianism can be traced to the early influence of Frederick Faber (1814-1863), a follower of John Henry Newman, upon Lord John Manners and George Smythe.
Like the founders of the Oxford Movement who ardently opposed the Victorian Radicalism centered in competitive economic self-determination, the founders of Young England rejected utilitarian ethics, blamed the privileged class for abdicating its moral leadership, and blamed the church for neglecting its duties to the poor, among them alms-giving. Expanding the Tractarians' reverence for the religious past to include a reactionary political agenda, Young England claimed to have found the model for a new Victorian social order in England's Christian feudal past.
Like Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
, Young England reflected the enthusiasm for confronting the middle-class crisis of Victorian
Victorian morality
Victorian morality is a distillation of the moral views of people living at the time of Queen Victoria's reign and of the moral climate of the United Kingdom throughout the 19th century in general, which contrasted greatly with the morality of the previous Georgian period...
conscience. In their advocacy of an exclusive, though tolerant, ecclesiastical authority, Young England's plan for a revitalized state church followed Coleridge's conception of an English clerisy.
Literature
Disraeli had outlined the principles of Young England in The Vindication of the English Constitution (1835), which characteristically opens with an attack on utilitarian beliefs, but Lord John Manners and George Smythe more widely disseminated its neo-feudal ideals in verse and narrative forms.Like Manners' England's Trust and Plea for National Holy-days (1843), George Smythe's Historical Fancies (1844) earnestly imagines a revival of feudalism, but the solutions both Manners and Smythe offer for industrial disorder are, in spite of the increasingly urban character of Victorian society, chiefly agrarian.
Disraeli's trilogy Coningsby
Coningsby (novel)
Coningsby, or The New Generation, is an English political novel by Benjamin Disraeli published in 1844.-Background:The book is set against a background of the real political events of the 1830s in England that followed the enactment of the Reform Bill of 1832...
(1844), Sybil
Sybil (novel)
Sybil, or The Two Nations is an 1845 novel by Benjamin Disraeli. Published in the same year as Friedrich Engels's The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, Sybil traces the plight of the working classes of England...
(1845), and Tancred
Tancred (novel)
Tancred; or, The New Crusade is a novel by Benjamin Disraeli, first published by Henry Colburn in three volumes. Together with Coningsby and Sybil it forms a sequence sometimes called the Young England trilogy...
(1847) details the intellectual arguments of Young England while showing an informed sympathy for England's poor. Tancred, however, noted a move away from the ideals of Young England and was published at a time when Young England as a political group was largely defunct.
The three novels respectively elaborate the political, social, and religious message of Young England, which included reform of industrial working conditions and, along with a strong Established church, the religious toleration of Catholics and Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
.
Political Role
In their political activities, Young England relied on the effectiveness of their alliance-building in Parliament and made itself heard politically in the 1840s. Most of what Young England accomplished in the House of Commons was accomplished through temporary coalitions with both the Social Tories and the RadicalsRadicals (UK)
The Radicals were a parliamentary political grouping in the United Kingdom in the early to mid 19th century, who drew on earlier ideas of radicalism and helped to transform the Whigs into the Liberal Party.-Background:...
. Fighting against the New Poor Law with the Social Tories, they also at times sided with the Benthamites, as in 1844, when Young England helped the radicals defeat a bill which would have strengthened the powers of magistrates dealing with labor disputes.
Decline
Attesting to its fragile and narrow political base, Young England died with scarcely an obituary some few years after 1847, when Disraeli effectively withdrew from the Parliamentary coalition. Disraeli's disagreements were chiefly with his longtime conservative rival, PeelRobert Peel
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to 29 June 1846...
, although a tempering of his unqualified support for Young England's social-political ideals surfaces in his novel Tancred, or the New Crusade.
At least two years earlier, Disraeli's political opportunism already had damaged Young England's credibility. In 1845, Disraeli opposed the Maynooth Grant Bill
Maynooth Grant
The Maynooth Grant was a major British political controversy of the 1840s which arose partly due to the general anti-Irish and anti-Catholic feelings of the British population....
, a legislative act that permanently increased the funding of the Roman Catholic seminary at Maynooth in Ireland.
Further, Disraeli's opposition to the repeal of the Corn Laws
Corn Laws
The Corn Laws were trade barriers designed to protect cereal producers in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland against competition from less expensive foreign imports between 1815 and 1846. The barriers were introduced by the Importation Act 1815 and repealed by the Importation Act 1846...
in 1846 tied him more closely to the landed aristocratic interests.
Legacy
Unlike Social Toryism, which it resembled philosophically, Young England did not survive to confront and oppose the socialist revival of the eighties. At its best, Young England influenced mid-Victorian reform legislation but never came close to gaining the popular support required to realise even partially its deeply conservative social vision.The utopian, neo-feudal dreams of Manners, Smythe, and Disraeli reflect the same crisis of Victorian conscience that inspired the similarly utopian Owenite socialism of the political left. Like Owenism, Young England soon failed, but too ambitiously conservative in a new democratic era, it quietly failed without experiment.