State Intervention in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain: Fact or Fiction?

1983 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.W.J. Bartrip
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
The Third ◽  
The People ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Government Interference ◽  
Laissez Faire

The question of the degree of state intervention in nineteenth-century Britain has interested generations of scholars since the beginning of the present century. Did mid-nineteenth century England constitute an “age of laissez-faire” which gave way to an “age of collectivism,” or did an “age of mercantalism” merge into one of state regulation during which process, even in the early and mid-Victorian period, the state exercised considerable control over the day-to-day lives of its citizens? These are two of the questions over which there has been extended debate.The term laissez-faire has been employed in a variety of ways by different writers, by no means all of whom have troubled to define their understanding of the expression. Recently Professor Perkin has argued that during the nineteenth century two distinct meanings were attributed to it (and seven to the related, though antithetical, concept, collectivism!). For the purposes of this paper the term is taken to mean the philosophy, policy and, above all, the practice of minimal government interference in the economy.The most influential case for an “age of laissez-faire” was presented by Dicey in Law and Public Opinion. In this Dicey identified three overlapping legislative phases: Quiescence (1800-1830), Individualism (1825-1870), and Collectivism (1865-1900). The first consisted of an absence of legislation, the second of “constant” parliamentary activity to abolish restraints on individual freedom and the third of state intervention “for the purpose of conferring benefit upon the mass of the people” at the expense of some loss of individual freedom.

The rise of financial accountability in British joint stock banks: 1825 to 1845

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-255
Author(s):  
Chantal S. Game ◽  
Lisa M. Cullen ◽  
Alistair M. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Financial Crises ◽  
Balance Sheet ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Mandatory Disclosure ◽  
Financial Accountability ◽  
Bank Of England ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
Bank Notes

This study explores parliamentary reforms related to the financial accountability of banks following the 1825–6 and 1836–7 financial crises in England. An appraisal of nineteenth-century parliamentary Hansard transcripts reveals early banking legislative pursuits. The study observes the laissez-faire and interventionist approaches towards the banking enactments of 1826, 1833 and 1844 that underpin the transformation of financial accountability during this era. The Bank Notes Act 1826 imposed financial accountability on the Bank of England by requiring the mandatory disclosure of notes issued. The Bank Notes Act 1833 extended this requirement to all other banks. The Bank Charter Act 1833 increased the financial accountability of the Bank of England by requiring it to provide an account of bullion and securities belonging to the governor and company, as well as deposits held by the bank. Thereafter, the Joint Stock Banks Act 1844 pioneered the regular publication of assets and liabilities and communication of the balance sheet and profit and loss account to shareholders. State intervention in the financial accountability of banks during the period from 1825 to 1845 appears to have been cumulative.

Laissez-Faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth-Century Britain.

1973 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 537
Author(s):  
Norman McCord ◽  
Arthur J. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Laissez Faire

scholarly journals The British Prohibitionists 1853–1872

1970 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
The State ◽  
Laissez Faire

In his famous study of attitudes to the state in nineteenth-century England, Dicey described the period 1825–70 as “the period of Benthamism or Individualism”. Evangelicalism and Benthamism, he argued later, “represented the development in widely different spheres of the same fundamental principle, namely, the principle of individualism”. Only later did laissez faire fall into eclipse: “somewhere between 1868 and 1900 … changes took place which brought into prominence the authoritative side of Benthamite liberalism.” Dicey's interpretation has come under sustained attack during the last twenty years, and historians now pay more attention to the continuing momentum of state intervention from the 1830s, and to the collectivist aspect of Bentham's teaching. Yet Dicey's critics have ignored a movement which in some ways lends more support to their case than any other mid-Victorian development, and which draws attention to hitherto unappreciated virtues and defects of Dicey's account.

CAPITALISM, CHARITY, AND JUDAISM: THE TRIUMVIRATE OF BENJAMIN FARJEON

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-218
Author(s):  
Michelle Persell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Reference Materials ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Laissez Faire

BENJAMIN LEOPOLD FARJEON (1838–1903) was a novelist of, at best, middling abilities who achieved a modicum of popular success working in the sentimental realist tradition. He was also Jewish, a fact that he neither avoided nor obsessed over. It is just Farjeon’s laissez-faire approach towards ethnic identity that spurs our interest today. He assumed an attitude that was only beginning to be possible in the British Empire in the middle to late Victorian period. Over the years, Farjeon has made perfunctory appearances in such familiar survey and reference materials as Richard Altick’s The English Common Reader (1957), John Sutherland’s The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction (1989), and Linda Gertner Zatlin’s Nineteenth Century Anglo-Jewish Novel (1981), but the only substantial piece of scholarship devoted solely to his work is Lillian Faderman’s dissertation “B. L. Farjeon: Victorian Novelist” (1967). Where Faderman provides a broad-based chronicle of Farjeon’s publications, I focus here on one aspect of his legacy — i.e., how he partook of an incipient opportunity to construct a position for Jews as Englishmen in economic terms.

The Expression of Self and Grief in the Nineteenth Century: An Analysis through Distant Readings

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Monzingo ◽  
Daniel Shanahan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Linear Trend ◽  
First Person ◽  
Distant Reading ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
The Third ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Song Lyrics ◽  
In The Beginning

When writing about grief, Peter N. Stearns and Mark Knapp (‘Historical Perspectives on Grief’, in The Emotions: Social, Cultural and Biological Dimensions, ed. Rom Harré and W. Gerrod Parrot (London: Sage Publications, 1996): 138) speculate that ‘[i]n contrast to eighteenth-century songs about death, which were set in the artificial pastoral world of shepherds and written in the third person, Victorian grief songs were personal and immediate’. Inspired by this claim, we investigated the usage of pronouns, as well as topics surrounding grief, in ballads taken from broadsides in the nineteenth century. We found that the use of first-person pronouns increases over the nineteenth century, and that this was not a linear trend; there were sharp increases in the usage of first-person pronouns beginning in 1815, which leveled off in the third quarter of the century. Additionally, we examined the usage of lyrical topics about death, grieving, negatively valenced emotion and sadness, and asked whether such topics correlated with the increased usage of first-person pronouns. We found that there was not a strong correlation with the usage of pronouns and such topics, though there was a small correlation between the usage of such pronouns and sadness and a stronger positive correlation between a focus on the present and positively valenced emotion. These findings suggest that first-person pronouns are not reliable indicators of lyrical topics surrounding grief, or vice-versa. Using personal pronouns as a measure of intimacy, we conclude that songs written in the beginning of the nineteenth century did see a rise in intimacy in song lyrics. However, this increase does not appear to be tied to songs about grief, specifically. Despite the existence of many personal grief songs in the Victorian period, our distant reading reveals linguistic trends and interrelations that challenge the intuition that nineteenth-century grief songs were more personal than earlier ones.

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