A history of moral change is, to a certain degree, a history of everything. This book is of more limited scope. It aims to explore the history of English moral reform – that is, of self-conscious, organised efforts by groups of concerned citizens to change moral values and to modify patterns of behaviour associated with them. It is argued that ‘moral reform’ as a category of social action was a particular preoccupation of the period between the Revolution Settlement of 1688–9 and the turn of the twentieth century and, more distinctly still, of the hundred years between the 1780s and the 1880s.

Moral reform identified

How is moral reform to be identified? It may help to begin with an attempt at definition by an actively engaged contemporary. In 1852 the British Temperance Advocate published an article: ‘What the Temperance Society is not’. In this article the author compared the work of a temperance society with the work of four other types of volunteer action. A temperance society was ‘not a charitable institution’ – though it helped to teach ‘the true charity which restores to sound moral habits, to virtuous self-help and self-reliance’. Nor was it ‘an educational society’ or a ‘sanitary association’ – though its encouragement to self-management would assist members towards accumulation of the resources and will-power needed to raise their educational and environmental goals. Finally, it was not ‘a political union’ – though its members, by their self-control, proved themselves fit for recognition as citizens.