¹ The advocate in question was, of course, Sidney Webb. For the strategy of “permeation,” see Shaw, George Bernard, ed., Fabian Essays (London, 1889).Google Scholar

² Among British historians, “whiggish” or “whig history” means a historiography in which the present state of affairs, seen as both desirable and the end or goal of history, is taken as the starting point and the past is seen as an inevitable process by which the present came to be. The study of history then becomes the study of the past in order to justify either the present or a particular hoped-for and expected future, rather than looking at the past in its own terms. Among the alleged features of whig history are a tendency to anachronistic moral judgement and the evaluation of past persons and events as progressive or reactionary according to their perceived part in bringing about the ideal present. The classic original of this was the history of the British constitution as recounted by Thomas Macaulay and Henry Hallam; see Macauley, , History of England from the Accession of James II, 4 vols. (London: Longmans, 1855–1861)Google Scholar, and Hallam, , The Constitutional History of England (1827; reprint, London: Garland, 1978)Google Scholar. For the most famous critical account, see Butterfield, Herbert, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: Bell, 1931)Google Scholar. Some of the many works which show a whiggish approach to the history of the welfare state are Roberts, David, Victorian Origins of the British Welfare State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Fraser, Derek, The Evolution of the British Welfare State: A History of Social Policy since the Industrial Revolution (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gregg, Pauline, The Welfare State: An Economic and Social History of Britain from 1945 to the Present Day (London: Harrap, 1967).Google Scholar

³ The outstanding example of this is the work of the late Finlayson, Geoffrey, Citizen, State, and Social Welfare in Britain, 1830–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, for example, Digby, Anne, The Poor Law in Nineteenth Century England and Wales (London: Historical Association, 1982)Google Scholar; Rose, Michael, The Relief of Poverty, 1834–1914 (London: Macmillan, 1972)Google Scholar; Williams, Karel, From Pauperism to Poverty (London: Routledge, 1981)Google Scholar; and Jones, Gareth Stedman, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976).Google Scholar

⁴ Smiles, Samuel, Thrift (London: John Murray, 1897)Google Scholar; Smiles, , Character (London: John Murray, 1872)Google Scholar; Smiles, , Duty (London: John Murray, 1887)Google Scholar; Smiles, , Self-Help, 2d ed. (London: John Murray, 1910)Google Scholar; Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Complete Works (Edinburgh: Nimmo, Hay and Mitchell, 1897)Google Scholar; Farrand, Max, ed., Benjamin Franklin's Memoirs (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1949)Google Scholar; Charming, William Ellery, Self Culture (Boston, MA: Dutton and Wentworth, 1838)Google Scholar; Hubbard, Elbert, The Philosophy of Elbert Hubbard (Boston, 1898)Google Scholar; Barker, Joseph, Teachings of Experience: Or Lessons I Have Learned on My Way through Life (Leeds, 1869)Google Scholar; Holyoake, George Jacob, Self-Help a Hundred Years Ago, 2d ed. (London, 1890)Google Scholar; Mackay, Thomas, Methods of Social Reform (London: Sonnenschein, 1892)Google Scholar; Craik, Dinah, John Halifax, Gentleman (London: Collins, 1856)Google Scholar; Banks, Isabella, The Manchester Man (Manchester: Heywood, 1896).Google Scholar

⁵ For a short but instructive account of Dissenting voluntarism, see Bradley, Ian, The Optimists: Themes and Personalities in Victorian Liberalism (London: Faber, 1980)Google Scholar. For a typical example of its arguments, see Briggs, John and Sellars, Ian, eds., Victorian Nonconformity (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), pp. 62–63.Google Scholar

⁶ For just one very clear statement of this, see Charming, William Ellery, Thoughts on Power and Greatness Political, Intellectual, and Moral (Boston, 1828).Google Scholar

⁷ See, for example, Smiles, , Character, ch. 8, “Temper,” pp. 216–34Google Scholar. Another classic statement is Clarke, James Freeman, Self-Culture: Physical, Intellectual, Moral, and Spiritual (Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1880), pp. 399–411.Google Scholar

⁸ For a recent discussion of the importance of continence to Victorians and its relation to other ideas, see Mason, Michael, The Making of Victorian Sexuality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mason, , The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudess (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The definitive work on the temperance movement in Britain is Harrison, Brian, Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England, 1815–1872 (London: Faber and Faber, 1972).Google Scholar

⁹ For an extended treatment of this, see Travers, Timothy, Samuel Smiles and the Victorian Work Ethic (New York: Garland, 1987)Google Scholar. See also Briggs, Asa, “Samuel Smiles and the Gospel of Work,” in Briggs, Victorian People (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), pp. 116–39Google Scholar. For a more recent discussion of the historical development of the whole concept of work, see Joyce, Patrick, ed., The Historical Meanings of Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)Google Scholar. For a clear and typical statement of the principle of the moral value of work, see Clarke, , Self-Culture, p. 31.Google Scholar

¹⁰ See, for example, Channing, William Ellery, Lectures on the Elevation of the Labouring Portion of the Community (Manchester, 1840).Google Scholar

¹¹ The idea of equal moral standing could be seen as implying, and often did mean, a rejection of the Calvinist notion of an “elect.” In this connection, it is worth pointing out the strong influence on voluntarist ideas of the part of Dissent Protestantism which rejected predestination or which espoused some form of Arminianism. Even those who continued to hold to predestinarian ideas of salvation rejected the idea that there was a visible body of the elect, and therefore held that all had to be treated on a presumption of equal moral worth.

¹² See Smiles, , Character, pp. 31–35, 299–342.Google Scholar

¹³ Travers, , Samuel Smiles, pp. 360–63Google Scholar. For the interesting case of Japan, see Kinmouth, Earl, “Nakamura Keiu and Samuel Smiles: A Victorian Confucian and a Confucian Victorian,” American Historical Review, vol. 85 (1980), pp. 535–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ Harrison, J. F. C., Learning and Living, 1790–1960: A Study in the History of the English Adult Education Movement (London: Routledge, 1961)Google Scholar; Briggs, , “Samuel Smiles and the Gospel of Work.”Google Scholar

¹⁵ The quoted passage is from Smiles, , Self-Help, pp. 364–65Google Scholar. For the general point, see Harrison, , Learning and LivingGoogle Scholar. For the distinction between the two literatures (self help and success), see Travers, , Samuel Smiles, passim, and esp. pp. 330–48Google Scholar. For Goodrich, see Goodrich, Samuel Griswold, Recollections of a Lifetime (New York: Miller, Orton, and Mulligan, 1856)Google Scholar. The McGuffey readers were a series of popular works widely used in nineteenth-century America for both education and moral instruction. Most contained accounts of exemplary lives, fictional and nonfictional.

¹⁶ Smiles, , Self-Help, p. 450Google Scholar; Smiles, , Character, p. 11.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Smiles, , Thrift, pp. 288–89.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Charming, , Lectures on the Elevation of the Labouring Portion of the CommunityGoogle Scholar, for a forceful statement of this. For another typical statement of this view, see Smith, Goldwin, “What Is Culpable Luxury?” in Lectures and Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1881)Google Scholar. For one of many statements by Smiles, see his Character, p. 7.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Smiles, , The Education of the Working Classes (Leeds, 1845)Google Scholar, quoted in Briggs, , “Samuel Smiles and the Gospel of Work,”Google Scholar and in Harrison, , Learning and Living, p. 56Google Scholar. See also Channing, , Lectures on the Elevation of the Labouring Portion of the CommunityGoogle Scholar. For a historical survey and a powerful restatement of this, see Lasch, Christopher, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: Norton, 1995), ch. 3.Google Scholar

²⁰ Smiles, , Thrift, pp. 286–87.Google Scholar

²¹ Harrison, , Learning and Living, passim, but esp. pp. 43–56.Google Scholar

²² Channing and Webster are discussed in Lasch, , Revolt of the Elites, pp. 56–58Google Scholar. For an example of a British work based on this analysis, see Wade, John, The Extraordinary Black Book; or, Corruption Unmasked (London: Effingham Wilson, 1831)Google Scholar. For an account of the French origins of this analysis, see Halévy, Élie, The Era of Tyrannies: Essays on Socialism and War, ed. and trans. Webb, R. K. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), pp. 21–104.Google Scholar

²³ Very little has been written about either the critique of wage labor by nineteenthcentury radicals or the idea of “free labor.” For the most extensive recent discussion, see Lasch, Christopher, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York: Norton, 1991), esp. pp. 203–16Google Scholar. For a discussion of Fitzhugh's argument, see Genovese, Eugene, The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation (London: Allen Lane, 1970).Google Scholar

²⁴ Travers, , Samuel Smiles, passimGoogle Scholar. On the general issue, see Biagini, E. F. and Reid, A. J., eds., Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour, and Party Politics in Britain, 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the contrary view, see Morris, Robert J., “Samuel Smiles and the Genesis of Self-Help: The Retreat to a Petit-Bourgeois Utopia,” Historical Journal, vol. 24 (1981), pp. 89–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kirk, Neville, The Growth of Working Class Reformism in Mid-Victorian England (London: Croom Helm, 1985).Google Scholar

²⁵ Briggs, , “Samuel Smiles and the Gospel of Work,” p. 124Google Scholar. Harrison, , Learning and Living, p. 51Google Scholar, describes the distinction made by nineteenth-century observers between three routes to social improvement: by the state; by help from the upper and upper middle classes (e.g., via mechanics institutes and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge); and by self-improvement on the part of the working classes. The 1869 quote is from Hardwick, Charles, The History, Present Position, and Social Importance of Friendly Societies (Manchester, 1869), p. 18.Google Scholar

²⁶ Smiles, , Thrift, pp. 302–6; the quote is from p. 303.Google Scholar

²⁷ The Poor Law was the minimal system of state relief of poverty in Britain, originally set up on a parish-based system in 1601 and funded out of a local property tax (the poor rates). In the early nineteenth century, concern grew over the rising cost of poor relief and the perception that the operation of the system was encouraging pauperism, i.e., welfare dependency. This led to the establishment of a commission of enquiry and, following its report, to the passage in 1834 of the Poor Law Amendment Act, which provided (1) that the condition of a person in receipt of relief should aways be worse than that of the lowest paid laborer (the principle of “less eligibility”); (2) that the administration of relief should be handled by large unions of parishes; and (3) that in order to get relief a person would have to enter an institution—the workhouse—with relief outside the workhouse (outdoor relief) being abolished. In practice, this third provision was not applied. The National Insurance Act of 1911 introduced a system of state insurance against sickness and unemployment, paid for by deductions from wages and compulsory contributions from employers. For a selection of extracts from original sources relating to this and the related question of state old-age pensions, see Evans, Eric J., ed., Social Policy 1830–1914: Individualism, Collectivism, and the Origins of the Welfare State (London: Routledge, 1978), esp. pp. 161–73, 272–82.Google Scholar

²⁸ See Smiles, , Thrift, ch. 16, “The Art of Living,” pp. 358–78Google Scholar; and Smiles, , Character, pp. 31–62Google Scholar. For Emerson's views, see, e.g., his Complete Works, pp. 29–30.Google Scholar

²⁹ Benson, John, The Penny Capitalists: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Working-Class Entrepreneurs (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1983)Google Scholar; Roberts, Elizabeth, “Working Class Standards of Living in Barrow and Lancaster, 1890–1914,” Economic History Review, vol. 30 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crossick, Geoffrey, An Artisan Elite in Victorian Society: Kentish London, 1840–1880 (London: Croom Helm, 1978)Google Scholar; Crossick, Geoffrey and Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard, The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe, 1780–1914 (London: Routledge, 1995).Google Scholar

³⁰ Raines, Edward Jr., Education Best Promoted by Perfect Freedom (Leeds, 1834)Google Scholar, quoted in Briggs, and Sellars, , Victorian Nonconformity (supra note 5), pp. 131–34.Google Scholar

³¹ Harrison, , Learning and Living, pp. 50–57Google Scholar. See also Gardner, Phil, The Lost Elementary Schools of Victorian England (London: Croom Helm, 1984)Google Scholar. An affiliated order, such as the Odd Fellows or Foresters, was a national friendly society made up of local branches (lodges), all affiliated to a national governing body.

³² See Mason, J. W., “Thomas Mackay: The Anti-Socialist Philosophy of the Charity Organisation Society,” in Essays in Anti-Labour History: Responses to the Rise of Labour in Britain, ed. Brown, Kenneth D. (London: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 290–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³³ Green, David, Reinventing Civil Society: The Rediscovery of Welfare without Politics (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1993), p. 30.Google Scholar

³⁴ Ibid. See also Baernreither, J. M., English Associations of Working Men (London: Sonnenschein, 1889)Google Scholar; Gosden, P. H. J. H., The Friendly Societies in England, 1815–1875 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Gosden, , Self-Help: Voluntary Associations in Nineteenth Century Britain (London: Batsford, 1973)Google Scholar; and David Beito's essay in this volume.

³⁵ See Baernreither, , English Associations of Working Men, pp. 5–9, 142–51Google Scholar. See also Charming, William Ellery, Remarks on the Disposition which Now Prevails to Form Associations to Accomplish All Objects by Organized Masses (London, 1830).Google Scholar

³⁶ See Mackay, , Methods of Social Reform (supra note 4), passimGoogle Scholar; Charming, , Remarks, passimGoogle Scholar; and Baernreither, , English Associations of Working Men, pp. 228–96.Google Scholar

³⁷ There is a large and extensive literature on Dissent and its historical impact. The best survey by far is the monumental work of Watts, Michael R., The Dissenters, vol. 2, The Expansion of Evangelical Nonconformity, 1791–1859 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. See also Bradley, , The Optimists (supra note 5)Google Scholar. For one of Miall's many works, see Miall, Edward, The Bearing of Religious Equality on the Right of Individuals and Spiritual Communities (Manchester, 1873)Google Scholar. One typical work from Dale is Dale, R. W., The Politics of Nonconformity (Manchester, 1871).Google Scholar

³⁸ On Hole, see Harrison, , Learning and Living, pp. 119–37Google Scholar. For voluntary socialism, see Greenleaf, W. H., The British Political Tradition, vol. 2, The Ideological Heritage (London: Methuen, 1983), pp. 412–63.Google Scholar

³⁹ For the views of James Fenimore Cooper and Francis Parkman, see Cawelti, John G., Apostles of the Self-Made Man: Changing Concepts of Success in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 75–80Google Scholar. For the role of conservatives in creating and sustaining the British welfare state, see Greenleaf, , The Ideological Heritage, pp. 196–262Google Scholar. See also Watson, George, The Idea of Liberalism: Studies for a New Map of Politics (London: Macmillan, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁴² See Greenleaf, W. H., The British Political Tradition, vol. 1, The Rise of Collectivism (London: Methuen, 1983), pp. 269–72Google Scholar, for discussion of the role of eugenics. See also Finlayson, , Citizen, State, and Social Welfare (supra note 3), pp. 149–52Google Scholar. For contemporary discussions of the “underclass” and its growth, see, for example, Magnet, Myron, The Dream and the Nightmare (New York: William Morrow, 1993)Google Scholar, and Mead, Lawrence M., The New Politics of Poverty (New York: Basic Books, 1992).Google Scholar

⁴³ A recent work which looks at the changing debate is Green, David, Community without Politics: A Market Approach to Welfare Reform (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1996).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ For an outstanding survey of the change and the related debate, see Finlayson, , Citizen, State, and Social Welfare.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ On the Charity Organisation Society, see Mowat, Charles Loch, The Charity Organisation Society: Its Ideas and Work, 1869–1913 (London: Methuen, 1961)Google Scholar. On the majority and minority reports of 1909, see McBriar, A. M., An Edwardian Mixed Doubles: The Bosanquets versus the Webbs: A Study in British Social Policy, 1890–1929 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).Google Scholar

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