Young England
Young England | |
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Young England was a
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Through countryside speeches and pamphlet distribution, Young England attempted sporadically to proselytise 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 despiritualising effects of industrialisation and the perceived amorality of
Like the founders of the Oxford Movement who ardently opposed the Victorian Radicalism centred 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
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 Historic 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
Political role
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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
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, Peel, 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.
Legacy
Unlike Social Toryism, which it resembled philosophically, Young England did not survive to confront and oppose the socialist revival of the 1880s. 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
Karl Marx cites young England as an example of Reactionary Socialism in The Communist Manifesto.
References
Further reading
- Cazamian, Louis. The Social Novel in England 1830–1850. Trans. Martin Fido. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973.
- O'Kell, Robert. "Past and Present: Young England and Industrial Medievalism." Victorian Review 41.1 (2015): 9-14.
- Somervell, D. C. English Thought in the Nineteenth Century. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1929.
- Speck, W.A. "Robert Southey, Benjamin Disraeli and Young England." History 95.318 (2010): 194-206.
- Speare, Morris Edward. The Political Novel: Its Development in England and America. New York Oxford UP, 1924.
- Stewart. R. W. Disraeli's Novels Reviewed, 1826–1968. Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 1975.
- Ward, J.T. "Young England." History Today (1966) 16.2: 120-28.
Primary sources
- Morrow, John, ed. Young England: The New Generation: a Selection of Primary Texts (Burns & Oates, 1999).