The Pursuit of Certainty

25. Liberty and the Ideal Individual

CHAPTER 25 Liberty and the Ideal Individual The Mid-Victorian Calm While Mill was meditating on the possibility of discovering and applying scientific truth about men and society, the agitated England he had known as a young Radical was growing more sedate. By the time the Political Economy was published in 1848, England was well on the way to the "age of Bagehot and Trollope," the time when England seemed to have emerged permanently from dreams and nightmares into a mature, confident serenity. The country was permeated by a sense of satisfaction, Bagehot declared, "because most of the country feels it has got the precise thing which suits it." The calm was founded on considerable prosperity. Trade flourished, and the superiority of English manufacturers was for the moment without challenge . Although agriculture was still troubled, by the end of 1851, after a good harvest, there was reason to hope for that agricultural revival that, encouraged by the growth of industry and the opening of the railroads, persisted during the next decade. The interests oflandlords and captains ofindustry, ofmasters and men were for the moment in harmony; the "condition of England" question that had so plagued the 'forties no longer seemed so important. The Oxford, Chartist, and Free Trade movements, the agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws, all belonged to the past. The last Chartist demonstration in England, in 1848, turned out to be mainly a festival in celebration ofEngland's escape from continental revolutions, and old Chartists took to lecturing on Christian evidences. For the moment, both the ambitions of the poor and the conscience of the rich were more or less at rest, and improvements were urged in gentle, apologetic, almost supplicating terms. Instead of struggles 318 John Stuart Mill over constitutional and social changes, there were mainly political manoeuvres and skirmishes between pressure groups-between the vested interests of private water companies and the General Board of Health, or between those who favoured the new tax on houses and those who clung to the old window tax. All this peace and self-satisfaction were suitably proclaimed to the world in the Great Exhibition of '51 with the Crystal Palace displaying England's wares to dazzled crowds and declaring, by its very architecture and all the objects produced by "mechanical ingenuity," the ascendancy of the middle classes and the rising of the artisans. The whole country was becoming middle class and comfortable. The upper classes were taking their cue from the Queen and the Prince Consort, who were the model of a respectable middle class family, thoroughly at home in South Kensington. The working class, too, admired moderation and propriety -the Amalgamated Society of Engineers declared that its object was to do nothing "illegally or indiscreetly ... but on all occasions to perform the greatest amount of benefit for ourselves, without injury to others." Everyone was finding life richer and easier. The middle class family could boast of carpets and hangings, plate and linen, luxuries that had been rare in earlier decades even among squires. Merchants and manufacturers became country gentlemen, married into the older aristocracy, and sent their sons to a public school. The spirit of mid-Victorian England was summed up in the public schools, where the nation's gentlemen were being moulded into an obvious uniformity . The model became Rugby, where Arnold very successfully put into practice his belief, shared by many decent Englishmen, that the school was a training ground for character, "a temple of industrious peace." Not that Arnold wished to denigrate intellectual ability. But for the moment intellect seemed more plentiful than the character demanded by the times, and the fear of Mephistopheles had the upper hand. Later in the century there was to be a reaction against Arnold's "well-groomed, well-mannered rational manly boys, all taking the same view of things, all doing the same things," but for the moment, Arnold's pupils were becoming masters and housemasters of schools where boys ofall sorts were being transformed into "Christian gentlemen." Even in religion, ardour seemed to have vanished. Evangelicalism was no longer at war with indifference or brutality. It had grown "complacent, fashionable , and superior." The only religious crises were over a supposed threat Liberty and the Ideal Individual 319 from Rome, but this was as nothing to the old soul-saving enthusiasm of the "money-making witness-bearers." Piety was now expressed in a scholarly manner...