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Young England | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Benjamin Disraeli |
| Ideology | Feudalism Absolute monarchism Paternalistic conservatism Social Toryism Right-wing socialism |
| Religion | Church of England |
Young England was aVictorian-era political group with a political message based on an idealisedfeudalism: anabsolute monarch and a strongEstablished Church, with the philanthropy ofnoblesse oblige as the basis for its paternalistic form of social organisation.[1] For the most part, its unofficial membership was confined to a splinter group ofTory aristocrats who had attendedEton andCambridge together, among themGeorge Smythe,Lord John Manners,Henry Thomas Hope andAlexander Baillie-Cochrane. The group's leader and figurehead wasBenjamin Disraeli, who bore the distinction of having neither an aristocratic background nor a public school or university education. Young England promulgated a conservative and romantic species ofsocial Toryism.
Richard Monckton Milnes is credited with coining the name Young England, a name which suggested a relationship between Young England and the mid-century groupsYoung Ireland,Young Italy,Young Germany, andYoung Europe. However, these political organisations, while nationalistic like Young England, commanded considerable popular support and (following lead Young Italy organiserGiuseppe Mazzini) were socially liberal and politically egalitarian and broadlyrepublican.[2]
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 ofBenthamite philosophy, which they blamed equally for Victorian social injustices. Thus, Young England was inspired by the same reaction to individualistic and rationalistic Radicalism that engendered theOxford Movement, theEvangelical movement, and the Social Toryism ofRobert Peel andLord Ashley, as well as literarymedievalism: the works ofWalter Scott,Robert Southey,Kenelm Henry Digby, andThomas Carlyle were "throughly read" and absorbed early on.[3] The association of Young England withTractarianism can be traced to the early influence ofFrederick Faber (1814–1863), a follower ofJohn Henry Newman, upon Lord John Manners and George Smythe.
Like the founders of the Oxford Movement who ardently opposed the Victorian Radicalism centred in competitive economicself-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.
LikeEvangelicalism, Young England reflected the enthusiasm for confronting the middle-class crisis ofVictorian conscience. In their advocacy of an exclusive, though tolerant, ecclesiastical authority, Young England's plan for a revitalised state church followed Coleridge's conception of an Englishclerisy.
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Disraeli had outlined the principles of Young England inThe 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'sHistoric 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 trilogyConingsby (1844),Sybil (1845), andTancred (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 ofCatholics andJews.
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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 theRadicals. Fighting against theNew Poor Law with the Social Tories, they also at times sided with the Benthamites, as in 1844, when Young England helped the radicals defeat a bill which would have strengthened the powers of magistrates dealing with labour disputes.
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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 novelTancred, or the New Crusade.
At least two years earlier, Disraeli's political opportunism already had damaged Young England's credibility. In 1845, Disraeli opposed theMaynooth 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 theCorn Laws in 1846 tied him more closely to the landed aristocratic interests.
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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.
Theutopian, neo-feudal dreams of Manners, Smythe, and Disraeli reflect the same crisis of Victorian conscience that inspired the similarly utopianOwenite socialism of the political left. Like Owenism, Young England soon failed, but, too ambitiously conservative in a new democratic era, it failed quietly, without experiment.
Karl Marx cites young England as an example ofReactionary socialism inThe Communist Manifesto.
