Young England

      Oh! the vests of Young England are perfectly white,
        And they're cut very neatly and sit very tight,
       And they serve to distinguish our Young Englishmen
          From the juvenile MANNERS to CONINGSBY BEN.
                        (Punch, 28 December, 1844)

The Victorian era political group Young England was born on the playing fields of Cambridge and Eton, and for the most part, its unofficial membership was confined to a splinter group of Tory aristocrats who had attended public school together, among them George Smythe , Lord John Manners, Henry Hope , Baillie Cochrane , and, above all, Benjamin Disraeli. Young England promulgated a conservative and romantic species of Social Toryism, and its political message described an idealized feudalism: an absolute monarch and a strong Established Church, with the philanthropy of noblesse oblige as the dubious basis for its paternalistic form of social organization. Other than to name its leaders in the House of Commons, the membership of Young England cannot be counted, for they had no reading rooms or meeting halls, and their social activism mainly consisted of legislating, not popularizing, their reforms.

Through country-side speech-making and pamphleteering, Young England attempted sporadically to proselytize the lower classes and enlist them into their newly resurrected "Order of the Peasantry." However, the few tracts, the poetry, and the novels that embody the social vision of Young England were directed to a "New Generation" of educated, religious, and socially conscious conservatives, who, like the inner circle of Young Englanders, were appalled at the despiritualizing effects of industrialization and the amorality of Benthamite 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 the Oxford Movement, the Evangelical movement, and the Social Toryism of Robert Peel and Lord Ashley which Young Englandism most closely resembled.

The association of Young England with Tractarianism can be traced to the early influence upon Lord John Manners and George Smythe of Frederick Faber (1814-1863), a follower of John Henry Newman (Mitchell 818). Like the founders of the Oxford Movement who ardently opposed the Victorian Radicalism centered in competitive economic self- determination and who, "in retracing their steps to the origins of the Church . . . rediscovered also the primitive Christian social and democratic spirit, the quasi-sacramental character of poverty, and the stigma of wealth" (Beer 178), so the founders of Young England rejected utilitarian ethics, blamed the privileged class for abdicating its moral leadership, and faulted the church for neglecting its benevolent 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 Evangelicalism, Young England reflected the enthusiasm for confronting the middle-class crisis of Victorian conscience, but in their advocacy of an exclusive, though tolerant, ecclesiastical authority, Young England's plan for a revitalized state church followed Coleridge's conception of an English clerisy. As Abraham Hayward remarked in a contemporary review of Manners and Smythe's Young England writings, their enthusiasm was genuine but not widespread:

         We must, however, say that this party, though small, and in
         some if its aspects rather laughable, is yet entitled to more
         attention that it seems to have received.  But this claim arises
         more perhaps from the causes from which it has sprung, and
         the feelings of which is the exponent, than from any
         immediate practical results to which it can lead.  Though, as
         just stated, it is nowhere numerous, it has nevertheless had
         some influence on the proceedings of the House of
         Commons.. . . It has got a little of everything--a little of
         history, somewhat more of metaphysics, a small portion of
         unintelligible theology . . . and a very little of political
         economy.  (Edinburgh Review, v80, 517)

In their political activities, Young England relied on the effectiveness of their alliance-building in Parliament, and as a small but vocal Tory faction headed by Disraeli, Young England made itself heard politically in the 1840's. If "Young England's reputation was and is out of proportion to its actual accomplishments" (Mitchell 884), nonetheless their (admittedly paternalistic) concern for "the condition of England" contributed to the passage of some significant social legislation. Richard Monckton Milnes is credited with coining the name Young England (Stewart 180), a name which suggested a relationship between Young England and the mid- century groups Young Ireland, Young Italy, and Young Germany. However, these political organizations, while nationalistic like Young England, commanded considerable popular support and were socially progressive and politically egalitarian. Once considered a candidate for admission into Young England's inner circle, Milnes later joined in satirizing the Young Englandites with his parody of Lord Manners' "Lines to a Judge":

         Oh! Flog me at the old cart's tail!
         I surely should enjoy
         That fine old English punishment 
         I witnessed when a boy!
         I should not heed the mocking crowd,
         I should not feel the pain, 
         If one old English custom
         Could be brought back again. 

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 Manners and George Smythe more widely disseminated its neo-feudal ideals in verse and narrative forms. In its romantic fervor for re-instituting feudalism in England, Cazamian observes that Young Englandism, "opposes radicalism like poetry confronting prose" (181). Of course, the significance of the confrontation was always qualified by Young England's small, elite number, and the nostalgic poetry offered only wistful simplifications of the past. Lord Manners' England's Trust, and Other Poems (1841) describes how the poet, "falls into a reverie before St Albans Abbey. Reflecting on episodes from the early days of Christianity in England, he regrets the passing of the ancient Church.. . . and sees rationalism as a spiritual sickness of modern times" (Cazamian 98). The poet repines the loss of values and disruption of social order that he attributes to the absence of a strong monarch and Church, and he finds hope for England's future in its fictional medieval past when,

         Each knew his place  king, peasant, peer, or priest  
         The greatest owned connexion with the least;
         From rank to rank the generous feeling ran,
         And linked society as man to man.

Manners' goes on to condense the political vision of Young England into a heroic couplet that would encourage much ridicule:

         Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die
         But leave us still our old Nobility. 

Like Lord Manners' England's Trust and Plea for National Holy-days (1843), George Smythe's Historical Fancies (1844) earnestly imagines a revival of feudalism, but the solutions both Manners and Smythe offer for industrial disorder are fantastical, ritualistic, and, in spite of the increasingly urban character of Victorian society, chiefly agrarian:

         Sedulous preservation of surviving customs and traditions was
         of primary importance.  And a careful and respectful
         observation of proper ceremony might lead to the revival of
         some obsolete practices.  Christmas ought to be celebrated in
         the old way in country houses, and landlords should participate
         in their tenant's recreations so as to regain an authority based
         on personal respect.  (qtd. in Cazamian 99)

Typically, one of Smythe's "fancies" concerns the reinstitution of "the royal custom of touching sick people for the King's Evil as a symbolic manifestation of the closer relation between the Throne and People" (Slater qtd. in Dickens 248). What such a custom would or would not do for the endemic dysentery and typhus of industrial centers like Manchester, Smythe does not touch upon, and the blindly anachronistic daydreaming of Young Englandism quickly came under fire in the Liberal press:

         A party has reappeared of late years, both in parliament and
         the church of England styling itself the New Generation.. . .
         Sometimes these gentlemen pass under the sobriquet of Young
         England, in allusion to the juvenile characteristics of the chins
         and speeches of their leaders. . . . In England, according to
         lord Henry Sydney, the palladium of her preservation will be
         found in Maypoles and Christmas mummeries; and in the
         revival of a fourth estate--to be neither more nor less than
         that of the Peasantry! . . . It pants, in other words to re-elect
         the throne of despotism. (Eclectic Review, v16, July 1844, 50).

Young England's romantic and medieval idealism did not simply reflect an uncritical reading of Scott's novels, nor was the probity and sincerity of their social commitment best gauged by the Young England poetical banalities of Lord Manners and George Smythe. 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. 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 Catholics and Jews. In constructing his fiction, Disraeli, unlike Elizabeth Gaskell, depended on a reading of the Blue books and a brief walking tour of Yorkshire (with Manners and Smythe) to familiarize himself with the miserable conditions at Manchester. But Disraeli accurately perceived the adversities of the industrial poor, and, like Mrs Gaskell, he believed that an authentic portrayal of the ghastly realities he found at Manchester would produce incredulity among the class he called on for leadership in reform. In the preface to Sibyl, writing in the third person, Disraeli maintains that:

         . . . the descriptions, generally, are written from his own
         observation; but while he hopes he has alleged nothing which
         is not true, he has found the absolute necessity of suppressing
         much that is genuine.  For so little do we know of the state of
         own country, that the air of improbability which the whole
         truth would inevitably throw over these pages, might deter
         some from their perusal.  (qtd in Cazamian 192)

Despite Disraeli's condemnation of the dehumanization of the factory system, in turning to a medieval England for a model, Disraeli and the Young Englanders showed a general misunderstanding of the class of workers their policies were to benefit, the urban industrial workers. An anonymously-written pamphlet, Lord John Manners. A Political and Literary History Sketch, describes how Disraeli and Manners suggested that the aristocracy form cricket-clubs for their tenants and how they went through the country, "engaging with great spirit and good nature in a variety of manly sports with the labouring population; until it almost seemed that we were to witness the renewal of those scenes of mirth and jollity, which had earned for this country, in olden times, the enviable, but alas! no longer applicable title of Merrie England" (Slater qtd. in Dickens 249).

In Parliament, Young England maneuvered its limited political force wisely, and most of what Young England accomplished in the House of Commons was accomplished through temporary coalitions with both the Social Tories and the Radicals. Fighting against the New 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 the magistrates dealing with labour disputes" (Cazamian 99). In regard to Young England's political clout, Somervell says that Young England was responsible for the passage of the Ten Hour Bill in 1847 (178). The measure did pass with the support and approval of Disraeli's Young England faction but, typically, only "after the tenacious parliamentary work of Ashley and Fielden," two philanthropically-minded Social Tories (Cazamian 104).

Attesting to its fragile and narrow political base, Young England died with scarcely an obituary some few years after 1847 when Disraeli, its main spokesman and only intellect, 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 the third novel of his trilogy, Tancred or The New Crusade. As Cazamian notes:

         It is both mystical and self-mocking, and it openly uses
         implausible events and situations . . . the union between
         industrialist and the nobility which Coningsby had proposed is
         no longer viewed as possible or even desirable" (207).

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. As Mitchell observes: "The logic of Young England principles, sympathetic to the Roman Catholic faith, demanded support of the measure; Disraeli, however, apparently could not miss the chance to attack Peel, and thus broke with his cohorts" (884). Further, Disraeli's opposition to the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, "had tied him more closely to the landed aristocratic interests, and his open break with Peel had made him the effective leader of the opposition. Now that power was nearly in his grasp, he was more acutely aware of the chimeric nature of some of Young England's plans (Cazamian 201).

Unlike Social Toryism which it resembled philosophically, Young England did not survive to confront and oppose the socialist revival of the eighties. At its best, Young England influenced mid-Victorian reform legislation but never came close to gaining the popular support required to even partially realize its reactionist social vision. Yet, "imaginatively, Young England symbolized the desire for a unified and ordered society, an ideal community able to withstand the pressures that would separate the social and religious sensibility" (Mitchell 884). The utopic, neo-feudal dreams of Manners, Smythe, and Disraeli reflect the same crisis of Victorian conscience that inspired the similarly utopic Owenite socialism of the political left. Like Owenism, Young England soon failed, but too ambitiously reactionary in a new democratic era, it quietly failed without experiment.

Works Cited and Consulted (Annotated)

Cazamian, Louis. The Social Novel in England 1830-1850. Trans. Martin Fido. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973. PR 871 C213.

Cazamian's discussions of the Young England movement are incisive and well-balanced, and his socio-political explications of Disraeli's novels are first-rate. An excellent source for the political, and to a slightly lesser extent, the philosophical background of early and mid-Victorian novels.

Beer, M. A History of British Socialism. New York: The Humanities Press, 1940. HX 243 B5.

The introductory chapters of this work helpfully discuss and compare the various political manifestations of Victorian idealism, including Young Englandism.

Dickens, Charles. The Christmas Books. Vol 1, Ed. Michael Slater. London: Penguin Books, 1971.

Slater's brief discussion of Young England is quite understandably negative, and he is following Dickens' lead here. Appendix A contains the deleted Young England passages of The Chimes in which Dickens wittily vignettes the Young England movement when he writes that, "a small party were enjoying rustic sports, while another rather larger party were being hanged on trees in the background and a third were having brazen collars soldered round their necks as the born vassals of an undeniably picturesque Baron."

Disraeli, Benjamin. Coningsby or The New Generation. London: Peter Davies, 927. PR 4080 F26.

The Young England political handbook in novel form. Disraeli's is didactic but entertaining. The language is often rhapsodic and the sentiments conventional, but as a roman a clef and the first political novel, it is close to actual events and personages, for which it was roundly criticized in contemporary reviews.

Somervell, D. C. English Thought in the Nineteenth Century. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1929. DA 553 S6.

Somervell outlines the currents of English thought and their respective social and political ramifications. He briefly discusses Young England along with Social Toryism.

Speare, Morris Edward. The Political Novel: Its Development in England and America. New York Oxford UP, 1924. PR 868 P6 S52.

Examines Disraeli's novels not particularly as Young England manifestos but as fiction that embodies all Disraeli's political ideas. Identifies the statesmen behind Disraeli's fictional masks.

Stewart. R. W. Disraeli's Novels Reviewed, 1826-1968. Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 1975. PR 4087 S67.

This comprehensive collection of Victorian criticism of Disraeli's novels is also an excellent source for contemporary opinions and reactions to the Young England movement.