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Class Consciousness in Early Victorian Britain: Samuel Smiles, Leeds Politics, and the Self-Help Creed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Alexander Tyrrell
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Extract

“During the late 1830's and 40's two forms of class consciousness were being forged in Britain, not one — middle-class consciousness and working-class consciousness.” Asa Briggs's belief is shared in all its starkness by many students of early Victorian Britain, including R. K. Webb, who has even referred to “the working class point of view,” which middle-class men could adopt only by becoming “traitors to their class.” Such statements have been severely taken to task by various historians, and from the beginning Briggs has seen the need to admit important qualifications. Quoting the nineteenth-century economist W. T. Thornton, he has agreed that “the labouring population … spoken of as if it formed only one class” was “really divided into several,” each distinguished from the other by wage rates, social security, regularity of earnings, climate of industrial relations, status in the local community, prospects of future advancement, and sophistication of political attitudes.

Unfortunately these qualifications are productive of confusion: it is by no means obvious why Briggs's readers should believe that only one form of working-class consciousness existed in such conditions of diversity. Nor is it obvious why similar qualifications should not be made concerning the middle classes. Was the gulf between William Lovett and those whom he called the “vicious many” not similar in extent to that between most members of the Leeds middle classes and their fellow citizen J. G. Marshall, “a millionaire mill-owner, a man aristocratically allied, and the manager of the largest factory in the world”? Nor is it necessary to rely on such an extreme example, if one believes Gibbon Wakefield, who detected the existence of an “uneasy class,” the product of a division within the ranks of the professionally qualified:

The learning, skill and reputation, united, of a professional man may be called his capital.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , May 1970 , pp. 102 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1970

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References

1. Briggs, Asa, “National Bearings,” in Chartist Studies, ed. Briggs, Asa (London, 1962), p. 297Google Scholar.

2. Webb, R. K., The British Working Class Reader 1790–1848 (London, 1955), p. 163Google Scholar.

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5. Quoted by Neale, R. S., “Class and Class Consciousness in Early Nineteenth-Century England: Three Classes or Five?” Victorian Studies, XII (1968), 15Google Scholar. This article has benefited from my discussions with Neale, although he cannot be held responsible for the views expressed.

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9. The reasons for disagreeing with Read, D., Press and People (London, 1961), p. 94Google Scholar, and others who claim that Smiles relinquished his editorship in 1842 are discussed in Tyrrell, Alexander, “Samuel Smiles Editor of the Leeds Times” (M.A. thesis, McMaster University, 1966)Google Scholar. This article is a revised version of the thesis. I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to H. W. McCready of McMaster University for his advice and encouragement.

10. For a description of these years, see Smiles, Samuel, The Autobiography of Samuel Smiles (London, 1905)Google Scholar; Tyrrell, “Samuel Smiles.”

11. Brown, Lucy, “The Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law League,” Chartist Studies, p. 344Google Scholar.

12. J. F. C. Harrison, “Chartism in Leeds,” ibid., pp. 83–85.

13. His most important single piece of evidence is a letter from the Leeds Short Time Committee published in the Northern Star (Feb. 5, 1842). Similar opinions were expressed in a handbill entitled To the Working Men of Yorkshire Generally and of Leeds in Particular. Smiles was accused of accepting “free traders' gold” from two “factory lords” on the condition that he should influence Leeds workingmen towards Corn Law repeal and defend the factory system against its critics. It should be remembered that the Northern Star was a Leeds newspaper (its full title was the Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser) and that there was a history of bitterness over circulation.

14. Lovett, William, Life and Struggles of William Lovett (London, 1920), II, 250Google Scholar. In his well-known condemnation of Feargus O'Connor, Lovett voiced opinions similar to those of Smiles's editorials and speeches. Ibid., II, 300–03.

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16. To obtain a complete picture of the relations between Smiles and the Leeds Chartists shortly before the Birmingham Complete Suffrage Conference in Dec. 1842, all the Leeds newspapers, including the Leeds Times (Dec. 24, 1842), must be consulted. Smiles was prepared to support the principles of the Charter, but the meeting to elect delegates for the Birmingham Conference seems to have been carefully stage-managed by the O'Connorites. Harrison's account is based only on the Northern Star, which does not give a full statement of Smiles's attitude. See Harrison, , “Chartism in Leeds,” Chartist Studies, p. 85Google Scholar.

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18. For various letters from Richard Cobden, see Smiles, , Autobiography, pp. 97–119Google Scholar; see also Leeds Times (Nov. 27, 1841).

19. For references to their role in the Corn Law repeal movement, see Thompson, F. M. L., “Whigs and Liberals in the West Riding, 1830–1860,” E.H.R., LXXIV (1959), 227CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. The other parts of the programme were the ballot, equal representation, short parliaments, and abolition of the property qualification. The statements in Read, , Press and People, p. 133Google Scholar, and Cowherd, R. G., The Politics of English Dissent (London, 1959), p. 110Google Scholar, that the L.P.R.A. favoured complete suffrage are incorrect.

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31. Leeds Times (Nov. 16, 1844).

32. Ibid. (Jan. 22, 1842).

33. Ibid. (Aug. 28, 1841).

34. Leeds City Library, Archives Department, letter from Smiles to Roebuck, SS/A/IV/8a and b.

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36. Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, introduction by Asa Briggs (London, 1958), p. 13.

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39. Silver, Harold, The Concept of Popular Education (London, 1965), pp. 220–21Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, E. J., The Age of Revolution (New York, 1962), p. 222Google Scholar.

40. These Scottish writings are discussed in Tyrrell, Alexander, “Political Economy, Whiggism and the Education of Working-Class Adults in Scotland 1817–40,” Scottish Historical Review, XLVIII (1969), 151–65Google Scholar.

41. Silver, Popular Education, p. 220.

42. It is interesting to compare E. P. Thompson's statement with the editorial policy of the Leeds Times when police measures were taken in Leeds after the Plug Riots. “Rome was once preserved from destruction by the braying of an Ass; the Capitol was saved by the cackling of Geese; and Leeds and the West-Riding generally has just been rescued from destruction by the swearing in of Special Constables.” Leeds Times (Sep. 3, 1842)Google Scholar.

43. Ibid. (Oct. 5, 1839).

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49. Smiles's indebtedness to the transcendentalists is discussed at greater length by Alexander Tyrrell in a forthcoming issue of Notes and Queries.

50. Bruce, Maurice, The Coming of the Welfare State (London, 1961), p. 98Google Scholar.

51. The fullest account of this committee is in Tyrrell, “Samuel Smiles.”

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57. Ibid. (Sep. 14, 1844). See also University of Leeds Library, B. A. Kilburne, “Annals of Zion Schools, New Wortley” (unpublished manuscript); Reports from Handloom Weavers' Commissioners, in Parliamentary Papers, 1840, XXIII, 543–45Google Scholar.

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61. Silver, , Popular Education, p. 221Google Scholar.

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