Condition-of-England question

The Condition-of-England question was a debate in the Victorian era over the issue of the English working-class during the Industrial Revolution. It was first proposed by Thomas Carlyle in his essay Chartism (1839). After assessing Chartism as "the bitter discontent grown fierce and mad, the wrong condition therefore or the wrong disposition, of the Working Classes of England", Carlyle proceeds to ask:What means this bitter discontent of the Working Classes? Whence comes it, whither goes it? Above all, at what price, on what terms, will it probably consent to depart from us and die into rest? These are questions. The division of society and the poverty of the majority began to dominate the minds of the intelligentsia following the 1832 Reform Act. They called this the "Condition-of-England Question". This was closely linked to a growing sense of anger at the culture of amateurism in official circles which produced this misery. The question preoccupied both Whigs and Tories. The historian John Prest has written that the early 1840s witnessed "the middle of structural changes in the economy, which led many to question whether the country had taken a wrong turning. Would manufacturing towns ever be loyal? Was poverty eating up capital? Was it safe to depend upon imports for food and raw materials? Could the fleet keep the seas open? Or should government encourage emigration and require those who remained behind to support themselves by spade husbandry? These were the ‘condition-of-England’ questions". Before Carlyle, William Cobbett had made similar critiques of the industrial revolution and in defense of the poor. Raymond Williams writes that Carlyle's question, "Is the condition of the English working people wrong; so wrong that rational working men cannot, will not, and even should not rest quiet under it?" is "Cobbett's question, and in Cobbett's manner." However, Cobbett's criticisms focused on physical want above all else, whereas Carlyle decried not only industrial England's material but its spiritual malnourishment.