492 Chapter 25
evolutionary socialism (who believed that democratic
elections would lead to socialism and therefore op-
posed violent revolution). Marx had little influence in
Britain and was virtually unknown in France. He was
not even dominant in his native Germany, where Ferdi-
nand Lassalle had more influence. Lassalle, a successful
lawyer and spellbinding orator, had organized workers
at Leipzig in 1862 and created a national Workers As-
sociation in 1863. His theory of state socialism, in
which governments would adopt socialist programs
without being overthrown by a Marxist revolution, ini-
tially appealed to German workers, but Lassalle died in
a duel in 1864. A more radical workers’ party appeared
in 1868, organized by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August
Bebel. However, their first party congress, held at Eise-
nach in 1869, showed that socialism remained close to
radical republicanism; the Eisenach program sought de-
mocratic reforms, not revolution.
Mid-Victorian Britain
If industrial conditions were heading toward revolution,
the revolution would logically be expected to come in
Great Britain, the birthplace of industrial society. The
British census of 1851 showed the changes associated
with the industrial revolution; more than 50 percent of
the population lived in towns and cities, making Britain
the first urban society in history. Comparative data
show how unusual Britain was: The French census of
1851 found only 25.5 percent of the population in
towns; the Spanish figure (1857) was 16.2 percent; and
the Austrian figure (1857), 8.5 percent.
Despite the pressures of urbanization and industri-
alization, Britain had avoided revolution in 1848. His-
torians have explained this in many ways. Some have
stressed the role of working-class religions (especially
Methodism) that inculcated values such as the accep-
tance of one’s social position and obedience to one’s su-
periors. Charles Dickens put this into a prayer: “O let
us love our occupations... and always know our
proper stations.” Others have extended this view to
stress the importance of deference to the leadership of
the upper class. As the constitutional scholar Walter
Bagehot put it, “The English constitution in its palpable
form is this: the mass of the people yield obedience to a
select few.” Economic historians have insisted that the
answer is simpler: The working-class standard of living
was steadily improving. A more traditional view stresses
the importance of timely, but gradual, liberal reforms.
Yet mid-Victorian Britain faced problems. The kind
of nationalist rebellion that struck central Europe might
have occurred in Ireland, for the Irish problem was as
severe as the plight of Czechs or Hungarians. The
potato blight of the 1840s led to terrible famine and
widespread unrest. The British responded by passing
repressive laws. When the moderate Daniel O’Connell
died in 1847, the leadership of Irish nationalism passed
briefly to the Young Ireland movement, founded on the
Mazzinian model by William Smith O’Brien. O’Brien
tried to raise an insurrection at Tipperary in July 1848,
but he failed and was sentenced to penal transportation
to Tasmania. In the 1850s one of O’Brien’s associates,
James Stephens, founded the Irish Republican Brother-
hood as a secret society dedicated to armed rebellion.
Stephens’s republican rebels became better known as
the Fenians (honoring ancient Gaelic warriors, the
Fianna). The Fenians planned an uprising in 1867 (for
which they pioneered fund-raising among Irish immi-
grants in America) but were thwarted by informers.
In domestic affairs, Parliament advanced cautiously
toward liberal-democratic government. This evolution
extended civil rights to British Jews through the Jewish
Disabilities Act of 1858, a generation after Catholic
emancipation. The House of Lords had blocked Jewish
(and atheist) emancipation on the argument that Britain
was a Christian state and must therefore have a Chris-
tian Parliament. In typical British gradualism, Jewish
emancipation provided only equal political rights; Ox-
ford and Cambridge remained closed to them until a
further reform in 1871.
The women’s rights campaign also made historic
progress during the 1850s. Parliament had briefly ad-
dressed this subject after Caroline Norton’s struggle to
win the Infant Custody Act of 1839, but no govern-
ment adopted the principle of women’s rights. In the
1850s another energetic woman with high political
connections, Barbara Bodichon, resumed the campaign
for the rights of married women. Bodichon had been
one of the first women to attend Bedford College at the
University of London. She managed her own school for
women and there encountered the burden that the law
placed upon a married woman. Bodichon published a
pamphlet to educate the public: A Brief Summary in Plain
Language of the Most Important Laws of England Concerning
Married Women(1854). “A man and wife are one person
in law,” she explained. “The wife loses all her rights as a
single woman, and her existence is... absorbed in that
of her husband” (see document 25.3). That loss of legal
identity was so complete that if a woman had her purse
stolen, the thief could only be arrested for stealing the