688 Ch. 1 8 • The Dominant Powers in the Age of Liberalism
results of a government survey of
every church in England and Wales
on a Sunday morning in 1851. Out
of a population of almost 18 million
people, only slightly more than 7.2
million had attended church. More
over, if everybody in England and
Wales had decided to attend church,
only 58 percent of the population
and only 30 percent of Londoners
could be accommodated. Between
1841 and 1876, the Anglicans built
1,727 new churches and restored
more than 7,000 old ones; among
their rivals, Congregationalists and
Catholics doubled the number of
their churches, and Baptists multi
plied their churches by five.
A contemporary impression of Darwin The Church of England, closely
looking at human ancestry. identified with the British elite,
remained a target for liberal reform
ers. Parliament had repealed the Corporation and Test Acts in 1828, elimi
nating two significant discriminatory laws that had kept Dissenters
(non-Anglican Protestants) who refused to take communion in the Anglican
Church from holding office. Parliamentary decrees in 1854 and 1856
allowed non-Anglicans to attend Cambridge and Oxford Universities.
Catholics, most of whom were Irish immigrants—in addition to a small
number of nobles whose families had converted to Catholicism—still faced
popular suspicion, however, reflecting the deep roots of anti-Catholicism in
British national identity.
Many middle-class Victorians wanted to make the lower classes more
“moral.” Congregationalist and Baptist evangelicals (as well as Methodists)
won converts among the lower classes, perhaps because leaders of these
churches demonstrated far more interest in the conditions of the poor than
did the Church of England. Temperance movements proliferated in a wave
of concern about lower-class drunkenness—one-third of all arrests were for
drunk and disorderly conduct. The Charity Organization Society, founded in
1869, promoted charitable giving to those who steered clear of drink. And in
1875, the Salvation Army began its work, offering assistance to those who
would participate in religious revival services.
The Crimean WarIn 1854, Britain found itself involved in a major war that ended the long
peace that had lasted almost without interruption since Napoleon’s defeat