Social Control

Abstract

The expansion of the urban communities, both physically and in terms of their density of population, raised the central issue of how they were to be governed. From the early nineteenth century it became clear that a system of local government which had evolved to serve the needs of a predominantly rural society would not be adequate to cope with the conditions created by the new industrialism. The ethos of the new communities was essentially individualistic, but whatever reservations there might be about the threat to individual freedoms of imposed legislation, the fact that laissez-faire would not on its own solve the problems created by urban expansion was inescapable. Laissez-faire itself was in fact only one half of a paradoxical equation: Benthamite utilitarianism was the predominant philosophy of Victorian commercial achievement and by its token administrative reform was a necessary requirement to ensure the efficient workings of the new social machine. Even a Romantic anti-Benthamite like Carlyle called unequivocally for legislation to solve society’s problems:

Again, are not Sanitary Regulations possible for a Legislature?