ABSTRACT
The disillusioned and sceptical mood which had so markedly overtaken penological discussions by the early 1850s was matched in social policy and public administration generally by a more agnostic, sober and pragmatic temper. In Burn's opinion
there is some evidence, scattered and imperfect as it is, that England in the 'fifties and 'sixties had lost or was losing certain characteristics which had distinguished it in the preceding forty or fifty years: the capacity for single-minded belief ... the impetuosity of thought and action, the rapid alternation between radiant optimism and abasing pessimism.
And in the 1860sOne is conscious of a note of impatience; the impatience, not of the fanatic or the revolutionary but of the rational, tidy-minded man resolved to clear his premises of an accumulation of junk. Some of the junk was institutional... some was human.... 1
