ABSTRACT
The Poor Law Commission was the most assertive and obvious example in the 1830s and 1840s of what would come to be called the growth of government, whose wider implications are discussed elsewhere (Ch. 32). The major intellectual influence in all of this was undoubtedly that of the Benthamite Utilitarians, but in the three areas of growing State involvement during the 1830s and 1840s discussed here they faced stern competition. In the campaign for factory reform, moreover, most of the protagonists actively opposed the new political economy: Richard Oastler, a land agent, Michael Sadler, a linen merchant and the Revd George Bull, an evangelical curate, all from the West Riding of Yorkshire, were Tory paternalists. They were sceptical of the benefits presumed to flow from unfettered competition and they saw the State as the natural agency whereby the most brutish aspects of industrial capitalism could be curbed. The State should not shrink from donning the mantle of benevolent concern for its citizens somewhat hazily presumed to have been worn by the landowners of rural England in their dealings with the peasantry: In particular, the State must protect children from exploitation by factory owners.
