ABSTRACT

In the year of the Great Exhibition the census recorded that, for the first time, one-half of Britain's population lived in towns. During the next twenty years or so, constructive adjustments were made to living in an urban society: These years of relative prosperity encouraged the luxuries of urban identification and civic pride. Not that social problems were ever far from the minds of town councillors elected under the new system of local government initiated by the Municipal Corporations Act (C.ii], but the town was seen increasingly as the emblem of political as well as commercial success. As early as 1843 the Congregationalist minister Robert Vaughan enthused that 'our metropolis has become such as the world has not seen' (though he acknowledged London's severe problems) while, 'Our leading towns in the provinces equal the capitals of ordinary kingdoms'. (294, 26).