ABSTRACT

In The Age of Equipoise W. L. Burn argued that in the mid-Victorian period 'the old and the new, the elements of growth, survival and decay, achieved a balance which most contemporaries regarded as satisfactory'. Burn's concept of equipoise implied that there was general consensual support for the status quo in the mid-Victorian period. The attitude of mid-Victorian intellectuals to democracy was deeply influenced by Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, which was published in France in 1835 and immediately translated into English. De Tocqueville was convinced that the rise of democracy was irresistible and his prediction seemed to be borne out by the 1848 Revolutions on the Continent. The victory of the North encouraged British radicals to revive the reform campaign. Essays on Reform, published in 1867, were peppered with references to the US and admiration for American democracy was voiced in radical papers like Reynolds's News and The Bee-hive.