ABSTRACT
The third phase of English history in the nineteenth century may be held to start in 1865. This is an arbitrary date, for the conditions which typified the third phase were the result of a continuous social development, and it is wrong to suggest any precise point at which it can be held to begin. As the programme of social reform developed it became increasingly professional, using methods which required the employment of trained experts, for which an untrained priest and parochial volunteers would be unsuited. In the twentieth century the abandonment of the dualism that accepts both the authority of the State and the authority of a value that remains beyond the needs and will of the State leads to the totalitarian State. The powers of the State were increasing and would certainly continue to increase, so that political theorists often choose this moment to mark the change from the ‘period of laissez-faire’ to the period of ‘collectivism’.
