social, and domestic arrangements, such as at present, a large proportion of your efforts would be vain, {234} and the education you could give nearly fruitless."[283] This was not Socialism. But it was the recognition of the fact that the individual would have no chance of honest growth unless society co-operated to improve the conditions in which he lived. The general attitude of legislators towards the spirit of Socialism was very different. The Tories were largely moved to oppose it by its alliance with free thought. In 1833 the Bishop of Exeter formally moved that the Government should take steps to suppress it. The Bishop of London said that "The Government, as a Christian Government, were called upon in the exercise of their parental functions to interpose a shield between these pernicious doctrines and the minds of those who were more than the rest of society liable to the dominion of passion."[284] Wellington gravely referred to the "atrocious character" of the Socialist Associations, which decoyed the people away from church by inviting them to Sunday dances. The Whig Ministry then declined to interfere with the propagation of any opinions, however obnoxious. But their intellectual hostility was as marked as that of Wellington himself. In 1852, after the French Revolution of 1848, with its disastrous attempt to provide work for all at the expense of the State, had brought the new doctrines again into prominence, Macaulay declined with great vigour to have anything to do with "Fourierism, or St. Simonianism, or Socialism, or any of those other 'isms,' for which the plain English word is 'robbery.'"[285] Whigs and Tories, whatever their opinions about free thought, were at least united in their determination to brook no interference with private property. The real English Socialism was of a more practical kind than the doctrinaire Socialism of Continental thinkers like Lassalle and Marx. The chief spokesman was Thomas Carlyle, who was a philosopher rather than a politician, and rather created a {235} new spirit in men than contrived for them any practical expedients. He never concealed his contempt for the ordinary politician, and had more in common with a Tory like Shaftesbury than with Whigs, Radicals, or political workmen.