Culture; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century
But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw it, and as it
really broke the Oxford movement? It was the great middle-class
liberalism, which had for the cardinal points of its belief the
Reform Bill of 1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the
social sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition, [37] and the
making of large industrial fortunes; in the religious sphere, the
Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant
religion. I do not say that other and more intelligent forces than
this were not opposed to the Oxford movement: but this was the force
which really beat it; this was the force which Dr. Newman felt
himself fighting with; this was the force which till only the other
day seemed to be the paramount force in this country, and to be in
possession of the future; this was the force whose achievements fill
Mr. Lowe with such inexpressible admiration, and whose rule he was so
horror-struck to see threatened. And where is this great force of
Philistinism now? It is thrust into the second rank, it is become a
power of yesterday, it has lost the future. A new power has suddenly
appeared, a power which it is impossible yet to judge fully, but
which is certainly a wholly different force from middle-class
liberalism; different in its cardinal points of belief, different in
its tendencies in every sphere. It loves and admires neither the
legislation of middle-class Parliaments, nor the local self-
government of middle-class vestries, nor the unrestricted competition
of middle-class [38] industrialists, nor the dissidence of middle-
class Dissent and the Protestantism of middle-class Protestant
religion. I am not now praising this new force, or saying that its
own ideals are better; all I say is, that they are wholly different.
And who will estimate how much the currents of feeling created by Dr.
Newman's movement, the keen desire for beauty and sweetness which it
nourished, the deep aversion it manifested to the hardness and
vulgarity of middle-class liberalism, the strong light it turned on
the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle-class Protestantism,--
who will estimate how much all these contributed to swell the tide of
secret dissatisfaction which has mined the ground under the self-
confident liberalism of the last thirty years, and has prepared the
way for its sudden collapse and supersession? It is in this manner
that the sentiment of Oxford for beauty and sweetness conquers, and
in this manner long may it continue to conquer!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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