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Friday 6 May 2011

Paternalism and patronage: a society of elites

All societies are, to some degree, stratified or divided into different social groups. These groups may be in competition with each other for social control or wealth. They may be functional, defined by their contribution to society as a whole. They may share common ‘values’, have a common ‘national identity’ or they may form part of a pluralistic society in which different ‘values’ coexist with varying degrees of consensus or conflict. They have different names like ‘castes’ or ‘ranks’ or ‘classes’. British society in the nineteenth and early-twentieth century has been called a ‘class society’ but there are some differences between historians about its precise meaning or whether it is meaningful at all.[1] Were there two classes or three or five or any classes at all? Were there any common values? They do, however, agree that society in 1914 was different from the society that existed in the 1830s. It is important to have some understanding of the ‘wholeness’ of society, whether nationally or within a given locality because it was the overall structure of society that people were reacting against or attempting to preserve.[2] Individuals must be understood, given meaning and significance, not in isolation but within their web of social relationships.  The underlying basis of the elitism of the aristocracy in the 1830s was one of mutual and reciprocal obligation within a hierarchical framework. Harold Perkin wrote that

The old society, then was a finely graded hierarchy of great subtlety and discrimination, in which men were acutely aware of their exact relation to those immediately above and below them, but only vaguely conscious except at the very top of their connections with those on their own level....There was one horizontal cleavage of great import, that between the ‘gentleman’ and the ‘common people’, but it could scarcely be defined in economic terms.[3]

This view of society had two important dimensions. First, it was paternalistic. What mattered here was not what was later parodied as ‘forelock tugging’ but sympathetic involvement by the elites in the lives of the rest of society. There was an expectation of reciprocity, a common outlook and identification of interests and, if necessary, sheer coercion to maintain the civil stability of a hierarchical social structure. A Christian faith and moral code was a common possession of all of society and rank, station, duty and decorum were central social values.

Class 1

David Roberts provides a useful model of paternalism in early Victorian society.[4] A paternalist saw society in the following ways. First, it should be authoritarian, though tempered by adhesion to the common law and ancient ‘liberties’. Secondly, it should be hierarchical. Thirdly, it should be ‘organic’ with people knowing their appointed place. Finally, it should be ‘pluralistic’ consisting of different hierarchical ‘interests’ making up the organic whole. Within this structure paternalists had certain duties and held certain assumptions. First was the duty to rule, a direct result of wealth and power. Parallel to this was the obligation to help the poor, not merely passively but with active assistance. Paternalists also believed in the duty of ‘guidance’, a firm moral superintendence. Paternalism governed relationships at all levels of society and continued to play an important role even in innovative areas of the economy.[5] Apprenticeship, for example, was more than induction into craft particular skills; it was an immersion in the social experience or common wisdom of the community. Practices, norms and attitudes were, as a result, reproduced through successive generations within an accepted framework of traditional customs and rights grounded in the vaguely defined notion of ‘the moral economy’. [6]

Secondly, patronage was a key feature.[7] Patronage was central to the paternalist ethic and it retained its importance throughout the nineteenth century. It was characteristic of an unequal face-to-face society, crossing social barriers and bringing together potentially hostile groups. Patronage involved a ‘lopsided’ relationship between individuals, a patron and a client of unequal status, wealth and influence. It could be called a ‘package deal’ of reciprocal advantage to the individuals involved. It is true that by the 1830s much of the ‘politically useful’ forms of patronage such as jobs for electors and rewards for political supporters had declined but to assume that there was a general decline in patronage is to fundamentally misconceive the issue.[8] Patronage remained central to the Church of England with successive prime ministers exercising considerable influence over episcopal appointments[9] and in the Arts.[10] The nineteenth century is often seen as an age in which professionalism replaced patronage in British political and social life. The career was opened up to the talents as the upwardly-mobile middle-classes attacked and conquered the old preserves of the aristocracy and gentry; fewer and fewer places were marked ‘reserved’ just because they were within the gift and bequest of those with wealth and property. Elections and examinations made steady inroads into elitism; merit was substituted for manipulation and management.

Many of the political, social and economic changes of the first half of the nineteenth century, however, greatly increased the amount of patronage that was available. There was a dramatic increase in the number of ‘administratively necessary’ offices.[11] The prison, factory, health and schools Inspectorate were all staffed, at least initially, through patronage. This was paralleled in local government where ‘efficient’ patronage was used by rival elites within communities as an extension of party politics. Finally, offices may have been filled by personal nomination but individuals had to possess some basic competence. This notion of ‘merit’ received wider application after the Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1854, though patronage comfortably withstood much of the onslaught of merit until the 1870s.[12] Only the urban middle-classes of the north were indifferent to patronage though it was still evident in, for example, the promotion of science.[13] The bulk of the middle-classes were located in the genteel world of the professions and of propertyless independent incomes, far less entrepreneurial and competitive than their industrial equivalents. As long as a common area of shared values existed patronage continued to have broad application and utility.


[1] On methodology see Burke, P., History and Social Theory, (Polity), 1992, Abrams, P., Historical Sociology, (Open Books), 1982 and two books by Lloyd, C., Explanation in Social History, (Basil Blackwell), 1986 and The Structures of History, (Basil Blackwell), 1993.

[2] What follows extends arguments developed initially in ibid, Brown, Richard, Change and Continuity in British Society 1800-1850, and ibid, Society and Economy in Modern Britain 1700-1850, (Routledge) 1991, especially pp. 342-367.

[3] Ibid, Perkin, H., The Origins of Modern English Society 1780-1880, p. 24.

[4] Roberts, David, Paternalism in Early Victorian England, (Croom Helm), 1979, pp. 2-10.

[5] Revill, George, ‘“Railway Derby”: occupational community, paternalism and corporate culture, 1850-90’, Urban History, Vol. 28, (2001), pp. 378-404 and ‘Liberalism and paternalism: politics and corporate culture in “Railway Derby”, 1865-75’. Social History, Vol. 24, (1999), pp. 196-214 provide a valuable case study.

[6] Thompson, E. P., ‘The Moral Economy of the Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, Vol. 50, (1971), pp. 76-136, reprinted in his Customs in Common, (Merlin Press), 1991, pp. 185-259, with ‘The Moral Economy Reviewed’, pp. 259-351. There is now a considerable body of literature on the historical application of the model of moral economy including Charlesworth, Andrew and Randall, Adrian, (eds.), The Moral Economy and Popular Protest: Crowds, Conflict and Authority, (Croom Helm), 2000.

[7] Bourne, J.M., Patronage and Society in Nineteenth-Century England, (Edward Arnold), 1986 remains an essential study.

[8] Harling, Philip, The waning of ‘Old Corruption’: the politics of economical reform in Britain, 1779-1846, (Oxford University Press), 1996.

[9] See, for example, Gibson, William T., ‘“A Great Excitement”: Gladstone and church patronage, 1860-1894’, Anglican and Episcopal History, Vol. 68, (1999), pp. 372-396, Disraeli’s church patronage, 1868-1880’, Anglican and Episcopal History, Vol. 62, (1992), pp. 197-210 and ‘The Tories and church patronage: 1812-1830’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 41, (1990), pp. 266-274.

[10] See, Morrison, John, ‘Victorian municipal patronage: the foundation and management of Glasgow Corporation Galleries 1854-1888’, Journal of the History of Collections, Vol. 8, (1996), pp. 93-102 and Wolff, Janet and Arscott, Caroline, ‘“Cultivated Capital”: patronage and art in nineteenth-century Manchester and Leeds’, in ibid, Marsden, Gordon, (ed.), Victorian values: personalities and perspectives in nineteenth-century society, pp. 29-41.

[11] This is evident in Clifton, G.C., Professionalism, patronage and public service in Victorian London: the staff of the Metropolitan Board of Works, 1856-1889, 1992 and Porter, Dale H. and Clifton, G. C., ‘Patronage, professional values and Victorian public works: engineering and contracting the Thames embankment’, Victorian Studies, Vol. 31, (1988), pp. 319-349.

[12] This was particularly evident in the Indian Civil Service: Compton, J.M., ‘Open Competition and the Indian Civil Service, 1854-1876’, English Historical Review, Vol. 83, (1968), pp. 265-284 and Moore, R.J., ‘The abolition of patronage in the Indian Civil Service and the closure of Haileybury College’, Historical Journal, Vol. 7, (1964), pp. 246-257.

[13] Cardwell, D.S.L., ‘The patronage of science in nineteenth-century Manchester’, in Turner, Gerard L’Estrange, (ed.), The patronage of science in the nineteenth century, (Noordhoff), 1976, pp. 95-113.

The rise in Catholic clerical power in Lower Canada: before the rebellions

A product of the unique geography and history of the land and its peoples, Canadian religion today exhibits its own characteristic features at the same time as it shows many of the typical patterns associated with the religious activities of contemporary post-industrial societies. While sharing much in common with the religious life of its nearest neighbour, Canada boasts significant national and regional deviation from the American norm. More generally, the drama of Canadian religiosity is enacted against a familiar backdrop of disenchantment and secularisation.[1]

Before 1760s, the vast diocese of Quebec at its greatest extent reached the Gulf of Mexico, Hudson’s Bay and the Rockies. From the city of Quebec went out, if not the missionaries themselves, at least the commission to the priests to organise and administer the territories that would eventually become subdivided into the parishes, then the dioceses, and again eventually be reunited into the ecclesiastical province. Before any division into dioceses occurred, or could even be considered, however, there was a long period of adjustment by the French Catholic colony under the new British administration.

The conquest of Canada in 1760 threatened a complete reversal of the religious history of New France.[2] The Anglican Bishop indicated that one Bishop for the colony was enough, and that that should be the Anglican bishop. The Catholic Church, at that moment inconveniently without a Bishop as Bishop Pontbriand had died in 1760, could not agree on his successor. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 promised Canada ‘the enjoyment of the benefit of the laws of Our realm of England’; and the royal instructions to General Murray, the first civil governor of the province, required him to admit of no ‘Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of the See of Rome.’ He was also required to give all possible encouragement to the erection of Protestant schools and churches, ‘to the end that the Church of England may be established both in principles and practice and that the said inhabitants may by degrees be induced to embrace the Protestant religion.’ Canada was to become a newer New England and Anglicanism could be imposed on the 60,000 French Canadians under current English law. However, under the influence of Murray and of his successor Sir Guy Carleton, this policy was never implemented. The administrators sensed parallels with Ireland and after long negotiations arrived at a pragmatic solution.

In 1766, permission was given for the consecration of Briand as bishop of Quebec in France with the title of ‘Superintendent of the Romish Church’, but to the Catholics he was the Bishop. He was empowered sacramentally to carry out the fullness of the priesthood and this was what mattered to the Catholic people of Canada. In 1774 the Quebec Act gave the Roman Catholic Church in Canada the right of collecting tithes by process of law making it, if not an established church, at any rate an endowed one.[3] At the same time, little was done to introduce Protestant clergymen into the colony. Two or three French-speaking Anglican clergymen were settled in Quebec, Trois Riviéres and Montreal but it was not until 1793 that an Anglican bishop of Quebec was appointed or any serious attempt was made to provide for the religious needs of the growing number of Protestants in the colony.

The Roman Catholic Church remained faithful to the British crown. In 1775, the rebellious American colonies launched an attack on Quebec but most French Canadians, guided by Bishop Briand, supported the British. The war of 1812 was another occasion for French Canadians to show their loyalty to the British crown. Joseph-Octave Plessis galvanised his priests and the entire apparatus of the Church to support the British cause. Plessis cleverly used his new found influence with the British by expanding the administration of the Catholic Church throughout Canada and in 1818 was made a member of the Legislative Council with the title of ‘Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church of Quebec’.[4]

The major problem facing the Roman Catholic Church in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century was the lack of parish priests.[5] After the Treaty of Paris in 1763, most of the members of the male religious orders had gone from the colony. The few left were aging. During the period of transition there were few young men being attracted to the priesthood. In 1790, there were 146 priests in Canada, for about 145,000 Catholics. There had been a ban on the entry of priests from France after 1760. After 1793 that ban was lifted. The French Revolution had sent about 8,000 priests to Great Britain as refugees. At the invitation of the Bishop of Quebec and with the permission of the British government, fifty-one of those French priests came to Canada and forty of them stayed, mainly as professors in the classical colleges and in the major and minor seminaries, and in a few parishes. Even with that addition, there were in 1808 only 166 priests for 200,000 people. While it appears that the number of priests was diminishing, the number of people was growing, as immigration added its masses to the naturally increasing populace.

Serge Gagnon and Louise Lebel-Gagnon show that in general the physical presence of the Roman Catholic Church was in decline before the rebellions of 1837-1838. From 750 Catholics per priest in 1780, there were 1,834 Lower Canadian Catholics per priest by 1830.[6] In Montreal during the 1830s, one third of adult burials were conducted without a religious ceremony. Young and Dickinson have shown that only 36% of the parishioners at Montreal’s parish church during this decade took Easter communion, the most important religious service of the year. It was only after 1840 that the organisation of the Roman Catholic Church expanded rapidly.[7]

The Catholic Church gave Quebec a uniform religious character. It was extremely traditional and French Canada remained the stronghold of clericalism. The clergy tended to subordinate the State to the Church. The parish priest not only became the undisputed head of his parish, but he also played a vital part in every aspect of community life. No transactions took place in the parish without consulting the priest. He drew up wills, drafted deeds of gifts, and looked after documents placed in his care. The parish priest was also the key stone of the educational system where French was the language of instruction. Much emphasis was placed on preparing pupils for their first Communion. One later objective was to make rural life attractive to forestall emigration to the cities. The clergy came to see urban life as the erosion of faith. Secondary education prepared for study for the liberal professions in colleges where French language and literature were emphasised. As a result, the educational system strengthened the francophone concept of a distinct society within Canada. It shaped the morals, religious convictions and the cultural outlook of a large part of Quebec’s population. The essence of Quebec’s heritage is consequently the Catholic faith, large families, the parish, the French language, rural living and historical development distinct from the rest of Canada.

An effective presence since the 1763 Treaty of Paris ceded most of the Franco-American empire to Britain, the Anglican Church (officially known as the Church of England in Canada until 1955) has decidedly establishment origins. Officially recognised as a legally established church by the Constitutional Act of 1791, the Anglican Church was viewed as a vital conservative bulwark against revolution and republicanism in British North America. Despite legal, social and economic advantages, Anglicanism never evolved into the naturally acknowledged Church of Canada envisioned by British elites in the wake of American independence. The powerful Roman Catholic presence in Lower Canada and a rapidly expanding Methodist movement in the newly settled lands of Upper Canada made such monopolistic designs untenable. Although Anglicanism retained a certain social status and elite influence, it acknowledged the denominational character of Canadian religious life long before its legal disestablishment by the Clergy Reserves Act of 1854.

Legally instated under the Crown by the Quebec Act of 1774 and the Constitutional Act of 1791, the Roman Catholic Church enjoyed a moral monopoly in Francophone Quebec until very recently. In unofficial concordat with local forces of reaction and expressing hostility to capitalism, industry, cities, liberalism, republicanism and other aspects of the Protestant-modernist axis, this conservative ultramontane church exercised an almost theocratic control over most aspects of Quebec’s rural and urban life until the mid-twentieth century. French ultramontanist Roman Catholicism adopted a fiercely defensive attitude towards the influences of Britishness and Protestantism after 1840 and gave Quebec a strong sense of mission and destiny. The Catholic hierarchy led the fight to safeguard Quebec’s national consciousness. Protestantism was seen, not only as a threat to the religious character of Quebec but also to its national identity. It has been said that to be French and Catholic is normal, to be English and Protestant is permissible, but to be French and a Protestant is heresy. In the words of one nineteenth century nationalist

Every nation must fulfil its own destiny, as set by Providence. It must understand its mission fully and strive constantly towards the goal...Divine Providence entrusted to French Canadians is basically religious in nature: it is, namely to convert the unfortunate infidel population to Catholicism, and to expand the Kingdom of God by developing a predominantly Catholic nationality.


[1] Handy, Robert T., A History of the Churches in the United States and Canada, (Oxford University Press), 1976, pp.116-135, 228-261, 344-376 provides a succinct discussion of Canada and its major religious developments.

[2] Lemieux, Lucien, Histoire du catholicisme québécois, Les XVIIIe et XIXe siècle, Vol. 1, Les années difficiles, (1760-1839), (Boreal), 1989 provides a discussion of Catholicism to the rebellions.

[3] Ibid, Lemieux, Lucien, L’Etablissement De La Premiere Province Ecclesiastique au Canada 1783-1844 consider the organisation issues relating to the bishopric of Montreal.

[4] ‘Joseph-Octave Plessis’, DCB, Vol. 6, pp. 586-599.

[5] On the life of priests and parochial organisation, ibid, Lemieux, Lucien, Histoire du catholicisme québécois, Les XVIIIe et XIXe siècle, Vol. 1, Les années difficiles, (1760-1839), pp. 101-184.

[6] Gagnon, Serge and Lebel-Gagnon, Louis, ‘Le milieu d’origine du clergé québécois 1775-1840: mythes et réalités’, Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, Vol. 37, (1983), p. 377

[7] Dickinson, John A. and Young, Brian, A Short History of Quebec, 2nd ed., (Copp Clark Pitman), 1993, p. 176; the growing conflict between the Church and the Parti Canadien has been traced by Richard Chabot in his Le curé de campagne et la contestation locale au Québec de 1791 aux troubles de 1837-38, (Hurtubise HMH), 1975.