The Industrial revolution gradually destroyed old agricultural England. It shook the supremacy of the aristocratic class and landed gentry, and brought into being a new merchant class.

This new class, quite naturally, clamored for power and prestige, both political and social, and did not agree to the accepted order of things. Victorian traditions and conventions were thus subjected to greater and greater pressures and by the last quarter of the century there were large cracks in the Victorian fabric. Moreover, the lower classes, too, were acquiring political rights.