Not if you read what the people at the time were saying and doing. They knew they were living in an exciting time and the world was for the taking for those who would throw the dice. The sky seemed to be the limit. Freedom was in the air, and no problem or challenge seemed to be beyond hope of resolution.

And the “Victorians” get a false bad rap as being a bunch of people who weren’t a lot of fun. There is a terrific old essay by Arthur Machen called “the Poor Victorians” (in his collection of essays entitled “Dog and Duck” (1924)). Machen gives a satirical depiction of how dowdy the Victorians supposedly were. He then goes on to describe the nightlife of mid-Victorian London, with its supper clubs which served vast meals beginning at midnight after the theatre: “mountains of kidneys, chops, sausages, the pints of stout, the creaming Scotch ale, the mighty measures of punch and grog; and all this was beginning at one in the morning.” He laments that in 1924 an Englishman cannot even buy a cigarette after 8:00 p.m.

Life was hard for many in those days, but the poor you always have with you. More importantly, we all know that life being hard is easier to take when the prospects of something much better are realistically before your eyes. The thousands who set out from Europe to go to American or Australia, or go out West from the East Coast went with high spirits and hopes for great things — and sometimes had spectacular success, and often made a good life for themselves and their families.

Three cheers for the men and women of the 19th century, our ancestors, heroic people of a heroic age. Let us all pause a moment in gratitude for all that we have had which is a gift to our age from the unfairly maligned 19th century mind.

And lots of things today are better than they used to be. There is probably, at least in the U.S., less racial animosity. There is more wealth, which makes everyone’s life better. Women have more opportunities. People live longer and healthier lives. These aren’t trivialities. Sure, there is less freedom along a number of dimensions, we pay taxes at much higher rates, etc. It would be nice if we could retain the good things about modern life without having to keep the statism, and without having to have gone through the socialist murder orgies of the 20th Century, but we don’t have this option. Recognizing that some things are better now doesn’t mean we have forgotten the Gulag or favor the system that created it.

Some of the societal changes (socialism) since then resulted in over 150 million state sponsored murders. Can we at least call it a draw?

I don’t agree with the implied link between slavery and minarchist government. Every civilized nation on the planet abolished slavery in the 19th century. Only one felt the need to accomplished that task by through war (and then only as a by-product). The government didn’t have to acquire vast new powers in order to abolish slavery (all they had to do was offer compensation, something that the radical abolisionists would never agree to because many were as interested in punishing slave owners as helping slaves). For the proponents of big government (Republicans at the time), this was just a fortunate bonus.

It’s very easy to say that slavery existed in the 19th century so everything that happened then is permanently tainted. The problem most people with this view have is that they don’t apply the same standard to the bloodist century in world history, which is held out as a superior comparison.

Neither side of the political aisle seems to get this.