The period of classical political economy has often been seen as an age dominated by the principles and policies of laissez-faire, where the role of the state is limited to little more than "the protection of person and property against force and fraud" both internally and externally.¹ Carlyle inveighed against "that self-cancelling Donothingism and Laissez-faire" which he contrived to associate with political economy and identify as the source of all the miseries of the poor.² Dicey named the years 1825–75 as "the period of Benthamism or Individualism". In more recent historiography another view has been taken. For Brebner, Bentham and J. S. Mill are "the formulator of state intervention for collectivist ends and his devout disciple".³ The two are seen as having a decisive influence on the undeniable rise in the level of state activity throughout the nineteenth century, despite the prevalence of anti-paternalist sentiments, the fear of state power, and (more importantly) the fear of new corruption and jobbery with each new creation of administrative machinery. Roberts has argued that between 1833 and 1854, albeit in a cumulative and unplanned fashion, "a centralised, paternalistic state" had been created.⁴ Watson writes of "the myth of laissez-faire" so far as the history of the Victorian period is concerned.⁵