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The decade of the 1830s in England was characterized by prolonged violent industrial unrests and the political noise. This atmosphere of simmering unrest in all parts of the country awakened the worry on social revolution to the authorities. A lot of measures including New Poor Law which ruling class took resulted from the perception that the poor were potential criminals and the concern about social revolution. To prevent such wrong turning the ruling class used the strategy that the poor were poor, not because of social injustice, but because of their own sins of profligacy, recklessness, and immorality. Utilitarianism and Evangelicalism were the key means to execute this strategy. The reforms and education based on Evangelicalism and Utilitarianism set a goal of maintaining existing social order and training the labourers who were suitable for industrial society. In Oliver Twist, Dickens expressed strong objection to the strategy for controlling the poor by the authorities because he believed that the poverty not resulted from personal character flaw but the uneven social structure. Charles Dickens was critical of the whole structure of beliefs concerning the poor which underlay the legal system of his time.
