英国为何放弃了"小政府"？

19世纪中期的英国虽然是全球最富裕的工业强国，却奉行极端的"小政府"制度。11850年时，英国的民生支出仅占GDP的不足10%，1内政部仅有29名雇员，1几乎没有公立学校、食品监管等现代意义的公共服务。1相比之下，同一时期法国内政部长的手下就有20万人。1这一时期，政治思想家约翰·斯图尔特·穆勒主张"当那些对生活事务有直接利益的人被允许按照自己的方式行事，不受法律命令或任何公职人员的干预时，生活事务会得到更好的处理"。1

到1914年，英国这套制度基本终结，国家完成了向现代干预型国家的转变。1义务教育已普及，1食品掺假被严令禁止，1工人享受失业保险，1政府开始发放养老金。1西北大学经济史学家W.沃克·汉隆在著作《自由放任的实验：英国小政府史》中揭示，这一转变的主要推动力量来自工业革命释放的经济力量，而非政治意识形态的改变。1工业化和城市化带来的复杂社会问题，最终促使英国放弃了持续数十年的"小政府"政策，建立起现代的政府干预体系。1

Britain underwent a dramatic transformation in its approach to governance between the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, abandoning the doctrine of laissez-faire economics in favor of active state involvement in economic and social affairs.1 In 1850, despite being the world's wealthiest industrial power, Britain maintained an extraordinarily minimal government footprint, with public spending on social welfare accounting for less than 10 percent of GDP and virtually no provision for public education, food safety regulation, or other social services.1 The scale of this restraint was striking: the British Home Office employed merely 29 staff members, a stark contrast to France's Home Ministry, which had 200,000 employees during the same period.1

By 1914, this system of governmental minimalism had fundamentally dissolved, replaced by what constitutes the modern interventionist state.1 The transformation encompassed mandatory education, strict prohibition of food adulteration, the establishment of public infrastructure, and the introduction of social insurance schemes including unemployment benefits and government-provided pensions.1 According to W. Walker Hanlon, an economic historian at Northwestern University, in his work "The Experiment in Laissez-Faire: A History of Small Government in Britain," this shift resulted primarily from the economic forces unleashed by industrialization rather than from ideological political change.1 The nineteenth-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill had articulated the prevailing philosophy of the era, stating that "when those who have a direct interest in any affair are allowed to act for themselves in managing it, without being either interfered with or controlled by any public functionary, the affair is generally conducted much better than it would be under the management of a public officer."1 Yet the pressures generated by rapid industrialization and urbanization ultimately proved insurmountable for this doctrine, compelling the state to assume unprecedented responsibility for the welfare and regulation of economic life.1