A century after Locke’s mature political writings, controversy over policy toward the working classes came roaring back. This was the occasion for thinkers to develop both sides of the work ethic in light of changing economic and cultural conditions. One side, represented by Adam Smith and more radical thinkers including assorted Ricardian socialists, Marquis de Condorcet, Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and Marx, advanced the progressive, pro-worker dimensions of the work ethic that Locke had so skillfully promoted in most of his mature writing. The other side, led by Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Malthus, Edmund Burke, William Paley, Richard Whately, and Nassau Senior, followed the spirit of Locke’s suspicious and stinting poor-law reform proposal. This split reflected two large changes in British society near the turn of the nineteenth century: a much sharper division between workers and capitalists caused by the Industrial Revolution, and increasing secularization.