What does "behaving better" mean, exactly?
That's a great question. I was reading some Mark Steyn on another thread, and found this fascinating bit:
"But, in fact, 'the people' were a large part of the problem. Then as now, citizens of advanced democracies are easily distracted. The 18th- century Church of England preached 'a tepid kind of moralism' disconnected both from any serious faith and from the great questions facing the nation. It was a sensualist culture amusing itself to death: Wilberforce goes to a performance of Don Juan, is shocked by a provocative dance, and is then further shocked to discover the rest of the audience is too blasé even to be shocked. The Paris Hilton of the age, the Prince of Wales, was celebrated for having bedded 7,000 women and snipped from each a keepsake hair. Twenty-five per cent of all unmarried females in London were whores; the average age of a prostitute was 16; and many brothels prided themselves on offering only girls under the age of 14."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1798364/posts
To paraphrase Yogi Berra, the good ol' days ain't what they used to be.
That's certainly true.
The Victorian era produced some very odd behavior.