One of the problems in approaching a question such as this is the potential brevity of its parameters. The question if often implicit in a number of historians’ writings on a plethora of different topic. In the end, it is hard to escape the conclusions of Christie that the reasons were multifarious. Among the examples cited by him are, the absence, in a sort of De Tocquevillian analysis, of clear caste or class divisions, the prevalence of working-class societies which gave workers a standing in society and the existing Poor Law system. Of course other examples can be cited too. Linda Colley would point to a run-away Francophobia, while Patrick O’Brien might refer to the superiority of the British taxation system. To answer this question, then clear boundaries need to be set, lest this essay forms merely a list of various British idiosyncrasies that might have contributed to the polity’s survival. Here, I will borrow from recent historiographical trends which have tended to treat ideas as important and emphasise the importance of contemporary discourse in clearly demarcating the realms of debate. During this period, a sort of Burkean, historicist discourse gained intellectual hegemony and meant that any criticisms had to be based firmly within this paradigm. Or as Christie has written, “those who advocated a radical reform of parliament were constrained by this ethos to adapt their rhetoric and epistemology in order to gain popular support.”[1] Hence, romantic radicalism, which reached its apogee with the success of Burdett and Lord Cochrane at the election at Westminster in 1807. However, this discourse was fairly restraining. Firstly, it connoted a reverence for historical precedence and therefore an unwillingness to break completely with the past, which is what revolution would mean and secondly, it suggested any progress would have to be slow and evolutionary as this is what underpinned British success. This ideology was best articulated by Burke however it was not his sole doing and its dominance as the only real contemporary discourse was augmented by the British reaction to the French revolution. Above all, this essay is in many ways based on the “political” turn of E.P. Thompson, which noted the importance of political, cultural and social developments, rather than merely economic ones, as the traditional Marxist, in class formation.[2] Politics or political ideology is fundamental in fomenting any revolutionary disposition. Economic matters can only act as a catalyst and often lead to merely mindless rioting, as in the case of Luddism. This should in some ways vindicate my decision to focus on political ideas and by doing so, we can explain why Britain avoided revolution.
Burke’s Reflections in 1790 in many ways established this discourse and set the parameters of radical and reformist debates. Against him almost diametrically was Paine. Paine was fairly unequivocal: “All governments except those in France and America derived their authority from conquest and superstition: their foundation lay upon arbitrary power.” He denounced all theory of precedence and argued that government authority lay in its ability to protect the rights of man, which would not, contrary to Burkean discourse, be sacrificed upon entering civil society in replace of protection though he accepted that some rights notably the right to personal arbitration was sacrificed in place of the right to justice. In the Paineite Zeitgeist however, natural and civil rights were almost synonymous. Conversely, Burke did not necessarily denounce the existence of natural rights – by this he meant the right to justice and non-interference from government, rather than the right to vote, but these were surrendered upon entering society. Government authority was based not on protecting the natural rights of its citizens, but precedence. It was the Burkean ideology which best represented the imagination of the era. In fact, similar views had already been articulated before Burke. Paley’s Principal of Moral and Political Philosophy in 1785 for example argued for the evolutionary improvement of government, whilst Smith attacked the notion of innate moral sensibility which was at the heart of Enlightenment discourse in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Both were well-read and both seemed to articulate a historicist discourse based on precedence. The former in fact became a standard examination text at Cambridge University within a year of its publication. The implications of this discourse are twofold. Firstly, by denouncing the theory of natural rights, it countered the theory of a right to the franchise and secondly, and more importantly, it suggested reform was evolutionary and gradual and could not be achieved by breaking with historical precedent, which is what revolution connoted. The prevalence of this Zeitgeist is perhaps best established by the fact that Burke did not deem it necessary to enter into a debate with Paine about natural rights, but merely assumed the idea to be ludicrous. Though many others, particularly William Smith in a pamphlet in November 1791, attacked this theory on metaphysical and theological grounds, such was the prevalence of this theory of historical precedence, that Burke did not even entertain the idea. This historicist discourse had already “appealed to and rallied the instinctive support of the great majority of the British political nation”[3]
Why however was the Burkean historicist discourse so accepted? Above all, this, rather than Paineite egalitarianism and natural rights suited the case of England. The reverence for the ancient constitution among eighteenth-century radicals has been so well described by Edward Thompson and Christopher Hill that it almost seems platitudinous now to repeat the point. O will do so anyway. Whereas the founding fathers of America found various truths to be “self-evident” and based their constitution on abstract philosophical musing, eighteenth-century British radicals sought to re-establish a golden era of constitutional government under the Witenagemot before the Norman Yoke. This discourse based on Saxon precedent was articulated by the anonymous author of An Essay on the English Constitution and the radical Major Cartwright in Take Your Choice in 1776. Both had clear overtones of precedence. Similarly, common law, the foundation of the English legal system and the Episcopal tradition within Anglicanism, which meant the transfer of religious authority from one generation to the next were based on historical precedence. In fact, it is probably not an over-exaggeration to suggest that eighteenth and early nineteenth century British political culture was based entirely on a discourse of historical precedence. This may in fact illuminate our understanding of the opposition to Paine. Effigies were regularly burned of him and radicals tended to denounce his views completely. Henry Redhead Yorke during his trial in 1795 for example repudiated the doctrines of Paine and appealed to the constitution in defense of his reformist principles. Establishing the prevalence of this ideology may also illuminate our understanding of the opposition to Paine based on the curious accusation of “leveling.” Paine, it was held, not only sought the equalization of rights, but the equalization of property also. Now this certainly was not the case. Paine’s aims of property redistribution were not as radical as was suggested. For example, he only proposed an income tax of 1.25 per cent on estates valued between £50 and £500. Nevertheless, startled, landed incumbents seized on this point, though Paine must take some blame for not articulating his views clearer, which was left for pamphlets such as An Explanation of the Word Equality and Political Dialogues Upon the Subject of Equality to defend. The problem was not so much that Paine wanted to undermine property, though this was a problem, but his vision of society essentially meant a return to the beginning of time before any inequality of wealth existed. This meant essentially a rejection of historical precedence. Claeys is adamant that this did much to isolate middle-class support, though it should be noted, that like with any widely held ideas throughout history, they usually transcend social barriers and Burkeism was no different. Paine’s main problem was not that he offended middle-class commercial men who thrived on inequality of wealth, but that he offended the existing Zeitgeist, which underpinned the British ancien régime.
It was the French Revolution however which put the final nail in the Paineite coffin and thus secured the supremacy of a Burkean discourse. So much has been written about the English reaction to the outbreak of revolution and so many historical events have been attributed to a shift in attitudes after Quatre-Vignt-Neuf that it is probably wise to clarify its effect. What effectively happened is that, even if most people could not subscribe to Burkean epistemological suppositions, to put it as crudely as Ian Christie has “some at least of them, though not Paine, came to a sickening realization that some kind of rottenness lay at the heart of the revolution.”[4] Paine’s shining example of a government based on natural rights and popular sovereignty no longer seemed to be working. This shift in opinion is perhaps best demonstrated by the volte-face of the two romantic poets, Coleridge and Wordsworth. Thanks largely to Nicholas Roe, we are now aware that both Coleridge and Wordsworth played a crucial role in the Paineite reformist campaigns of the early 1790s. By the beginning of the nineteenth-century however their views had changed and become more Burkean like most of Britain. Wordsworth’s Prelude of 1805 characterized “reason” as the evil enchanting wizard. Though explicitly an attack on Enlightenment rationalism, it had obvious implications for Paineism too, which had its root in Englightenment subjectivity. The role of the Gallic stereotype, Britain’s image of revolutionary France is best dealt with in the work of Gerald Newman though I am not sure that I can necessarily agree with his conclusions that this rather than evangelicalism was the main bandwagon for growing middle-class consciousness. Regardless, British attitudes to revolution in France did more than anything else to establish in people’s minds the superiority of the British system over the Paineite, Frenchified model, which seemed to lead to anarchy and despair. In fact, Britain’s image of the revolution in France is best summed up by the popular iconographic image of the griming countenance of Voltaire or the face of an ape, both of which seemed to connote anarchy, licentiousness, barbarism and atheism. Burke was in fact partly responsible for this but there is a danger in assuming the attitudes of an entire epoch can be summed up in one man’s work. There were in fact many who disagreed with some of the more specific points of Burke’s work, particularly his views on chivalry. Equally, Burke mainly blamed Rousseau for the outbreak of revolution; however Rousseau was Swiss, not French and a devout Christian and hence did not play on British fears of French infidelity. Far more popular was the view expressed by the émigré Baurrell in Memoire pour server a l’histoire du Jacobinisme, which struck many chords with contemporary Britons. In fact, it is likely that this image of France and particularly Voltaire was firmly imprinted on the nation’s psyche for countless years. Daniel Quilp, for example, Little Nell’s pursuer in Dickens’ The Old Curiosity, Newman argues is very similar to Voltaire. In fact, Francophobia may have swung many of the very poor away, Satan’s stronghold, away from Paineite radicalism and possible revolution to a Burkean reverence of the English constitution and historical inheritance, even if they did not necessarily understand or know some of the subtleties of Burke’s argument.
It is perhaps appropriate now to consider the effect of this discourse on radical politics. There were many who attempted to keep the Paineite flame burning: Watson, Lovett, Hetherington, Carlile, Thistlewood and the maverick surgeon-demagogue, John Gale Jones among others. However, these were a small elite who most likely took pleasure in kicking againt the status quo. The Owenites also spoke not only of natural rights, Claeys tell us, and aimed for the eventual abolition of parliament, which was totally out of place with contemporary political discourse. Even fewer wanted out-and-out confrontation with the state, though these were the aims of Thistlewood and the younger Watson, who looked to check Hunt’s popularity at Spa Fields on 2nd December 1816 by leading a march on the metropolis. Far more typical was the romantic radicalism of Burdett and Cobbett, which fully appropriated the Burkean political discourse. The Paineites were of course not the first to develop a critique of government, which was not based on historical precedent. This had been done by the Levellers in the sixteenth-century at Putney and by the London Corresponding Society in 1793, which was fairly unequivocal in its basis for membership: “Are you thoroughly persuaded that the welfare of these kingdoms require that every adult person, in possession of his reason, and not incapacitated by his crimes, should have a vote for a member of Parliament?” However, by the mid-1790s, the London Corresponding Society had been completely defeated by the loyalist movement, which began under Reeves at the Crown & Anchor on 20th November 1792. In fact, the loyalist movement perhaps best reflects this new form of radicalism, which was articulated within a discourse of constitutional reverence and historical precedence. Ginter has shown for example how the movement and its reverence for constitutional principles generally were used as a pretext for radical reform of parliament. For example, after a brief token gesture to the superiority of the constitution, the loyalist association in the town of Perth asserted that “in our opinion, its stability would be rendered more permanent and liberty better secured if the House of Commons were a more general as well as a truer representation of the people.” In other words, radicals had to appropriate the language of loyalism and historicism in order to demand reform. This in itself was not revolutionary, but rather evolutionary and thus prevented the fostering of radical sentiments. Equally, and this is a point which has hitherto largely been ignored, Burkean discourse had the effect of pulling the rug under the feet of not only those radicals who espoused Paineite principles, but those who looked for a return to the constitution in its pure form since this discourse suggested that improvement occurred gradually over time. This further circumscribed the position of radicals and prevented revolution. The majority who may have wished to articulate revolutionary ideas no doubt found release either in Methodism or burying their head in Pilgrim’s Progress.
Thus during the period outlined in the question, an organicist, Burkean discourse, based on historical precedence came to dominate the thinking of all men throughout Britain. As this suggested that change should be gradual, it prevented the fomentation of any radical, revolutionary sentiments. The prevalence of this rhetoric is perhaps best illustrated by the apotheosis, George III. One only needs to look at the jubilee of October 1809 to see how widespread this deification of the monarch was. Contrary to Linda Colley, who sees this as a “conservative” backlash in the face of unprecedented change, with the secession of the colonies in America and the outbreak of revolution in France, I would argue that in many ways the reason for this was that the monarch embodied this discourse. Since, contrary to Paine, it was held and developed by Spence, that original society was based on the family, then George III as the patriarch of the British nation embodied this link with a previous era. He in fact embodied the entire historicist discourse. It was this discourse which prevented the outbreak of revolution and its hegemony was only increased after the revolution in France began to turn sour. This may in many ways explain why the Tories dominated politics from 1784 to 1830. Here, Claeys argues that Burkean discourse benefited the Whigs more than anyone else. However, in my opinion he has missed the point and has probably based this on an understanding of the ambivalence of Tory opinion on the legacy of Burke as outlined by Sack. In defending this point he cites the popularity of James Mackintosh’s 1791 pamphlet Vindicie Gallacie even though by the end of the century, Mackintosh had converted to Burkeism. The Whigs could never benefit from this shift in opinion, purely because of their cosmopolitanism and close ties with Voltaire, who had hosted both Stephen and Charles James Fox during their Grand Tours. Rather, the Whigs, or I should say Whig-Liberals, were to benefit from a shift in discourse in the early nineteenth-century from an organicist to a natural one as outlined by Boyd Hilton. In stressing the reasons why Britain avoided revolution thus I have focused almost entirely on the political dimension here. There is a danger of course of assuming that these bookish analogies, which were developed in high society, were held by members of the lower orders too. However, it is likely that even if the details of such arguments did not trickle down the social scale, general attitudes did so. Even if this is not the case, sociologists are regularly telling us that in order for a revolution to occur, you need both a discontented elite and a troublesome mass; and out of the two the former being the most important, with the latter usually responding to leadership. Artisans, the most radical part of the working-class certainly were not interested in leading a working-class revolutionary movement anyway so the working-class would need such leadership. This would seem justifies my focus on intellectual factors; factors which prevented the outbreak of revolution.
[1] I. Christie, Stress & Stability in late Eighteenth-Century British History: Reflections on the Avoidance of Revolution (1984), p1
[2] “I am convinced that we cannot understand class unless we see it as a social and cultural formation” E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working-Class, p9
[3] Op.cit, I. Christie, p182
[4] Ibid, p174
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment