Books
The people, right and wrong
John Kenyon
Liberty and Property: Political Ideology In Eighteenth-Century Britain H. T. Dickinson (Weinfeld £15)
This is a major contribution to our understanding of eighteenth-century British politics. It is a pioneering work which covers a long period, from 1688 to 1790 and beyond, and it opens up a whole new field of Inquiry.
Up to now the study of political thought in eighteenth-century England has clustered round the Olympian figure of John Locke, whose theory of government by contract, it was supposed, exercised complete domination over men's thinking about politics, though not, lamentably, over their actions. It has been assumed that the Whigs of William III and Anne justified the Revolution of 1688 by reference to Lockean theories of contract and based their policies on the theoretical participation of the people through Parliament, and that the Tories foundered in 1714 because they could not adjust their outmoded theories of divine right and non-resistance to the demands of a new age, nor discard them. Unfortunately (so this basic construct proceeds) the Whigs, corrupted by undisputed Power, failed to develop Locke's admirable Ideas; indeed, by mid-century they had abandoned political principle altogether, and embraced a pragmatic theory of government — if theory it could be called — exclusively directed to their own survival. This was handsomely confirmed by Namier, Who, examining the politics of the 1760s With pitiless disdain, concluded that party distinctions were now largely meaningless, and that the end of politics was money and authority; ruling was an end in itself. It needed the double shock of the American War and the French Revolution to revive our political principles and get the constitution in motion again towards its inevitable reform.
There have been murmurings of mutiny in recent years, of course. (Herbert Butterfield's onslaught on Namier's methods and assumptions,was not so much a murmur as a roar of exasperation.) John Dunn and Martyn Thompson have pointed out that for a man whose ideas were supposed to be the alpha and omega of political obligation, Locke's contemporary reputation is curi ously blurred. John Pocock has exposed the importance of Harrington's rather wayward theories down the eighteenth century.
Quentin Skinner has discussed the ideas of Bolingbroke's New Country Party, and argued that even if these ideas were bogus the fact that they were put out by Bolingbroke in expectation of support is sig nificant. Isaac Kramnick has analysed the extraordinary reversal in Whig thinking about the Revolution which occurred under Walpole. Bernard Bailyn has argued that the ideological driving force behind the American Revolution was not the theories of Locke but the radical criticisms of the eighteenth-century constitution voiced by men like Trenchard, Gordon and even, by implication, Benjamin Hoadly.
Dr Harry Dickinson has now taken all these random outcroppings of rock above the waves, and by a thorough investigation of the half-forgotten works of preachers politicians and pamphleteers who were read and listened to at the time just as much as Locke and Hume, has shown that they form part of one long, continuous reef. Eighteenth-century politicians were not devoid of principle, even if their principles were not logical, admirable or wellexpressed.
The basic trouble lay with the Revolution of 1688, which in the long run was much more troublesome to the Whigs than the Tories. For after an initial hiatus, and despite continuing trouble with their lunatic High Church wing, the Tories managed to transfer their despised theories of political obligation comfortably enough from a sovereign king to a sovereign Parliament — the Whigs, in fact, found this much more difficult. Their ultimate eclipse was due to political circumstances, not ideological rigidity.
It was the Whigs, according to Dickinson, who found themselves in ideological difficulties. With one hand they had to beat down Tory ideas of non-resistance, yet at the same time they had to decide how far they could themselves enhance the power of the new, whiggish', post-Revolution monarchy. With the other hand they had to moderate, and eventually suppress, the idea that they were a party of the people governing by some form of popular consent, while at the same time preserving their key idea that government was by mutual agreement. And just as the Tories were hampered by the High Court right, so the Whigs were cruelly embarrassed by the activities of a republican left wing which continued to advocate broad popular con sent. Locke's theories did in fact imply the equality of man and the participation of all the people in government, whether this was intended or not, and the Whigs prqferred instead the myth of the Ancient Constitution; a limited and class-structured con stitution which had been invaded by the Stuarts and triumphantly restored in 1688. However, when this was taken over by the Tories in the 1730s and bent to their own purposes the Whigs had to turn their own theories upside down; they now argued that England had been an unrelieved despotism up to 1688, when a new, more liberal era had dawned. But it was not until the 1750s that the Whigs finally got the Revolution under control, purged it of any taint of radicalism or democracy, and established to their own satisfaction that the development of the constitution was prescriptive, or accumulative. We are thus treated to the diverting spectacle of full-blown Whig theorists rejecting Locke directly, and deriding the Original Contract in precisely the same terms used by the Tories in 1689.
In fact, one of Dickinson's most interesting conclusions is that by 1760 the Whig oligarchy had a whole armoury of weapons at their disposal which fully justified, to their own satisfaction and the satisfaction of many, those aspects of their rule which always seem least justifiable. They unblushingly argued for the innate inequality of men, so that some would always be horses and others be riders; this, and the famous theory of virtual representation, took care of parliamentary reform. Patronage was justified by the need for the Crown and the aristocracy to preserve the balance of the constitution against the Commons. Members of Parliament were not, of course, delegates, but free agents, which was why any casual corruption in the electoral system was irrelevant. Nor need any great attention be paid to public opinion, which was erratic and ill-informed; as one government newspaper remarked in 1734: Supposing it true, that the majority of the people are against the ministry, what doth that prove? The people are sometimes right, and sometimes wrong. They have been in the right against kings, and against parliaments too; and they have been in the wrong against both.
Finaily, Dickinson shows that this theory was strong enough to stand up to the French Revolution, for he argues that the reaffirmation of Conservatism after 1790 was not just a brute reaction to the Terror in France and the execution of Louis XVI; it would not have succeeded if there had not been a sound conservative ideology to hand which provided a satisfactory moral and theoretical basis for political reaction.
In a book of this range many readers will find points of disagreement. For myself, I think Dickinson gives insufficient attention to the theories of the Country opposition down to about 1750, and in particular he does not sufficiently acknowledge that they provided for an alternative constitution on the lines of that which developed in America, with a legislature which was frequently re-elected but totally divorced from the executive. It is startling to find in the 1740s the Tories, of all people, advocating parliamentary reform, and even casting approving eyes back on Oliver Cromwell's Instrument of Government in 1653. But this is a minor aspect of the matter. In general terms this is a first-class piece of historical synthesis, and no one who has worked with the kind of materials Dickinson is using will underestimate the difficulties involved, though they will not be apparent to the reader. It is in fact written with great cogency, lucidity and drive. It will be superseded in time, no doubt, but only because Dickinson has shown the way.
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