A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783-1846

by Hilton, Boyd

• ISBN13: 9780199218912
• ISBN10: 0199218919
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-08-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This was a transformative period in English history. In 1783 the country was at one of the lowest points in its fortunes, having just lost its American colonies in warfare. By 1846 it was once more a great imperial nation, as well as the world's strongest power and dominant economy, having benefited from what has sometimes (if misleadingly) been called the "first industrial revolution." In the meantime it survived a decade of invasion fears, and emerged victorious from more than twenty years of "war to the death" against Napoleonic France. But if Britain's external fortunes were in the ascendant, the situation at home remained fraught with peril. The country's population was growing at a rate not experienced by any comparable former society, and its manufacturing towns especially were mushrooming into filthy, disease-ridden, gin-sodden hell-holes, in turn provoking the phantasmagoria of a mad, bad, and dangerous people. It is no wonder that these years should have experienced the most prolonged period of social unrest since the seventeenth century, or that the elite should have been in constant fear of a French-style revolution in England. The governing classes responded to these new challenges and by the mid-nineteenth century the seeds of a settled two-party system and of a more socially interventionist state were both in evidence, though it would have been far too soon to say at that stage whether those seeds would take permanent root. Another consequence of these tensions was the intellectual engagement with society, as for example in the Romantic Movement, a literary phenomenon that brought English culture to the forefront of European attention for the first time. At the same time the country experienced the great religious revival, loosely described under the heading "evangelicalism." Slowly but surely, the raffish and rakish style of eighteenth-century society, having reached a peak in the Regency, then succumbed to the new norms of respectability popularly known as "Victorianism."

Author Biography

Boyd Hilton is Professor of Modern British History in the University of Cambridge and has been a Fellow of Trinity College since 1974. He has served as Senior Tutor, Dean, and Steward of the College. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy.

Table of Contents

List of Plates	p. xviii
List of Figures and Maps	p. xx
List of Tables	p. xxi
Abbreviations	p. xxiii
England 1783-1846: A Preview	p. 1
The Economy: Crisis and Survival	p. 2
An Old or New Regime?	p. 24
The Politics of Theatre and the Theatre of Politics	p. 31
Politics in the Time of Pitt and Fox, 1783-1807	p. 39
The Launching of Pitt and the Destruction of Fox	p. 41
Party Government or Broad Bottom?	p. 47
The French Revolution and Political Realignment	p. 57
'Pitt's Terror'	p. 65
Irish Problems	p. 74
French Wars	p. 82
The Fall of Pitt	p. 91
Peace and War	p. 98
Pittism and Plutocracy: The Social and Psychological Foundations	p. 110
Court Whigs, Country Whigs, and the Conservative Reaction	p. 110
Virtuous Economics	p. 113
A New Vision of Government	p. 119
Class Distinctions and Rentier Capitalism	p. 124
The Late Hanoverian Aristocracy: Domination or Accommodation?	p. 133
Commerce and the Quasi-Professions	p. 141
Business Classes	p. 152
Producers and Dealers: The Makings of a Lesser-Middle Class?	p. 156
Civic Cultures: A Literary and Philosophical People	p. 162
The Evangelical Revival	p. 174
Slavery and National Mission: The Politics of Virtue	p. 184
The Politics of Pittism: Rhetoric and Reality	p. 188
Politics in the Time of Liverpool and Canning, 1807-1827	p. 195
The Development of Two-Party Politics?	p. 195
The Narrative Resumed: All-Out Warfare	p. 210
Liberation and Liberalism	p. 223
Victory, the Second Empire, and a Mistaken Case of National Identity	p. 235
'A Malady of Peace': The Foundations of Monetary Policy	p. 251
Rethinking the Corn Laws	p. 264
The Squires' Revolt	p. 268
'Never a Controversial Cabinet': Lord Liverpool's System of Politics	p. 274
The Reshuffle of 1821-1823 and the Origins of Cabinet Government	p. 280
Divided Cabinets: Foreign and Economic Policies	p. 286
Ruling Ideologies	p. 309
'A Love of System'	p. 309
Liberal Toryism versus High Toryism	p. 314
Utilitarianism	p. 328
Natural Theology in a Fallen World	p. 332
The Paradoxes of Political Economy	p. 342
Philosophic Whiggism	p. 346
The Status of Women and Ideas about Gender	p. 353
The Crisis of the Old Order, 1827-1832	p. 372
Coalition and the Canningite Flame	p. 372
The Goderich File	p. 376
The First Blow: Test and Corporation Act Repeal	p. 379
The Second Blow: Catholic Emancipation	p. 384
The Emancipation of Peel	p. 391
Money and the Millennium	p. 397
Ultra Tory Backlash	p. 406
The Fall of the Pittite Regime	p. 411
The Struggle for Reform	p. 420
A Middle-Class Bill, or a case of Landed Reaction?	p. 429
The Status of the Borough Freeholders	p. 437
Split Voting, Straight Voting, and Plumping	p. 437
Contesting Mechanical Philosophy	p. 439
The Evolutionary Moment: The Scientific Threat to Belief	p. 441
From Romantic Science to Peelite Compromise	p. 454
From Unitarianism to Liberal Anglicanism	p. 460
The Oxford Movement	p. 468
The Middle Ages, the 'Olden Time', and Ideas of Nation	p. 475
From Romanticism to Socialism	p. 487
Politics in the Time of Melbourne and Peel, 1833-1846	p. 493
From Reform to Repeal: The Narrative Resumed	p. 493
The Analysis Resumed: Party Politics without Parties	p. 513
The Politics of Militant Dissent	p. 524
Clouds in the West	p. 538
Towards Free Trade: 'Mighty Athlete' or 'Wounded Giant'?	p. 543
Towards the Pax Britannica	p. 558
Imperial Onset	p. 565
The Condition and Reconditioning of England	p. 573
Social Crisis	p. 573
The Origins of Social Policy	p. 588
'System, Method, Science, Economy': Defining the Liberal State	p. 599
Chartism	p. 612
Class and Community	p. 622
Mad Metropolis	p. 625
Afterwards: 'There are no Barbarians any Longer'	p. 628
Chronology	p. 639
Bibliography	p. 664
Index	p. 725
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