Abstract
While it is clear that even in the later eighteenth century Britain was still governed by an aristocratic, propertied elite, another political world existed in which large numbers of people, mainly but not exclusively drawn from the middling ranks of society, were able to influence the decisions taken by the ruling elite and were often able to act independently of them. A century of political, social and economic changes moreover had combined to create a growing body of opinion critical of the power and the policies of the aristocratic elite. The rule of law limited the authority of the ruling elite and the civil liberties of the subject ensured that many Britons believed that they were free men living in a free state, and they acted accordingly. A century of commercial expansion and modest population growth had, by 1760, created towns in which moderately prosperous men had learned to exercise increasing control over their own lives. The population grew very rapidly in the later eighteenth century and much of this increase was concentrated in the larger urban centres. Urban growth produced an expanding middle class whose advancing wealth and improved education inspired demands for greater social status and increased political influence.
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Notes
Much of this chapter is based on H.T. Dickinson, ‘Radicals and Reformers in the Age of Wilkes and Wyvill’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), British Politics and Society from Walpole to Pitt 1742–1789 (London, 1990), pp. 123–46 and H.T. Dickinson, British Radicals and the French Revolution 1789–1815, ch. 1 and 3, though more recent research has also been incorporated into it.
On the impact of the American issue on British extra-parliamentary politics, see, in particular, Colin C. Bonwick, English Radicals and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1977);
James E. Bradley, Popular Politics and the American Revolution in England (Macon, Georgia, 1986);
James E. Bradley, Religion, Revolution and English Radicalism (Cambridge, 1990), chs 6, 9–10; John Sainsbury, Disaffected Patriots; Paul Langford, ‘London and the American Revolution’, in John Stevenson (ed.), London in the Age of Reform, pp. 55–78; John Brewer, Party ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III, pp. 201–16;
and John Brewer, ‘English Radicalism in the Age of George III’, in J.G.A. Pocock (ed.), Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1766 (Princeton, 1980), pp. 323–67.
On the impact of the French Revolution on British extra-parliamentary politics, see, in particular, Albert Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty, chs 1, 4–10; E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, chs 1, 4–5; G.S. Veitch, The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform (London, 1965 ed.), chs 5–14;
Carl B. Cone, The English Jacobins (New York, 1968), chs 4–10;
Gwyn A. Williams, Artisans and Sans-Culottes (1968), chs 4, 6; and John Stevenson, ‘Popular Radicalism and Popular Protest 1789–1815’, in H.T. Dickinson (ed.), Britain and the French Revolution, pp. 61–84.
Jack Fruchtman, Jr, The Apocalyptic Politics of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley: A Study in Late Eighteenth-Century English Republican Millennialism (Philadelphia, 1983);
C. Garrett, ‘Joseph Priestley, the Millennium and the French Revolution’, JHI, 34 (1973), 51–66;
and Isaac Kramnick, ‘Religion and Radicalism: English Political Theory in the Age of Revolution’, FT, 5 (1977), 505–34.
On this ideological debate, see H.T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property, ch. 6; Colin C. Bonwick, English Radicals and the American Revolution, chs 1–5; J.C.D. Clark, English Society 1688–1932, pp. 307–23; J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Radical Criticism of the Whig Order in the Age between Revolutions’, in Margaret Jacob and James Jacob (eds), Origins of Anglo-American Radicalism, pp. 35–57; Isaac Kramnick, ‘Republican Revisionism Revisited’, AHR, 87 (1982), 629–64;
D.O. Thomas, The Honest Mind: The Thought and Work of Richard Price (Oxford, 1977), chs 8–10;
and Anthony Lincoln, Some Political and Social Ideas of English Dissent 1763–1800 (Cambridge, 1938), chs 4–5.
Christopher Wyvill, Political Papers, ii, 20–1; iii, 66, 69. On Wyvill’s campaigns see Ian R. Christie, Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform (1962), chs 3–6.
‘Thomas Hardy’ in J.O. Baylen and N.J. Gossman (eds), A Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals (2 vols, Hassocks, 1979), i, 206–10.
John Brewer, ‘English Radicalism in the Age of George III’, in J.GA. Pocock (ed.), Three British Revolutions, pp. 331–4; John Brewer, ‘Commercialization and Politivs’, in Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society (1982), pp. 254–8; John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics, ch. 8; Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealihman, ch. 9;
and C.C. Bonwick, ‘An English Audience for American Revolutionary Pamphlets’, HJ, 19 (1976), 355–74.
James E. Bradley, Religion, Revolution and English Radicalism, chs 4–5; Robert Hole, ‘English sermons and tracts as media of debate on the French Revolution 1789–99’, in Mark Philp (ed.), The French Revolution and British Popular Politics (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 23–4; and especially Martin Fitzpatrick, ‘Heretical Religion and Radical Political Ideas in Late Eighteenth-Century England’, in Eckhart Hellmuth (ed.), The Transformation of Political Culture, pp. 339–72.
J.C.D. Clark, English Society 1688–1832, pp. 307–24; C.C. Bonwick, ‘English Dissenters and the American Revolution’, in H.C. Allen and Roger Thompson (eds), Contrast and Connection (1976), pp 88–112;
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Mary Thale (ed.), Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792–1799 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. xxiii–xxiv.
Ibid., p. xix; and Günther Lottes, Politische Aufklärung und plebejisches Publickum (Munich, 1979), pp. 360–73.
A.W.L. Seaman, ‘Radical Politics at Sheffield, 1791–1797’, THAS, 7 (1957), 215–28;
and John Stevenson, Artisans and Democrats. Sheffield and the French Revolution, 1789–1797 (Shef field, 1989), pp. 15–17.
John Brewer, ‘Commercialization and Politics’, in McKendrick et al, The Birth of a Consumer Society, pp. 217–36; and Verner W. Crane, ‘The Club of Honest Whigs: Friends of Science and Liberty’, WMQ 3rd series, 23 (1966), 210–33.
E.C. Black, The Association: British Extraparliamentary Political Organization, 1769–1793 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 71–5, 86–9; Carl B. Cone, The English Jacobins, pp. 61–2, 65–70;
Edward Royle and James Walvin, English Radicals and Reformers 1760–1848 (1982), pp. 29–32; and Günther Lottes, Politische Aufklärung und plebejisches Publickum, pp. 29–52.
Henry Collins, ‘The London Corresponding Society’, in John Saville (ed.), Democracy and the Labour Movement (1954), pp. 103–34.
Mary Thale, ‘London debating societies in the 1790s’, HJ, 32 (1989), 57–86.
P. Handforth, ‘Manchester radical politics, 1789–94’, in TLCAS, 66 (1956), 87–106;
C.B. Jewson, The Jacobin City (1975); and Albert Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty, ch. 5.
John Brewer, ‘The Wilkites and the law, 1763–1774’, in J. Brewer and J. Styles (eds), An Ungovernable People (1980), pp. 128–71; and John
Brewer, ‘English Radicalism in the Age of George III’, in J.G.A. Pocock (ed.), Three British Revolutions, pp. 344–8.
Peter D.G. Thomas, ‘John Wilkes and the Freedom of the Press (1771)’, BIHR, 33 (1960), 86–98.
John Brewer, Party Ideological and Popular Politics, pp. 139–60; John Brewer, ‘Commercialization and Politics’, in Neil McKendrick et al, The Birth of a Consumer Society, pp. 254–8; Solomon Lutnick, The American Revolution and the British Press 1775–1783 (Columbia, Mo., 1967), passim;
and John Money, Experience and Identity: Birmingham and the West Midlands 1760–1800 (Manchester, 1977), ch. 6.
C.C. Bonwick, ‘An English Audience for American Revolutionary Pamphlets’, HJ, 19 (1976), 355.
John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics, pp. 171–4; and Horace Breackley, The Life of John Wilkes (1917), pp. 189–90.
Donald Clare, ‘The Local Newspaper Press and Local Politics in Manchester and Liverpool, 1780–1800’, TLCAS, 73–4 (1963–4), 104–8, 111–13.
A.W.L. Seaman, ‘Reform Politics at Sheffield, 1791–1797’, THAS, 7 (1957), 220–3.
Gregory Claeys, Thomas Paine, Social and Political Thought (1989), pp. 111–13; and E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 117.
Harry Hayden Clark (ed.), Thomas Paine: Representative Selections (revised edn, New York, 1961), pp. cviii–cxciii.
George Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, chs 7–8; John Cannon, Parliamentary Reform 1640–1832, pp. 62–3; and John A. Phillips, ‘Popular Politics in Unreformed England’, JMH, 52 (1980), 601–5.
John Brewer, ‘The Number 45: A Wilkite Political Symbol’, in Stephen Baxter (ed.), England’s Rise to Greatness (Los Angeles, 1983), pp. 349–80.
George Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, chs 2–3, 5–6, 10; and George Rudé, ‘Wilkes and Liberty, 1768–9’, Guildhall Miscellany, 1 (1952), 3–24.
N. McCord and D.E. Brewster, ‘Some Labour Troubles of the 1790s in North-East England’, IRSH, 13 (1968), 366–83;
and Roger Wells, Dearth and Distress in Yorkshire 1793–1802, Borthwick Institute Papers, no. 52 (York, 1977).
E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, ch. 5; Roger Wells, Insurrection: The British Experience 1795–1803 (Gloucester, 1983), chs 3–8; and Roger Wells, ‘English society and revolutionary politics in the 1790s: the case for insurrection’, in Mark Philp (ed.), The French Revolution and British Popular Politics, ch. 9.
Albert Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty, ch. 11; J. Ann Hone, For the Cause of Truth: Radicalism in London 1796–1821 (Oxford, 1982), ch. 2; and John Dinwiddy, ‘Conceptions of Revolution in the English Radicalism of the 1790s’, in Eckhart Hellmuth (ed.), The Transformation of Political Culture, pp. 535–60.
On the United Irishmen, see Marianne Elliott, Partners in Revolution: The United Irishmen and France (1977)
and David Dickson, Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan (eds), The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion (Dublin, 1993).
Conrad Gill, The Naval Mutinies of 1797 (Manchester, 1913); E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, pp. 183–5; and Roger Wells, Insurrection, ch. 5.
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Dickinson, H.T. (1994). Radicals and Reformers in the Later Eighteenth Century. In: The Politics of the People in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24659-5_8
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