Britain in the Age of the French Revolution, 1785-1820

270 Pages·2000·8.699 MB·English

by  Jennifer Mori

BRITAIN IN THE AGE OF THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION 1785-1820
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BRITAIN IN THE AGE
OF THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION
1785-1820
JENNIFER MORI
First published 2000 by Pearson Education Limited
Published 2014 by Routledge
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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-23852-7 (pbk)
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CONTENTS
Preface..............................................................................................................................vii
Abbreviations.....................................................................................................................ix
1. Parties and Politics............................................................................................................1
Party Politics before the French Revolution, 1785-1789 .............................................2
Party Politics during the French Revolution, 1790-1799............................................ 7
The End of an Era, 1799-1806.................................................................................. 16
Unity and Disunity, 1807-1820.................................................................................. 21
2. Ideas and Influences......................................................................................................31
The Rights of Man........................................................................................................ 33
Toryism Old and New.....................................................................................................39
Discourses of Commerce and Modernity......................................................................46
Radical Toryism and Romantic Conservatism............................................................55
3. Radicals and Loyalists..................................................................................................60
High and Low Politics, 1785-1792 .............................................................................. 62
Constitutional Radicalism and the Quest for Parliamentary Reform,
1792-1799 ................................................................................................................... 65
The United Societies and the French Revolution: 1795-1799 ................................. 69
Quietus and Redivivus, 1800-1820.............................................................................. 74
Loyalists and the Old Order.......................................................................................... 78
The Wages of Sin.............................................................................................................86
4. Individuals and Institutions........................................................................................92
Sedition and Treason.......................................................................................................93
From the Two Acts to the Six Acts.......................................................................... 101
Pauperism and Poverty.............................................................................................. 104
Religion and Society.................................................................................................. 113
5. From Orders to Glass?........................................................................................... 123
The Upper Ten Thousand........................................................................................ 124
Conflict and Cohesion in Urban Communities..................................................... 133
Enclosure and the Proletarianisation of Labour...................................................... 139
Industry and Popular Protest.................................................................................... 145
6. Ways and Means....................................................................................................... 153
Production, Retail and Finance................................................................................ 154
v
CONTENTS
Wartime Demands and Fiscal Expedients............................................................... 163
Strategic Aims and Military Objectives................................................................... 170
By Accident or Design? British Global Warfare, 1793-1801 ............................... 174
Towards a Grand Strategy, 1803-1815.................................................................. 181
7. Pragmatism and Policy......................................................................................... 185
Britain and Europe, 1785-1791 ............................................................................... 185
From Neutrality to War............................................................................................. 191
Talking at Cross Purposes: The First and Second Coalitions.............................. 195
The British Government and the Bourbon Restoration........................................201
From the Peace of Amiens to the Battle of Waterloo, 1801-1815 ..................... 205
Bibliography............................................................................................. 215
Index.......................................................................................................... 249
vi
PREFACE
The past two decades have witnessed a general revival of academic interest
in all aspects of eighteenth-century British history, in which Britain’s re­
sponse to the French Revolution constitutes a discrete special subject with
specialist historiographies of its own. The years from 1780 to 1830 have
long occupied an uneasy place in the history of Britain: claimed simultane­
ously by advocates of a ‘long eighteenth century’ who emphasise the con­
tinuity of social, intellectual and political traditions from 1688 to 1832 and
students of a ‘modern’ Britain presumed to start with the industrial revolu­
tion. The ‘new’ cultural history of the French Revolution pioneered during
the past decade has, in its British incarnation, now created a ‘long nine­
teenth century’ stretching from 1790 to 1928 and Britain in the age of the
French Revolution is now described both as an ancien regime confessional
state and the cradle of a mass political culture. It is the aim of this book to
introduce students to these debates and the research that fuels them through
a survey of the politics, diplomacy, strategy, ideas, society and economy of
Britain from 1785 to 1815. As this book has been written for an upper-year
undergraduate audience, it is assumed that readers possess some rudiment­
ary knowledge of significant names, dates and events of the period.
The French Revolution was loved and hated in Britain, the nation that
mounted the most determined intellectual and military resistance to its
effects in Europe during the 1790s. The impact of the revolution on British
politics and intellectual life therefore constitutes one major theme of this
book, explored in its first three chapters. Here Britain’s loyalist opponents
of the revolution, a long neglected group finally receiving the academic
attention its strength and numbers warrant, are examined alongside more
familiar radicals and reformers to elucidate the social and intellectual prin­
ciples that motivated both. Both camps constructed compelling and popu­
lar cases in support of their claims: through a survey of these, this book
aims to convey some sense of the subtlety, complexity and range of the
arguments produced by loyalists and radicals.
Though the British debate on the French Revolution, waged in parlia­
ment, the press and public bodies of all descriptions shaped the minds and
social cosmologies of a generation, equally important to the culture and
vii
PREFACE
politics of the period was the impact of a war waged for twenty-two years
against revolutionary and Napoleonic France. The war was an important
catalyst of change, accelerating state development in fiscal, military and
legal spheres that touched the lives of all Britons. Chapter four deals with
the reception of national directives respecting sedition and treason, the
poor and religion by individuals and institutions at local levels to explain
the paradox of growing metropolitan power in a decentralised state. Readers
must jettison twentieth-century assumptions about the all-pervasive powers
of parliament, the state and national bodies to understand a world where
towns, counties and parishes interpreted central policies in their own ways
and and cherished their freedom to do so as a fundamental liberty guaran­
teed by the constitution. State policies could, moreover, be appropriated
by localities to serve specific social and political needs, as demonstrated by
Chapter five.
The social and economic consequences of the war are treated in Chap­
ters five and six in tandem with longer-term trends: most notably the ‘in­
dustrial revolution’ and class formation. Labour historians have long seen
the origins of a working class in Britain’s experience of war and first-stage
industrialisation despite the fact that the socio-economic impact of each
remains unclear. This book treats war and industrialisation as separate
phenomena to assess their effects upon supply and demand patterns, the
infrastructure of manufacturing, retail and finance, the wages and working
conditions of labour and the re-negotiation of social relationships between
rich and poor. The last two chapters of this book survey the military and
diplomatic goals for which so much money and manpower were raised
between 1793 and 1815.
I have accumulated numerous debts in the writing of this book: to the
staff of the Bodleian and the British Library; to the editorial desk at Pearson,
who have waited so patiently for this manuscript; to the University of
Toronto, for funding this and other research projects; to John Stevenson,
for unfailing moral support, and to Barbara Todd, who listened to so much
of this book in conceptual form. I must also thank the many friends and
colleagues who have saved me from egregious errors: any that remain are
my own.
Jennifer Mori
Toronto
vm
ABBREVIATIONS
AJ The Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Political Register (1799), 2 vols
AJR The Anti-Jacobin Review, or Monthly Magazine (1798—1821)
APLP Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property
against Republicans and Levellers
BC The British Critic (1793-1828)
BL Add MS British Library Additional Manuscripts
Canning MS Harewood Estate Papers, West Yorkshire Record Office,
Sheepscar, Leeds
Clements MS Pitt Papers, W.L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan
EIC East India Company
FO Foreign Office
FOP Society of the Friends of the People
HO Home Office
LCS London Corresponding Society
LRS London Revolution Society
MCM Melville Castle Muniments, Scottish Record Office,
West Register House, Edinburgh
MCS Manchester Constitutional Society
MS manuscripts
NLW National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
PD The Parliamentary Debates, from the Year 1803 to the Present
Time: Forming a Continuation of the Work entitled ‘The
Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the
Year 1803% ed. W. Cobbett (1804-20), 36 vols
PH The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to
the Year 1803, ed. W. Cobbett (1806-20), 36 vols
PR The Parliamentary Register: or History, Debates and Proceedings
of Both Houses of Parliament, ed. J. Debrett, 2nd series
(1781-96), 45 vols; 3rd series (1797—1802), 18 vols
PRO Public Record Office, Ruskin Avenue, London
RO Record Office
Rylands MS Melville Papers, John Rylands University Library of
Manchester, Deansgate
ix