Abstract
It is the peculiar happiness of these our days that the distinctions of Whig and Tory are either so little known or so totally confounded by the practice of both the parties that it is no easy task to define either, but, as it has been the wicked policy of some who wish to disturb the public peace to endeavour to revive those odious and obsolete distinctions, a short history of both may be useful by way of antidote and to show how little they have to do with the contests for power in these our days.
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References
P. D. G. Thomas, ‘Sir Roger Newdigate’s Essays on Party, c.1760’, English Historical Review, April 1987, pp. 395–96.
See A. F. Foord, ‘The Waning of the Influence of the Crown’, English Historical Review, July, 1921, and R. Pares, King George III and the Politicians (Oxford, 1953), Chapter 6.
The most forthright argument for the importance of party before 1830 is to be found in F. O’Gorman, The Emergence of the British Two-Party System, 1760–1832 (London, 1982).
See also B. W. Hill, British Parliamentary Parties, 1742–1832 (London, 1985), and the same author’s ‘Executive Monarchy and the Challenge of Parties, 1689–1832: Two Concepts of Government and Two Historiographical Interpretations’, Historical Journal, September 1970.
Anon., Observations on Two Pamphlets (Lately Published) Attributed to Mr. Brougham (London, 1830), p. 70.
N. Gash, ‘The State of the Nation (1822)’, in his Pillars of Government and Other Essays on State and Society, c.1770–c.1880 (London, 1986).
Gladstone memorandum, 9 May 1841, printed in J. Brooke and M. Sorenson (eds), The Prime Ministers’Papers: W. E. Gladstone, II: Autobiographical Memoranda (London, 1972), pp. 135–37;
L. J. Jennings (ed.), The Correspondence and Diaries of the Late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker (London, 1885), ii, p. 82.
See, for example, E. A. Smith, ‘The Yorkshire Electors of 1806 and 1807: A Study on Electoral Management’, Northern History, 1967.
For details of the whips’ activities, see A. Aspinall, ‘English Party Organisation in the Early Nineteenth Century’, English Historical Review, July 1926.
P. Fraser, ‘Party Voting in the House of Commons, 1812–1827’, English Historical Review, October 1983, p. 773.
P. J. V. Rolo, George Canning: Three Biographical Studies (London, 1965), p. 3.
J. B. Owen, The Pattern of Politics in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1962), p. 3. This short pamphlet is an excellent brief introduction to the subject.
A. D. Kriegel, ‘Liberty and Whiggery in Early Nineteenth-Century England’, Journal of Modern History, June 1980, p. 254.
See D. E. D. Beales, ‘Parliamentary Parties and the “Independent” Member, 1810–1860’, in R. Robson (ed.), Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain (London, 1967); see also O’Gorman, Two-Party System, pp. 62–65.
A. Mitchell, The Whigs in Opposition, 1815–1830 (London, 1967), p. 66. Mitchell’s book is the best study of the pre-reform Whig Party and is also an excellent discussion of the growth and meaning of party before 1832.
J. A. Phillips, ‘The Structure of Electoral Politics in Unreformed England’, Journal of British Studies, Autumn, 1979, p. 84; O’Gorman, Two-Party System, p. 75.
Mitchell, Whigs in Opposition, p. 72.
Ibid., p. 43.
Croker Diaries, i, pp. 367–72.
E. Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace (London, 1796), Letter 1.
J. A. Phillips, ‘Popular Politics in Unreformed England’, Journal of Modern History, December 1980.
L. Radzinowicz, The History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750 (London, 1948–68), i, p. 528.
For an excellent brief survey of this subject see R. J. Morris, Class and Class Consciousness in the Industrial Revolution, 1780–1850 (London, 1979).
Also useful is an earlier essay by A. Briggs, ‘The Language of “Class” in Early Nineteenth-Century England’, in Briggs and J. Saville (eds), Essays in Labour History (London, 1960).
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963). For criticism of Thompson’s arguments see R. M. Hartwell, ‘The Making of the English Working Class?’, Economic History Review, December 1965.
M. I. Thomis and P. Holt, Threats of Revolution in Britain, 1789–1848 (London, 1977), makes a persuasive argument against the view that there was a revolutionary possibility in these years.
N. Gash, Aristocracy and People. Britain 1815–1865 (London, 1979), p. 68.
Fraser, ‘Party Voting’, p. 766.
J. Mill, An Essay on Government (Cambridge, 1937 edition), p. 72. (The essay was first published in 1824.)
R. J. White, Radicalism and its Results, 1760–1837 (London, 1965).
A more recent, short discussion of radicalism in this period is to be found in H. T. Dickinson, British Radicalism and the French Revolution, 1789–1815 (Oxford, 1985).
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© 1989 Robert Stewart
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Stewart, R. (1989). The Old Order. In: Party and Politics, 1830–1852. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19653-1_1
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