Heavy Father
Charles Townshend: His Character and Career. By Sir Lewis Namier. (C.U.P., 3s. 6d.) IT is delightful to have Sir Lewis Namier back in the eighteenth century, and to learn that this 'preliminary sketch' of Charles Townshend looks forward to a full biography. Like everything Sir Lewis writes, his Leslie Stephen Lecture is wise, witty and stimulating. The main achievement of 'the Namier method' has been to divert historians' attention from what politicians said to what they were and did; from speeches to family connec- tions; from alleged principles to real interests. Lesser men can abuse the method; and even Pro- fessor Namier has had to defend himself against the charge of 'taking the mind out of history,' of 'discerning self-interest or ambition in men, but showing insufficient appreciation of political prin- ciples and of abstract ideals.' This lecture, whether intentionally or not, forms an ironical comment on this accusation.
Most of us know Townshend as the erratically brilliant aristocrat who, with typical irresponsi- bility, insisted on raising taxes from the American colonies in 1767, an action which helped to precipitate the American Revolution. Sir Lewis brilliantly shows that this action, far from being the sudden whim of a dilettante politician, was the result of deep conviction. Townshend was carry- ing into effect in 1767 a programme for the colonies which he had formulated at the very beginning of his career, fourteen years earlier, and to which he had obstinately adhered ever since. Sir Lewis has not taken the mind out of history. We lost the American colonies, among other reasons, because of Charles Townshend's steady pursuit of principles. But what Professor Namier gives with one hand he takes away with the other.
For he suggests that Townshend's ideas were them- selves determined, that there was 'a strong emo- tional colouring' to his programme : 'A rebel towards his father and chiefs, he turned into a heavy father when acting for the Mother Country in relation to her offspring.' Sir Lewis also argues that Townshend's irresponsibility sprang partly from epilepsy, partly from his relations with his formidable father. Childhood letters to the latter 'set the tone in fervency as in non-performance for later professions of devotion to political .chiefs!'
This lecture, then, does not modify that deep distrust of political ideals which underlies Profes- sor Namier's pessimistic Toryism. Whether this philosophy was forced upon him by the study of history, or whether his own temperament (like Townshend's) moulded an approach and a choice of subject-matter, is anybody's guess. Sir Lewis's study of 1848 led him to equally discouraging conclusions; but that is hardly the revolution one would choose to demonstrate the creative role of ideas. It would have been nice if just once, just for the hell of it, Sir Lewis depicted for us a high-souled idealist whose pursuit of principle did some good to the world. But this is an idle fancy : for such characters are not to be found in eighteenth-century Parliaments, and it is to them that we should wish Professor Namier to continue to devote his unique genius.
CHRISTOPHER HILL
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