BOOKS
Back in Focus
BY J. H
PLUMB
SOMETIMES it is necessary for scholars to concentrate their energies on a narrow field in order to disentangle truth from the coral-like accretions of historical writing. And the result— until the dust settles—is likely to be turmoil. The sharper the debate, the more baffled the general reader; and sad-faced schoolmasters and be- wildered schoolboys, those addicts of certainties, stumble hopelessly as old truths are shattered. In the last twenty years, the constitutional history of the eighteenth century has had a bad batter- ing; few of those cosy truths remain that made it all so simple for the men who taught my generation. And that rather insignificant Sover- eign, George III, now dominates the stage, push- ing the rest of the century out of focus. Wary schoolmasters give the Hanoverians a miss and whisk their charges from the comprehensible controversies of Professor Trevor-Roper to the absolute judgments of Mr. Alan Taylor, thankful to have escaped the perils—worse than Scylla and Charybdis—of Butterfield v. Namier. They should take courage from this book—an admir- able addition to a noble series—a triumph of courageous publishing.* Who would have thought that a book of nearly a thousand pages of docu- ments at ninety-five shillings could possibly pay its way? This will. All schools that teach history , should buy it, any reader interested in the eight- eenth century should buy it, all the Butterfield- ians and all the Namierites should buy it. Buy it and read it, for here the eighteenth century is back in focus—the Industrial Revolution, the growth of empire, the loss of America, local government and the first demands for reform. Here the world we live in is struggling to be born, clamouring loudly if not successfully for the end of an England that was still essentially medieval, a land inefficiently dominated by privilege and ancient practice.
Dr. Horn and Miss Ransome deal excellently with their chosen themes. Their range is wide, their choice of document wise, if mainly conven- tional, and the critical bibliographies with which they preface each section nearly faultless. But the highest praise must go to the sense and judgment they have shown in the design of this book. Those questions about which too much controversy rages—premiership, Cabinet, party, role of monarchy, patronage—get the amount of space they deserve, and no more. Indeed, the treatment of the Cabinet—in all conscience a difficult enough subject—is, perhaps, too slight, and the printing of one or two memoranda showing the work which the Cabinet did when it met and the decisions which were required of it would have been more useful than the long extracts on the amorphous, and somewhat meaningless, question of collective responsibility. In general, however, wherever one turns—Ireland, colonial trade, the church, population, education, wars, treaties, transport —the documents given are engaging in themselves and illuminate the subject which they treat. These are admirable virtues and sufficient to give the book the success that it deserves.
And yet as I read and skipped and skipped and read through these thousand pages, I had a grow- ing sense of unease, a mild dissatisfaction, undeni- able as the book's merit is. Partly this was due to the familiarity of most of the material. Take Trans- port. Need one guess? Quite right, Defoe, Arthur Young, Campbell; all well known, all easily avail- able. How much more effective—if a description of the roads of the Midlands and Lancashire were needed—to have used the infuriated denunciation of Josiah Wedgwood for whom the ruts and quagmires were a monstrous hindrance to his trade rather than a matter for journalistic com- ment. Time and time again, a further search would have brought to light documents fresher, more intimate, more involved in the daily life of the times.
Arid there remains a more fundamental criti- cism than this : one of the most vital aspects of eighteenth-century life, social and political dis- content, gets scant and scattered treatment. Secret service expenditure may have been small, electoral
* ENGLISH HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS, Vol. X, 1714-83. Edited by D. B. Horn and Mary Ransome. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 95s.) corruption far, far less than Whig historians believed, the Church neither idle nor self-indul- gent, law more humane than the statute book; men who bought commissions were not neces- sarily poor generals; and civil service by inheri- tance could be efficient; men of property might be fair even about the game laws. These things scholarly research has been at pains to prove; the men and women who lived through Hanover- ian times would scarcely have believed such things credible. In their village, in their towns, in their Parliament, in their Church, in their Customs, in their Excise, in their Army, their Navy and their Law, the Establishment, complacent, self-indul- gent, self-perpetuating, sat immovable, critical only when pushed out of its well-feathered nest. And the public—that sadly ignored eighteenth- century entity—hated it. They bought the Crafts- man, the more libellous the better; they roared out ballads, dull pitiful things now, but then vehicles of anger, passion and contempt. They adored Wilkes and swore by Junius. For the institutions by which they were governed they developed infinite scorn. Quaintly enough, though few schoolboys will now believe it, the politics of eighteenth-century England could be as violent as anything we know. Not, of course, seen from the inside. The wide, dreary wastes of the Walpole, Newcastle, Hardwicke papers give little hint of the world beyond the Establishment. Their moun- tainous folios depict the needs and anxieties of its daily life.
Should or should not Neddy Townshend have the Deanery of Norwich? Should a tide-waiter place go to a client of Hedworth or Liddell? Vital matters these, but to the world without as unreal as the strife of faction. Furthermore, the eight- eenth-century Establishment became steadily more incompetent as it grew more exclusive. Law and order, pauperism, transport, public health, the modest amenities of social life—paving, light- ing, rubbish disposal—they were handled with the same lack of imagination with which the Estab- lishment applied itself to the graver problems of Wilkes or America. Small wonder that the men of London, the North and the Midlands who were conscious of England's potential industrial wealth permitted their discontent to turn to uncritical radicalism. How deep that radicalism went ballad, pamphlet and newspaper show; or better still such a diary as Sylas Neville's, the survival of which rescued him and his friends from oblivion. He hated kings—he and his cronies solemnly dined on calves' heads on the day of Charles, King and Martyr—they loathed Parliament and looked to America as the sole hope for liberty. For them the Establishment had betrayed the Glorious Revolu- tion, not saved it. But this great whirlwind of frustration, anger and passion which shook and strained the structure of politics, even in the very earliest years of George III's reign, receives no separate treatment in this book.
Certainly, this collection helps to bring back the eighteenth century into focus, but its focal length could well be longer and its impact sharper; and it would have had far greater value had it possessed separate sections on opposition and radicalism. Perhaps the most remarkable omission is Junius. How surprised the historians of the past would be to discover that his name is now scarcely ever to be found in any work of scholar- ship on the politics of the reign of George III. Yet propaganda lies as near the heart of politics as pursuit of place.
In these omissions the authors have, perhaps, been influenced by the fashion of their time; but if so, it is the only occasion in this long, admir- able book. In all other respects it can be thoroughly recommended for its balance and sound judgment.
Previous page
