A Massing of Men •
Foa the last thirty years historians of the eighteenth century have concentrated on the structure of politics, particularly the methods by Which members were elected to the House of Commons, the types of MP who sat at West- Minster, and the nature of their political allegiances. Huge territories of the constitution have had few topographers. The Church has been lucky in securing almost a lifetime's atten- tion from the Dean of Winchester whose work has been as extensive as it is thorough. But local government, the liberties of the subject, the' Crown, the Royal Household and Civil Service, as well as many aspects of Parliament itself (particularly the House of Lords) are still more or less where the Webbs, Anson and Holdsworth left them. In consequence schoolmasters, dons and undergraduates have tended to neglect the eighteenth century. waiting hopefully for the Namierian dust to settle, in favour of the Tudor constitution which has long been admirably documented. There will now be no further excuse for such evasion. Mr. Williams has done what Dr. Tanner formerly and Dr. Elton recently have done for the Tudors. He has drawn the lines of the eighteenth-century constitution with accuracy and clarity and garnered his illustra- tions from a wide variety of documents. Such a
book possesses exceptional value, for these care- fully chosen documents illustrate a theme of exceptional importance in the general develop- ment of the constitution.
Mr. Williams cautions his readers not to expect precedents in eighteenth-century gov- ernment for the concepts of the modern con- stitution, but he is shrewd enough to realise that liberties sought by a class in its own self-interest an become of vital significance and importance in changing social contexts. The gentry and aristocracy who brought about the Revolution of 1688 wanted little more than liberty to enjoy Without question the authority which their pos- session of land gave them in their local com- munities; but, in order to achieve this once and for all, they needed to wedge Parliament firmly
and permanently into the Constitution, to keep a strong financial check on the Crown, to limit its control over the Army and to allow a moderate toleration in religion. They left the Crown, however, with immense prerogatives, restricted only by the salutary examples of the fate of Charles I and James II. Yet in essentials they had captured the Constitution and the eighteenth century witnessed the full flowering of parliamentary monarchy and its exploitation by the dominant oligarchies of town and countryside. Yet even as they succeeded, the knell sounded. The tide of commerce and social change had begun to create problems of organisa- tion and government that were beyond their amateur methods and quasi-feudal outlook. Obvious, at first, in local government, then in the Church, the 'massing of men' through commerce and primitive industry began to threaten the very citadel of power itself—Parliament. By 1815 liberties, acquired by gentlemen, were slowly turning into liberty for all.
This is the underlying theme that Mr. Williams's book lays bare,but, of course, there is far more than this. It contains a wealth of detail on all aspects of government and illustrates fully the methods and practices, the aims and intentions, of eighteenth-century men in their own terms. No one now can plead that the con-
stitutional history of ,Hanoverian England is too obscure or too difficult to teach or to study. Here it is, as plain as a pikestaff, and the sooner Mr. Williams's book is in all school and college libraries, alongside Dr. Elton's, the better.
J. II. PLUNIFI
Previous page
