In an age as confusing and volatile as the interwar period, it was perhaps to be expected that the main theme in literature among younger writers and poets particularly would be the social, political, and economic malaise of the time. Indeed, it was the delineation and analysis of this malaise and its relationship to individual life that set the tone of the so-called thirties poetry in Britain and which provided the focal point of W. H. Auden, the most distinguished and versatile English poet of the 1930's. Auden's work in the thirties was characterized by persistent intellectual effort and endurance. For as his contemporary John Lehmann pointed out, W. H. Auden was “the spiritual physician of his generation.” And he was the spiritual physician because more than any other prestigious English litterateur of the interwar years, Auden sought to resolve what seemed to be the most critical problem of the time: how the individual might take effective political action without losing his moral integrity. Or as Auden put the problem as early as 1930:

I should like, therefore, to examine two of W. H. Auden's works which most directly confront the problem of individual commitment to collective political action: “Spain,” and Journey to a War.

The famous poem “Spain,” written in April 1937 and published in May of that year, seemed to announce that at last Auden offered unequivocal endorsement of politicial action. The poem further develops a theme set forth in his celebrated Look Stranger (1935) — the moral responsibility of carefully considered choice and action. The Spanish Civil War, to Auden, is the clear opportunity of an individual to make a decision and to act. A person could either do nothing, which in the face of the Fascist threat is virtually to commit moral suicide, or he could act in unison with other individuals against Fascism. In Auden's view, not only does the Spanish Civil War represent a crisis situation in the history of his generation, it represents also a pivotal point in the intellectual history of the Western World. Accordingly Auden places himself and his generation in a profoundly meaningful historical context. The first stanzas of the poem summarize the ingredients of the Weltanschauung which culminated in twentieth-century liberalism, with its political manifestation in Western parliamentary democracy. The poet also sketches the history of the application of science to conquer the natural world and the gradual victory of scientific method over the ages in which religious faith explained the whole of the world as but a symbol of a transcendental order.

The burning of the city of Cork on the night of 11-12 December 1920 —a “truly staggering reprisal” — was one of many outrageous acts by British forces in Ireland in the late autumn of 1920 and indeed during the entire Anglo-Irish War. Known in Ireland at the time as “the troubles” and in Éire today as “the war of independence,” or “the war of liberation,” the Anglo-Irish War lasted two-and-one-half years from January, 1919, until the truce in July, 1921. Not only did that struggle mark the end of 750 years of Irish subjection under Britain; it served as a warning of the eventual collapse of British and Western imperialism throughout the world.

Throughout the first eight months of 1919 the British government's policy was simply military suppression of the Republican Movement. Repeatedly, it misjudged Sinn Féin and the rising Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.) as nothing but a “murder gang” terrorizing the mass of the Irish people. Not until the Fall of 1919 did Lloyd George finally conceive a policy — one combining force with appeasement. The latter was offered to Ireland in the Fourth Home Rule Bill though it was to be rejected by a majority of the Irish press and people. From the fall of 1919 until the summer of 1920, Lloyd George stepped up coercion, not only by strengthening the military, but by introducing “Black and Tans” into the Irish police force and establishing a new administration at Dublin Castle in the spring of 1920.

When, in late July, 1920, it became evident to the British cabinet that police action was losing to the I.R.A.'s guerilla tactics, they broadened the struggle even further by choosing, not appeasement along Dominion lines, but a policy of war. Though never officially declared, war was first implemented under the guise of restoring order in Ireland and later by martial law. Accompanying Lloyd George's war policy between the summers of 1920 and 1921 were systematic reprisals against Irish civilians and their property by British forces retaliating for the I.R.A.'s killing of their own men. These reprisals, which became official and regulated under martial law in 1921, were unauthorized — although not officially condemned — in 1919 and 1920. Unauthorized reprisals reached a peak in the fall of 1920 at Balbriggan, Groke Park, and in the burning of Cork.

Although the central concern of this essay is with early and mid-Victorian matters, it would be well to begin by stepping back into a longer historical prospective. Robert Burns' “The Cotter's Saturday Night,” contains an enduring literary image derived from a prevailing late eighteenth century tradition of self-conscious moral sentiment. This poem, with echoes of Thomas Gray's “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” and Oliver Goldsmith's “The Deserted Village,” celebrates the homely joys and Presbyterian virtues of Scottish peasants, their pastoral lives a reproach to readers of rank and fortune. It contains a rhetorical digression filled with a curious anxiety over the possible fall of the cotter's young daughter: Is there in human form, asks the poet

We glimpse here, on the periphery of our literary consciousness, the houseless, shivering unfortunate of Goldsmith's “Deserted Village” (1770). In that case, the maid, led by idleness and ambition, had left her modest cottage: “Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled,/Near her betrayer's door she lays her head.”

The Burns passage, the poem in fact, is earnest and evangelical in tone, commending itself to Victorian propriety in a way which dialect songs inspired by sweet hours among the lasses do not. Let us, in kindness, refrain from close questions about the folk mores of the 18th century Scotland; or how it was that, in the case of Jane Armour at least, one Robert Burns was permitted to make an honest woman out of a girl who had given scandal by the birth of a child before marriage. What matters here is the remarkable force of the larger myth within which the ruined maid functions as a recurring archetype, an image related to, but discontinuous with, the social realities of particular times that color it. We know instinctively that within the cultural tradition involved the potential villain is not Jenny's shy local suitor (who is courting with her parents' approval), but some gentleman with a taste for poor but honest girls. And there will be no way back. The hopelessly ruined maid, having stooped to folly and been left without a ring, will seek in vain for art to wash her scarlet mark away. She is fated to pregnancy, prostitution in city streets, a speedy death, or any combination of these. Something very much like this seems indeed to have been part of the early – and high-Victorian orthodoxy designed to preserve the purity of middle class homes and minds. Obviously these respectable readers, on whose behalf Charles Edward Mudie so long exercised power to exclude books from his lending library, were involved in such a social myth; and even if papa might have known better, he did have the ubiquitous “young person” to think of.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the possibility of a democratic revolution in England just prior to the Franco-British War of 1793. I hope to correct, in a minor way, one of the assumptions held by R. R. Palmer in his analysis of the progress of democratic revolution in England.

Palmer presented his thesis in The Age of the Democratic Revolution, which appeared in two volumes, in 1959 and 1964. Here Palmer proposed a new interpretation of the major political developments of Western Europe.

Palmer's synthesis of these objectives and principles can be summed up in his title: this was the Age of the Democratic Revolution, which “signified a new feeling for a kind of equality, or at least a discomfort with older forms of stratification and formal rank.” All western countries underwent this revolution, including England.

Palmer's treatment of Britain places a responsibility upon historians of that country to determine whether this new interpretation clarifies or obscures the development of events. If there was a single democratic revolution, how and when was it manifested in England, and what were the causes of its failure? Were the Wilkesite, County Association, and workingmen's association movements the background of the gradualist reform movements of the nineteenth century, or the background of a revolution that failed in the eighteenth? Answers to these questions will not be derived easily, and the purpose of this essay is not nearly so ambitious. I intend to explore only the possibility of a revolution in England in 1792.

Among the myths of the origins of World War I is that of the ability of obscure bureaucrats to influence the foreign policy of their country through intrigue and deceit. The foremost example in the volumious literature involved the unlimited capacity for evil attributed to Friedrich von Holstein of the German Foreign Office. One of his contemporaries left the. following portrait: “His life was devoted to poisoning human and international relationships. Holstein's diplomacy by intrigue, his vicious disloyalties, and the way he placed his own revengeful purposes before his country's good contributed largely towards the outbreak of the First World War.” Labeled the Grey Eminence of the Wilhelmstrasse in the aftermath of defeat, Holstein became the scapegoat for the disasters of German diplomacy in 1914.

Other bureaucrats of the pre-war era whose careers followed a similar pattern have received like treatment. On the British side, it was asserted, there operated a civil servant whose anti-German animus steered Britain into conflict with Germany. Allegedly possessing a fatal fascination for Sir Edward Grey, Sir Eyre Crowe was credited by historians with enormous surreptitious influence. The hostility toward Germany manifested by Great Britain in the decade prior to 1914, the argument runs, reflected Crowe's personal hatred and suspicion of German power. “The vast influence exercised by Sir Eyre Crowe upon British policy between 1908 and 1914,” wrote the distinguished Austrian historian A. F. Pribram in 1951, “only became generally known outside the Foreign Office, and especially abroad, in recent years.” Apologists for Germany cited Crowe as the prime mover of British policy, and one German historian termed him the ‘böse Geist’ [evil spirit] of the British Foreign Office.

Few Englishmen proved more consistent critics in the years before the Civil War than William Fiennes, Baron, later Viscount, Saye and Sele. In religion a Puritan, in politics committed to the defence of aristocratic privilege and parliamentary rights, he was deeply involved in all of the important opposition movements of the period. A major participant in the passage of the Petition of Right, a prominent opponent of ship-money and the Bishops' Wars with Scotland, he was a leading enemy of the court and clergy in the Long Parliament. Nor was Saye's significance limited to his individual activities alone, for both the Earl of Clarendon and Anthony Wood, writing in the seventeenth century, treated him as the acknowledged leader of the party that provoked the Civil War.

In assessing Lord Saye's role as on opposition leader, historians have paid little attention to Saye's first and, in many ways, most vigorous confrontation with the royal government in 1622. In that year Saye not only refused to contribute to a benevolence for the assistance of Frederick, the Elector — Palatine, but was also accused of attempting to hinder others from doing so. For these alleged actions and the grounds upon which he chose to defend himself, Saye was imprisoned in Fleet Prison for nearly eight months, from June 6, 1622 to February 4, 1622/3.

There are two important documents which will enable us to penetrate the nature of Saye's actions and the government's response to them. The first, hitherto neglected, is a transcript of four appearances which the Baron made before the Council between May 23 and June 6, 1622. The second, a letter from Lord Saye to the Duke of Buckingham, written sometime around February 3, 1622/3, while Saye was still in the Fleet, contains valuable information that has not yet been brought to light concerning this affair.

In a letter to Oliver Cromwell in April 1653, John Rogers wrote that his soul was “boiling over into earnest prayers to the Great Jehovah for wisdom, counsel, and courage for you … the great deliverer of His people. …” Rogers perceived in the person of Cromwell another Moses, charged with the duty of liberating the saints of “the Commonwealth of Israel.” Yet in a face-to-face confrontation with Cromwell in February 1655, Rogers warned him, “in the name of the Lord Jehovah,” that his condition was “very desperate,” and that “the next Vial which is to be poured out … the scorching hot one … must fall upon him … [for having] forsaken and betrayed the Cause of Christ.” In less than two years, Rogers had gradually slipped from a summit of hopeful expectation into an abyss of bitter disillusionment, as he watched the man in whom he had placed all trust take for himself the crown that had been reserved for the Lord Jesus.

Born in 1627 at Messing, Essex, John Rogers was the second son of Nehemiah and Margaret Rogers. Nehemiah Rogers, an Anglican clergyman and a firm advocate of the policies of Archbishop William Laud, endeavored to educate his son in a manner that would fit him for service in the Church of England. Early in life, under the tutelage first of his father and later of two Puritan clergymen — William Fenner and Stephen Marshall, John Rogers became acutely aware of contemporary theological controversies and intensely preoccupied with his own religious condition. Later as a minister in Ireland, Rogers recounted various childhood experiences in his quest for some assurance of salvation:

The study of the nineteenth century British Parliament cannot be limited to the institution itself, nor to the constitutional relations of its par ts. The great electoral reforms of the century increased the importance of the electorate in political decision-making. Coupled with these changes, the vast transformations of economy and society altered the very functions of Parliament. Thus nineteenth century parliamentary history requires an understanding of the whole political system, as well as the events within the House. Many of the recent works bearing on the history of Parliament reflect these facts. While good narrative history of parliamentary events continues to be needed and produced, the most innovative recent work raises different kinds of problems entirely and is not limited to affairs at Westminster. The newer types of work can be viewed as coming in two waves: first, a detailed analysis of political structure, utilizing traditional kinds of sources; and second, a proliferation of analytical approaches, using new sources and methods. Both waves are basically analytical, but they differ in questions asked and in routes to the answers.

The analysis of political structure has been inspired by the questions, if not the methods and interpretations, of Sir Lewis Namier. The best of many examples are still Norman Gash's Politics in the Age of Peel and H. J. Hanham's Elections and Party Management. The main questions asked in such works are: What was the real, as opposed to the theoretical, framework of politics? How were politics actually conducted outside the House of Commons? How did the various reform acts affect the functioning of the electoral system? These works stress, in Gash' terminology, the “medium” in which the ordinary politician operated. In each case, they seem to emphasize continuity rather than change, and the enduring power of bribery, corruption, and influence. They have added a great deal to what the narratives tell us about Victorian politics, especially in regard to the realities of constituency operations, the origins and workings of party machinery, the problems of party finance, and the cost of elections. Structural investigations of parties, like Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party and E. J. Feuchtwanger's Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory Party have given a new dimension to party history. Perhaps most important, the structural studies have established the crucial significance of local factors and the comparative inconsequence of national issues in most elections.

Despite the considerable amount of attention devoted to the Revolution of 1688 by serious scholar, constitutional panegyrist, and antiquary alike, no completely satisfactory account of the overthrow of James II has been put forward. Recent research has led to additional insights and a better understanding of the complexity of the event; it has also partially discredited the traditional Whig thesis. However, there is as yet no generally accepted new interpretation of the Revolution, and many questions remain concerning the causes, course, and consequences of this phenomenon. Analysis of the rising at Nottingham provides a valuable fresh perspective on the English contribution to what, a generation ago, was essentially regarded as England's Revolution. It also provides a useful opportunity for defining the crucial role played by the nobility, while at the same time demonstrating the importance of an event neglected by most historians.

At the outset it should be recognized that the Revolution in the North, and more specifically the rising at Nottingham, were not by-products of special circumstances pertaining to the region. Careful investigation of the situation in the counties of Derby and Nottingham reveals little that is exceptional in terms of the patterns which existed in the country as a whole. It is true that the earl of Danby and others of the seven signatories of the invitation stressed the general disaffection in the North as a significant factor in favor of the prince's launching his invasion there, and certainly the rising at Nottingham and its counterpart at York would never have occurred had the environment been totally hostile to the Williamite cause. But while the impact of James II's policies varied somewhat according to local factors, county or regional boundaries were largely meaningless in this context.

After Sir Walter Scott made the historical novel popular with his Waverley novels, many other writers, including the major novelists Dickens and Thackeray and the minor novelists Ainsworth, G. P. R. James, Bulwer-Lytton, and Reade, took up the form. But while the major novelists are credited with artistry in their use of history, the minor ones are generally regarded as hacks who used history indiscriminately in any way they wished in order to “make saleable novels.” The disparaging criticism of William Harrison Ainsworth's use of history exemplifies this unreflective critical tendency.

For several probable reasons, critics have not been inclined to credit Ainsworth with using history responsibly; however, none of the reasons is based on an examination of his sources: his rapid ascension and decline as an important literary figure, his popularity with the common reading public, and his failure to progress artistically after his first few good novels. His artistic growth seems to have ended in 1840, forty-one years before the publication of his last novel. These critics have seen him as a “manufacturer of fiction,” and therefore not responsible in his treatment of historical fact and his use of historical documents, even though time and place are of crucial importance to Ainsworth. One could hardly regard Ainsworth more incorrectly. A close reading of Ainsworth's historical sources demonstrates that Ainsworth's history is extremely reliable in both generalities and particulars; his alterations, usually minor, serve only to adumbrate his concept of history as cycle. Thus, even though he is a novelist and not a historian, the faithful revelation of the past is central to his work. He examines history carefully in order to present truths about life and in order to demonstrate how history reveals these truths.

A careful examination of the conduct of the Verney and Temple interests in the Buckinghamshire election of 1784 reveals that interest, not party, was the major determinant of political conduct in the eighteenth century English county constituency. The freeholder voted in deference to his head of interest, and he did so through an agent's performance of an unwritten but clearly understood code of electioneering conduct. By contrast, the more tangible relationship between tenant and landlord explains little about how individuals voted in the county.

The importance of parliamentary politics in the 1784 election cannot be denied. The attempt of William Pitt the Younger to wrest the majority in the House of Commons from the Fox-North coalition occasioned this election three years earlier than a general election would normally have occurred. Yet to assume that party determined the course of the election far exceeds the evidence available at the level of the county constituency. The political awareness and rising interest in issues, described by J. H. Plumb and others, certainly existed in this election. But this tells us very little about the acquistion and exercise of political power, which Plumb rightly identifies as the essence of politics, though a great deal may thus be learned about literacy, public opinion, interests, tastes, and electoral tactics.

Three aspects of the problem of party have dominated the studies of the period: the emergence of the modern political party in the sense of a group of electors consistently joined together because of a common devotion to a particular political philosophy; the emergence of the modern political party in the sense of a group of electors consistently joined together because of common attitudes toward government policies; and, the emergence of the modern political party in the sense of a group of electors consistently joined together in a structure suited to the winning of an opportunity to translate its desires and beliefs into government policies through success in elections. The 1784 Buckinghamshire election refutes the importance of party in any of these senses in the county constituency.

Before gaining office, the members of the Whig-Radical government of 1830 had continually pressed for reform not only of Parliament, but also of the institutions of the kingdom. The reformers complained about numerous branches of royal administration, including the church, the legal profession, and the army. In the years between 1815 and 1830, the army was especially irksome to the parliamentary opposition. As the most expensive item in the national budget and the traditional stronghold of Tory aristocrats with the proper “connexions” it was vulnerable to the favorite opposition demand for “retrenchment and reform.”

During the reform government's tenure of office from 1830 to 1834, relations between the Commander in Chief, Lord “Daddy” Hill, and the Prime Minister, Lord Grey, were not good. Lord Hill openly opposed the Reform Bill and other reform measures, often with the support of William IV. Aggravating the mutual hostility between civilian and military authorities was the position of the Duke of Wellington. He stood as the acknowledged moral leader of the army, as well as the official leader of the Tory party.

In this tense situation, the Grey government made several attempts at military reform. These were related directly to parliamentary and public demands regarding the army and may be grouped under the headings of financial, administrative, and humanitarian reform. Financial and administrative reform were closely linked in the minds of the reformers, who saw reduced expense as a primary aim of administrative change. For many of the Whigs and Radicals administrative reform, other than reducing offices and expenses, simply meant getting military patronage away from the Tories. This was especially important since Tory control of military appointments since the 1790's had made the army into a Tory institution. Financial reform usually meant reduction of expense by nearly any means. For the public as well as the parliamentary reformers, one of the most unnecessary expenses was the “dead weight” in the Army Estimates — the pension paid to retired soldiers and the half-pay given to retired officers. Another important objective of financial reform was destruction of the army sinecure system. Finally, the most popular and almost the onlv demand for humanitarian reform was the campaign against corporal punishment.

It is a commonplace to assume that in any given Government members of the civil service and other non-elected employees will be loyal to the elected officials of the Government and will carry out the policies determined by these officials. But what happens when a policy is at odds with a man's conscience? Recently we have seen one solution in the release of the Pentagon Papers. Other solutions include burial of one's personal beliefs in commitment to duty, quiet resignation from the Government, or dedication to serve the country's best interests according to one's conscience while remaining within the Government. An example of such dedication, which exceeded partisan considerations, was that displayed by Sir Edward Walter Hamilton, permanent financial secretary to the British Treasury, during the 1903-1905 campaign for tariff reform.

From his birth in 1847, Hamilton was destined to be a free trader. His father, Walter Kerr Hamilton, was the Bishop of Salisbury and a close friend of William E. Gladstone. In 1870, Hamilton entered the temple of free trade, the Treasury Department. (Britain had been a free trade nation since midcentury, and permanent members of the Treasury Department had come to consider the fiscal policies of Peel, Gladstone, and Sir Robert Lowe as their own.) He served as private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Robert Lowe, from 1872 to 1873, to Prime Minister Gladstone for the remaining months of his first administration (1873-1874), and again to the Prime Minister during Gladstone's second administration (1880-1885), becoming imbued with his mentor's ideas. Hamilton worked his way up the ranks of the Treasury Department and in 1902 became permanent financial secretary and joint permanent secretary with Sir George Murray. Although not brilliant, Hamilton was a capable civil servant, and in general, gained the confidence of the chancellors whom he served; this close association with the great men of the moment became important to his social ego.

The Age of the Tudors has been viewed both as an age of transition, and as an age of enterprise and innovation. Although such views more often than not have been limited to political and economic matters, they can be extended equally well to technology and industrial organization. The mining and smelting industries of England and Wales, which for centuries had contributed notably to the national product, during the Tudor Age underwent a number of technological and economic adjustments, some of permanent significance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine, in the light of contemporary and near-contemporary evidence, some of the more important changes that took place in the metalliferous mining and smelting industries of Tudor England The emphasis will be largely on technological changes, but as these gave rise to new and ever-increasing demands for industrial financing, it will be necessary also to examine certain of the concomitant economic changes that ocurred in these industries. Whether the economic changes were the outcome of technological changes, or vice versa, is not always clear. Certain technological changes emphasized the need for new methods of financing and organizing a particular mining or smelting industry, while, in turn, the reorganization of an industry tended to provide the conditions and the incentive for further technological modifications.

There were three mininar and smelting industries of importance at ihe beginning of the Tudor period — tin, lead and iron. By the end of the period, copper and calamine1 had acquired prominence, while renewed interest in gold and silver prospecting had resulted in the precious minerals assuming a fairly important, if erratic, role in this sector of the economy.

The temperance efforts of Joseph Chamberlain during the 1870's have been a largely ignored facet of the great Birmingham politician's career. The latest of his biographers, Dr. Peter Fraser, did not feel that the temperance aspect of his subject deserved even the attention of a citation. Perhaps the fact that Chamberlain's program of temperance reform was so easily defeated explains this general sketchiness of historical treatment. It is the contention of this paper, however, that the defeat of Chamberlain's proposals would exercise an important — if malevolent — effect on the future of the Liberal party.

These temperance proposals of Chamberlain exhibited many of the characteristics described in the Nineteenth Century Revolution in Government literature. While mayor of Birmingham, Chamberlain created a public house inspectorship when he discovered that the average constable could not be trusted within the walls of a drink shop. As part of his vision for central Birmingham, the Corporation next purchased 120 public houses. Although civically owned, these houses were leased to private management. And finally as a fledgling M.P. in 1877, Chamberlain argued for the complete municipalization of the drink trade. He now felt that the city should become a monopolist in both ownership and management of alcohol. Socialization of the drink traffic would offer two advantages. In the first place, abolition of the profit motive would lessen drunkeness; the customer would no longer be pressured into “drinking for the good of the house.” Secondly, elimination of over-entry and excess competition through public ownership would make the municpalized trade a lucrative source of civic revenue.