Surprisingly little attention has been given by modern historians to the composition or the detailed proceedings of the Convention Parliament of 1660. The generalizations of past generations of historians have been accepted and transmitted. In particular, terms of description have been applied to the political and religious groups in this parliament without precise definition or even verification. Since the demolition work performed by Professor Hexter, few would use the terms ‘presbyterian’ or ‘independent’ in talking of groups in the Long Parliament, at least without qualifications and additional definition. Yet they are still generally and confidently used in speaking of major groups in the Convention. So too is the label ‘royalist’, a quite useless term to use of 1660, when all but a few members wanted the return of the King, whatever their attitude had been in the 1640's. Yet these terms are still used as if ‘royalist’ and ‘presbyterian’ denoted separate and mutually exclusive groups. Some historians also see nothing illogical in contrasting ‘presbyterian’ (which if it means anything is a religious classification) with ‘royalist’ (a political term).

In the later Middle Ages English kings borrowed to an increasing extent from their subjects rather than from foreign bankers. This development, often remarked, has usually been interpreted as both a sign and a cause of the Crown's weakness. Dependence on its subjects' goodwill is thought to have compromised the Crown's political authority, while its financial embarrassment enabled subjects to make a profit at the Crown's expense. Repeated borrowing thus brought not only an inexorable decline into insolvency, but increasing distrust of the Crown's promises and contempt for its rule. Such an interpretation derives much of its force from the view usually taken of these loans. They were, we are told, not ‘forced’ but freely made; not offered disinterestedly, but for profit.

One of the most significant of the anti-ministerial newspapers of the early eighteenth century was the London Evening Post. Its importance has been overshadowed by such great newspapers as the Craftsman, which has come to be regarded as the main propaganda weapon of the Opposition to Walpole. But it seems probable that the London Evening Post reached a wider public, and that its influence was more sustained and more immediately effective. The Craftsman was published only once a week, and devoted the greater part of its space to its political essay. These essays were undoubtedly immensely influential, and in times of unusual excitement the paper' circulation could reach quite remarkable figures. But the regular circulation of such a paper was bound to be limited. Outside the capital, London newspapers were not cheap: and few readers would be so politically minded as to be prepared to subscribe regularly to a purely political paper. Most country readers wanted news as well as views: and perhaps no eighteenth-century paper set out to satisfy both demands more effectively than did the London Evening Post. Its reputation was increasingly to be based upon its political content: but its various printers never lost sight of the fundamental fact that their product was first and foremost a newspaper, and even in the most hectic political campaigns the news always received priority. On the political side, instead of relying, as did most political papers of this period, upon lengthy and often tedious essays, the Post preferred to make its point by brief but exceedingly pungent comment upon the news and by the savagely humorous verses for which it was to become notorious. In this way, it made politics both interesting and amusing. The result was that the Post very rapidly became established as one of the main sources of London and foreign news throughout the countryside. By the 1740', there were few country papers indeed which did not draw heavily upon the Post: and these papers reproduced not only the Post's news items but also its politics. In fact, its political influence became so pronounced that on two occasions, in 1733 and 1754, the Whig ministry paid it the supreme compliment of endeavouring to prevent its transmission through the Post Office.

The debates between ‘rationalism’ and ‘traditionalism’ and between ‘organization’ and ‘community’ 1 which are such a striking feature of contemporary political thought may be traced back in their modern form to the eighteenth century. Men like Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Bolingbroke, Hume, Bentham and Burke recognized the relevance of these debates to theory and practice and they attempted to link the issues by exploring the conceptual and practical connexions between rationalist politics and the theory of community. The problems were not, of course, discussed in either an intellectual or a political vacuum. The intellectual context was produced by the impact of the discoveries of natural science on social investigation. Students of social affairs hoped to discover behind the apparent diversity and complexity of actual societies a framework of uniform, consistent and, above all, predictable rules which would be analogous to the laws of the planetary system.

The passage of Catholic emancipation in April 1829 was resisted, in the name of the inviolability of the Protestant Constitution, by a group of ‘ultra’ anti-catholics.1 The principles and personnel of this group have already been well described, 2 but its political activities have been inadequately explored. Since 1824, when they criticized Lord Liverpool's Government for dilatoriness in prosecuting O’Connell's Catholic Association, these ultras had tended to form a distinct group on the right wing of the anti-catholic Tories, and had been the most aggressive opponents of Canning's short-lived ministry in 1827. The emergence of an Irish demand for Catholic emancipation, of unprecedented force, was shown in O’Connell's victory at the County Clare by-election in July 1828 and in the ensuing months. This produced a determined resistance by the Irish anti-catholics, which had its counterpart in a British no-popery movement led by the ultras. Most of the leading ultras were peers, and the most prominent among them were the dukes of Cumberland and Newcastle, the marquess of Chandos, the earl of Winchilsea and Lords Colchester and Kenyon. For nine months before the passage of the relief bill they sought to counteract the immense fervour of the Irish Catholics by stimulating the ingrained anti-catholic feelings which had characterized the English masses since the sixteenth century. Their efforts, however, were of no avail against Wellington's decision to carry a Government emancipation measure. It is the object of this study to investigate the no-popery movement and to account for its failure.

In its issue of 18 November 1870, the Liberal Daily News drew the attention of its readers to a remarkable recent change in the attitude of the British public towards the affairs of Europe.

Sir Edward Grey presided over the Foreign Office, Lord Salisbury ruled it. While Salisbury's Foreign Office can still be discussed in Palmerstonian terms, Grey's resembled its modern—day counterpart. After 1906, men who had been clerks began acting as true advisers. This change was in part due to the increasing volume of business and to the personalities of the men involved, but it also resulted from a belated administrative revolution which brought the Foreign Office into line with the other great departments of state. The years under Lord Lansdowne were the transitional ones both in terms of policy and of Foreign Office organization.

One of the chief features of the history of nineteenth-century England was undoubtedly the increase in the size of cities, and in the proportion of the total population who lived under urban conditions. Since this process turned out to be a long-term trend, the urban communities, especially the larger ones, were always historically more important than the statistics of urban to rural population in any one decade would have suggested.2 They were the growing points of the new society, and decisions taken there were to be of cumulative significance far beyond the borough boundary. The problems of the towns in any one generation became increasingly the problems of the nation in the next. For instance, it was assumed in 1848 that the administrative measures under the Public Health Act of that year were applicable to urban areas only. By 1872 it had been realized that they would have to be extended to the country as a whole.

‘I wish there was no such thing as Local Government’, wrote Lord Salisbury,1 exasperated by the difficulties of securing a measure his whole Cabinet could accept. Gladstone's second administration had already encountered difficulties in considering the question, and had not proceeded to legislation. The subject thus passed to the Conservatives. And, though Local Government was not considered an issue of the first importance, the fact that they were to some extent dependent upon the support, and therefore influenced by the wishes, of the Radical Unionists made for prolonged negotiations before County Councils were finally established in 1888. These negotiations and difficulties are principally interesting for the light they shed on the politics of the time. But, since they revolved around technicalities, they cannot be understood without some exposition of the possible courses open to a legislator.

The Treaty of Rapallo, signed on 16 April 1922, cemented a German-Soviet partnership that promised advantages of several different kinds: economically, the reconstruction and development of the Soviet Union by means of German trade and investment seemed good business for both partners; militarily, the secret co-operation between the Red Army and the Reichswehr made possible the introduction of the latest weapons for the one, evasion of the Versailles Treaty for the other, and effective training for both; and politically, German and Soviet policy-makers entertained hopes which ranged, according to the time and the individual concerned, from the modest expectation that the treaty-partner would refrain from joining any hostile coalition to the grandiose ambition of jointly attacking and dismembering the fragile and presumptuous state of Poland.