Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gvh9x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T14:02:43.545Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Swift and Bolingbroke on Faction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Pat Rogers
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The text for this essay comes from Sir Lewis Namier. “One has to steep oneself in the political life of a period,” so the decree reads, “before one can safely speak, or be sure of understanding, its language.” This article is an attempt to supply, not a complete grammar of Augustan politics, but a minor lexicographical entry. Historians sometimes talk as though the most urgent need were for an advanced glossary. The assumption behind this essay is that a more elementary gradus is required. The two key words under review, “party” and “faction,” have always occupied neighbouring berths in the British synonymy. Unfortunately, in the eighteenth-century vocabulary of politics, they became overlapping concepts. Or rather — this is the trouble — they sometimes merged, partially or completely; sometimes they did not; and sometimes they were even employed as antonymous terms. Examples of all these contrary applications are found in the work of Swift and Bolingbroke. As with other lexicographical enquiries, then, usage and abusage must be considered, as well as the simple dictionary definition of these terms.

I

Edmund Burke is still, in some quarters, valued more highly as a prophet than as a political thinker. His forecasts of the likely course of the Revolution have brought him a reputation for the occult among those who hold his moral views in little esteem, even though he may be regarded, most unfairly, as a sorcerer's apprentice who was engulfed by his own charmed vision.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , May 1970 , pp. 71 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. SirNamier, Lewis, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd ed.; London, 1957), p. xiGoogle Scholar; see also Butterfield, Herbert, George III and the Historians (London, 1957), p. 201Google Scholar.

2. In some respects this essay might be regarded as a minor appendix to Boulton, J. T., The Language of Politics in the Age of Wilkes and Burke (London, 1963)Google Scholar. I have, however, confined my attention to a number of verbal clues which illuminate certain political categories; I have not considered wider habits of language as an index of literary or rhetorical intention, as Boulton does.

3. See, e.g., Foord, A. S., His Majesty's Opposition 1714–1830 (Oxford, 1964), esp. pp. 113–216Google Scholar; Kluxen, Kurt, Das Problem der Politischen Opposition (Freiburg, 1956), passimGoogle Scholar; Butterfield, Herbert, The Statecraft of Machiavelli (London, 1940), pp. 135–65Google Scholar; Hart, Jeffrey, Viscount Bolingbroke, Tory Humanist (London, 1965), passimGoogle Scholar; Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr., Statesmanship and Party Government (Chicago, 1965), passimCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pope, Alexander, An Essay on Man, ed. Mack, Maynard (London, 1950), pp. xxvi–xxxiGoogle Scholar. A more recent work is Kramnick, Isaac, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cambridge, Mass., 1968)Google Scholar. This reached me too late to be used in this article.

4. For a modern distinction between older “factions” and emergent “parties,” see Plumb, J. H., The First Four Georges (London, 1956), p. 78Google Scholar.

5. For a relevant survey, which needs some correction in the light of more recent knowledge, see Realey, C. B., The Early Opposition to Sir Robert Walpole 1720-1727 (Lawrence, Kan., 1931), ch. iiGoogle Scholar, “Parties and Factions in 1721.”

6. The Works and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (London, 1852), III, 141Google Scholar.

7. Mansfield, , Statesmanship, p. 11Google Scholar. I am indebted to my colleague, Derek Beales, for drawing my attention to this work, as well as for the loan of his personal copy.

8. Mallet, David (ed.), The Works of the Late Right Honourable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke (London, 1754), III, 37Google Scholar.

9. Ibid., III, 81.

10. Cicero, , De Re Publica, De Legibus, tr. Keyes, Clinton W. (London, 1951), pp. 154–220Google Scholar.

11. Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times ([London], 1714), pp. 113–14Google Scholar.

12. Murphy, Arthur (ed.), The Works of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D. (London, 1824), VIII, 147Google Scholar.

13. Toland, John, The Art of Governing by Partys (London, 1701), pp. 9, 41, 44, 116 ff., 141Google Scholar.

14. Mallet, , Works of Bolingbroke, III, 11, 18–21, 29–31Google Scholar. It is worth recalling that the phrase “His Majesty's Opposition” dates from as late as 1826 and that Johnson records no political sense of the word “opposition” in his dictionary. Carswell, John, The Old Cause (London, 1954), p. 20Google Scholar. See also Bolingbroke's remarks on an earlier “Factions Cabal” in his Letter to the Examiner (1710)Google Scholar.

15. Mallet, , Works of Bolingbroke, III, 82–100Google Scholar.

16. Ibid., III, 92, 101, 134-37.

17. Swift's well-known confession that he was thoroughly disenchanted by the squabbles between the Earl of Oxford and Bolingbroke occurs in his poem, “The Author upon Himself.” See Williams, Harold (ed.), The Poems of Jonathan Swift (Oxford, 1937), I, 191–96Google Scholar.

18. Bagehot, Walter, Biographical Studies (London, 1902), ch. v, “Bolingbroke as a Statesman,” p. 185Google Scholar.

19. It would be illuminating to compare Bolingbroke's exploitation of recognized clichés with that of, for example, Samuel Johnson. See Wimsatt, W. K., “Scientific Imagery in The Rambler,” in Samuel Johnson: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Greene, D. J. (Englewood Cliffs, 1965), p. 145Google Scholar; Mallet, , Works of Bolingbroke, II, 29, 165, 251.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., II, 54, 89, 114. Pope, too, refers to “a tide of malice and party” in a letter to Thomas Parnell of 1717. Sherburn, George (ed.), The Correspondence of Alexander Pope (Oxford, 1956), I, 395Google Scholar. Burke similarly speaks of the favourite principle of disunion as “a distrust, a disconnexion, a mutability by principle.” See Boulton, , Language of Politics, p. 55Google Scholar.

21. Mallet, , Works of Bolingbroke, II, 167, 70Google Scholar.

22. Ibid., II, 14, 72.

23. Ibid., II, 33, 52, 68, 91, 108.

24. Ibid., II, 78, 68-69, 145.

25. Hart, , Bolingbroke, p. 148Google Scholar.

26. The Works of Sir William Temple Bt. (London, 1750), I, 256Google Scholar.

27. Waldegrave, Earl, Memoirs from 1754 to 1758 (London, 1821), p. 20Google Scholar. Cf. the comments of Brooke, John, “Party in the Eighteenth Century,” in Silver Renascence, ed. Natan, Alex (London, 1961), p. 27Google Scholar.

28. Davis, Herbert (ed.), The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift (Oxford, 1939–1968), III, 69Google Scholar; Burke, , Works, III, 132Google Scholar. Cf. Burke's mention to Lord Rockingham of “the Bedfords, the Grenvilles, and other knots, who are combined for no publick purpose; but only as a means of furthering with joint strength, their private and individual advantage.” Sutherland, Lucy (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke (Cambridge and Chicago, 1960), II, 101Google Scholar.

29. Davis, , Prose Works of Swift, II, 11Google Scholar.

30. Ibid., III, 167-68; Hurd, Richard (ed.), The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison (London, 1811), VI, 123–26Google Scholar.

31. Davis, , Prose Works of Swift, III, 97–98, 13–18Google Scholar.

32. Ibid., III, 122. The importance of two images utilized here — clothes and “fabric” — in eighteenth-century writing has been brought out by Fussell, Paul, The Rhetorical World of Augustan Humanism (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar.

33. Sutherland, , Correspondence of Burke, II, 101Google Scholar.

34. Davis, , Prose Works of Swift, III, 123–24Google Scholar.

35. Ibid., III, 102-03. The idea of a mythological genealogy of faction was not new. See the opening of [Sackville Tufton], The History of Faction (London, 1705)Google Scholar, where Rebellion and Self-Interest are the parents. Similarly, William Shippen's “Faction Displayed” refers to “Faction, a restless and repining Fiend … offspring to Chaos, Enemy to Form.” See A New Collection of Poems (London, 1705), p. 570Google Scholar. In John Bull, by Dr. Arbuthnot, Discordia is the daughter of Mrs. Bull (Parliament).

36. Davis, , Prose Works of Swift, III, 104Google Scholar.

37. To take a single instance, the Whig author, John Oldmixon, makes scathing reference to Robert Harley's apostacy from the sound principles of his ancestors; in addition, Oldmixon presents Harley as socially ambitious and a pretender to taste. See the following works by Oldmixon, John: Memoirs of Wharton (London, 1715), pp. 10–11Google Scholar; Memoirs of North Britain (London, 1715), p. 25Google Scholar; False Steps of the Ministry (London, 1714), p. 25Google Scholar; The History of England (London, 1735), pp. 34, 122, 208, 219, 461Google Scholar; The Secret History of Europe (London, 1715), IV, 71Google Scholar. On Sir Richard Steele's exploitation of the same line of attack, see Winton, Calhoun, Captain Steele (Baltimore, 1964), p. 193Google Scholar.

38. Davis, , Prose Works of Swift, III, 92Google Scholar.

39. de Thoyras, Paul Rapin, The History of England, tr. Tindal, N. (2nd ed.; London, 1733), II, 805Google Scholar.

40. Davis, , Prose Works of Swift, III, 75Google Scholar.

41. For an examination of the mutual relationship of the two journals, see Rogers, Pat, “The Whig Controversialist as Dunce” (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 1967)Google Scholar.

42. Davis, , Prose Works of Swift, III, 158–59, 160Google Scholar.

43. Williams, Harold (ed.), The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift (Oxford, 1963–1965), IV, 230Google Scholar.

44. Sherburn, , Correspondence of Pope, I, 220.Google Scholar To rail against party was, of course, a universal sport at this epoch, as it has been in every age. Daniel Defoe, who was scarcely a Tory humanist, was anxious to absolve himself from the charge of writing for party in the Mercator. See Novak, Maximilian E., Economics and the Fiction of Daniel Defoe (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962), p. 28Google Scholar. Gay was another writer who professed to care not “one Farthing” for a man's politics. Burgess, C. F. (ed.), The Letters of John Gay (Oxford, 1966), p. xviCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. Davis, , Prose Works of Swift, III, 64–65Google Scholar; Wright, H. B. and Spears, M. K. (eds.), The Literary Works of Matthew Prior (Oxford, 1959), I, 597Google Scholar; Hurd, , Works of Addison, VI, 32–37Google Scholar.

46. Davis, , Prose Works of Swift, VIII, 77Google Scholar; Williams, , Correspondence of Swift, II, 369Google Scholar.

47. Sherburn, , Correspondence of Pope, IV, 144Google Scholar.

48. Hume, David, Essays Moral, Political and Literary (London, 1904), p. 57Google Scholar; Price, Martin, Swift's Rhetorical Art (New Haven, 1953), p. 1Google Scholar. It is worthy of notice that Lord Cowper, on the other hand, stressed the reality of the ideological cleavage. See his “Impartial History of Parties” in Campbell, John Lord, Lives of the Lord Chancellors (London, 1846), IV, 427Google Scholar. Cowper wrote ca. 1714.

49. Douglas, David, English Scholars 1660–1730 (2nd ed.; London, 1951), p. 14Google Scholar; Feiling, Keith, The Second Tory Party 1714–1832 (London, 1938), p. 2Google Scholar.

50. Hughes, John, Poems on Several Occasions (London, 1735), II, 343–45Google Scholar.