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Was There a “New Toryism” in the Earlier Part of George III's Reign?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Ian R. Christie
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Extract

The reissue after twenty years of G. H. Guttridge's study, English Whiggism and the American Revolution, is very welcome. In many of its judgments this lucid, aseptic dissection of the ideas, attitudes, and policies of the opposition groups in British politics during the period of the Revolution bids fair to stand the test of a much longer period of time than has elapsed since its first appearance in 1942. The virile political traditions (some still traceable in modern British practice) which Hanoverian England inherited from the whiggism of the seventeenth century contained not one but several potentially competing principles; and the great strength of this study lies in the author's exposition of the ways in which these divergent principles were taken up by different political groups, with the effect of determining the stand taken by each, both on the American question and on concurrent issues of domestic politics. In Locke's writings radicals found justification for the creed of personality as the basis of political rights. All groups drew from them a belief that Parliament had an essential role in maintaining “the contractual obligation of monarchy to preserve certain fundamental rights,” but more than one principle followed from this premise. In the minds of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and his friends, it was combined with pre-Lockeian concepts of fundamental law as an element in the constitution beyond the power of Parliament to alter. For the leaders and members of the Rockingham connection, Parliament's role was seen in, and secured by, its supremacy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , November 1965 , pp. 60 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1965

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References

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57. North's conduct at this time is discussed in Christie, Ian R., “George III and the Debt on Lord North's Election Account, 1780-1784,” E.H.R., LXXVIII (1963), 715–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See too Pares, , George III, pp. 81–82Google Scholar. Members of a political group attached to Bute up to 1766 called themselves “King's friends,” and the term has sometimes been used by writers as synonymous with the “court and administration party” (ibid., pp. 107-08, 117 note), but neither of these corresponds with the postulated party created by the King and led by North. Unless clearly defined, the term “King's friends” is better avoided.

58. For the growth of the London press and the development of political and parliamentary reporting up to 1774, see Thomas, P. D. G., “The Beginning of Parliamentary Reporting in Newspapers, 1768-1774,” E.H.R., LXXIV (1959), 623–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.