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Britain in the 1840's: Reflections in Relevance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

M. A. Fitzsitnons
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Extract

The historian initially marks off his subject matter from the past's welter or continuum by emphasizing the unique color and tone of the events he has selected. He, therefore, appears to be preoccupied with the transient and, as we may say, in self-preoccupation, with mortality. But the point about our mortality is that, as we have so far had successors, our transiency is within a cycle of death and birth. From this cycle some of our works escape, perhaps to join a larger cycle. Flux has, then, no unlimited dominion. If we cannot step twice into quite the same river, our words win a metaphysical triumph for constancy when we define river as embanked watery flux. Still more happily, at any rate so far as the present occasion is concerned, some of our institutions endure. This endurance of St. Mary's and its promise for the future are what we celebrate.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , October 1969 , pp. 509 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1969

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References

* This paper was presented to the symposium, “The World in the 1840's,” which is a part of the celebration of the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana.

1 The Times, January 4, 1841.

2 Guizot, , Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel (London, 1857), p. 89Google Scholar.

3 Economic History Review, 2nd series, VI (1953), 1–15Google Scholar.

4 This point is well made by Platt, D. C. M., “The Imperialism of Free Trade: Some Reservations,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, XXI (1968), 297–306Google Scholar.

5 Marx, , “The Chartists,” The New York Daily Tribune, 08 25, 1852Google Scholar, quoted in Avineri, Shlomo, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1968), p. 214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Marx, Karl, “A Discourse on Free Trade” (Boston, 1888), p. 42Google Scholar. The Discourse was prepared for delivery in 1847. The preface is by Engels.

7 Ancien Regime, I, 160, quoted in Drescher, S., Tocqueville and England (Cambridge, 1964), p. 211Google Scholar; see also Chs. VIII-XI; and Drescher, , Dilemmas of Democracy (Pittsburgh, 1968)Google Scholar.