This paper investigates the relationship between constitutional ideas and political action during the 1630s by comparing the privately expressed ideas of Sir Simonds D'Ewes regarding ship money with his conduct regarding the levy, especially while he was sheriff of Suffolk in 1639–40. The first section investigates the constitutionalist views expressed in D'Ewes's ‘autobiography’, unpublished during his lifetime, and their relationship to D'Ewes's attitude to the political role of the levy. The second section studies D'Ewes's conduct as sheriff, in which he gave almost no expression to constitutionalist ideas, and suggests that he struck a middle course between neglect and zeal, while finding means to oppose the levy through his connections at court. The third section seeks to establish the reasons for the inconsistencies between D'Ewes's privately expressed ideas and his public conduct, which may have lain in a belief that, in the prevailing political situation, criticism of the levy had, in order to be effective, to be expressed in terms acceptable to potentially sympathetic courtiers; D'Ewes adapted the tone of his comments on ship money to his audience in order to achieve political ends, but had also to act in ways which would make that tone convincing. Participation in the collection of ship money was therefore not inconsistent with opposition to it.

Contrary to received historical wisdom, Sir Robert Walpole, the pragmatist par excellence, was diverted by political ideas. Thus he invested time and an unprecedented amount of money in political newspapers. This article investigates the primary pro-government newspapers and, as well as identifying the leading circle of political writers sponsored by Walpole, addresses the varied and complex arguments that appeared in their ‘leading essay’ each week for twenty years. After identifying some common but misleading historical representations of Walpolean political thought, the article examines the treatment of three broad philosophical questions – human nature, the origin, nature and extent of government, and political morality – so demonstrating that Walpole's spokesmen were not narrowly pragmatic. Subsequently, the article focuses upon the careful pro-government response to the common charges that Walpole corrupted the political system and betrayed traditional whig values. In doing so, the article highlights the skills of some underrated eighteenth-century political writers and, more importantly, emphasizes the union of government and ideology in Walpolean political thinking.

This essay deals with the problem of the roots of Ostrogorski's well-known approach to the problem of political parties, showing that: (1) Ostrogorski's approach is highly dependent on the nineteenth-century debate among the English intelligentsia about a supposed ‘American model’; (2) James Bryce was at the centre of an intellectual network assuming that ‘modern politicsxyr could become the subject of a sort of ‘scientific approach to politics’ more up to date than the traditional one depending on Tocqueville's school; (3) Ostrogorski betrayed Bryce's expectation of a balanced research on the transformation of modern politics because of his dependence on an old-fashioned liberal mind (as evident from his correspondence); (4) this cleavage between the two interpretations of political development was perceived and led to a certain discussion among English and American political scholars (and in this framework Lowell's contribution is peculiarly worthy of attention).

This article is a case study of labour strife in the Alabama coal fields from 1917 to 1921. It speaks to the broader issue of labour repression in the American South by examining the patterns of repression in one industry and in one state. Several revisionist works have been written recently refuting the alleged distinctiveness of the South on the labour issue. This article supplies evidence for a surprising degree of labour militancy; the type of militancy that has been used to buttress revisionist interpretations of the similarity of southern labour to that of other American regions. In this study, however, labour militancy is understood more as a function of the desperation of southern workers confronted with distinctive issues and degrees of racial acrimony, communal antipathy toward labour, and the advantageous position of southern coal operators vis-a-vis their northern counterparts. In the face of overwhelming odds of governmental, business, press, religious, communal, and legal opposition, Alabama coal miners mounted a militant, prolonged, and biracial protest against what have been described as the worst conditions in the United States at that time.

It is normally assumed that antisemitism in post-war France needs to be understood primarily in the light of the German occupation of 1940–4. This article seeks to describe the relationship between political antisemitism and events after 1945. Special attention is given to the issue that obsessed a large part of the French right: the loss of Algeria. It is argued that between 1954 and 1962 right-wingers came to took on the Jewish population of Algeria, which was often fervently opposed to French withdrawal, with new favour. Furthermore, many right-wingers began to admire Israel, which seemed so successful in combating Arab nationalism and which was widely believed to have links with the Organisation de l' Arméte Secrète. Changes in attitudes to Israel and the Jews were linked with a wider change in the French right that had been going on since 1945: most of the right now focused their loyalties around ‘l' occident’ a block of nations led by America and including Israel rather than around the France that was so important to Gaullist thinking. Finally, an attempt is made to show how the French right's new attitude to the Jews influenced its reaction to the 1965 Presidential election campaign, de Gaulle's denunciation of Israel in 1967 and the student riots of 1968.