The existence of ‘civic humanism’ as a common form of British political thought in the eighteenth century is well established. It began as a Country Whig ideology in the 1670s, justifying opposition to the attempt by the monarch and his ministers to introduce popery and absolutism. It was deployed again by ‘old Whigs’ and their Tory allies at the end of the century in the controversy over a ‘standing army’ which allegedly would endanger liberty and the constitution. In the 1720s, John Trenchard, a prominent old Whig participant in that controversy, collaborated with Thomas Gordon to warn of the dangers of stock jobbing and moneyed men to British liberty. Then, Bolingbroke utilised their views as well as exploiting other elements of the civic humanist tradition to denounce the corruption of Walpole's regime. The Scottish enlightenment thinkers faced some of the problems posed by civic humanism: David Hume's critique of ‘vulgar Whiggism’ and Adam Smith's account of the unintended benefits of self-interested activity were a response to civic humanist themes. Subsequently these ideas filtered into the thought of reformers and radicals at the end of the century. But before then, they had helped inspire a colonial rebellion in the New World against the corruption and tyranny of the old.

Civic humanism had a number of distinctive characteristics. It held that political activity was essential for self-fulfilment but that naturally human beings would selfishly pursue their own interests and pleasures.