JOHNSON AS “REVOLUTION TORY”

In the evolution of English politics, as in the development of ideologies of class and gender, Johnson's life spanned a crucial era, and may even be said to mirror the development of a recognizably modern political praxis and philosophy. This evolution was marked by England's transformation from a society rancorously divided over questions of dynastic succession to a nation preoccupied with questions of political privilege and liberties, especially as connected with the varying rights and economic relations of its social ranks. These are the issues that increasingly pitted conservatives against radicals, a new kind of “Tory” against a new kind of “Whig.” To maintain that Johnson would come even to embody the outlooks of eighteenth-century conservatism, therefore, is not to imply that he remained entrenched in the attitudes of a past era or a defunct political ideology. His “Toryism” transformed during his life in relation to a broader restructuring of English political alignments. In tracing this development in his political thought and allegiances, we can gain important insights into the early growth of the English party politics that would coalesce fully in the nineteenth century and continue to shape British politics to the present day.

This claim for Johnson's political modernity will be controversial for a number of reasons. Until recently, there has been wide consensus among historians that party, like social class, was a phenomenon only of the last decade of the eighteenth century or even later.