When the judge of the High Court of Admiralty, Dr Julius Caesar, rode south from London to Lewes on 26 June 1591 1 an important experiment was initiated in the Admiralty court's continuing quest for greater respect and authority. The judge was setting out on a circuit of the troubled south and west coast of England in hopes of forcing the local authorities in those regions to submit to the supremacy of the High Court of Admiralty.2An examination of the prelude to the circuit and of the circuit itself, as well as an appraisal of its aftermath, will provide us with an instructive view of the tension between the local authorities and the central Government at the end of the sixteenth century. If there were a marked reduction in the quality of central government leadership at the end of Elizabeth's reign, one cause was perhaps the unsubdued strength of the provinces coupled with the corruption of Crown officers who were beyond the effective control of Westminster.

Note, the King by his proclamation, or other ways, cannot change any part of the common law, or statute law, or the customs of the realm … also the King cannot create any offence by his prohibition or proclamation, which was not an offence before, for that was to change the law, and to make an offence which was not; for ubi non est lex, ibi non est transgressio; ergo, that which cannot be punished without proclamation, cannot be punished with it…

Liberalism is characterized by paradox. It is a creed with sacred books, sacred names and a sacred history, but without a universally acceptable definition. It emerged slowly, first in England, then in France, spread with difficulty, yet is fading even more slowly—if it is indeed fading at all. From time to time its tenets have seemed to attain final expression, whether in the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, or in John Stuart Mill's Liberty. Invariably these formulations have come at last to seem inadequate, and to need re-interpretation if they are to retain their reputation. Such re-interpretation has usually been forthcoming. Liberalism, to the vexation of conservatives and socialists, like a goat with exceptionally powerful digestion, finds it possible to absorb almost anything into itself, even the most trenchant criticism. Only the advocates of force for the sake of force, or of the suppression, on principle, of free thought, have been invariably rejected by the liberal consensus. Liberalism has therefore remained the creed, not of governments, but of oppositions, happiest in a critical, rather than a constructive role.

On 16 April 1697 King William III of England gave his Royal Assent to a Bill just passed by his Whiggish Parliament, thereby making illegal a custom of very long standing in the history of English law and convention. During the Middle Ages the practice of imprisonment for debt had come into being through statutory enactments and through judicial procedure; parallel to it had grown the use of so-called ‘privileged places’, refuges to which delinquent debtors could flee and evade arrest for debt. While imprisonment for debt persisted as a legal process in England until the middle of the nineteenth century, sanctuary for debtors was legally abolished by this Act of 1697. That this Act was passed by a Whig-dominated Parliament is not without significance, for a substantial element in the Whig Party was the mercantile interest, the group most likely to suffer damage by the flight of debtors to these places of refuge.

The history of mechanics’ institutes ‘is at once beautiful and terrible to read', Christopher Charles Cattell, the Birmingham radical republican, told the members of his Eclectic Institute in 1854. Contemporaries of the mechanics’ institute movement in the mid-nineteenth century were acutely aware of this terrible history. ‘The banquet was prepared for guests who did not come …,’ wrote Robert Elliott in 1861. J. W. Hudson referred to ‘The universal complaint that Mechanics’ Institutions are attended by persons of a higher rank than those for whom they were designed…’ The Westminster Review continued the lament, Samuel Smiles, Lloyd Jones and J. M. Ludlow joined the chorus, and later historians have followed the tune. E. P. Thompson, for example, writes: ‘After the mid-Twenties the tendency was general for the custom of artisans to give way to that of the lower middle class, and for orthodox political economy to come into the syllabus.

On Friday, 18 July 1679, Sir George Wakeman, Bt., a Roman Catholic of an old Gloucestershire family, and formerly physician to the Queen, was arraigned before a special commission of oyer and terminer at the Sessions House, Old Bailey, charged with high treason, in that he had conspired to murder the King. He was acquitted, as were the three Benedictine monks, William Marshal, William Rumley and James Corker, arraigned with him.

It has long been a commonplace among historians of eighteenth-century England that effective participation in the political affairs of the nation was confined to the privileged few. The substantial truth of this is undeniable, but its recognition has carried with it the questionable assumption that there were

Two worlds of politics in the eighteenth century—a tight political establishment, linked to small groups of powerful managers in the provinces, who controlled parliament, the executive, and all that was effective in the nation, and outside this an amorphous mass of political sentiment that found expression in occasional hysteria and impotent polemic, but whose effective voice in the nation was negligible.

The historical circumstances which surround the publication of Burke's third and to that date most important pamphlet, the Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, are familiar to every historian of George III's reign. The first decade of the young King's reign was marked (or marred) by a progressive growth in political instability. Despite the advantages enjoyed by George at his accession—the military success of his Government, the political unity of the nation, the absence of a Prince of Wales and the insignificance of the Pretender as a source of opposition—the early promise of the reign, so often commented upon by contemporaries, was not fulfilled. By 1770, and for reasons which have been a great occasion of dispute, an apparendy stable political order had collapsed. After the disintegration of the war coalition, the King was unable to form a stable administration from the fragmentary groups that remained: by the end of the decade five new ministries had tottered to a rapid and precipitate downfall. Nor did die situation out-of-doors appear any more healthy than in Parliament. The organs of dissent—pamphlets, newspapers and prints—had grown in number and scurrility to a level not sustained since the opposition to Walpole, while the presence of deeper fissures could be seen in the eighty-four riots that occurred in England and America during the years 1765–70.

The development of government participation in the support of research is one of the most significant characteristics of nineteenth-century science. As public money became available for science, the social framework of research underwent a profound transformation. This process of transformation is not easy to define, but the response of scientific societies and institutions sometimes provides significant clues.

While Swift's contribution to most fields of thought has generally been well received, his science is normally considered along with the third book of Gulliver's Travels; and the usual practice is to condemn both. At first it was thought that Swift's criticism of Newtonian science in the third book of Gulliver's Travels was written at short notice, in which case it would be peripheral to the work as a whole. In this event, science would be of little concern to Swift. The important achievement of Professors M. Nicolson and N. M. Mohler was to demonstrate diat Swift's assault on Newton's science was not only premeditated, but carefully executed as well: ‘The sources for nearly all the theories of the Laputans and the Balnibarians (sic) are to be found in the work of Swift's contemporary scientists and particularly in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.’

Shortly after the death of the Younger Pitt on 23 January 1806, his political heirs collected themselves into two principal groups. Lord Hawkesbury and Lord Castlereagh dominated one, and George Canning and George Rose were prominent in the other. The roots of this division stretched back to the interlude between the first and second Pitt Ministries, when Henry Addington, now Lord Sidmouth, had been Prime Minister. Some junior ministers in the first Pitt Government, such as Hawkesbury and Castlereagh, had taken Pitt's advice and accepted leading positions under Addington. Others, such as Canning and Rose, had refused to endorse Addington and were soon foremost among those who denounced his measures as insufficient. When Pitt formed his second Ministry, his separated friends, including the four mentioned above, came together and, though their union was none too stable, in part because of Canning's acute disappointment at being denied a major position, it did not disintegrate. Pitt's death, however, forced his friends from public office, and in their respective places succeeded the followers of Charles James Fox and Lord Grenville, who formed a government of ‘ All the Talents ’. This paper traces the reaction of Rose and Canning to the unfamiliar demands of opposition, especially strange in the absence of the self-assured guidance of their late esteemed and unquestioned leader.1

Chartist internationalism has usually been treated as a peripheral question in the consideration of some broader topic—the history of the labour movement or of Chartism or communism—or as an element in the background of some radical's biography. It has, however, played a much larger part for Marxist writers, particularly in its embodiment in the Fraternal Democrats, with whom Marx and Engels were for a time associated.

Under pressure from the anti-slavery interest in the House of Commons, the British Government undertook, in 1823, to reform West Indian slavery and prepare the slaves for eventual freedom. This policy of amelioration was based on the assumption that the West Indian planters would co-operate with the British Government to improve slave conditions. As George Canning explained to the House of Commons, ‘The masters are the instruments through whom, and by whom, you must act upon the slave population.’ Ten years later the reform programme was abandoned in favour of abolition. This change of policy reflected, in part, the conversion of officials at the Colonial Office who began to urge the need for emancipation in 1831. For eight years the Colonial Office made persistent efforts to induce the co-operation of the West Indian planters; these attempts failed and a mass of evidence accumulated which suggested that the slave system could not be improved, it could only be abolished. This article demonstrates the efforts made by the Colonial Office to effect amelioration in the legislative colonies with particular reference to Jamaica and the nature of the evidence which demonstrated that emancipation was the only viable solution to the problem of West Indian slavery.

Much has been written about the history of the Cobden-Chevalier treaty, partly because of the eminence of the persons involved in its negotiations and partly because of its significance in Anglo-French relations. By far the most detailed and up-to-date account is that of A. L. Dunham. Besides this valuable contribution to the history of the treaty, accounts of it can be found in nearly all the biographies and personal reminiscences of British statesmen of that period. In addition a large number of articles and monographs have been devoted to it on both sides of the Channel. All these accounts usually contain three main points concerning the origin of the treaty. The first of these is that by the close of 1859 the state of Britain's finances offered yet another opportunity for a major reform of the tariff, and that no one was more conscious of this opportunity than Gladstone, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was particularly concerned about annuities worth £2 million, due to mature the following year, and was determined that this large sum of money should not‘ pass into the great gulf of expenditure there to be swallowed up ’. He informed Richard Cobden that if under the favourable financial circumstances nothing was done for ‘trade and die masses, it would be a great discredit and a great calamity ’.2 Secondly, that while Gladstone was resolved that the large sum at his disposal should not be wasted, the enthusiasm of persons who had no official position, particularly Cobden and Michel Chevalier, directed his attention to the possibility of using that amount to further Anglo-French commercial relations.

When Sir Llewellyn Woodward wrote his distinguished book Great Britain and the German Navy in 1935, the last volumes of Gooch and Temperley were not yet published, and the original papers were still subject to the fifty-year rule. In 1971, all of the Gooch and Temperley collection of documents has long since been available; and the archives have been open since 1965. It is therefore possible to add to what Sir Llewellyn wrote, and this article seeks to show, not differently from him, but more fully, how the naval holiday proposals unfolded and how the general tenor of Anglo-German relations remained unaltered in this most vital area. Nothing that the Haldane Mission had done, nor even the general co-operation between London and Berlin during the Balkan Wars, could change the fundamental position—despite Baron Marschall's hopes.

On 23 March 1815 Louis XVIII disbanded die French army. In June Napoleon lost Waterloo and abdicated, and the Bourbons returned to Paris to complete the destruction of the army. It had proved itself loyal only to Napoleon and over half of the 70,000 men of Davout's command preferred desertion to the white cockade. The country at large was hostile and in the royalist south returning officers were arrested and several were killed. In August the King published an ordinance ‘concerning the organization of a new army’. The army was ‘to be formed according to the principles which constitute a truly national army to form a military force in harmony with the liberal nature of our charter… avoiding the separation of die army from the interests of die country‘. It was not an easy task. Financial circumstances placed limitations on size, die Charter forbade conscription, the allies wanted reprisals and die royalists claimed rewards for their loyal service.

‘Let the past bury its dead, but for God's sake let us get down to earnest endeavour and hold this line until … the end.’ No other words can more adequately express, after four years of war, the sheer agony of the Canadian Prime Minister, Sir Robert L. Borden. These words also suggest both his attitude to the war in general and his intense frustration with die supreme direction. Like Lloyd George, Borden was an exponent of total war and of victory. His proclamation that Canada was ‘fighting not for a truce but victory’, was strikingly similar to Lloyd George's own declaration that ‘the fight must be to a finish—to a knockout’. The objective, proclaimed at die conclusion of the Somme battles, seemed no less remote in the middle of 1918. Over the last two, and most critical, years of the First World War there was constant contention within Britain over how the objective was to be secured. One aspect of the contention was the direct involvement of Dominion leaders, especially Sir Robert Borden.

All persons concerned with the Benthamites are indebted to William Thomas's ‘James Mill's Politics’ for reopening a crucial, complex and much-debated question and for offering a number of thought-provoking opinions on die subject. Despite the ingenuity of his essay, however, many of Thomas's conclusions merit further consideration. Most of the questionable points in his argument centre on three basic issues: the meaning of the Essay on Government; the import of James Mill's distinctive theory of propaganda; and the general perspective from which James Mill's politics should be studied. Thomas's position on these issues casts doubt on his entire approach to James Mill's political theory.

I am grateful to Professor W. R. Carr for giving my article on James Mill more attention than it deserved. I had many doubts about its suggestions, and more about the way they were expressed, and had hoped that an expert critic versed in Mill might help to remove them. His ‘James Mill's Politics Reconsidered: Parliamentary Reform and the Triumph of Truth’ contains so much that I can accept and profit from, that I am only at a loss to account for the captious vehemence of his language. For our arguments do not seem to me so much to conflict, as to cross and diverge. I was concerned with the Essay on Government as a practical document. I argued that it had less bearing on the movement for parliamentary reform culminating in the Act of 1832 than had been supposed. The effect of his criticism is to remove the Essay into a world of abstract speculation, even more divorced from the problems which beset the parliamentary reformers in the 1820s than I had claimed. Probably he would not admit this, because his real charge is not that I think Mill and his followers made no practical contribution to the Reform Act, but that I have not, as he has, pieced together the various parts of Mill's thought into that mosaic of ‘glittering clarity’ cemented by ‘strenuous logic’ which he conceives it to be.

In all three great imperial powers of Western Europe, imperialism acquired a popular following only in the 1890s. This change in public attitudes was particularly striking in France. For most of the 1880s the French public had seemed at best indifferent, at worst violently hostile, to colonial expansion. The Tunisian expedition had helped to bring down Jules Ferry's first ministry in 1881; the proposed Egyptian expedition brought down Freycinet in 1882. Three years later Ferry was hounded not merely from office but virtually from public life after an insignificant military setback in Tonkin. At the elections of 1885 the Opposition reserved its most virulent invective for the attack on colonial expansion, and even the Moderate Republicans felt obliged to condemn the politique d'aventures which they had previously supported.2