A Psychological ‘Malady’?

Throughout the late 1790s, a great many social and religious commentators feared that British society was facing ruination. Indeed, despite the threat allegedly posed by radicalism having been largely suppressed or driven underground following the introduction of the so-called ‘Gagging Acts’ in 1795, such fears actually intensified. John Bowdler, in his highly influential and poignantly entitled essay Reform or Ruin: Take your Choice! (1797) surmised that ‘this country has often been in great danger, but never in greater danger than now’. Britain, according to the Earl of Carlisle, had been brought ‘to the very brink of the issue; so that we are, AT THE PRESENT INSTANCE, treading at the crisis’. A succession of incidents and calamities directly contributed to this pervasive sense of impending ‘danger’ and ‘crisis’. In late February 1797, for instance, a run on the Bank of England had reduced stocks of bullion to only £1.2 million, and with around £100,000 being withdrawn daily due to fears of invasion, the nation was facing bankruptcy. On 27 February the arrival of 1400 French ‘banditti’ on the Pembrokeshire coast did little to calm the already nervous population, while in April and May the Royal Navy's Portsmouth-based Channel Fleet mutinied. In 1798 came the Irish uprising, while the years 1799–1801 witnessed repeated military defeats, harvest failures, further invasion scares and the fall of William Pitt over the issue of Catholic emancipation.