After the death of Major John Cartwright in 1824, his niece wrote:

The interest of British radicals in the development of the United States of America did not diminish in the decades following the ratification of the state and federal constitutions. This chapter examines the views of British radicals on the new United States of America from 1792 until 1820, and compares them with the expectations of the new republic that British radicals had expressed before 1792, as discussed in chapter 1.

The role of America in providing a successful, worked example, not only of revolution but of implementing a constitution built around representative government, was of the first importance to British radicals: as Paine put it, ‘The independence of America, considered merely as a separation from England, would have been a matter but of little importance, had it not been accompanied by a revolution in the principles and practice of governments’. Whether or not the new republic lived up to British radical expectations was crucial not only to their hopes and dreams, their desire to find in the United States a totem and an inspiration during the repressive 1790s in Britain, but also to the credibility of their arguments in favour of reform and representative government. Once more, the aim is to compare British expectations, not with the reality of the American polity, but rather with their perceptions of that reality, which were not always the same thing. After discussing the general place of America in British radicalism in the 1790s, this chapter will examine radical discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the United States of America, c. 1792–1820.