Britain and the French Revolution

Clive Emsley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138177949
• eBook ISBN: 9781317878506
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The French Revolution catapulted Europe into a new period of political upheaval, social change, and into the modern era.

This book provides a concise introduction to the impact of the French Revolution on Britain and to the ways in which this impact has been assessed by historians.

The book is organised thematically. It begins with a survey of the ideological debate sparked off by the Revolution discussing, in particular, the work of people such as Burke, Paine, Spence and Wollstonecraft. From here it presents an exploration of the Revolution s impact on

• Parliamentary polities
• The growth of radicalism and loyalism
• The way in which French ideas influenced Irish aspirations to generate rebellion

The third main section of the book focuses on the causes and course of Britain s war with Revolutionary France, and on the effects of the war on the home front, most notably the recurrent, serious food shortages.

Part One Introduction

Chapter One
Issues and Historiography

Historians argue over the causes, the course, and the consequences of the French Revolution. They differ about the dates of its beginning and its end. Yet few, if any, would deny that it had profound effects far beyond the frontiers of France. Some of the effects are relatively easy to pinpoint and provoke little debate; but there can also be significant differences of opinion, especially when historians move away from a detailed chronology of events to assessing the broader patterns and meanings of those events. Thus, while a chronicle of the impact of the French Revolution on Britain is relatively straightforward, what that impact meant in the broader picture of political and social change, of social development and class relations, of national self-consciousness remains a matter of dispute.

The period from 1688 to 1815 was one of intense rivalry between Britain and France, sometimes described as the 'second hundred years war'. The two states clashed in the four corners of the world over markets and imperial possessions. Since the reign of Louis XIV, France, a dominant continental power, had appeared to successive British governments to be aiming at European hegemony; and this was something which they could never countenance. Britain's wars against the French Revolution and, subsequently, against Napoleon, provided the climax to this facet of the rivalry and they settled the matter in Britain's favour.

But it was not only in matters of French hegemony in Europe, of markets and imperial possessions that the two countries were rivals. Eighteenth-century France was Catholic. She was ruled by a monarchy which aspired to absolutism, and this aspiration provided the model for most other princes of continental Europe. The British were fiercely Protestant and proud of the liberties and the balanced constitution which they considered they had won by the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. They believed that these liberties and their constitution were examples for their less fortunate continental neighbours. Indeed, some eighteenth-century French thinkers pointed to what they understood to be Britain's 'balanced constitution' of the king in parliament with the counterweights of lords and commons, to the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers, and they suggested that such structures might benefit their own country. At the same time there were Britons who, particularly from the 1780s, looked to changing French models which, they believed, might be taken up and usefully developed for their own national context [27]. Again, the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars appeared to settle the matter in favour of constitutional monarchies and parliamentary structures, though the extent to which Britain can be considered as a model remains a moot point.

Changing political, economic and social contexts foster changes in historical perceptions and interpretations. During the nineteenth century the Anglo-French conflict of 1793-1815 was described as 'the Great War'; and then a new, catastrophic conflict in Europe, meant that the term was no longer applicable. During the Second World War and in its aftermath, however, patriotic parallels could be found by some historians who described the earlier conflict in terms of a gallant Britain standing alone against a hostile ideology - Jacobinism - and dictator - Napoleon, even Robespierre - who dominated continental Europe by force of arms [11; 12]. The patriotic parallels drawn by Arthur Bryant and others would find favour with few contemporary academic historians; and more recently the wars have been studied as a way into understanding the development of class and/or national consciousness [18; 124; 126],

The sons of the Whig grandees, so long out of power under George III, published the papers of their forebears in the early nineteenth century with commentaries which portrayed the Whigs as 'friends of the people', longstanding supporters of parliamentary reform, who were denied power by 'old corruption' and a blinkered monarch. A similar interpretation was put forward by non-patrician radicals and reformers who maintained that some 40 years of political reaction had begun in Britain during the early 1790s, and had continued until the passage of the Great Reform Bill in 1832. A broadly Whig interpretation subsequently suited those historians, like J.L. and Barbara Hammond and Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, sketched out the history of the continuing struggle for parliamentary reform and for the recognition of trades unions [24; 25; 26], The French Revolution is central to the Whig interpretation since it appeared to have provided the opportunity for a reactionary Toryism to tar all reform with the brush of revolution and thus to persecute and suppress those calling both for political reform and the right to organise and campaign against the low wages and bad conditions of the early stages of the industrial revolution. At the same time the Whig interpretation, by implication at least, suggests first, that British reformers and radicals had political arguments intellectually superior to those of their persecutors, and secondly, that they were moderate and constitutional with only a few eccentric hotheads seeking violent, revolutionary change.

While, eventually, there was parliamentary reform - with the Great Reform Act of 1832 being passed by a ministry led by Earl Grey who, as Charles Grey, had been a leading figure among the young Foxite Whig activists of the 1790s - it is by no means agreed that the radicals and reformers won the political debates at the time of the French Revolution. The loyalists put cogent, well-made arguments and did not necessarily defeat their opponents simply with repression and what passes as the English 'reign of terror' [35; 94]. Moreover the demands for reform went far wider than the call for changes in the ways that parliament was elected and constituencies were spread and structured. The wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France were extremely costly in men and money. The financial costs were met by the efficiency of what John Brewer has described as the Hanoverian 'military-fiscal state' [121], but the scale of those costs drew attention to the peculation and greed of politicians and officials who ran the system often for their own financial benefit. Demands for reform of this system came from men who, like William Wilberforce, could normally be called upon as loyalists to support the government, and the end of the war witnessed a steady dismantling of the Hanoverian war machine by men who were not political radicals [47; 128].

While almost all demands for change could be, and often were, branded 'revolutionary' in Britain during the 1790s, aspirations for reform were not confined solely to Foxite Whigs, political radicals or revolutionaries. The question of whether revolutions are the work of individuals who seek violent political change, or processes which gather momentum from the failure of one group to maintain power and then work themselves out in the resulting conflict between different groups who aspire to seize that power, is not one that can be explored at length here. However, recent research into attitudes among a cross-section of British reformers and radicals during the decade of the French Revolution suggests an ambivalence towards violence, even among some of the most respectable. A comparison between the sans-culottes of revolutionary Paris and the artisans who joined British corresponding societies has drawn attention to considerable similarities [84]; and if debate on the significance of a revolutionary underground, and on the potential for revolution in Britain during the period is not yet resolved, it is clear that radicalism was by no means always as moderate and constitutionally minded as the Whig interpretation suggested [13; 30; 80; 82; 97; 99].

What follows is a broad survey of the impact of the French Revolution on Britain. The book is organised thematically. It begins with a general survey of the ideological debate sparked off by the Revolution. It moves from there to explore the Revolution's effects on parliamentary politics at Westminster, on the development of reform, radicalism, and loyalism and, in Ireland, on the origins and course of rebellion. From here the focus shifts to the causes and impact of the war against revolutionary France; and this is followed by a discussion of the recurrent, serious food shortages during the decade. The concluding chapter offers some overall assessments.

Part Two Analysis

Chapter Two
Ideas

The upheavals which constituted the opening stages of the French Revolution coincided with centenary celebrations in Britain for the Glorious Revolution of 1688. To many it appeared that the French were now taking steps to reject absolutism and to establish both the kind of constitutional monarchy and the forms of personal 'liberty' which freeborn Englishmen had boasted as their birthright since the exile of the Stuart dynasty. Such perceptions were particularly appealing to political radicals and those of a liberal political inclination. For the young William Wordsworth it was 'bliss' to be alive; the MP Samuel Romilly 'rejoiced', perceived a 'very sincere and general joy' in Britain, and looked forward to 'the important consequences which must follow throughout Europe' [quoted in 4 pp. 39-40], Among such liberal-minded individuals, especially Protestant Dissenters, there were those who considered that, good as the English system might appear, there were still abuses which needed to be ironed out. Dissenters and Catholics were debarred from political life, though it was possible for the former at least to take office by becoming 'occasional conformists', that is taking holy communion once a year in the established church. There had been applications to parliament by, and on behalf of, Protestant dissenters to repeal these Acts in March 1787 and May 1789; a third approach was made in March 1790. And while the agitation for parliamentary reform had subsided with the decline of the Association Movement of 1780 (see below p. 22), the reformist literature remained in circulation and reformist aspirations were still to be met.

Burke and Paine

It was against this background that, on 4 November 1789, Dr Richard Price, a dissenting minister well-known for his works on political economy and population, preached a sermon 'On the Love of our Country' to the Society for Commemorating the Revolution of 1688. Price stressed that the Revolution of 1688 had been based on three principles: liberty of conscience; the right to resist power when abused; and the right to choose and reject rulers. However, he believed that the business of 1688 had been left unfinished, and he went on to urge the abolition of the Test and Corporation Acts, which restricted the first of these principles, and a reform of the system of representation in parliament which was currently leading to 'government by corruption'. The events in France, following closely on the American Revolution, he believed, were the heralds of change across the world [Doc. 1]. It was this sermon which prompted Edmund Burke to write his powerful Reflections on the Revolution in France [1; Doc. 2].

Born in Dublin in 1729, the son of an Irish barrister, Edmund Burke had himself studied law. He entered parliament as an MP at the end of 1765; from then until the early 1780s he acted as a powerful spokesman for the Whigs in parliament. He had denounced misgovernment in the American colonies and was opposed to fighting the colonists in their war of independence. He had denounced the exploitation of India by the East India Company and had taken a leading role in launching the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the former Governor General of Bengal and, subsequently, of British India. He was sympathetic to religious toleration. But by the end of the 1780s Burke had become disillusioned with the Whig party, not least because of the stance taken by its leaders, notably Fox, during the Regency Crisis of 1788-89. He had supported 'economical reform', which he understood essentially as the removal of secret influence and corruption in government, but he always had his doubts about political reform. Suggestions that Britain might take a cue from events in France and embark on a series of constitutional changes, including parliamentary reform, incensed him. It seems too that he saw in the crowd action in Paris an echo of the Gordon Riots which had terrorised London in 1780, and thus, rather than an example to follow, France was providing a serious warning for Britain of things to avoid [43]. 'France', he proclaimed, 'has brought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings! France has bought poverty by crime!' In sum, her example was 'an irreparable calamity ... to mankind' (Burke, Reflections, Everyman Edition, pp. 35 and 36).

Initially there were few who shared Burke's fears, or at least few who were prepared to make any such concerns public. The Reflections prompted many critical replies. Perhaps the most astute and cogent was Vindiciae Gallicae, written by James Mackintosh, a young, unsuccessful Scottish doctor, who would soon change his profession and make a career as a successful lawyer and a liberal politician. Quite simply, Mackintosh explained, Burke had got it wrong. It was mistaken to imply any excellence to the old institutions of France; these had been inimicable to liberty. Drawing on the ideas of their ancestors and the experience of other countries, the French had every right to contemplate the general principles which regulated society and to reform their institutions accordingly. The validity of their actions should depend only upon subsequent approval. But while intellectually sound and highly regarded, especially among the Whigs, Vindiciae Gallicae was not written in a way that made it readily accessible to all readers. Tom Paine's The Rights of Man [7; Doc. 3] was quite different and it rapidly became the most popular and influential response to Burke.

Paine had been born in Norfolk in 1737. He began life following his father's trade of staymaker; later he became an excise man, but was dismissed for writing a pamphlet demanding better pay. In 1774 he crossed to America where he played an influential role as a pamphleteer on the side of the colonists in the run up to and during the war of independence. He journeyed to France in 1787, crossing to England to promote an iron bridge which he had designed. Part One of The Rights of Man appeared in March 1791, and even before the appearance of Fart Two early in the following year, the ideological debate had begun to polarise around the writings of Burke and Paine.

Burke's Reflections remains one of the most powerful statements in favour of political conservatism, yet he always saw himself as defending Whig principles, the constitutional monarchy, and the parliamentary system based on checks and balances. The Glorious Revolution of 1688, as interpreted by Burke, did not introduce new principles; it changed the monarch, but kept the principle of heredity. It was merely another reformation in a tradition, begun with the Magna Carta, of preserving constitutional inheritance and freedoms. In Burke's estimation, the best societies and political structures were organic; they grew and matured over centuries, constantly evolving and adapting themselves to the present. Political societies were partnerships between the dead, the living, and the as yet unborn, and the best arrangements were conventions sanctified by custom and tradition. Equality and abstract rights were chimeras; the much vaunted 'reason' of French philosophers was dangerous; and it was sheer folly, as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• An Introduction to the Series
• Note on Referencing System
• Acknowledgements
• Part One: Introduction
• Part Two: Analysis
• Part Three: Conclusion
• Part Four: Documents
• Who's Who
• Bibliography
• Index
• Series Title