Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society: The Edinburgh Review 1802-1832

Rethinking the politics of commercial society: the Edinburgh Review 1802-1832 Rethinking the politics of commercial s...

Author: Biancamaria Fontana

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Rethinking the politics of commercial society: the Edinburgh Review 1802-1832

Rethinking the politics of commercial society: the Edinburgh Review 1802-1832

Biancamaria Fontana

The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584.

Cambridge University Press Cambridge London New York Melbourne Sydney

New Rochelle

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521303354 © Cambridge University Press 1985 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1985 This digitally printed version 2008 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Fontana, Biancamaria. Rethinking the politics of commercial society. Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral — Cambridge). Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Economics - Great Britain - History - 19th century. 2. Edinburgh review (1802) I. Title. HB103.A2F66 1985 330'.0941 85-7760 ISBN 978-0-521-30335-4 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-06956-4 paperback

Contents

Preface Introduction 1

page vii 1

Scottish theories of commercial society and the French revolution The Edinburgh reviewers and the French revolution The revolution and Scottish 'philosophical' history The impact of Burke's Reflections From the Restoration to Louis Philippe

2 Adam Smith's heritage: the Edinburgh reviewers and the Wealth of Nations The reviewers, Smith and the Physiocrats Francis Horner's early writings, 1800-5 Henry Brougham on the colonies and on Lauderdale, 1803-4 Editing the Wealth of Nations: from Gamier (1802) to McCulloch (1828) The impact of David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy (1817) 3

11 11 17 25 38

46 46 48 59 69 75

The definition of political economy: political economy as a social science 79 The Edinburgh Review and the 'transition' to English classical political economy 79 The 'restoration' of speculative philosophy 81 The definition of political economy: from Dugald Stewart to John Stuart Mill 96 Science for all: McCulloch's Discourse on Political Economy (1824) 105

4

5

The Edinburgh reviewers and the Whig party Political economy and party politics Francis Horner: from Edinburgh to London The Bullion Report Henry Brougham and free trade The post-war economic depression The 1820s: McCulloch and the dilemmas of economic growth Commercial society and its enemies: the debate on the First Reform Bill The reviewers and the Reform Bill The Scottish heritage: the reviewers, James Mill, Walter Scott Commercial society, progress and pessimism

112 112 114 118 126 135 140

147 147 160 170

Conclusion

181

Notes

186

Bibliography Index

228 249

Preface

This book is a study of the intellectual and political identity of the Edinburgh Review, the first and most influential of 19th-century British periodicals, from its foundation, in 1802, to 1832. It is at the same time a study in the early-19th-century attempt to understand modern commercial (or, as we would say today, capitalist) society and its most salient political characteristics. Given the nature of the historical evidence on which this work is based, it is necessary in advance to remind the reader that the contributions to the Edinburgh Review (like most of the texts discussed in this book) were in fact writings for a periodical publication, often hurriedly drafted, and always subject to the editor's revision. It is important to bear this character in mind, since it would be misleading to attach to the contradictions, repetitions and rhetorical exploits which characterised the style of the Review the same value as if they were found in carefully planned and closely considered works, published on the responsibility of individual authors. In assessing the authorship of articles in the Edinburgh Review I have relied on the attributions of the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals,1 since it has proved more complete and more accurate than all previously published indexes of the Review itself.2 A few personal doubts about, or additions to, these attributions are indicated in the footnotes. For reasons of convenience all articles from 19th-century periodicals are cited here with the names of their (known or supposed) authors, without constantly reminding the reader that the articles were of course anonymous, and that their authorship is always, in principle, a matter of inference. I am very grateful to Professors Kenneth Bourne and William B. Taylor, who have kindly allowed me to consult a transcription (made with Lady Lyell's permission) of the manuscripts of Francis Homer in the Kinnordy Papers discussed in Chapter 2. This material is copyright, vii

viii

Preface

and may not be reproduced or cited without the owner's permission. This book was originally written as a Ph.D. dissertation in the University of Cambridge. I wish to thank the Provost and Fellows of King's College, Cambridge, who between 1979 and 1984 supported my research as part of the King's College Research Centre Project, 'Political Economy and Society, 1750-1850'; my supervisor, Gareth Stedman Jones, and the examiners of the thesis, Professor J. H. Burns and Dr Boyd Hilton, for their encouragement and helpful criticism; and, finally and especially, John Dunn and Istvan Hont for their invaluable and generous assistance and enthusiasm. This book is dedicated to my parents.

Introduction

Morals and metaphysics, politics and political economy, the way to make the most of all the modifications of smoke; steam, gas and paper currency; you have all these to learn from us; in short, all the arts and sciences. We are the modern Athenians. (T.L. Peacock, Crotchet Castle)

Amongst the eccentric guests who haunted Mr Crotchet's country residence in Thomas Love Peacock's famous satyrical novel, a leading role was reserved for the Scottish Mr McQuedy, indefatigable authority on all branches of metaphysics and the social sciences, eager to entertain the company with improvised digests of conjectural history and instant lectures on the exchange value of salmon, well at ease in expressing damning judgments on any respectable literary product of the time. With this caricature of the Scottish intelligentsia, uncharitably represented in their role as encyclopedic public mentors, 'sugar-plum manufacturers to the Whig aristocracy', Peacock paid his somewhat grudging homage to the established reputation of the Edinburgh Review as the leading literary phenomenon of its time, one which, for better or worse, had brought about a revolution in British journalism and promoted an entirely new style of critical writing. He also offered a representative, if unsympathetic, portrait of one of the main components of early-19th-century British culture, the tradition broadly inspired by the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment, which was revived at the turn of the century by the emigration of a whole generation of Scottish intellectuals to England. This book is a study of the intellectual identity of the Edinburgh Review during the first thirty years of its life: not a comprehensive assessment of the character of the Review itself as a periodical, but a more focused, and somewhat more limited, attempt to describe the body of social and political ideas which inspired it and guided it from its beginning.

2

Rethinking the politics of commercial society

The main historical issue which the book thus addresses is the question of what in fact became of the heritage of 18th-century Scottish social theory after the 1790s, when the centre of the intellectual and political debate for Scottish intellectuals shifted gradually from Scotland to London, and the debate itself came to be voiced by a British rather than a merely local, periodical press.1 While the emergence of a new 'liberal' ideology of economic and political reform in early-19thcentury Britain, together with its derivation from, or at least affinity with, the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment, are generally taken for granted, we still have very little understanding of the precise character of this new ideology. Implicit within, yet also central to, this historical question of the transmission of the Scottish heritage is the problem of the identity and development of the most characteristic and prominent feature of the heritage itself, political economy, at the time when the social science or theory of society currently designated by that name first acquired a substantial influence upon public opinion and first became a central component of British political discussion. Reconstructions of British intellectual history in the period of the Napoleonic wars face the task of identifying and explaining the relation between the contribution to the understanding of commercial society furnished by 18th-century Scottish authors, such as David Hume (1711-76) and Adam Smith (1723-90), and that made a few generations later by the 'classical' texts of James Mill (1773-1836), Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) and David Ricardo (1772-1823). Although the common appeal to the authority of political economy suggests the existence of a measure of continuity (a continuity which has generally been taken for granted by historians principally concerned with the development of economic thought as such),2 it is far from clear to what extent there were common elements and direct influences. Recent historical research, correcting the intimations of classical studies like Elie Halevy's The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (London, 1928), has increasingly confirmed the complexity of the issue, and demonstrated that any understanding of it requires a tracing out, both at the English and the Scottish end, of a number of tangled political and intellectual influences. The Edinburgh Review, the first major vehicle for the popularisation of the doctrines of political economy in 19th-century Britain,3 and a most fertile and influential workshop for their application to the political

Introduction

3

and social problems of the time, is a particularly important historical source for the investigation of this question. While it is hard to approach any of the issues of political and economic reform in Britain after the French revolution without encountering some reference to the Edinburgh Review, the Review itself, though mentioned more or less cursorily in numerous studies of the political and intellectual history of the period, has received surprisingly little systematic investigation. The only significant exception is John Clive's study of its first thirteen years, which presents a useful picture of the Review as a journalistic and literary phenomenon, but does not provide much information about its intellectual content. 4 Donald Winch's recent portrait of the founders of the Edinburgh Review in That Noble Science of Politics is theoretically more illuminating, but necessarily sketchy and deliberately confined to the issue of the reviewers' early Scottish education.5 While a number of contemporary historians have shown a sound grasp of the Review's character as a political enterprise, we still lack any comprehensive assessment of the factors which gave it its intellectual significance. The Review was founded in Edinburgh in 1802 by a group of young intellectuals whose hopes for a brilliant career at the Bar or in politics had been shattered by the reaction in Scotland which had followed the French revolution and the ensuing war.6 Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850), son of a deputy clerk in the Court of Session,7 Francis Horner (1778-1817), son of a merchant and grandson of a writer to the signet,8 and Henry Brougham (1778-1868), the child of an impoverished family of the gentry,9 were all educated in Edinburgh and had been active members of the two major debating societies, the Speculative Society and the Academy of Physics.10 The fourth member of the group, the Reverend Sydney Smith (1771-1845), son of a prosperous and ill-tempered London businessman, was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, took orders in the Church of England in 1794, and arrived in Edinburgh in 1797 in the capacity of private tutor to the young Michael Hicks-Beach.11 The Review - christened after the journal of the same name published in 1755-6 by the leading members of the Select Society of Edinburgh, Adam Smith and Allan Ramsay (1713-84)12 - was created, in Jeffrey's words, for the purpose of'personal amusement and improvement' and for 'the gratification of some personal and some national vanity'.13 Initially Sydney Smith acted as editor, but he was soon replaced by

4


Jeffrey, who continued to act in this role until 1829, when he became dean of the Scottish Faculty of Advocates and resigned the editorship in favour of his son-in-law, Macvey Napier (1776-1847).14 Despite the modest initial ambitions of the Review's authors, the Edinburgh publisher Archibald Constable saw its sales rise from 750 copies for the first number to 13,000 copies in 1814.15 By 1826, the year in which the Review was taken over by the London publisher Longmans, its successful journalistic formula had called into existence two important imitators and competitors in the Quarterly Review, founded by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1823) in 1809,16 and the Westminster Review, founded by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and James Mill in 1824.17 Notwithstanding the extensive and heterogeneous display of Scottish erudition to be found in its pages, the Edinburgh Review formed a rather selective receptacle for the heritage of the Scottish Enlightenment. In broad terms, its direct descent was from that group of 18thcentury Scottish writers who held an essentially socio-economic interpretation of history, and who attributed to political economy a central role in the understanding of modern society: David Hume, Lord Kames (1696-1782), Adam Smith and, in the younger generation, John Millar (1735-1801) and Dugald Stewart (1753-1828).18 It was especially Stewart - professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh from 1785 (when he succeeded Adam Ferguson) to 1809 - who exercised the dominant influence on the reviewers.19 It was his lectures on political economy20 which Jeffrey, Horner and Brougham attended from 1799 to 1801; and, although Stewart did not contribute directly to the Review itself, his pupils maintained close personal contacts with him over the following decades. Through his lectures on political economy - which remained unpublished until the 1850s, and circulated during his life only in the form of semi-clandestine notebooks among his students - Stewart transmitted to his pupils a body of knowledge which remained their exclusive monopoly for the decades to come. Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776)21 provided the framework of Stewart's teaching; and from him the reviewers learned to identify in the Smithian doctrine the core of modern political economy. But, alongside Smith's masterpiece, Stewart's lectures covered an extremely wide range of 17th- and 18th-century British and Continental works on the subject. The result was not, as his pupils knew only too well, a consistent theoretical system. What it offered, rather, was a well-organised critical examination of the relevant authors and doc-

Introduction

5

trines - an invaluable mine of information and arguments to serve in the debates of the war and post-war period. It is impossible to identify in the same way a direct influence upon the reviewers from John Millar, professor of Law in the University of Glasgow from 1761 until his death in 1801.22 We know from Henry Cockburn that, when Jeffrey was for a year a student in Glasgow in 1787, his father, alarmed by Millar's political reputation, intervened to prevent his son from attending his lectures, and that Jeffrey enrolled instead in the class of the professor of Logic, George Jardine (17421823).23 The anecdote in itself is of little relevance, but, apart from it, there seems to be no evidence of direct contacts between Millar and the reviewers. Millar's writings were given their due share of attention in the pages of the Review, but, although the reviewers displayed ample interest in his doctrines, they took a rather critical view of Millar's historical method, and were far from fully endorsing his radical Whiggism. Similarly, Thomas Reid (1710-96), professor of Philosophy at King's College, Aberdeen, from 1751 to 1764, and in the University of Glasgow from 1764 until his death, influenced the reviewers only indirectly through the teaching of his former pupil Stewart.24 Francis Horner, for example, while acknowledging the merits of Reid's metaphysics, referred to it in his correspondence, a trifle contemptuously, as 'the Aberdonian institution', and insisted that it should on no account be confused with the 'true' metaphysics of David Hume. 25 While Sydney Smith and Jeffrey both experienced the educational resources of Oxford, neither retained any relevant memory of their 'English' education, except a vivid sense of the intellectual dullness and overwhelming boredom of the local academic community. One important source of inspiration for the Review, however, who cannot properly be included among either its Scottish ancestors, or its founders, was Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832). Some fifteen years older than the reviewers themselves, Mackintosh belonged, like his friend Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), to an ill-at-ease generation, uncomfortably suspended between the Enlightenment and the postrevolutionary world, and torn, at least in the Scottish case, between the habits of 18th-century cosmopolitanism and the growing attraction of London and professional politics. Unfortunately these ambiguities have been reflected negatively in recent scholarship on the life and

6


work of Mackintosh, which scarcely does justice to the richness and sophistication of his intellectual performance. Mackintosh in fact wrote extensively for the Edinburgh Review and maintained close personal and political contacts with its founders, whose intellectual debt to him was undeniably very great.26 In his Memoirs of the Life of LordJeffrey, Henry Cockburn labelled the intellectual tradition to which the reviewers belonged and which they contributed to promote as 'philosophic Whiggism'.27 This contemporary attribution- virtually a self-definition- identified the common features of the group in their Scottish philosophic education and in their general commitment to 'progressive' and 'liberal' policies. In this context, it is important to note, 'Whiggism' indicated a broad intellectual and political disposition rather than a specific party allegiance. The Edinburgh Review is generally and appropriately associated with 19th-century Whiggism, and more precisely with the patronage of Henry Fox, 3rd Baron Holland (1773-1840) and the Foxite faction.28 But the relationship between the reviewers and the Whig party was from the start more complex and problematic than this simple association may suggest. To treat the reviewers as a unified group, for example, involves an arbitrary oversimplification of a set of differentiated political views. Both Horner and Brougham became Whig MPs, but their position and alliances within the party had little in common. While Horner oscillated prudently between Foxites and Grenvillites, Brougham ruthlessly pursued his ambition to become leader of the party in the House of Commons. Jeffrey - who alone among the reviewers never left Scotland- was particularly sensitive to the climate and issues of Edinburgh local politics, where the conservative establishment remained considerably stronger than in London. Sydney Smith, while undeniably a supporter of the Whig party and a protege of Holland House, never became active in politics and his judgments were often in marked disaccord with the official Whig positions. In the younger generation, of the Review's most important contributors, Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-59)29 became a leading Whig politician, while John Ramsay McCulloch (1789-1867)30 never joined any political party at all, and in the 1840s ended up as economic advisor to the Tory minister Sir Robert Peel. These differences among its contributors went together with recurrent disagreements over how far the political commitment of the Review should be made explicit. After he joined the Whigs, around 1807, Brougham used his influence to transform the Review into a party

Introduction

7

journal, while at the beginning of his career he had not hesitated to publish in it articles intended to support Pitt's financial policy. Its editor, Jeffrey, believed that the Review's success depended on its ability to sustain a vigorous and attacking political line, though he did make some efforts to keep Brougham's manipulation under control. Horner, Mackintosh and Sydney Smith on the other hand believed, after 1807-8, that the politicisation of the Review had gone too far, and exerted constant pressure on Jeffrey to retain the journal's independence and intellectual credibility.31 It is important therefore to insist that the identity of the Review was more intellectual than it was political;32 and that their sharing of a common theoretical project exemplified more of the reviewers' attitude than did the determination to sustain a common party allegiance. It is in fact reasonable to claim that the reviewers did as much to create 19th-century Whiggism as they did to popularise it; and the Review itself ought principally to be regarded not as an instrument for the promotion of a clearly defined, pre-existing ideology but rather as the locus within which a new ideology was tentatively given shape. The emphasis upon political economy as one of the main educational sources of the reviewers' beliefs, and one of the chief theoretical components in their intellectual position, also requires further qualification. In the reviewers' terminology, as in that of their Scottish predecessors, the expression 'political economy' covered a relatively wide range, and was used to refer to at least two quite different concepts. In the first instance political economy was employed to refer to the systematic body of reflection about commercial (or market) society at large.33 It seems more appropriate in this sense to speak of a style of analysis rather than a theory, since what we are describing was not a single specific doctrine, but an aggregate of more or less converging views. The analysis of commercial society offered by political economy included those interpretations of historical progress which saw the development of civilisation as characterised by the successive emergence of different modes of production, what Dugald Stewart had successfully christened 'conjectural history'.34 It also embodied the conviction that - despite the greater degree of inequality in the distribution of resources which it exemplified - modern commercial society was on balance more compatible with the material welfare of the great majority and with political liberty than any other earlier form

8


of social organisation had proved to be. Finally, it implied the belief that market society was ruled by rational laws, and was thus a possible object for scientific understanding, and, consequently, that any transformation of society for the better could only rest upon the knowledge of such laws, and observe the constraints which they indicated. In its second sense political economy meant specifically the science of market relations as such: and, more precisely, that part or section of the science of government which was concerned with the investigation of the causes of the prosperity and poverty of nations. Political economy in this more restrictive sense was an organised domain of scientific knowledge, not to be confused with political science at large. On the map of early-19th-century intellectual life, the Review represented only one amongst the intellectual milieux which we associate today with the development and popularisation of political economy. Although, by the end of the Napoleonic wars, a number of groups of intellectuals had come to share the belief that political economy offered a privileged insight into the conditions for political and social stability, the motivations which sustained this belief varied very widely from instance to instance. The general appeal to the authority of political economy indicated the presence of a common language, and of a set of more or less compatible theoretical arguments, but it covered - at least in the decades we are considering - a rather wide and loose spectrum of philosophical and political opinions. In 18 th-century Scotland, also, the theory of commercial society had been associated with a range of political positions, and, not surprisingly, its use remained politically eclectic within 19th-century British culture at large, despite the general tendency to identify it with a distinctively 'liberal' ideology. By 1829 - the year in which Jeffrey resigned the editorship - the Review listed among its contributors almost all the most representative writers on political economy of the time: James Mill, Malthus, McCulloch, Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) and Robert Torrens (1780-1864). Ricardo himself, it is true, was not on the list (he declined to contribute out of modesty and lack of faith in his own journalistic abilities)35 but his views and doctrines were well represented in the Review by Horner and McCulloch. While the Review was thus open to a fairly wide range of opinions, the views of the Edinburgh grouping remained clearly differentiated from the positions of the philosophic Radicals on the one hand and of the High Church Tory writers on political economy on the other. These distinctions did not merely

Introduction

9

reflect the patent differences in political judgment on the part of their authors. They also revealed deeply incompatible theoretical perspectives. On the historical question we attempt to consider (the development of Scottish social theory and conjectural history in the early 19thcentury) the evidence offered by the Review is essentially one of continuity: the general understanding of the nature of historical progress and of the mechanisms of modern commercial society remained substantially the same in the writings of the reviewers as they had been in those of Hume and Smith. But the political experience of the new generation of Scottish intellectuals also indicated that the 18thcentury theory of commercial society could scarcely offer specific and helpful answers to the new political, social and administrative questions of the war and post-war period; and that its teaching had therefore to be supplemented by lessons drawn from other intellectual and political traditions. If the primary aim of this book is to capture - through a study of the Edinburgh Review- the process of anglicisation of Scottish thought after 1790, its historical reconstruction also serves a more specifically theoretical purpose. Its aim is to call into question those interpretations which view political economy as a holistic social theory: as a comprehensive political ideology or a consistent doctrine of the social good. The most powerful and influential among such interpretations is the one originally formulated by Karl Marx (1818-83) in the 1840s in his 'critique' of political economy, and since perpetuated within the tradition of Marxist historiography.36 But a similarly 'holistic' reading of political economy could also be found, long before Marx, in the tradition of popular radicalism,37 and in the works of conservative writers, both Christian and romantic.38 In the writings of both its revolutionary and conservative critics, political economy was identified without exception as furnishing a coherent ideological justification of the new social system which emerged from the decline of feudalism in Europe: a social system in which power had shifted to the hands of the greedy industrial and commercial middle classes, and in which the values of humanity, charity and brotherhood had been discarded in favour of the ruthless promotion of individual interest and utility. In contrast with this clear-cut and somewhat Manichaean image of political economy as a consistent apology for the individualist and utilitarian values of the 'bourgeoisie', our study of the Edinburgh Review attempts to show the composite and internally differentiated character

10


of the theory of commercial society in the early 19th century and its complex relations to contemporary political ideologies.39 While socialist and conservative critics of political economy have rejected it en bloc as a morally evil and dismal doctrine, in the history of economic thought proper practitioners in most cases have been too preoccupied with defending the scientific status and internal coherence of their own discipline to look too closely into its historical origins and significance. Thus, despite the efforts of the most historically minded representatives of both schools, the division between the 'critique' of political economy and the putatively 'apologetic' internal history of the science has been carried well into our time; and it is only very recently that intellectual and political historians have insisted on the need for a more integrated understanding of the role played by political economy within British culture in the aftermath of the French revolution. The Edinburgh Review is obviously by no means the only source to illustrate and demonstrate the comparatively disaggregated character of political economy in the early 19 th century. (Similar conclusions can be - and in fact have been - convincingly reached by examining different components of the tradition of political economy itself.)40 But, because of the close relationship of the Edinburgh reviewers to the Scottish sources of political economy, it certainly constitutes a highly significant example. In approaching the study of the Edinburgh Review it is natural first to focus upon problems of cultural influence and affinity. But to insist in this way on the weight of tradition risks doing less than justice to what made the reviewers' intellectual enterprise radically novel. The central theoretical and practical issue to which the Review addressed itself was in several respects an entirely new one. Its urgency had been forced upon the attention of contemporaries by the traumatic and exhilarating experience of the French revolution. How exactly was it possible to protect the welfare and independence of the citizens of a large industrial community from both the abuses of arbitrary government and from the threat of social violence, or, in other words, on what basis could one hope to design political institutions suitable for modern commercial society? It is an issue which political theorists today are still struggling to answer, and it is in the light of our own doubts and failures that the reviewers' in places tentative, and even mildly confused, analysis can still speak to us in familiar accents.

Scottish theories of commercial society and the French revolution

The Edinburgh reviewers and the French revolution To say that the French revolution and the Napoleonic experience were crucial to the intellectual and political formation of the Edinburgh reviewers is a truism requiring little illustration. The French revolution of 1789 and its influence on English politics furnished the background to Dugald Stewart's teaching at the turn of the century. For the generation of his pupils- born between the 1770s and the 1780s- the spectacular unfolding of French events, up to the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, remained the constant focus of political reflection. The development of the reviewers' opinions was marked profoundly by the impact of the French revolution upon Scottish politics. In the 1790s the reaction to French events had rapidly resulted in the virtual paralysis of political and intellectual life in Edinburgh. Under the crushing weight of Tory rule and the stranglehold over Scottish patronage exercised by Henry Dundas (1742-1811), the debating societies were virtually reduced to silence. The Whig party, despite the great personal prestige of its leader Thomas Erskine (1750-1823), sank gradually into provincial isolation; while Whig sympathisers saw their chance of acceding to public offices or professional careers drastically restricted.* On the publication of his Elements of the Philosophy of Human Mind in 1792, Dugald Stewart had to face accusations ofJacobinism and was induced to retract his previous sympathetic assessment of the thought of Condorcet, then widely held responsible for the September massacres.2 This political climate contributed to the steady if gradual shift from Edinburgh to London as the centre of political interest; and the belated but profound impact of the French revolution on Scottish society was the principal reason for the reviewers' decision to emigrate to London.3 Partly because of this, an analysis of the Edinburgh reviewers' interpretation of the French revolution and its aftermath is a precondition for the understanding both of their general views of politics and their 11

12


conception of the nature and progress of modern commercial society. In considering the revolution and the issues that it raised for them, the reviewers' political opinions were relatively detached from the routine and contingent circumstances of English party politics. Their reflections on France were directed from the start to the attempt to grasp the significance of long-term developments, and consequently were unconstrained by the limited horizons of the day-to-day strategy of the opposition. As early as 1791, in his Vindiciae Gallicae, James Mackintosh had expressed with great clarity what the French revolution had already come to represent in the eyes of the political philosopher: a unique case-study in the history of the progress of modern society. If history was 'an immense collection of experiments on the nature and effects of the various parts of various governments,' 4 the question of the French revolution, as Edmund Burke had raised it in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), was 'as extensive as political science'.5 On a later occasion, in his speech in defence of the French emigre journalist JeanGabriel Peltier in 1803, Mackintosh suggested that France, in a few years, had 'described the whole cycle of human society'.6 It was inevitable that the French revolution should from the very beginning suggest comparisons with the turmoils of the Great Rebellion, and revive its presence in the political language of the Whig opposition. The readers of the Edinburgh Review accordingly found themselves instructed on French events through an endless display of historical analogies: the States General were compared to the Long Parliament and the National Assembly to the House of Commons; the death of Louis XVI recalled that of Charles I, and the career of Bonaparte was measured against that of Cromwell. In his review of Charles James Fox's History ofJames II, Francis Jeffrey complained that the French revolution had made it impossible to speak of Russell and Sidney for fear of evoking the ghosts of Marat and Robespierre;7 while Henry Brougham- in an erratic outburst of rhetorical enthusiasm- described Carnot, opposing the Bourbons in 1815, as the heir of Hampden and of the martyrs of the English revolution.8 The concepts of the right of resistance, of the encroachment of the crown, of English liberty and the defence of the Constitution- the jargon of the old Country party 9 dominated British political debate throughout the period of the Napoleonic wars. Despite this constant presence of the imagery and jargon of the English revolution, the immediate effect of French events was to thrust English political discourse violently outside its traditional


13

tracks. In a recent study, John Burrow has stressed the dominance of the attitude of party * piety' in early-19 th-century Whiggism, in particular in the writings of Macaulay.10 This suggestion is certainly crucial for the understanding of Macaulay's work. But between 1790 and 1815 events moved too fast to allow any satisfactory assessment of the adequacy of existing political and historical traditions. Writing in 18301, Macaulay could begin his - never completed - History of France with the statement that: There are two portions of modern history pre-eminently important and interesting- the history of England from the meeting of the long parliament to the second expulsion of the Stuarts; and the history of France from the opening of the states-general at Versailles to the accession of the house of Orleans. It is not too much to say, that neither of these portions of history will ever be thoroughly comprehended by any man who has not often looked at them in connextion, and carefully examined the numerous points of analogy and of contrast which they present.11

For Jeffrey, Horner, Mackintosh and Brougham, who were producing a political journal in the course of an endless war, the outcome of which appeared increasingly uncertain, and who witnessed the changes in Napoleon's fortunes between 1814 and 1815 and the dramatic consequences of the post-war economic crisis, the terms of the comparison may have been clear enough, but conclusions remained extremely difficult to draw. A second reason, therefore, why its judgments on the French revolution offer a particularly illuminating insight into the politics of the Edinburgh Review is that they display the political arguments of the opposition in a phase of extreme disarray, and thus in a particularly revealing manner. Coping in practice with the French revolution, unlike writing its history, was an enterprise which could hardly benefit from exercises in party piety or from High Whiggism's studied amateurism.12 The disruptive impact of the French revolution did not merely shake the credibility of Whig ideas. It also posed a formidable challenge to the understanding of the history and nature of modern society which had formed the reviewers' central intellectual presumptions. Adam Smith's and David Hume's social theory had been essentially a defence of modern civilisation. It rested on the assumption that modern commercial society, though characterised by great inequality in the distribution of resources, could still guarantee to all its members - and especially to the humblest of t h e m - higher living standards than any primitive, more egalitarian community. Their political economy

14


was opposed in principle both to the civic humanist argument that the growth of wealth and inequality would necessarily lead to the corruption and decadence of civic virtue and political liberty, and to the Christian ideal of the positive community of goods and hence to the belief that a legitimate government had the duty to feed and support its subjects.13 Smith's and Hume's belief in the superiority of commercial society to previous forms of social organisation went together with some degree of scepticism as to the specific form of government best suited to promote and guarantee commercial progress. Their argum e n t - re-echoed by Dugald Stewart 14 - that commercial society could in principle flourish as readily under an absolute monarchy as under a free government undermined the traditional antithesis between English liberty and French despotism.15 From a somewhat different angle, John Millar's more recent version of Scottish conjectural history had viewed the growth of commerce and the ensuing distribution of wealth among larger groups of the population as generating an increasing demand for liberty and power on the part of the middling ranks.16 It was inevitable that the French revolution of 1789 and the successive political experiences which it provided - the moderate reformism of the National Assembly, the egalitarian republic of the Jacobins, Napoleon's military empire - should compel a critical reconsideration of all these hypotheses. Both Millar and Stewart in fact reacted personally to the experience of the revolution and took part in the ensuing debate; but neither of them achieved a theoretical reassessment which the reviewers could regard as broadly satisfactory, let alone conclusive.17 Thus, when Jeffrey opened the first issue o£ the Edinburgh Review with an article on the influence of the Philosophes and the Physiocrats on the revolution of 1789, he commenced at the same time a test of the validity of the whole body of knowledge transmitted by Stewart to his pupils.18 In principle, the Physiocrats' failed attempt to rescue the French economy from the grip of Colbertism and mercantilism might still be regarded with some detachment. In the reviewers' eyes, thinkers like Frangois Quesnay (1694-1774) had shared the prejudices of the feudal despotic society they lived in, and their experience remained very distant from the British one. Yet, if the doctrines of the unproductive character of manufactures and of the territorial tax elicited a merely technical interest in Scottish academics like Stewart, their hearts warmed to the ministerial experiences of Anne Robert Turgot (1727-81) and Jacques Necker (1723-1804). The echoes of the


15

six edits of 1775 and of Necker's Compte rendu brought into the Edinburgh classroom a very different experience: the flavour of what it was like for a political economist to serve as counsellor to his prince in a country in the throes of a major struggle for reform. Jean Antoine Caritat de Condorcet's (1743-1794) Vie de M. Turgot19 was well known to Stewart's pupils; and the first common enterprise which brought together the future Edinburgh reviewers was the project of preparing an English edition of Turgot's works.20 The failure of Turgot's and Necker's attempts to guide the policy of Louis XVI could not be dismissed merely as remote plots and intrigues of the despotic French court. Their defeat was a defeat for political economy if the latter was regarded as something better than a mere set of academic speculations or Utopian reform projects. It was a defeat which cast doubt on the validity of Smith's doctrine just as much as on that of the Physiocrats themselves and it urgently demanded a full and convincing explanation. The extensive contribution made by the Edinburgh Review to the understanding of the French revolution and to the questions which this raised has not been ignored by recent scholarship. Hedva Ben-Israel, in particular,21 has stressed the influential role played by the Review in the formation of English opinion and English historical writing on the subject of French affairs. But, if we examine the ways in which the position of the Edinburgh reviewers has usually been described and accounted for, the interpretations appear for the most part implausible and disconnected. The history of the Whig party in the period from 1789 to 1830 offers a detailed index of the impact of French events on the English parliamentary opposition. The record is one of a recurrent divisions and conflicts. From the break between Burke and Fox in 179 3-4, to the disagreement on the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815 and the split between Foxites and Grenvillites in 1817, the French revolution runs like a widening fissure through the party's political identity.22 In particular, it was on the issue of the French revolution that the Edinburgh Review met the only serious crisis in its editorial life. Jeffrey's and Brougham's defence of the principles of 1789 in their article 'Don Pedro Cevallos',23 on the Spanish revolution of 1808, caused Walter Scott to withdraw his contribution, and it was after this episode that the review became more clearly identified with Holland House and the Foxite faction.24 In sharp contrast with this tormented record of factional conflicts

16


and personal disputes, the existing accounts of the position of the Edinburgh reviewers tend to be, chronologically, arbitrarily polarised. On the one hand, the attention of historians has been attracted by the debate between Burke and Mackintosh at the very beginning of the 1790s, and by Mackintosh's later 'recantation' in his Lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations of 1799-1800.25 This debate was indeed crucial, and has for the intellectual historian the advantage of constituting a rather elaborately articulated theoretical confrontation. However, Mackintosh's views, though influential, cannot be taken as perfectly representative of the opinions of the Edinburgh group. Setting aside the question of the extent to which Mackintosh's position changed in his confrontation with Burke,26 it is a fact that the younger Edinburgh reviewers - Jeffrey, Horner and Brougham - could have only an a posteriori perception of the character of the dispute. On the other hand, the focus of historians' attention has fallen on 1832 and parliamentary reform. In this perspective the Edinburgh reviewers' attitude towards the French revolution was the only attitude which could possibly be expected of a political group actively working at a project for the gradual extension of the suffrage. In Jeffrey's words, this attitude constituted an attempt to repair the damage wreaked by the violence of Jacobinism on the cause of'rational liberty'. It led the reviewers to search for a compromise between stability and political change, timely reform being the preventive check against revolutionary violence.27 What is missing from present historical reconstructions is principally a clear sense of how the position of the young Scottish Whigs developed throughout the war period. Both the French revolution and the Napoleonic experience and Restoration acted as a powerful Occam's razor on the Edinburgh reviewers' opinions. The label of 'Whiggism' is conveniently ambiguous, but it tells us very little about the content of a political perspective which was rapidly evolving. A second weakness of existing reconstructions is that in stressing the issue of parliamentary reform the relationship between the politics of the Edinburgh reviewers and the heritage of Scottish political economy is left very much in the dark. The politics of the Edinburgh group is seen as leading confidently towards parliamentary reform while the doctrines of Smith are seen as gradually taking over, imposing their rational innovative pace on a still archaic system of legislative regulation of the economy. Somehow it is assumed that the two things belong together, that they are part of the same project of modernisation of British society, the French revolution and the war being the external


17

agents of the transformation. But how exactly they relate to each other, and how they can be said to belong within the same approach to the understanding of modern society still needs to be explained.

The revolution and Scottish 'philosophical' history However inconvenient the French revolution might have b e e n - even in a place as distant from the Bastille as Edinburgh- for the generation of intellectuals who had to face its impact on British political life, one thing at least has to be acknowledged in its favour: it was not an intrinsically unpredictable or inexplicable event from the viewpoint of the Scottish historical tradition. Of course the extent of the violence which accompanied it was unexpected, just as was the course of the war it had caused. On the whole, however, it was a phenomenon which could easily find some place within the tradition of Scottish conjectural history. From the beginning - from the time when Dugald Stewart went to France to watch the experience of the States General,28 and Mackintosh defended the National Assembly against Burke's accusations there were already to hand, in the writings of Hume, Millar and Smith, a set of historical arguments which could be applied to explain the revolutionary changes in French society. The central issue was the nature of the progress of modern market society as such. In Adam Smith's reconstruction, even if commercial society was characterised by great social inequality - if those who laboured received what was barely sufficient for their survival, while wealth was accumulated in the hands of the idle and squandered in luxury consumption - in the long run, nevertheless, economic growth would satisfy the needs of increasingly larger social groups. The international division of labour between 'poor countries' and 'rich countries' - countries producing manufactured goods and grain for export and countries producing simpler goods and raw materials- would assure to the labourers of the rich countries a regime of high wages and would gradually enable them to avoid the hazards of crises to which a poor economy was exposed.29 This view of the mechanism of economic growth went together with the sociological expectation - expressed with varying political and moral undertones by different authors 30 - of the growth of the middling ranks. The development of commerce, high wages and higher living standards, would in fact result in the achievement of a better level of education and would generate a stronger political consciousness and

18


sensibility in those social groups who made their livings by the professions and by manufacture and trade, including the skilled labourers and the artisans.31 The key question was: how did this model apply to France? Within this interpretative framework, what possible origins were there for the violent political and social conflicts which had shaken French society? At the centre of the Edinburgh reviewers' reading of the revolution was the insistence that France had experienced a belated and uneven development of those social strata whose fortunes were in general most closely associated with the growth of commercial society. As Mackintosh wrote in Vindiciae Gallicae: The Constitution of France resembled in the earlier stages of its progress the other Gothic governments of Europe. The history of its decline and the causes of its extinction are abundantly known. Its infancy and youth were like those of the English Government. The Champ de Mars and the Wittenagemot - the tumultuous assemblies of rude conquerors - were in both countries melted down in representative bodies. But the downfall of the feudal aristocracy happening in France before commerce had elevated any other class of citizens into importance, its power devolved on the crown.32

The concentration of power in the twin poles of crown and aristocracy was the key to the understanding of French despotism and to the structural instability of French society. Emerging too late from the context of a predominantly agrarian and locally fragmented economy, the * middling ranks' - the men of trade and the professions, the skilled workers and artisans - had found a society in which the monarchy and the aristocracy not only exercised complete control over political power, but monopolised all access to social prestige and dignity. Even France's glittering intelligentsia- the philosophers and literary men who kept the educated public all over Europe under their magic spell - could only prostitute themselves to the service of an arrogant aristocracy and an overbearing monarch. Frustrated in their legitimate social aspirations, they had plainly, in most cases, withdrawn their loyalty and turned to Jacobinism and subversion. As for the aristocracy, imprisoned in Versailles by the despotism of Louis XIV, alienated from the provinces from which they derived their rents, often ruined or impoverished by habits of luxury and by the growing size of their families, they were hardly in a position to exercise beneficial political influence. Their character as a 'real' aristocracy, in the Whig sense, was lost. France's great families had turned into an absentee race of courtiers, indebted military men, faithless clergy,


19

untrustworthy servants of the crown, unknown to the peasants who cultivated their lands and from whom they extracted the exorbitant cost of their feudal privileges. The case of the Vendee was generally cited as an illuminating exception; in the only region of France in which the aristocracy's life-style was, supposedly, similar to that of the English gentry- a simple, rural life, close to the life of the local peasant community - the peasants had sided with the aristocracy, resisting social subversion and Jacobin violence.33 Central to this 'Scottish', conjectural-history reading of the revolution was the image of the Ancien Regime as a society resisting economic rationalisation, and a conception of the revolution itself as the violent political emergence of the middling ranks- the bourgeoisiefrom the shell of a doomed feudalism. This approach presented obvious similarities with the French historical literature of the Restoration - from Robert de Montlosier's and Augustin Thierry's reconstructions of France's feudal past to Saint Simon's and Auguste Comte's doctrines of industrie and societe industrielle?* The reviewers' contacts with French 'liberal' intellectual circles are well known, and the connection between Holland House and the Coppet entourage exercised a somewhat exclusive influence on their perception of French affairs.35 The mastering of the notion of commercial society - as a model against which French society could be measured- marked the distance between the perspective of the Edinburgh reviewers and that of a large section of current British political opinion on the subject of the downfall of the French monarchy. On the one hand, their reading was, from the start, sharply at odds with any approach in terms of the language of rights: the variety of theories of the revolution which saw it as the re-establishment of a 'natural' and 'just' order of society. Thomas Paine's (1737-1809) and William Godwin's (1756-1836) radicalism,36 or Joseph Priestley's (1733-1804) Millenarian view of the revolution as the Second Coming,37 were as profoundly alien to the reviewers' ideology as the writings of Rousseau and a large portion of the French Enlightenment. Rousseau's influence has been detected in the language of Mackintosh's Vindiciae Gallicae,3* but the younger Edinburgh reviewers had a rather discriminating conception of the heterogeneity of the philosophic movement, and took great care to separate the views of the writers who contributed to the scientific understanding of society and to reform - Montesquieu, Turgot and the Physiocrats - from authors

20


like Rousseau, Mably and Condorcet, whose writings fell half-way between the 'revolutionary cant' of the Jacobins and respectable but Utopian and misguided philosophical investigation.39 On the other hand, the reviewers could rely on their knowledge of the socio-economic determinants of the revolution to refute some influential products of conservative propaganda. One set of interpretations they undertook to refute was what can be described as the 'conspiratorial' theories of the revolution- the interpretations suggesting that the revolution had been caused by a (national or international) plot, prompted - according to the different versions - by the Free Masons, the Illuminati and other Continental secret societies; more generally, by the writings of economic and political reformers and by the diffusion of learning. In Scotland, the example set in France by the Abbe Augustin Barruel (1742-1820)40 was followed by John Robison (1739-1805), professor of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh, where he led the local academic crusade against Jacobinism.41 In his widely read pamphlet Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe Carried on in Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati and Reading

Societies, dedicated to the secretary of war, William Windham (17501810), he argued that: The present awful situation of Europe, and the general fermentation of the mind in all nations, have not been altogether the natural operations of discontent, oppression and moral corruption, although those have been great, and have operated with fatal energy; but this political fever has been carefully and systematically heightened by bodies of men who professed to be the physicians of the state, and while their open practice implied cooling medicines, and a treatment which all approved, administered in secret the most inflammatory poisons.42

As to the effects of the diffusion of knowledge, Robison synthesised his conception of the ethos of the revolution in the formula 'all wrote and all read'. Thus, after the publication of Necker's Compte rendu: . . . the appearance of Paris was completely changed. Everyone saw crowds staring at papers posted on the walls- breaking into little parties - walking up and down the streets in eager conversation - adjoining in coffee houses - and the conversation in all companies turned on politics alone; and in all these conversations a new vocabulary, where every second word was Morality, Philanthropy, Toleration, Freedom and Equalisation of Property.43

In Robison's elaborately paranoid reconstruction, Jacobinism and the revolutionary spirit formed a tentacular intellectual threat, ranging from the writings of Priestley and the popular press, to the 'atheistic'


21

astronomy of La Place and to Lavoisier's 'materialistic' chemical doctrines. In his more balanced De I'influence des Philosophes, reviewed by Jeffrey in the first issue of the Review, Jean Joseph Mounier (17581806) - former representative of the Monarchical grouping in the National Assembly - discussed the role played by the Philosophes and the Physiocrats in determining the revolutionary turn in French politics.44 Jeffrey agreed with Mounier in rejecting any hypothesis of a conspiracy of the intelligentsia - and virtually ignored the accusations against the Illuminati and the Free Masons. The revolution, it was obvious, had been brought about by the 'ordinary causes of social change', and by the 'improvidence and presumption that neglected the signs of the times' which had characterised the conduct of the monarchy.45 There was only one sense in which it was acceptable to say that the writers who had advocated political and economic reform bore a share of responsibility for the revolution. The popularity of their works was itself the product of the progress of commercial opulence and the accompanying diffusion of information which ensured a change in the condition and sentiments of the people. The 'revolutionary spirit' had not been created by the works of the writers of the Enlightenment, but by the natural progress of commercial society. Though making the ritual prudential exception for Rousseau and Condorcet - whom he described as genuinely 'subversive' authors - Jeffrey made clear that the subversion lay only in the spirit of their works, not in their material outcome. 46 If the reviewers' approach to the issue of the French revolution was sharply differentiated from the most explicitly 'radical' and 'conservative' interpretations of their British contemporaries, it is important to recall the close similarity between their reading of French events and that sketched by Walter Scott in the first two volumes of his Life of Napoleon (1827). The dominant presence of the heritage of Scottish 'philosophical' history, and the influence of Dugald Stewart's teaching upon Walter Scott's writings has been admirably illustrated by Duncan Forbes.47 As early as 1824, the French historian Augustin Thierry (1795-1856)- commenting on the picture of Scottish history sketched in Scott's Waverley Novels - wrote: 'Jamais [Scott] ne presente le tableau d'une revolution politique ou religieuse, sans la rattacher a ce qui la rendait inevitable, a ce qui doit, apres elle, en produire d'analogues, au mode d'existence du peuple, a sa division en races distinctes, en classes rivales et en factions ennemies.'48 John Stuart Mill

22


(1806-73), in his review of the Life of Napoleon published in the Westminster Review in 1828, admitted that Scott's reconstruction of the revolution showed his respect for democratic principles and repudiated the current Tory prejudices on the subject.49 Although Scott withdrew from the Edinburgh Review in 1809 in order to join the Tory camp and set up the Quarterly Review under George Canning's (17701827) patronage, the reviewers were unable to deny the validity of Scott's socio-economic approach to history and the similarities between his approach and their own. Macaulay, too, paid his homage to the depth and sensitivity of Scott's historical understanding in his review of Hallam's Constitutional History.™ As Ben-Israel points out, the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review were so similar in their treatment of the literature on French history that it is actually impossible to distinguish a 'Whig' from a 'Tory' historical interpretation of the revolution.51 The idea that the turmoil that had shaken French society was the result of a deep socio-economic transformation and not the realisation of some abstract principle of justice or the sudden product of evil influences was an illuminating guide to the historical and theoretical understanding of the revolution. It enabled the reviewers to handle with intelligence and historical sensibility the mass of memoirs (true and faked), correspondences, personal defences, accusations and apologies which characterised the early stage of historical writing on the subject. It also enabled them to draw a line between positions and interpretations the interest of which was confined to the political debate of the day, and those contributions which more properly belonged to the domain of social science. All this was, however, only the premise, the skeleton, of an adequate understanding of the revolution. The theory of commercial society and its application to the study of France's transition from feudalism to modern despotism could only suggest the existence of the premises and conditions for profound political change. Chronologically, it could explain events up to the meeting of the States General, and to what looked like the first step towards the creation of a constitutional monarchy. The crucial question which it left unanswered was- why had the process of change in French society got out of control, and why had it proved impossible for the moderate reformers to guide the country through a peaceful transition to a constitutional government which could satisfy the requirements of modern market society? At the end of the 1780s there were in France a group of enlightened reformers well aware of the


23

necessity of profound changes both in legislation and in the administration of the state. Some of them occupied prominent political positions and were close to the monarch and his family. Louis XVI himself, though not an outstandingly perceptive politician, had not proved blind and insensitive to the issue of reform. Whatever had gone wrong with France's feudal past, there was no straight line leading from the perversion of its Gothic constitution to Robespierre. In the attempt to answer this particular question- the reasons for the failure of the moderate reform policy, first in 1787-8 and later in the experience of the National Assembly - the reviewers found it necessary to reconsider critically the very notion oi politics which emerged from the works of their Scottish predecessors. The tradition of Scottish 'philosophical' history, outlined in Hume's, Smith's and Millar's writings, had been on the whole committed to the project oi & science of politics. The application of the 'Newtonian' method of experience and observation to the study of human nature, and the idea of a 'natural' history of society, were closely associated with the belief in the possibility of a systematic investigation of the different forms of government and types of constitution. The fact that it was possible to formulate general laws and principles of politics, did not imply that such principles could be derived 'mechanically' from the socio-economic conditions of the different nations. The relation between the stages of economic progress and the forms of government associated with them was perceived as a fairly complex one, and was regarded as heavily dependent on particular historical circumstances. If it was possible to indicate some of the basic requirements which made a specific form of government compatible with commercial progress (e.g. the protection of property), it was more difficult to establish in principle the supreme merit of a given constitution. In his account of the English civil wars of 1642-60 and of the revolution of 1688 in the History of England, Hume had elaborated a fairly sophisticated conception of political agency and of the structure of the competition for power among political parties; and had paid full attention to non-socio-economic motivations of political actions, such as religious feelings and beliefs.52 However, although Hume, Smith and Millar in no sense repudiated the notion of a science of politics, their indications and suggestions on the subject were unsystematic and far from rigorously developed. The science of politics was a desideratum rather than a set of established doctrines, and was bound to appear quite indeterminate

24


and controversial when compared with the comparatively straightforward analysis of the development of commercial society. It was not surprising that, in a period of political turmoil and disarray such as the 1790s, the views of the 18th-century philosophical Whigs should appear to the reviewers either too general and abstract to be helpful or, alternatively, when it came to the making of specific political judgments, simply false and unfounded. Their dissatisfaction was made more acute by the fact that neither Hume's Toryism nor Millar's Whiggism, was entirely acceptable to them; while their own more immediate mentor Dugald Stewart, intimidated by the experience of the revolution, had withdrawn from active politics into the routines of academic life and was unable to offer them any real political guidance. The criticism of the Scottish science of politics which they developed was not entirely consistent. Sometimes the charge brought against 18th-century Scottish writers was of being in fact too Scientific' of showing an excessive desire to systematise the study of historical processes and to reach general conclusions. On other occasions their works were described as the brilliant but superficial products of literary or forensic eloquence deplorably lacking in theoretical rigour. Thus in two review articles dedicated to John Millar's work,53 Jeffrey stressed the merits but also the limits of Millar's alleged sociological determinism: It was the leading principle, indeed, of all [Millar's] speculations on law, morality, government, language, the arts, science and manners - that there was nothing produced by arbitrary or accidental causes; that no great change, institution, custom or occurrence, could be ascribed to the character or exertions of an individual, to the temperament and disposition of a nation, to occasion, policy or peculiar wisdom or folly; everything, on the contrary, he held, arose spontaneously from the situation of the society, and was suggested or imposed irresistibly, by the opportunities or necessities of their conditions.54

In his attempt to 'trace back the history of society to its most simple and universal elements', Millar allowed too little for the influence of 'political contrivance', and was too ready to overlook and dismiss all those factors which might be in contradiction with his theory.55 If Millar's work was the most patent illustration of the metaphysical 'vices' of Scottish philosophical history, Jeffrey recognised the same defects in the works of Adam Smith and Lord Kames.56 On the other hand, Brougham, in his review of Dugald Stewart's LifeojDrRobertson ,57 complained that Robertson- like Millar, Smith, and even Stewart himself - wrote history in a beautiful, fluent, easy style which was more


25

suitable for elegant conversation or academic display than for serious scientific investigation. This literary style was not just a matter of preference or taste: it indicated that there was something amateurish and superficial in the way in which the Scots had constructed their theories and systems, often overlooking crucial historical evidence. The refinement of polite Scottish culture, its academic subtleties, its peculiar philosophical flavour had become inadequate for the demands of modern political theory, inadequate for the understanding of a world that had been profoundly shaken by sudden and traumatic (and unmistakably/w////W) events: 'Recent events have accumulated more terrible practical instruction on every subject of politics than could have been in other times accumulated by the experience of ages. Men's wit sharpened by their passions has penetrated to the bottom of almost all political questions.'58 The impact of Burke's Reflections The confrontation with Burke acted as a powerful catalyst to this critical revision of the Scottish science of politics. Recent historical reconsideration of the debate between Mackintosh and Burke in 1790-1 has demonstrated that Mackintosh's position was, from the start, considerably less * radical' than has commonly been supposed, and suggested that the importance of his 'recantation' and conversion to Burke's position - a gesture which, later in his life, Mackintosh himself judged as somewhat extreme - has generally been exaggerated. Mackintosh's thought as a whole emerges from this historical reassessment more safely rooted within the Scottish tradition of'scientific polities', while the distance between his views and those of Burke narrows accordingly.59 In stressing the influence of the political-economy tradition on Burke's political language, John Pocock has drawn attention to an important theoretical dimension of the confrontation between Mackintosh and Burke.60 It was inevitable that the reviewers' interpretation of the revolution should have intersected with that of Burke at several crucial points, rather than confronting the latter in systematic opposition. The reviewers, to be s u r e - with the sole exception perhaps of Mackintosh- did not feel close to Burke. They respected him and gave him a proper place among the saints of the Whig religion; but such canonisation implied no profound intellectual and political sympathy.

26


The ground for their dislike was not, in the first place, simply Burke's conservatism. It was, rather, a deep factional hostility. The aspect of Burke's attitude towards the French revolution which they could not forgive was its disruptive effect on the unity of the Whig party. Joining the Whigs at around the time of Fox's death, Horner, Brougham and Jeffrey devoted most of their political (and editorial) activity to the attempt to repair the damage to the party's fortunes in the early 1790s caused by the break between Burke and Fox. Nobody was better placed to measure accurately how disproportionately high the political cost of Burke's move had been.61 Burke, however, did offer the reviewers some important aid in resolving their theoretical difficulties. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke had outlined a conception of politics that rejected the 'abstractions of system', replacing them by an 'empirical' approach, based on experience and observation. In a passage of his Memoirs, Mackintosh counterposed the metaphysical politics of Montesquieu and Hume to the practical politics of Burke. Mackintosh affirmed that 'the philosophy of morality and politics is founded on experience'. Quoting Lord Bacon, he declared that empirical statesmen should not despise science, just as speculators should not ignore experience; and concluded that a true science of politics could result only from the combination of 'contemplation and action'.62 Such an appeal to political practice was necessarily ambiguous. In his review of Bailly's Memoirs, Jeffrey displayed a genuinely Burkean rhetoric when he stigmatised the precipitate eagerness with which the National Assembly had carried through, 'in a few weeks, the legislative labours of a century'.63 Human society . . . is not like a piece of mechanism which may be safely taken to pieces, and put together by the hands of an ordinary artist. It is the work of Nature, and not of man; and has received, from the hands of its Author, an organization that cannot be destroyed without danger to its existence, and certain properties and powers that cannot be suspended by those who may be entrusted with its management.64

It is clear, however, that the critique of Hume's excessively 'abstract' philosophical politics could not be equated with the attack upon the 'projectors and speculators', in which Burke and the Scottish political economists were allied together against the 'political Utopias' of the radicals and the Jacobins. A more illuminating interpretation of the appeal to practical politics is the recognition that, unlike the 'academic' Scottish writers, Burke's


27

essential appeal to the reviewers was as a practical politician and a party man. In the Reflections on the Revolution in France, and especially in the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1792)65 - two texts originally written in response to an internal party dispute - Burke had actually addressed a question crucial to the preoccupations of the young Scottish Whigs: what could the old categories of Court and Country, Tory and Whig possibly mean after the French revolution? The most important aspect of Burke's thought for the reviewers was his contribution to redefining the role of the opposition party. Here he contrived to remedy what they perceived as a serious deficiency in the Scottish science of politics. In the writings of their Scottish predecessors, the reviewers had no chance of discovering a conclusive and consistent theory of political parties. The author who had perhaps come closest to formulating an articulated conception of the nature and function of parties was David Hume. Hume had certainly recognised the inherent duality of political parties, the fact that they represented both a conflict of principles and opinions and a conflict of interests between different social groups. But his analysis became more than a little blurred when it set this general conception of parties against the realities of factional divisions in British history - Cavaliers and Roundheads, Court and Country, Tories and Whigs - and attempted to define their precise function in relation to the model of the mixed constitution:66 'To determine the nature of these parties is perhaps one of the most difficult problems that can be met with, and is a proof that history may contain questions as uncertain as any to be found in the most abstract sciences.'67 In general, Hume took a favourable view of the role of parties. He believed that they contributed towards the sustaining of political balance since they represented a form of organised corruption and a legitimate expression of contrasting interests and ideologies without posing thereby any direct threat to constitutional liberty.68 Hume's views on parties stood in sharp contrast with those of authors like Adam Ferguson, who regarded party conflicts merely as the expression of the struggle of factions for power and office, and who thought that modern parties had lost all connection with the deep historical conflicts stemming from the Great Rebellion.69 John Millar's preoccupation with the acquisition of political consciousness and power on the part of the middling ranks similarly made little allowance for the role of organised parliamentary conflicts; while his emphasis on the defence of liberty and the encroachment of the

28


crown was still expressed in the traditional language of Court and Country.70 Stewart also was more interested in the real structure of power, in the nature of the relationship between social classes and institutions, than in the machinery of party politics as such. In his Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith (1793), he attributed the deterioration of the political situation in France after 1789 to the prevalence of party politics and to factional intrigues over economic and legislative reforms. But he was unable to identify the political dynamics which brought the leading groups in the French Assemblies to mutual political and physical destruction.71 Eighteenth-century views on the nature and role of parties revealed the extreme difficulty of establishing a convincing framework for their analysis independently of specific political contexts. The great strength of Burke's approach to the issue of party was precisely its explicit and aggressive partisanship: its dedication to the defence of one particular political force and programme. His impact on the reviewers' understanding of politics was fundamental; and the viewpoint which he represented challenged them more insistently than did any of the radical or utilitarian authors commonly presented as their chief political interlocutors. But to accept Burke's methodological suggestions and to praise his political talents did not imply subscription to his opinions and conclusions. The reviewers certainly believed that his reconstruction of French events was simply false, however intelligent and provocative its approach. As Jeffrey pointed out in his article 'State of Europe' of 1814, Burke's description of the Ancien Regime as characterised by a 'tempered royalty' and 'polished aristocracy' was plainly untrue.72 The age of chivalry had not gone for the simple reason that it had never come into existence in the first place; and even if it had gone there would have been no reason to regret this, since in the whole past history of Europe the commercial interest had always proved more 'open and intelligent' than the landed classes. The spirit of Burke's attack upon modernity was in itself utterly unacceptable. In a swingeing retrospective appraisal of Burke's Reflections, written in 1827, Brougham wrote: 'Except in lamenting the excesses of the times of terror, and in admitting them to form a large deduction from the estimate of the benefits of the Revolution, it would be no easy matter to point out a single opinion of [Burke] which any rational and moderate man of the present day will avow.'73 The reviewers responded to Burke by applying his own practical and


29

historical approach to the refutation of his opinions. The product of their labours was an extremely detailed analysis of the different political forces and factors which had operated in the revolution. It was an unsystematic (and not always very consistent) analysis, scattered through a large number of review articles often written to serve the political controversy of the day. Macaulay's fragment of a History of France, together with his articles on Mirabeau and Bar ere, give us a mere sketch of the form which a possible synthesis might have taken.74 It remains the case, however, that the reviewers did undertake the first British attempt to explore French politics beyond the stereotypes which dpminated most contemporary political reflection.75 One of the central questions which the reviewers considered was the position of the moderate reformers in France in the 1780s and 1790s, and the grounds for the failure of the peaceful transition to a constitutional monarchy which they had attempted to promote. In the reviewers' eyes, this issue was closely related to the question of the political validity of Scottish philosophic Whiggism. The reviewers considered that what the Physiocrats, Turgot and Necker, had attempted in France had been very close in spirit to the teaching of Hume, Smith and Stewart. All of these presumed that a broad project of legislative and economic reform could be promoted and accomplished by means of a despotic government. They believed that the good will of the monarch, the talent of his ministers and the guidance of political economy should together be sufficient to implement such a transformation:'. . . the most celebrated works which have been produced in the different countries of Europe, during the last thirty years, by Smith, Quesnai, Turgot, Campomanes, Beccaria and others, have aimed at the improvement of society- not by delineating plans of new constitutions, but by enlightening the policy of actual legislators.'76 What the reformers had not taken into account was the vital importance of the forms of political control. If they had found themselves swept away by popular and factional violence, it was not because their doctrines were false or their reform proposals unsound. Their defeat indicated no lack of good faith, honesty or talent on their part. What explained their failure was, firstly, that France did not possess any functioning political institutions which could make their reform proposals effective, and, secondly, that the moderate reformers themselves had proved very deficient in political experience and ability. Contrary to the suggestions of Hume and Stewart, the form of the constitution was crucial to commercial progress, though this truth might

30


not be apparent in situations - such as that of Britain - in which there was a functioning political structure to rely on. Among the various political institutions which had successively governed France between 1789 and 1800, the States General was the one on which the judgment of the reviewers was clearest and most uncontroversial. Neither the States General themselves, nor the Assemblies of Notables or local Parliaments were properly constituted and regular political institutions. Formed by a random (or at any rate arbitrary) selection of individuals belonging to different ranks, without any established criterion for the electoral franchise, they were the direct expression of socio-economic forces. Their pre-modern, indeed medieval, character was reflected in their incapacity to exercise any genuinely political mediation among conflicting interests and opinions. All that they could do was to symbolise the assent of the different orders and ranks to the exercise of royal authority. It was not surprising that, when the States General did actually attempt to make political decisions, they should have reached complete paralysis.77 The reviewers' judgment became somewhat more confused - and possibly less informed- when it came to the nature of the National (or Constituent) and of the Legislative Assemblies.78 One of Burke's most brilliant literary exploits in the Reflections was his devastating portrait of the National Assembly as a parliament of litigious provincial lawyers. His observations had been anticipated by Stewart (in a letter to the Rev. Alison written from Paris on 10 May 1789) in a pessimistic description of the representatives of the Tiers Etat: . . . I am very sorry to hear of the injudicious choice which the Tiers Etat have in general made of their deputies. By far the majority of them are lawyers, who are by no means respected by the people of rank in this country, and who are certainly of all men the least qualified for new-modelling a constitution.79 Like many contemporary observers, the reviewers were greatly impressed by one particular feature in the constitutional development of France: the sudden appearance on the stage of a new political class, first with the creation of the National Assembly in 1789, and later with its replacement by a completely new chamber at the election of the Legislative Assembly in October 1791. The speed at which this change was effected went against all the established rules of political prudence, and especially against the philosophic Whig principle that political representation should reflect the actual distribution of wealth, power and authority in a given country.80


31

The sociological implications of this abrupt materialisation of a new political elite caught the reviewers' attention more than the actual transformation of the electoral franchise in the constitutions of 1791 and 1793 and its prospective effects on French political life. The Constituent Assembly could not be regarded as a proper parliamentary institution, being merely the instrument of the violent dictatorship of the Jacobins. As to the Assemblies created by the Consulate and the Empire, the reviewers were inclined to share the general British prejudice that these were 'puppet' assemblies, completely enslaved to Napoleon's despotism.81 While they attached great importance to the nature of French political institutions, the reviewers were inclined to judge the effects of the financial crisis on French politics to have been generally overestimated. Firstly, they simply did not believe that the state of French finance in the last years of the Ancien Regime had been truly disastrous, nor that it was in fact one of the major causes of political disarray.82 On this particular issue their opinions may have been influenced by Necker's retrospective defence of his ministerial activity, and especially by the presentation of his views by his daughter Germaine de Stael (1766-1817).83 In his lectures on political economy Stewart observed that the real mistake in Necker's conduct had been not the economic measures he had promoted but his failure to take sufficient notice of public opinion. The publication of the Compte rendu was the proof not of some imminent financial disaster but simply of Necker's political insensitivity.84 Secondly, the reviewers argued that British observers had too readily assumed that the paper-money policy pursued by the revolutionary government would necessarily result in a complete financial and political catastrophe. During his visit to France in 1789 Stewart had expressed some enthusiasm for the policy of the assignatsf5 while in Vindiciae Gallicae Mackintosh had defended the monied interests against Burke's accusations.86 Writing in the aftermath of the revolutionary period, the reviewers obviously knew that Stewart's optimistic expectations concerning the assignats had been falsified by the experience of war inflation. They thought, however, that - as Sydney Smith wrote in his review on 'Necker's last views on finance' - it was a serious mistake to believe that France's strength depended entirely on the success of her financial policy. The failure of the assignats' experiment did not imply-

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as Pitt's government had too hopefully assumed - that the resources of the country were completely exhausted.87 It would be difficult to argue that the language of the Edinburgh Review was entirely free from rhetorical hostility to paper money. Such rhetoric was too deeply embedded in British political discourse not to surface inevitably in any extensive series of writings about economic policy. But, for the most part, the reviewers took great care to separate their 'scientific' criticism of inflationary policies - b o t h in England and France - from the current popular and conservative arguments against paper money and the monied men. Paper money had not ruined France, as the ability of the Republic to sustain the ensuing war had convincingly proved. Besides, the reviewers believed that the revolution had solved- if by somewhat objectionable means- the problem stressed by Burke in the Reflections of the alienation of the financial interest from the landed aristocracy. The confiscation and sale of the lands of the Church and of the emigres - violently denounced by Burke - had finally achieved the result of mobilising property and integrating the monied men into the landed classes.88 If they saw the deficiencies of the French representative system in this way as a major source of disruption, the reviewers also stressed the importance of the lack of political ability on the part of the moderate reformers. During the last years of the Ancien Regime, Turgot's plans for economic reform had been defeated by the crushing aristocratic power displayed at the Lit deJustice.*9 Similarly, whenever the moderate reformers had found themselves members of the representative Assemblies thrown up by the revolution, they had revealed their 'inexperience in legislation* and the amateurish character of their approach to politics. Having dedicated a large part of their youth to acquiring the knowledge and skills to employ in political life, the reviewers had a very 'professional' conception of political activity, and very little indulgence towards aristocratic ignorance or nonchalance on the matter.90 While the moderate reformers had posed an excessive trust in the resources of a good administration and had neglected the importance of political control, the Jacobins had been the victims of a symmetrical, and equally suicidal, Utopia- the illusion violently exposed by Burke, that major socio-economic changes might be effected overnight by the magic of legislative intervention: '. . . a thousand ambitious theories were at once let loose upon the state. . . they talked about republics till


33

they fancied they were free; and murdered one another till they had convinced themselves that they were indivisible.'91 What was interesting about the various political groups at the leadership of the revolution was that none of them - n o t even the most extreme Jacobins- could be regarded simply as criminals and fanatics. They were all, at least at the beginning, Virtuous' politicians who lacked either ability or courage and who were finally swept away by factional violence. The Girondins' martyrdom in particular was a striking example of the misadventures of an essentially innocent civic virtue.92 At the same time, neither the Jacobins nor the Girondins could be regarded as 'political parties' in any modern British sense of the term they did not embody the different powers holding the balance of the constitution, nor did they represent social orders or ranks. Essentially factional and archaic in character, they had given a spectacularly tragic illustration of what could not be revived in the ideal of civic virtue and in the myth of the ancient republic. While it was comparatively easy for the reviewers to formulate a detached historical judgment of the political errors of the Jacobins, the Napoleonic adventure represented a much more complex and puzzling historical experience. A consideration of French events up to Thermidor and the formation of the Directory showed growing social and economic tensions and ideological conflicts which, in the absence of adequate political control, exploded into uncontrolled violence. This was an essentially predictable pattern of development - just as it was predictable that a murderous struggle among factions should occasion the growth of a military dictatorship. However, Napoleon's continuing military success, his political creativity, the efficiency of his administration, and the popularity he enjoyed even after his defeat were all elements which influenced and modified the reviewers' judgment. Their attitude towards Napoleon, accordingly, remained fundamentally ambivalent, and it would be impossible to give a perfectly consistent and unproblematic account of it. On the one hand, they endorsed the current contrast between Bonaparte's military despotism and English liberty. Though this was obviously a major theme in English propaganda, the reviewers were able to present the more sophisticated version of it outlined in the writings of French liberals like Benjamin Constant and Germaine de Stael. According to this interpretation, Bonaparte's progress was a challenge to the logic and laws of commercial society. If the tendency of modern

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European states was towards commercial progress and peaceful international relationships ,the Napoleonic experience had seen the revival of 'irrational' and 'pre-modern' political passions: nationalism, the spirit of conquest and military glory. To a certain extent this phenomenon could be attributed to the spirit of the French people, to their Vainglorious and sanguine' nature,93 but it was a fact that Bonaparte had been able to awaken these popular feelings to a degree unknown to all other French governments. Bonaparte, who - according to Macaulay's description - 'hated metaphysics and political economy'94 had led for several years a triumphantly successful war against commercial society. He had created a centralised, bureaucratic and tyrannical government. He had suppressed the free press and alienated the intelligentsia. He had imposed an unprecedentedly oppressive system of taxation, created all sorts of obstacles to trade and subordinated French finance to the needs of a war economy. He had been able to mobilise large social groups against their own patent economic interest. The laws of commercial progress could not be ignored and violated for much longer. Napoleon's empire was an anachronism of which history would necessarily sooner or later dispose. As Constant wrote in 1813 in his De lfesprit de conquete et de I'usurpa-

tion, 'II y a des choses qui sont possibles a telle epoque, et qui ne le sont plus a telle autre. Cette verite semble triviale: elle est neanmoins souvent meconnue; elle ne Test jamais sans danger.'95 But there was also a very different way of looking at the Napoleonic regime which surfaced in the writings of the reviewers. It was impossible to deny the despotic character of Bonaparte's government; but it remained difficult to dispute either its popularity, its deep roots in the French people's feelings and ambitions, or the efficiency of its administration and the comparative success of its economic policy. The reviewers followed with great attention the situation of the French economy throughout the war period and - unlike the majority of the British press - took notice of those elements which indicated that Bonaparte's economic policy was proving far from catastrophic.96 A suspicion which was particularly disturbing for politicians obsessed with the issue of corn supply, was the idea- hinted at by Malthus in one of his pamphlets on the corn law of 1815 - that Bonaparte's protectionist policy with respect to the corn trade had proved far more successful than that pursued by the English government. In the space of a few years, according to Malthus, France had actually achieved the


35

target of having a well-regulated grain supply in the home market, while at the same time exporting to England. With regard to the alleged impotence of governments in this respect [Maithus wrote] it seems to me that facts show their power rather than their weakness. To be convinced of this, it is only necessary to look at the diminished importations from America during the war, and particularly from the Baltic, after Bonaparte's decrees.97

Napoleon's policy, together with the experience of the English war economy, certainly influenced the reviewers' perception of the role of the state. On the whole, they remained faithful to the traditional Whig conception of the state - the executive - as an essentially negative force, something which should be subjected to the highest possible degree of political control on the part of the opposition. At the same time, they acquired the sense that in the practice of modern states the functions of the executive, especially with respect to the economy, were necessarily bound to expand. Though actively campaigning in favour of the reduction of the war establishment, the reviewers came to recognise that the creation of a large public revenue and public debt, the transformation of the Bank of England into a public institution, the expansion of the state bureaucracy were phenomena which could not be simply liquidated with the end of the war. However obnoxious in some respects, they were necessary to the efficient functioning of a modern commercial state. The reviewers' conviction that, in the modern English government, the balance of the constitution was essentially set in the House of Commons, could easily be reconciled with a conception of the executive as an essentially 'administrative' force.98 In a significant article published in the review in February 1815, James Mackintosh summarised the socio-economic consequences of the French revolution and of Bonaparte's regime. The views expressed by his friend, Benjamin Constant, in De lfesprit de conquete, although fundamentally correct, he saw as excessively general and abstract." Mackintosh fully agreed with Constant in recognising the despotic character of Napoleon's government. But he thought that the description of the empire as a doomed military despotism was precipitate. As a whole, the article breathed the atmosphere of the hundred days and the uncertainty over Bonaparte's chances of maintaining his reconquered power. But in it Mackintosh made two very important points. The first one was that Napoleon's reign could not be separated in any

36


way from the experience of the French revolution. This argument had often been set forth by the reviewers - particularly by Brougham when evaluating the reasons for the success of the French armies. Bonaparte's victories depended on the fact that he embodied the spirit of the revolution and that his armies were popular armies. The spirit of conquest, however disturbing to the enlightened modern mind, was not a factor which could be entirely removed from the calculus of European policy. His second point was that the combined experience of the revolution and of Bonaparte's empire had on balance served the interests of nearly all French social classes, and brought 'substantial benefits to the great body of the people'.100 With the revolution, Mackintosh argued, the state of French agriculture had advanced, and the condition of the agricultural population had greatly improved. Mai thus's preoccupation with French exports of grain to England was, he thought, to be taken very seriously. As to the middle classes in the cities, previously humbled by the aristocracy, the revolution had definitely seen their triumph, while, thanks to the policy of confiscation, the tradesmen and merchants enriched by the revolution had finally become integrated into the landed classes. There were, besides, other social groups who had strong reasons to support the revolutionary and the Napoleonic regime - namely, the 'immense body of civil officers', both in France and in the countries newly occupied by the French armies, and the Protestants and religious dissenters who had benefited handsomely from the end of the policy of religious discrimination of the Ancien Regime.101 There were undeniably less agreeable aspects in this assessment of the array of French social interests: above all, the creation of an immense popular army which had exercised a fatal influence on Bonaparte's political choices. It remained a fact, however, that this army possessed deep roots in France's large rural population, and that Louis XVIII's decision to abolish conscription had proved highly unpopular.102 The implications of Mackintosh's analysis became clearer after Waterloo and the return of the Bourbons. The reviewers - Brougham and Horner in particular- had been favourable to the position of those French liberals, such as Constant and Carnot, who had supported Napoleon's new constitutional regime and who had opposed any return of the Bourbons imposed by the intervention of foreign armies.103 This position was not shared by the majority of the Whigs;


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Horner in particular offered to resign his seat, having found himself in disagreement on the issue with his patron, the Marquis of Buckingham.104 The return of the Bourbons, in the reviewers' eyes, imposed manu militari by the states of the Coalition, watched with hostility, suspicion or, at best, indifference by the French people, showed the strength of the heritage of the French revolution, and the impossibility of returning to the pre-commercial and despotic society of the Ancien Regime. The middling ranks, the industrial classes, had seen with relief the end of the disastrous wars which had fed Bonaparte's military power. But they were not prepared to cherish a king who restrained the liberty of the press and breached his promise of a new, free constitution.105 In his unfinished History of France - a text which was heavily influenced by Jeffrey's writings on the subject -Macaulay gave an extremely vivid description of France as the Bourbons found it on their return; a country in which the signs of the new, 'bourgeois' prosperity had replaced the splendours of the Ancien Regime: . . . the royal emigrants returned to a country in which they could recognise nothing; to a country which still presents, in every part, to the eye even of a passing stranger, the signs of a great dissolution and renovation of society. They returned to find sumptuous town houses broken up into lodgings; venerable sepulchres collected in museums; dismantled castles, defaced monuments, neglected cathedrals; a fountain playing on the spot where Richelieu had placed the statue of his master; a blank space where Henry IV had overlooked the Seine; a cotton mill standing on the ruins of Marli; a mound of turf heaped over the embalmed kings of St Denys; desolation in the fairy gardens of Chantilly, and silence in the gorgeous halls of Versailles. The magnificent trophies of a new dynasty filled their galleries, adorned their public places, and constantly reminded them that they were strangers in the palaces of their fathers.106 The French revolution and Bonaparte's empire were the heavy toll that France had paid for the development of a free commercial government. The price could only have been so high in a country which lacked from the start the benefit of free political institutions. At the same time, France's wildly fluctuating political fortunes - from the egalitarian Utopia of the Jacobins to Bonaparte's imperial dream- revealed a kind of 'cunning of reason' in the means through which commercial progress asserted itself, forcing its way through profoundly different institutional settings. Obviously, things were not as simple as that there were many contradictions in the process, losses which would never be repaired, risks too high to be run again; however, as Macaulay

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put it, the Bastille was fallen, and could never more rise from its ruins.107 From the Restoration to Louis Philippe Between the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815 and the revolution of 1830, the attention given to French affairs in the Review diminished in intensity. Much of the space dedicated to France was taken over by the mass of authentic or faked memoirs produced during Bonaparte's captivity in St Helena, and by the posthumous revelations about and interpretations of his conduct and character. As to French politics, English liberal opinion presumed that on the whole - despite the evident aspirations of the Bourbons to return to the Ancien Regime- the country was in fact well on the way towards a free constitutional monarchy of the English type. In 1819, commenting on the law de Serre on the liberty of the press, Brougham wrote: Nothing can be more delightful to every lover of rational liberty, than the spectacle which our neighbours in France are now exhibiting, - of a great nation reclaimed from the wicked and miserable pursuits of war, and applying themselves to establish, upon solid grounds, the truest glory and happiness of any nation - a Free Constitution.108

On closer inspection, however, France's march towards constitutional liberty still faced serious obstacles. In the long article published in the Review in 1820, the Genevan essayist Louis Simond (1766-1831)109 denounced the enduring instability of French political institutions under the restored monarchy. Commenting on the electoral law of 1818-19 (the so-called 'double-vote law' which restricted the franchise in favour of the higher incomes) the author observed that the real weakness of the French political system lay not in its constitutional forms but in the socio-economic structure of French society itself. A restricted franchise was not necessarily incompatible with constitutional freedom. But, Simond wrote: . . . it is easy to see that the political machine among our neighbours is at this moment of very simple construction, consisting of two unconnected and opposite powers- the People, a promiscuous mass, in one scale- the King and Army in the other. If the King be warlike, he will have the army on his side, and soon find means of overruling the Legislature - if he be for a course of years weak or pacific, the Legislature elected by the people must in the end establish something very like a republic, of which a soldat heureux will in due time become


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the master. There is in that country no intermediate body, able to rally round the constitution when invaded by either of the opposed powers, and to resist the inroads either of despotism or of anarchy. uo

We have seen that, in the reviewers' reconstruction of the causes of the revolution of 1789, the missing 'intermediate body' in French society had been the middling ranks. Simond's article, by contrast, followed the argument of the these nobiliaire in deploring the absence in Restoration France of a 'real aristocracy' of the English kind. The old French aristocracy had been profoundly marked by the experience of the revolution and of emigration, and had given clear evidence of its hatred for any constitutional government. Bonaparte had indeed attempted to create a new aristocracy- but the lack of independence of these new peers, enslaved to Napoleon's personal fortunes, had prevented them from acquiring any real authority in the country.111 Together with political instability, a further weak point in the new French administration which became apparent in the course of the 1820s was the character of France's economic performance. Like England, France had suffered at the end of the war in the form of a decline of demand in the home market and a revived international competition. In 1819, the Review had attacked the views of JeanAntoine Chaptal (1756-1832), former minister of Napoleon, whose De Vindustrie frangoise had proclaimed the superiority of the French economy over the English one.112 In 1829, when the economic crisis which began in 1826 had become all too evident, McCulloch exposed the weakness of the French economy in his article 'French Commercial System': There is not a single branch of manufactures or commerce that is, at this moment, in a flourishing condition. Even the businesses that have been fenced round with prohibitions, are in anything but a thriving state; while wine, brandy and silk, the leading products of France, and the materials by which she formerly carried on a lucrative and extensive foreign commerce, meet with no profitable outlet, and have become almost unsaleable . . . the leading merchants of Paris, Bordeaux and other great towns, as well as vast numbers of the agriculturists, have petitioned for the repeal or modification of the prohibitive system . . .113

McCulloch's analysis helped to put in historical perspective the deprecated policy of the Continental Blockade. What he in fact saw, assessing French economic policies from the Ancien Regime to the Restoration, was their great ideological continuity, the tenacious commitment to protectionism that had always been maintained, irrespec-

40


tive of the revolutionary or despotic character of French governments. Protectionism had proved successful during the Blockade, and had certainly contributed to the growth of French industry, but it was now suffocating the French manufactures of iron, cotton and sugar. McCulloch's article was interesting because it shifted attention from the dynamics of the relation between commercial society and despotism to the importance of political prejudices and ideologies. The French revolution of 1830, together of course with the turn in domestic policy which finally brought the Whigs into office, restored the reviewers' optimism over the cause of French liberty. When the news of the Paris insurrection of 1830 reached England, Brougham- at the time electioneering in Yorkshire - sent an enthusiastic letter of congratulations to the president of the newly elected French Assembly, the Due de Broglie.114 Writing in the Review in the same period, he described the Orleanist revolution in the following terms: 'If all mankind are interested in this glorious achievement, Englishmen surely have of all others the deepest concern in its effects, not merely as well-wishers of the liberties of other nations, but as feeling watchful of every encroachment upon their own . . . The battle of English liberty has really been fought and won in Paris.'115 Once again, a sudden turn in French political events gave to the reviewers - at the time engaged in the campaign for the Reform Bill the occasion to compare the patterns of commercial and constitutional progress in England and France. In this particular instance, the comparison was wholly favourable to France, which - they argued - overcoming the effects of its previous political backwardness and of its recent traumatic past, had finally achieved 'a freer government than England'.116 It is, on the whole, not surprising that the comparatively peaceful and 'orderly' French revolution of 18 30 - allegedly inspired by the principles of 1688 117 - should have appealed to the reviewers more strongly than the rather devastating experience of 1789. As to the Due de Broglie, he may well have been reassured to learn t h a t - after four tormented decades- France had finally succeeded in meeting the requirements of Scottish scientific politics. To what extent did the experience of the French revolution and its aftermath influence both the reviewers' general approach to social theory and their understanding of British politics? Two different aspects of this question require consideration. The first one is methodological: can we say that the reviewers actually formulated a


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conception of a science ofpolitics which diverged significantly from the one set forth by their Scottish predecessors? It does not appear possible to identify any crucial theoretical difference. If the reviewers had become impatient and critical in their attitude towards the rhetoric of 18th-century conjectural history, the mechanics of their own historical explanation remained substantially the same. Undoubtedly the French revolution forced the observers' attention to focus on the accidents of politics and on the issue of the stability of political power. But this did not imply that the theory of the development of commercial society lost its explanatory relevance. On the contrary, their commitment to modernity emerged reinforced rather than enfeebled by the experience of the revolution; while civic humanist anxieties about the cycles of corruption and decadence to which the republic was exposed were finally ruled out by France's survival through the troubled 1790s. All considered, it would be difficult to argue that the reviewers' conception of politics was in any way theoretically better organised and more systematic than that outlined in the writings of Smith and Hume. The solution that the reviewers proposed to this particular problem how could the science of politics be made more rigorous - was a subdivision of the study of society into various specialised fields. The science of society was to be articulated into a number of distinct disciplines, characterised by different degrees of generality and abstraction. As Mackintosh wrote: [The politician] must not be too distant from practice to justify results by pretty direct appeal to fact, or to try their justness by application to real affairs. Even in this intermediate region are many subdivisions, which are in their present state distinguishable, and which may one day receive names as sciences as distinct from each other as the various branches of physics. The moral doctrine of government, or the reasons why and how far it ought to be obeyed, is perfectly distinguished from the physical theory which explains how it is formed and changed. The theory of the general progress of society is different from that of the revolutions of states. Neither are to be confounded with the maxims of prudence applicable to internal or foreign policy, nor do any of these speculations, or rules, resemble in their genius and character the almost exact science of political economy.118 In other words, the reviewers shared the opinion that the limits and lacunae in 18 th-century Scottish theories of society could be overcome by the development of politics, political economy, history, etc. as separate sciences. Intellectually this vision was essentially dilatory, since

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the appeal to the system of social sciences offered a dispensation from a rigorous definition of each particular example of them. But it did undeniably represent a firm commitment on the reviewers' part to the Scottish project for a science of politics substantially unshaken, in the end, by the impact of Burke's critique. (One sense, however, in which the notion of politics as part of a system of sciences may well have reflected Burke's influence was the idea that politics should be regarded as a specialised skill, a profession, rather than one of the many accomplishments of the virtuous citizen.) The second aspect of the question is more substantive. How profoundly did the experience of the French revolution modify the content of the ideology of philosophic Whiggism? It is interesting here to look at Stewart's and Millar's respective responses to the French revolution, and at the reviewers' assessment of their politics. We have mentioned above that, by the mid-1790s, Stewart had essentially withdrawn from active politics. The experience of the revolution led him to reconsider and revise some of the judgments he had expressed in his previous writings, but it elicited no new assessment of his political views. In the Edinburgh of those years, his teaching retained a considerable political relevance; and he certainly maintained a keen interest in politics throughout the decades to come.119 Yet his pupils could not help viewing him - perhaps rather unfairly - as a provincial academic, 'Whig' in his principles and loyalties, but neither a true party man nor a practical politician. In their eyes, Stewart was guilty of the 18th-century illusion that the philosopher and political economist could be above political parties and factional disputes - that his appropriate political function was to counsel an enlightened monarch. In his Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith Stewart expressed his agreement with Smith's argument that happiness was the real aim of government and that the happiness and prosperity of commercial society could be achieved, in given circumstances, independently of political liberty.120 The reviewers did not disagree with the principle which lay behind this judgment; they believed too that no form of government could be said to be in principle the right one, the most conducive to commercial prosperity; that the criterion must be one of expediency as well as of justice. But they also thought that, in 19th-century Europe, despotism had had its day. The necessity of a free government was not a matter of principle; it was a direct implication of recent historical experience. As to the philosopher and political economist, his ideas could be expressed effec-


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tively only by means of organised political parties and of public opinion. Unlike Stewart, Millar had not been intimidated by the French revolution. On the contrary, his political views had become franker and more radical after the beginning of Pitt's ministry in 1783, and in response to the activities of the Friends of the People in 1792-3.121 To a large extent the reviewers shared Millar's analysis of the revolution and its effects, especially over the role of the middling ranks and the function of public opinion and the press in modern commercial society. Like Millar, they believed that the emergence of the middling ranks which had been the driving force of the French revolution - was also the dominant feature of modern British society. To understand the necessity to extend political power to the middle classes was the conditio sine qua non of any successful policy. And again, like Millar, the reviewers did not believe that the political influence of the middling ranks must necessarily take the form of direct parliamentary representation. The presence in the country of a large, well-educated and prosperous middle class, together with a free press and popular education, were in themselves sufficient guarantees of their political influence. Of course, through the first three decades of the century, the Review's position on parliamentary reform underwent some change, and by 1830 the issue of the extension of the franchise had acquired greater relevance. But its enduring presumption was that the reform of the system of representation could only mirror the real distribution of power within British society. If the people have risen into greater consequence, let them have greater power. If a greater proportion of our population be now capable and desirous of exercising the function of free citizens, let a greater number be admitted to the exercise of those functions . . . The power itself you can neither repress nor annihilate; and, if it be not assimilated to the system of the constitution, you seem to be aware that it will overwhelm and destroy it.122

If it was desirable that the middling ranks should exercise political power, the basis for this desirability could only be their influence de facto on the economic and intellectual life of the country. Any attempt to establish it as a principle or a right would necessarily lead to the paradoxes and contradictions exposed by Macaulay in his criticism of James Mill's Essay on Government}11 Millar's preoccupations, in his last years (he died in 1801) had been those of a Foxite Whig in the years of Pitt's crushing success. The anxieties expressed in the Letters of Crito124 about the suffocation by the crown of free government in Britain and

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about the threat posed by the growing state apparatus, were not really shared by the reviewers. They appeared from time to time in their political rhetoric like other formulas of the old Whig jargon, but they no longer possessed a real political significance. The reviewers believed, along with Dugald Stewart,125 that the idea that the balance of the constitution depended on the relationship between the king, the Lords and the Commons was somewhat archaic. In modern Britain, the powers were all represented in, and exercised their influence through, the House of Commons. It was therefore legitimate that the House of Commons should be opened both to state patronage and the influence of the great aristocratic families on the one hand, and to wealth and talent on the other. The Commons had - in this interpretation - a double nature; they represented both the powers of the constitution and the orders of society; but the tendency was for the second of these aspects to take over and become the dominant one.126 It was a major consequence of the French revolution in the reviewers' eyes, by creating alarm and panic amongst British public opinion, to bring about a dramatic radicalisation of British political life. The two parties of the 'courtiers' and of the 'democrats' confronted each other in a struggle which might result in a civil war which would destroy the benefits of commercial progress. The most important feature of this analysis was its redefinition of political parties as parties in the country - divisions within society and public opinion- rather than as parliamentary factions: The parties to which we wish to call [our readers'] attention are not the parties in the Cabinet - not even the parties in Parliament - but the parties in the Nation; - the Nation, whose opinions and whose spirit ought to admonish and control both Cabinet and Parliament, but which seems to us to be itself breaking rapidly into furious and irreconcileable parties; by whose collision, if it not be prevented, our constitution and independence must be speedily destroyed. 127 Thus, the role which the Whig party might have to exercise was to mediate between the forces of conservatism and radicalism: Between these [courtiers and democrats] stand a small, but most respectable band - the friends of liberty and order - the Old Constitutional Whigs of England—with the best talents and best intentions, but without power and popularity — calumniated and suspected by both parties, and looking on both with too visible a resentment, aversion and alarm.128


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This 'new' Whig party was still identified with the traditional parliamentary opposition party (the 'Old Constitutional Whigs of England') but it rested on a radically different basis. Jeffrey's diagnosis was written in 1810. The idea that the Whig party should be a political force in the country and in public opinion rather than a parliamentary faction, remained central to the reviewers' analysis throughout the 1810s and 1820s. The crucial question, in the years between 1815 and 1830, became accordingly: which elements of the political nation, which social forces and groups should be identified with the Whigs? In the years of the post-war economic crisis, under the pressure of the 'disaffected multitudes', the rather blurred 18thcentury notion of'middling ranks was forced gradually to acquire a more specific sociological content. In these ways the reviewers' modifications of philosophic Whig political theory defy neat summary. The relations between their thinking and the views of Stewart, of Millar and of Burke remained extremely unstable, sometimes corresponding quite closely and at others diverging very sharply indeed. They appealed to Burke's authority, to be sure, to enforce the principle of the desirability of political parties. And, of course, twenty or thirty years after the French revolution, they became increasingly inclined to stress the continuity of, rather than the disjunctions within, the Whig political language. But, despite this prudence, their conception of political parties as forces 'in society' and 'in the Nation' was drifting steadily away from Burke's constitutional approach, imposing and reinforcing the peculiar imprint of Scottish philosophic Whiggism. By and large it was the content of the reviewers' political judgments and of their sociological analysis which was affected by the experience of the revolution and the war; while their theoretical approach remained relatively close to that of their 18th-century Scottish mentors.

Adam Smith's heritage: the Edinburgh reviewers and the Wealth of Nations

The reviewers, Smith and the Physiocrats In the previous chapter we have discussed the impact of the French revolution and the war on the reviewers' understanding of political science at large. The next topic which it is necessary to consider is the development- throughout the war period- of political economy in the more restrictive sense of the 'science of wealth'. To what extent did the events of the years 1790 to 1815 affect, in the reviewers' eyes, the validity of the doctrines outlined in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations! Whether it is in fact legitimate to isolate 'political economy' proper from the context of the Scottish science of politics at large is obviously a controversial issue, which must be discussed later (see Chapter 3). For the moment it will be convenient simply to assume, uncritically, that the reviewers on the whole regarded political economy as a self-contained body of doctrines, and to concentrate essentially on the content of the doctrines themselves. The focus on Smith's Wealth of Nations also needs to be qualified. Dugald Stewart's course of lectures on political economy, which he began in 1799 and taught until his retirement in 1809, was not simply an exposition of Smith's doctrine. It included a rich and diversified presentation of a wide range of British and Continental works on the subject of political economy and on the theory of legislation. Among them, the writings of the French Economists were accorded at least as much importance and attention as the works of Smith himself.1 But it was the Wealth of Nations that provided the overall structure of the lectures, which were presented in fact by Stewart as a critical commentary upon Smith.2 From the years of their Edinburgh apprenticeship onwards, the reviewers continued to be concerned with the question of Smith's heritage: they were anxious both to reach some assessment of its validity, and to establish their own influence on the current interpretation of the Wealth ofNations. They were acutely sensitive to the issue of how the 46

Adam Smith's heritage: the reviewers and the 'Wealth of Nations'

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authority of 18th-century political economy was to be presented to the contemporary reading public. This concern is illustrated by a series of editorial ventures. In 1800 Francis Horner, together with his Edinburgh friends James Reddie and Thomas Brown (both of whom later became contributors to the Review), was planning an English edition of Turgot's writings and correspondence, a large part of which remained still unpublished at the time, not only in Britain but also in France.3 In his biography of Turgot, extensively cited by Stewart in his lectures, Condorcet had described the former minister of finance of Louis XVI as the champion of economic reform, fighting against aristocratic prejudices and administrative abuses. By the end of the century, Condorcet's pious portrait had lost some of its lustre, and appeared, as Horner observed in his Journal, 'somewhat too much of a panegyric';4 but the interest in Turgot's policy was kept alive by the continuing instability of French governments. Besides, as Condorcet had observed, Turgot's Essaisur la formation de la richesse was *le germe du traite sur la richesse des nations du celebre Smith',5 and certainly deserved closer attention on the part of the British public. The projected edition of Turgot was to be carried out with the co-operation of the aged Abbe Andre Morellet (17271819), who in 1776 had produced the first (never published) French translation of the Wealth ofNations, and who had the custody of Turgot's papers.6 Horner does not mention in his correspondence the reasons why the initiative was abandoned; but in 1803 he was considering instead the proposal to prepare a new critical edition of the Wealth of Nations, As Horner himself pointed out, in a short note published in the Edinburgh Review in 1806, while Germain Gamier (1754-1821) in France and Jose Alonso Ortiz in Spain had produced reliable critical editions of Smith's work, in England the Wealth of Nations still circulated in innumerable, often arbitrarily abridged or capriciously altered versions.7 Horner finally resolved to decline this proposal, pleading the burden of his activities, and observed: . . . even if I had been prepared for such an undertaking, which I certainly am not yet, I should be reluctant to expose Smith's errors before his work has operated its full effect. We owe much at present to the superstitious worship of Smith's name; and we must not impair that feeling, till the victory is more complete. There are few practical errors in the Wealth of Nations, at least of any great consequence; and, until we can give a correct and precise theory of the nature and origin of wealth, his popular and plausible and loose hypothesis is as good for the vulgar as any other.8

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The reason offered for his refusal indicated how much thought he had given to the questions that a critical reconsideration of Smith's work would necessarily raise. Francis Horner's early writings, 1800-5 Amongst the first Edinburgh reviewers, Francis Horner is the only one ever to have been regarded by historians as a political economist, although, perhaps due to his untimely death,9 his writings remained discouragingly fragmentary, and his theoretical preoccupations never achieved a sufficient degree of clarity and completeness.10 At the time when he attended Stewart's lectures in Edinburgh, and in the early years of his emigration to London, Horner gave close critical attention to Stewart's interpretation of the Smithian and of the Physiocratic doctrines. His views on the subject can be traced in two early unpublished texts: the first is the Essay on the Overgrowth of the Metropolis, written in 1800, the only surviving dissertation among those Horner submitted to the Speculative Society of Edinburgh.11 The second text is a set of Notes on my Progress in Studying the System of the Economists which Horner wrote at different times between 1801 and 1803, first when he was attending Stewart's lectures, and later on when he was preparing his article on Canard for the Edinburgh Review.12 As we mentioned above, the writings of the French Economists occupied a central place in Stewart's teaching, and Horner inherited from him a durable interest in their doctrines. It would be misleading, of course, to attach great significance to these texts.13 Horner was not engaging in an extended examination of Stewart's speculations on political economy; he was simply discussing two specific and limited issues: the role of London in the English economy, and the Physiocratic definition of productive and unproductive labour. However, they reveal Horner's own detachment from the reading of the Physiocratic and Smithian theories offered by Stewart. In the Essay on the Overgrowth of the Metropolis Horner explored the implications of the classical argument of the negative effects of opulence on the political stability and manners of a country. He first showed, against the opinion of'Political Arithmeticians',14 that the question of whether large towns were destructive of, or favourable to population, did not admit of a simple solution, and that both arguments could be sustained. Secondly, he argued that London performed an essential role in the development of the British economy; without


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denying, however, that the existence of a large town necessarily generated profligacy and corruption of manners. In his conclusions he described commercial society as capable of checking the consequences of its own evils, and indicated the least quantity of evil as the measure of the success of any given policy: After having allowed the full extent of the immoralities that prevail in our commercial Metropolis as well as in other great cities, it is necessary to recollect that they occupy a very small proportion in the immense scale of transaction which it comprehends. The least quantity of evil is unquestionably the test by which political prosperity is to be tried; but that minimum evil must be measured not by its own magnitude, but by its proportion to the quantity of good.15

The Essay contained no arguments which could not be found in Stewart's lectures. It did however show that the 18th-century querelle between the advocates of commercial civilisation and its critics had gradually acquired the repetitive and sterile character of an academic dispute. In his Notes Horner offered a dual appraisal of the politics of the Physiocrats. On the one hand, he defended them from the current accusation of being responsible for the outbreak of the revolution- a defence which was to be often echoed in the pages of the Edinburgh Review, Like Stewart, he subscribed to the view that the Economists had represented the positive and progressive side of the French revolutionary movement. They belonged to that group of 'enlightened' moderate reformers who had unavailingly attempted to impose their policy against the violence of popular demands and the blind incapacity of the monarch. At the same time, he did not hesitate to acknowledge the failure of the moderate political strategy with which the Economists had been associated. This failure had two relevant implications: first, the belief that a despotic government was well equipped to promote economic and political reforms had proved illusory. Second, the role of the political economist as 'advisor to the prince' - still to some degree implicit in Stewart's approach - had proved outdated and politically ineffective. Horner's criticism in the Notes extended to the ideological roots of the Physiocratic doctrine; he noticed the 'quasi-mystic' concern which the Economists had shown with the values of agriculture and land, and described their theoretical approach as heavily biased by the feudal and despotic character of the society in which they lived, by their belonging to an 'agrarian empire'.

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In forming a separate class of the proprietors of land\ were not the Economists misled by the prejudice of feudal habits? Does not the cultivator or farmer set apart a portion of the produce for his landlord, in exactly the same manner that he sets apart a portion of it for the monied capitalist who advanced to him the original stocking? . . . Quesnai betrays in various instances his habit of viewing too exclusively the system of political economy that prevailed in his own country; he might have enlarged his views to the more general aspect of affairs.16 This critique of the Physiocrats was implicitly a critical judgment on Stewart's own position. In his lectures Stewart had denounced the 'feudal prejudices' which had guided the politics of the Economists but he did not fully acknowledge the limitations imposed by their agrarian bias. He saw, it is true, a direct relation between the doctrines which they advanced and the characteristics of French society of the Ancien Regime. But he was unable to free himself from the boundless admiration which he felt for the privileged position which the Economists had enjoyed at the court, for the essentially 'philosophical' and 'systematic' character of their speculations, and for the reputation they had acquired in enlightened circles all over Europe.17 The central argument in the Notes turned on the comparison between the Physiocratic and the Smithian definition of productive and unproductive labour. Horner tried to show that both definitions - the Physiocratic one, which described only agricultural labour as productive, and the Smithian, which claimed that both agriculture and manufactures were productive - were equally open to defence. Both rested in fact on an a priori assumption about the productive or unproductive character of the activities of given social groups. Smith's criticism of the Economists in Book IV of the Wealth of Nations was less than persuasive; his definition of productive labour as labour producing durable commodities and of unproductive labour as labour producing services was neither rigorous nor particularly illuminating.18 The Physiocratic and the Smithian theories of production and distribution did not in fact differ widely. Quesnay had envisaged a system in which productive (agricultural) labour was at the centre of circulation, while Smith had aligned the three sources of wealth - land, labour, capital- without establishing an order of priority among them. Horner believed these two approaches to be less far from each other than they might initially appear: I have some notion that the different descriptions of this order of circulation, which have been given by Quesnai and Smith, are not altogether irreconcilable. At least, the one seems to have been in some degree derived from the


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other; & both perhaps, if stated with some modifications, might be given as appropriate descriptions of the order of distribution. - In Quesnai's view, agricultural labour is represented as the centre of circulation, the source of the circulating matter, the heart of the system. In Smith's view, we have the branching of the system delineated without any common source or origin.19

Both Quesnay's and Smith's theories of distribution rested on a 'sociological' description of the ranks which they believed to be entitled to a share in the product- even if their views about the nature and order of these ranks did not necessarily coincide. Both, Horner suggested, were still far from having attained a comprehensive theoretical approach to the question: Phys, p.5 2. The object of this chapter is evidently to explain synthetically the order in which M. Quesnai conceives that the commodities or produce, wh. compose national wealth, are distributed among the different ranks of the people. This purpose coincides with what is announced in the title of Smith's first book. Neither of them has been very distinct in the explanation of this subject, or rather in the description of this order neither of them seems to have caught a simple point of view, till the fortunate discovery of which I am persuaded that this part of the science will remain in obscurity. As it is, these two philosophers have adopted two methods distinct from each other. Quesnai has formed a classification of the people; Smith has made an analysis of price.20

Horner's reading of the Physiocrats- in particular his treatment of the definition of productive labour-was, again, very closely dependent on Stewart's own arguments. It differed from Stewart, firstly, because his political judgment on the strategies of reform set forth by political economists in the 1770s and 1780s was substantially different; and, besides, because he thought that Stewart himself had become politically too timid and retiring after the shock of the early 1790s.21 Secondly, Horner perceived that Stewart's extensive illustration of 17th- and 18th-century literature on political economy was unnecessarily 'academic' and, in the end, both repetitive and inconclusive. By his skilful exploration of all the possible arguments advanced for and against modern market society, Stewart had contrived to exhaust the actuality and interest of the argument. In his presentation, the dilemmas raised by the emergence of modern economy the opposition between town and country, manufactures and agriculture, wealth and virtue, progress and corruption, technological improvement and alienation - were fully explored, in a manner which demonstrated the inescapable interdependence of their positive and negative sides. Similarly, in his lectures on political economy,

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throughout the encyclopedic survey of over a century of economic literature, the arguments of the mass of authors who had taken part in the economic debate contradicted and corrected each other, leaving the competition between the laudatores temporis acti and the advocates of commercial progress substantially even. Horner was not inclined to underestimate the relevance of Stewart's contribution. He thought, with Stewart, that the French revolution and its aftermath had settled the argument in favour of modern market society, which, despite its notorious drawbacks, had proved itself to be an inescapable and altogether humanly acceptable, reality. Making the best of it by means of appropriate policies was the task which confronted the new generation. But he thought also that the investigation of political economy ought not to stagnate in sterile academic disputes. It must move on to examine the experience of more recent years and adjust and complete existing theories on the basis of the fresh historical evidence. Smith's theory in particular needed to be reconsidered critically and its implications tested in the light of contemporary economic experience. Horner's writings for the Edinburgh Review - focused as they were on major economic-policy issues of the war period like the suspension of convertibility of the pound sterling, the Corn Laws and taxation might also be described as fragmentary contributions to the revision of the Smithian doctrine. Written (with one unimportant exception22) between 1802 and 1806, they were at the centre of Horner's activity in the years which immediately followed his emigration to London but before the beginning of his parliamentary activity. After his election to Parliament in 1807, Horner- who had always been a slow, meticulous and laborious writer- gave up writing for the Review altogether, confining his contribution to comments and suggestions in his letters to Jeffrey. Horner's reading of Smith was guided by the view that the intrinsic weakness in the latter's work was its systematic and comprehensive character. In writing the Wealth ofNations, Smith had been misled by the ambition of producing a complete theory of political economy and, more generally, by the habit of systematic philosophical investigation. Under this impulse, he had included in his treatise arguments and conclusions which were formulated unsatisfactorily or which rested on incomplete evidence. In Smith's work- as in the commentary on it presented in Stewart's lectures - the elegance of the exposition and the


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skilful arrangement of the material were obstacles rather than aids to the attainment of truth.23 It would be misleading, however, to attribute to Horner a crudely empiricist approach: his criticism of Smith's system did not aim to deny the systematic character of political economy as a discipline. He believed, on the contrary, that the investigation of its principles would ultimately result in a complete and organic theory and not just in a loose collection of policy prescriptions. In the meantime, he viewed the rejection of the 'spirit of system' simply as a critical device to question established orthodoxy. If he was persuaded of the need to test the validity of Smith's theory, Horner also believed, as we have seen, that criticism of Smith should be expressed with great prudence, and without undermining the powerful influence that his work exercised on public opinion. He thought that the errors and lacunae in Smith's exposition should be discussed within a restricted audience of specialists, but that Smith's authority should be maintained and defended in the context of the wider political debate.24 Horner was in fact unique among the reviewers in expressing articulated criticism of Smith's views. Both Jeffrey and Brougham were inclined to support their arguments with references to Smith's authority - generally ignoring or dismissing Stewart's and the Earl of Lauderdale's (1759-1830) later interpretations - and thus creating the illusion of unquestioned theoretical continuity. Horner's articles in the Edinburgh Review focused upon three specific questions in Smith's work: the labour theory of value, the determination of corn prices and the theory of money. The discussion of Smith's labour theory of value was developed in the article on NicholasFrangois Canard's (175OP-1833) Principes d'economiepolitique.25 In 1800 the National Institute of France had proposed the following question as a subject for prize essays: 'Is it true, that in an agricultural country, taxes of all descriptions fall ultimately on the proprietors of land?' Canard's essay, which had been awarded the prize, gave expression to the pro-Smithian and anti-Physiocratic reaction which followed the end of the revolution in France. It argued, against the Physiocrats, that, since the agricultural sector was not the only productive sector, the rent of land was not the sole source of income on which taxation could in principle fall. Reconsidering the definition of productive and unproductive labour, Horner expressed the opinion that the general obscurity of

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Smith's position, like that of Canard, was due to his partial adoption of a labour theory of value, and in particular to the ambiguity of the notion of the exchange value of labour. He argued accordingly - following Stewart's26 suggestion and, on this particular issue, that of Lauderdale27 - that Smith's intermittent and somewhat confusing references to a labour theory of value should be corrected into a straightforward cost of production approach. The value of labour should not be regarded as constituting the whole price of the commodity or forming an adequate measure of it, but simply as the condition which limited the supply of the commodity itself. That the wages of the whole labour employed in production or in manufacture, form a component part of price, is an undeniable principle; in other words, that the quantity of the commodity bought must be adequate to replace, by a circuit of other exchanges, the whole commodities advanced or consumed in the manufacture of the commodity sold. But the proper mode of introducing this principle into the theory of exchangeable value, is not to state the value of labour as constituting the whole price, or forming an adequate measure of it, but to view it as a condition which limits the eventual supply of each commodity . . . in the actual exchange of any one commodity for any other, no regard is paid to the quantity of labour employed in producing either; the quantities, reciprocally exchanged, are proportioned by the competition between the supply and demand of both.28

Horner's theoretical conclusions were favourable to the position of the Physiocrats. He stated, against Canard, that the Physiocratic theory of the incidence of taxation - that all forms of taxation fall ultimately on rent- was correct. He also believed that Smith was wrong in assuming that the incidence of taxation would ultimately fall on both rent and profit.29 However, when he came to discuss the political implications of his argument, he made it clear that he had no sympathy for the Economists' proposal for a unified territorial tax, but subscribed to the current opposition opinion, which saw any French system of taxation as 'despotic' and 'centralised' by definition and as the model for Pitt's execrated war-time taxation policy. In the article on the bounty on corn,30 Horner undertook the criticism of a political measure - the Corn Bill of 1804 - which he described as outrageously opposed to any 'salutary doctrine of political economy'.31 Hastily introduced with the explicit aim of keeping the price of corn high after two years of plentiful harvests, and of excluding foreign competition, voted through with very little opposition by the two Houses, the Bill was a concession to the panic and pressures of corn producers. An example of war-time piecemeal legislation, it had no


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pretensions to theoretical coherence, but simply bespoke the alarm created by the first effects of war inflation. Comparing this new measure with the previous legislation on corn trade, Horner argued that the Corn Bill of 1773 - though somewhat unsatisfactory - had on the whole been framed 'upon Smith's principles', thus raising the expectation of further improvements in the commercial legislation of the country. This expectation was finally frustrated when- owing to an accidental coincidence of circumstances affecting both the price of corn and the corn balance of trade - public opinion was turned erroneously in favour of the bounty.32 If the article was phrased as a defence of Smith's doctrine against the prejudices of politicians and of popular opinion, Horner admitted further that, in reconsidering Smith's reasoning on the effects of the bounty, he had met with several inconsistencies and imprecisions.33 Horner's divergence from Smith concerned the consequences of a bounty granted on the exportation of corn. Horner denied that a bounty on exportation could- as it was generally argued, and as Smith himself had 'too readily assumed' - have the immediate effect of increasing the price of corn in the home market, thus creating an incentive to increase corn production. He believed, rather, that the effect of stimulation of the demand for corn and of the increase in price on the home market would be achieved indirectly, through the medium of the foreign market.34 Smith's mistakes, Horner commented, were not such as to endanger the practical implications of his argument, but they had certainly added to the misunderstandings and errors of the contemporary advocates of the bounty. Horner concluded the article by arguing that the alarm which had been excited over the conditions of English agriculture was unjustified, and that the success of England's commerce and manufactures concealed the remarkable progress of its agriculture. The argument, however, was not carried any further; unlike James Mill in his pamphlet on the bounty published in the same year, 1804,35 Horner did not frame his attack on the bounty within a general view about progress and economic development. He raised the question of how to conceive economic progress, but postponed its treatment to a forthcoming review of Thomas Robert Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), which in the end he never completed.36 The reviewers' attitude towards Malthus's Essay deserves some notice.37 In a letter to Richard Sharp, written in 1806, Horner described Mai thus as 'the discoverer of a new world'.38 If he never completed the

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review of the Essay he had repeatedly promised to Jeffrey, it was essentially because he felt he had not achieved sufficient clarity about the important theoretical implications of Malthus's anti-populationist argument In 1815, when Malthus had himself become a contributor to the Review, and he and Horner found themselves on opposite sides in the debate on the new Corn Law, Horner declared that Malthus's decision to support the agriculturalists was the only fact that made him feel less confident about the Tightness of his own position.39 Certainly the reviewers thought, with Stewart, that in the Essay Malthus had given a conclusive answer to a whole range of objections to modern market economy. On the one hand, by stressing the necessarily limited character of resources, Malthus had ruled out the argument in favour of perfectibility set forth by Godwin and by the Radicals. As Sydney Smith wrote in 1802, * While everybody was abusing and despising Mr Godwin, and while Mr Godwin was, among a certain description of understandings, increasing every day in popularity, Mr Malthus took the trouble of refuting him; and we hear no more of Mr Godwin.'40 On the other hand, Malthus had provided a powerful answer to the recurrent Christian and paternalist claims that governments had an obligation to feed the poor. In 1802 the issue was at the centre of Sydney Smith's attack on the archdeacon Robert Nares (1753-1829), editor of the Tory British Critic (1793-1813).41 In the article, Smith refuted Nares's claim that farmers should be held responsible for the high price of corn; and he ridiculed the archdeacon's proposal that granaries should be put under the control of an exciseman. Smith observed that the question of the corn trade had divided society into two parts - those who had any talent for reasoning and those who had not. Relying on Malthus's arguments, he attacked the existing Poor Laws, and suggested that, in time of famine, the poor should be taken care of by organised private charity.42 In addition to the immediate political relevance of Malthus's Essay, Horner had the intuition - which he expressed in the Notes on the Physiocrats - that Malthus's anti-populationist argument must necessarily affect the Smithian theory of distribution, in particular the understanding of the determination of wages and rent. He also believed that it might be possible to formulate a more general and rigorous theory of distribution on the basis of Malthus's contribution; but he never carried his insight any further. It was especially through his discussion of monetary theory in the


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review of Henry Thornton's (1762-1815) Inquiry into the Nature of Paper Credit** (1802) that Horner developed his criticism of Smith's work. The review of Thornton's book - unanimously judged by commentators as a most successful popular exposition of Thornton's ideas- was essentially a survey and reassessment of the theory of money and credit. Further considerations on the issue were presented in a later article - the review of Peter, Lord King's (1776-1833) Thoughts on the Restriction of Payments (1803) 44 - more explicitly political in character, which discussed the effects of the restriction of payments on the Irish pound and on the state of foreign exchanges, and in which Horner presented for the first time his view that the over-issue of paper money on the part of the Bank of England was the root of the increase in the price of bullion. On the whole, the theory of money and paper currency appeared to Horner as the least satisfactory and settled part of the inheritance of 18th-century political economy, the one which had become more rapidly outdated as a result of the financial experience of recent years. In his view, the necessary premise for any useful investigation of the subject was the recognition that recent events surrounding the suspension of payments in 1797 represented a completely new historical experience, and therefore jeopardised the validity of any previous theoretical generalisation. In his presentation of Thornton's book, Horner began by praising the contribution of'practical men' to the understanding of political economy. If Thornton's exposition was muddled and inelegant, and betrayed his lack of training in systematic investigation, it was, however, only from the experience of practitioners like him that the 'speculative inquirer' could learn the mistakes in his own doctrine. Horner illustrated in particular some relevant technical suggestions which emerged from Thornton's elaborate description of the functioning of English credit: the importance of promissory notes and bills of exchange in integrating the circulating medium of the country; and the relevance of the velocity of circulation in determining the volume of the circulating medium, a point which, Horner argued, had largely escaped Smith's attention. At the same time, Thornton attempted - though not to Horner's complete satisfaction - to clarify two critical theoretical issues which were inadequately treated by Smith and by other authorities on the subject. The issues were, first, the validity of the principle of the convertibility of paper into gold, and the limits within which it should be

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accepted. Both Thornton and Horner believed that the immediate convertibility of paper into gold was the necessary condition for any sound system of circulation; but the recent experience of the Bank of England indicated that convertibility could be suspended for a considerable length of time without causing major financial and social disaster. It was necessary, therefore, to consider how far the 1797 experience limited the validity of a principle which had been generalised prematurely: That the immediate convertibility of paper into gold is an indispensable condition of its credit, as we are taught by the language of system, has been disproved by the recent history of the Bank of England, which has happily quieted the apprehensions to which our best informed politicians yielded, on account of the events of 1797. The maintenance of credit during a short interval of suspended payments, was a case, indeed, which might have been foreseen by theory, and was not totally unknown to our previous experience. But that a restriction of this kind should have been continued for more than five years, without any depreciation of the paper from failure of confidence, is a fact which has falsified all reasonable prediction, and forms an exception to the most confident maxims of all former economists. It is incumbent on us, therefore, to consider how far we are required to limit, by the result of this experiment, a principle which has been generalized prematurely.45

In the attempt to answer this question, Thornton introduced into his analysis a consideration of the psychological factors affecting the conditions of public credit, which represented a major break with the traditional treatment of the subject.46 The second issue was: how precisely did any increase of the circulating medium of a country (both in the form of precious metals and of paper) affect the general level of prices of commodities? The way in which Smith had described the relationship between the circulating medium and the level of prices- in particular his assumption that every issue of paper currency would 'automatically displace' an equivalent quantity of gold- appeared to Horner purely 'metaphorical'. It suggested the existence of some interaction between paper currency and prices, but once again failed to provide a real explanation of the mechanism of price determination. Finally, Thornton's book raised a crucial political question: to what extent did the experience of the suspension of payments go together with a transformation in the nature and functions of the Bank of England? The control that the Bank had achieved, through the suspension of payments, over the general financial conditions of the country, suggested that the Bank had acquired the character of a national


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institution, rather than remaining merely an important private financial company. This transformation in the function of the Bank obviously raised the issue of what degree of political control could, or should, be exercised over such an institution. If the Bank of England must now be considered as a national establishment, not merely influencing, by the superior magnitude of its capital, the state of commercial circulation, but guiding its movements according to views of public policy, an important revolution has taken place since the erection of that corporation as a banking establishment . . . The organization of this establishment, possessed of such means to control the operations of commerce, as well as to facilitate the advance of financial supplies may, in our political constitution already complicated, introduce a new principle of action, the effect of which cannot be clearly discerned. Perhaps, an unbounded field will be opened to the extension of ministerial influence. Perhaps, an unexpected control may be gained to the people, over the views and measures of the executive.47

Thus, not only did the Smithian theory of money have to be revised, it had to be revised in the light of a significant transformation in the institutional framework and in the functions of the state. It would be sterile to speculate on the alternative approach to economic theory which might possibly have emerged from Horner's criticism of Smith, had he expressed his views in a more complete and systematic form. Horner's reflections, as we have described them, were far too fragmentary to allow such a reconstruction; the specific questions he raised about the theory of value, corn prices and paper currency, were commonplace arguments at the time - generally echoing Stewart's and Lauderdale's positions - and he failed to provide a theoretical framework other than the Smithian one. Horner was genuinely preoccupied with the internal coherence of the Smithian theory, and was to a certain extent the prisoner of his own diligent and unimaginative scholarship: but he had the courage and merit to expose Smith's authority to the test of historical evidence, and to see how far the doctrines outlined in the Wealth of Nations could actually be applied in the current political debate. Henry Brougham on the colonies and on Lauderdale, 1803-4 At first sight, including Henry Brougham in a study of the interpretations of Smith's work may seem dubious. While the role played by Brougham on the 19th-century political scene was of undeniable importance, and his contribution to the various fields of social reform-

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popular education, slavery, prisons and law reform, etc. - was massive and influential, his writings on political economy can hardly be described as rigorous, let alone relevant or original. In a letter to McCulloch, written on 19 February 1822, Ricardo observed, 'Nothing could be worse than the lectures on political economy lately given to the House by Brougham- he is not even perfect in Adam Smith's work, and really appears not to have paid any attention to the works which have been published in our day.'48 But - like his contemporary Francis Horner and his intimate friend James Mill- Brougham was a pupil of Dugald Stewart. If his knowledge of Adam Smith's work remained faulty, this was not because he lacked a thorough Scottish training, but rather because of his restlessness and dislike for all 'abstract' intellectual pursuits. Like Horner, Brougham relied on the authority of Adam Smith to build up his image as an expert on the subject. If we can believe Sydney Smith's testimony, shortly after his emigration to London in 1803 Brougham's reputation - like Homer's - was 'high for political economy'.49 Brougham's first performance as a writer on political economy was his Inquiry into the Colonial Policy ofthe European Powers, published in Edin-

burgh in 18O3.50 Voluminous, theoretically confused, badly arranged, illustrating the peculiar state of international relationships created by the Napoleonic wars, this work would have been completely forgotten had it not been for the reputation later acquired by its author. However, it is relevant to our investigation since it represents Brougham's Scottish 'masterpiece', his first and last attempt to produce an economic treatise in the Scottish line. The book was conceived and drafted hurriedly at a particularly difficult time in Brougham's life: when he was a young barrister in Edinburgh, with no fortune, no clients (he found the Bar boring anyway), no prospects of improving his position, and haunted by gloomy fantasies about joining the Army or emigrating to the East Indies.51 According to his own testimony, Brougham wrote the book because he needed money and hoped that a treatise on the colonies might find a reasonably large public among merchants and civil servants, especially at a time when international relationships and colonial trade were particularly troubled. If he filled several chapters with erudite considerations about colonies in the ancient world and about the Punic wars, he collected as much 'fresh' information as he could about the contemporary state of colonial settlements, especially those, such as Santo


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Domingo, which had been directly affected by the French revolution.52 At the same time, he hoped that the book might gain him a reputation, and he watched public reactions to it anxiously. His friends, Mackintosh, Horner and Jeffrey, thought highly of it.53 James Mill reviewed it rather favourably in the Literary Journal.™ Dugald Stewart (as Brougham himself reported ironically in his correspondence) dropped only an absent-minded comment, 55 while Fox (1749-1806) - whom he had presented with a copy- replied with 'a very civil sort of letter', in which he promised to 'examine his opinions' but anticipated his dissent on the question of the slave trade.56 The only influential connection Brougham acquired through his work was William Wilberforce (17591833), who, unlike Fox, was favourably impressed by the chapters of the Inquiry dealing with the question of the slave trade, and who, after Brougham's emigration to London, introduced him into his circle.57 The central argument in the Inquiry was a defence of colonial trade which was described as generally advantageous to the mother country.58 Brougham argued that both Mercantilists and Physiocrats had been wrong in considering colonial settlements as a dispersion of capital which might have been more profitably employed at home.59 Colonies had to be thought of not as distant foreign countries, but as provinces of a single large empire. The capital laid out for their administration and defence was to be regarded not as a burden to the mother country but as a part of the current expenses of the state. Besides, similarities of language and customs between the colonies and the mother country created incentives to trade, making the colonial market comparatively safe and colonial wars unlikely. Brougham suggested that those wars in the 18 th century that Smith and Turgot had described as 'colonial wars' were in fact wars among European powers for supremacy in Europe, and were not caused by the nature of colonial possessions as such.60 In the framework of his defence of colonial trade, Brougham set forth a fairly unsubtle criticism of Smith's position. Smith's argument about colonial trade in the Wealth of Nations was, first, that the monopoly of colonial trade did not constitute an addition to the trade of the country, but simply a change in its direction; second, that, since profits were generally higher in the colonial trade than in other sectors of the economy, the monopoly of colonial trade would cause a general increase in the rate of profit; capitals would in fact be attracted into the

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colonial trade, thus lessening the competition in other sectors.61 What Smith was concerned with here was the negative consequences of a high rate of profit on the economy as a whole; and the problems that a nation enjoying high profits and high prices would meet in competing in the international market. Brougham completely overlooked these implications of Smith's argument, as he missed much of the complexity of the 18th-century rich countries-poor countries debate. He read the argument as a commonplace survey of the disadvantages of colonial trade: insecurity, round-about transactions and slow returns. Accordingly, he came to the conclusion that Smith's view of colonial trade was not very different from the views of the Mercantilist and Physiocratic writers, and suggested that only the circumstance of the Wealth ofNations being written at the time of the American war had induced Smith to a more prudent phrasing of his criticism of the monopoly of colonial trade.62 As James Mill suggested in his review, Brougham's criticism of Smith appeared to be dictated by the desire of impressing the reader with an attack upon the Wealth ofNations, rather than being founded on an alternative theoretical approach. Comparatively original and perhaps the most interesting argument in Brougham's work was the idea that colonial settlements could provide a remedy against the evils of surplus population and excessive accumulation of capital, two problems which he thought Great Britain - like Holland and Venice before her - was bound to face very soon.63 When the population of a community has become very great in proportion to its means of subsistence, the price of labour is diminished, and a large accumulation of inhabitants is always to be found floating, as it were, in the country . . . often inclined, in their idleness and exigencies to adopt various means of procuring relief; . . . In like a manner, when the wealth of a country has greatly increased, and the lines of employment for stock are not multiplied at the same time; the profits are diminished, and a great part of the national capital floats about, shifting from one occupation to another, in order to obtain higher profits.[sic]64 Surplus population generated social unrest and, similarly, surplus capital favoured excessive speculation. Colonies, especially in territories like America, where the new immigrants could easily settle as farmers cultivating their own land, offered a remedy against these evils, which governments of developed countries should recognise in due time. If the idea was not entirely new 65, Brougham's concern with the conse-


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quences of widespread unemployment and uncontrolled financial speculations bespoke the economic climate of the war period. Two years later, Brougham reviewed favourably in the Review Talleyrand's essay Sur les colonies, in which the establishment of new colonies was advocated as an effective remedy for the social unrest created by the French revolution and the war.66 We have mentioned above Wilberforce's interest in the Inquiry, The work included an extensive discussion of the slave trade, in which its abolition was warmly advocated, while the abolition of slavery and the institution of a 'free negro system' the author rejected as a dangerous and impracticable Utopia. This criticism was directed against reformers like Turgot, but mainly against the French revolutionary government, who bore the responsibility for the explosive situation in the West Indies.67 In this context, the Inquiry also expressed a passionate defence and justification of the French war.68 It is perhaps useful to recall that, at the time of his emigration to London, Brougham had not yet made a choice of his party allegiance. If he very soon found the opportunity of putting his talents at the service of Lord Holland and the Whigs, he also simultaneously set his hopes on William Pitt's patronage - possibly in the form of a ministerial post or of a Treasury seat. The Inquiry- like his early articles for the Edinburgh Review - reflected the ambiguity of this quasi-Tory phase in his political career. A second early text which illustrates Brougham's handling of the Smithian tradition is his review of the Earl of Lauderdale's Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth (1804), published in the Edinburgh Review in July 1804.69 Violently abusive, arrogant in tone and often inaccurate, the review was almost certainly written as a personal attack upon a rather unpopular political character.70 James Maitland, eighth Earl of Lauderdale, had entered the House of Commons in 1780, where he became a prominent representative of the opposition to Pitt, and was closely associated with Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1741-1816) and Edmund Burke. In 1789 he succeeded to his Scottish peerage, and in 1790 was elected a representative Scottish peer. Although he was a personal friend of John Millar and Dugald Stewart, his politics drifted gradually towards more conservative positions, leaving him by the time of his death an opponent of the 1832 Reform Bill.71 Because of his conservatism, Lauderdale was generally disliked by the Edinburgh reviewers, and even Horner - whom he patronised judged him politically corrupt.72 With the sole exception of Horner-

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who had originally planned to review the book himself and who was appalled by Brougham's careless handling of theoretical questions 73 the Edinburgh reviewers were quite pleased with Brougham's performance. Both Mackintosh and Sydney Smith expressed their satisfaction - though on purely political grounds - while Jeffrey declared that the article was on the whole 'excellent' and that it took 'a fine range'.74 In the same month of the publication of Brougham's review, Lauderdale's work was also reviewed by James Mill in the Literary Journal. We shall occasionally refer to Mill's article while discussing Brougham's text - the two reviews display significant similarities and their arguments overlap considerably.75 In introducing his review, Brougham described Lauderdale as a deluded follower of the Physiocrats, who had not entirely freed himself from the errors and prejudices of their doctrine.76 His general argument was that the criticism of Smith's theory set forth by Lauderdale in his work was based on a misleading and partial reading of the Wealth of Nations', and that the concepts and definitions presented as novelties in the Inquiry were in fact commonplace truths, contained within, rather than conflicting with, Smith's theory.77 The first point Brougham discussed was Lauderdale's criticism of Smith's theory of value. In the Inquiry Lauderdale defined the value of a commodity as determined by its utility and scarcity, and argued against the theory according to which labour could provide an invariable measure of value. Brougham denied that there was anything new in this position: he argued first that what Lauderdale meant by value was in fact the exchangeable value of commodities, and that it was self-evident that value in this specific sense was determined exclusively by supply and demand. Second, he argued that Smith did not attach a very rigorous meaning to the idea that labour was the invariable measure of value, but that he had introduced it as a useful device and a convenient approximation: Upon the whole we are disposed to think that our author avails himself of certain obscurities, and even inconsistencies in Dr Smith's language, for the purpose of fastening upon him a much more contradictory and erroneous theory than he ever maintained. That a person of Dr Smith's metaphysical and mathematical powers should have meant to predicate the absolute immutability of any standard, we cannot for a moment imagine . . . We apprehend that he only sought for an approximation, and thought he had found it in that one commodity which, being by much the most frequently exchanged against


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all other commodities, and of course the most constantly brought into comparison with every object of barter, might be assumed as the best attainable measure of their relative value.78 The problem was expressed more clearly by Mill, who argued that Lauderdale failed to make the appropriate distinction between value and price: Lauderdale believed he had proved, against Smith, that labour was variable in value, while the variations which he has observed were in fact variations in its price. Similarly, Lauderdale's distinction between private and public wealth rested on a confusion of the notions of real and nominal price. Lauderdale affirmed that it was possible to have a variation in the value of the total wealth of a country while the portions of wealth in the possession of single individuals remained the same; and he concluded that this proved that public wealth was something different from the sum of individual riches. This, Mill observed, was an opinion which could derive only from the confusion of a variation in the general level of prices with a variation in the value of commodities.79 The second issue discussed in the review was in the definition of productive and unproductive labour. Here Brougham advanced once more (though without acknowledging his sources) the familiar argument of Stewart and Horner. Smith's definition of productive labour as labour producing durable commodities was theoretically unsophisticated and in the end very similar to the definition given by the Physiocrats. Smith had in fact defined productive labour as labour adding to the existing stock of commodities, as opposed to the labour employed in services. This followed the implications of the Physiocratic definition, which saw agricultural labour as labour creating new wealth, in opposition to the labour employed in the mere transformation of matter. With reference to the Physiocratic definition of productive labour, Brougham argued that there was no essential difference between the powers of man over matter in agriculture and in other employments: nature always 'laboured with man' and the division of labour could be carried on in the agricultural as in the manufacturing sector, though obviously not to the same extent. The Economists had assumed that the demand for the product of the work of the artisan was necessarily limited, while the demand for grain could be indefinitely expanded - this assumption was unjustified, and the demand for manufactures could expand with the growth of population and wealth in the same way as the demand for food:

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It may safely be concluded that all those occupations which tend to supply the necessary wants, or to multiply the comforts and pleasures of human life, are equally productive in the strict sense of the word, and tend to augment the mass of human riches, all those things which are necessary, or convenient, or delightful to man.80 On this particular question, Brougham did not materially differ from Lauderdale, though he rather arbitrarily accused the latter's treatment of the issue of being 'deficient' and 'narrow'. Thirdly, the review discussed Lauderdale's definition of the 'sources of wealth' and his theory of the accumulation of capital. In the Inquiry Lauderdale indicated land, labour and capital as the three sources of wealth, introducing capital as a separate element, at variance with Smith's twofold definition, which included only land and labour. The difference was not just one of words, as both Brougham and James Mill suggested in their reviews, minimising the relevance of Lauderdale's criticism. What Lauderdale objected to in his classification was the idea that the function of capital was that of'putting labour into motion, or adding to the productive power of labour'. He thought, on the contrary, that what capital did was 'supplanting the necessity of a portion of labour which should otherwise be performed by the hand of man', or 'executing a portion of labour, beyond the reach of the powers of man to accomplish'. The difference was that in the first case labour was thought of as being everywhere in proportion to the quantity of existing capital; while in the second case this correspondence between labour and capital was not taken for granted, and the implication was that 'a nation [could not] be benefited by the possession of a greater portion of capital than [could] be employed in performing and supplanting labour in the production and formation of those things for which were [existed] a demand'.81 It was on this premise that Lauderdale founded his criticism of Smith's notion ofparsimony as the basis of capital accumulation. Parsimony could not increase the wealth of the nation in so far as, first, it created a stock of capital which could not profitably be employed, and, second, it abstracted resources which would otherwise have stimulated future reproduction. In reply to Lauderdale's underconsumptionist argument, Brougham objected first, that since capital itself derived from land and labour it could not be considered as a separate source of wealth. Second, that it was inconceivable that, in any given historical situation, capital might be accumulated to excess. On this second point, however, Brougham's position was not formulated very convincingly and his views, here as in


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the Inquiry, appear somewhat contradictory. While Mill flatly denied the possibility of insufficient demand, Brougham admitted that England might already have reached the limits of capital accumulation and that further growth might be possible only if the nation should 'attend more to her domestic agriculture' and to 'the improvement of her noble colonies'82 - a conclusion which the much abused noble lord might very well have endorsed. Lauderdale's immediate polemical target in his criticism of parsimony, was the accumulation of the national debt. In reply to this, Brougham produced an apology for Pitt's sinking fund- a position which he was soon to abandon as he did most of those which he expressed in this period.83 Though they were written for purely instrumental and political reasons, and despite their diffuseness and lack of rigour, these two texts allow some conclusions about Brougham's handling of Smith's writings. Despite his limited talent for theory, Brougham did not renounce his claims to the Scottish heritage and to the Scottish monopoly of economic knowledge. Like Homer, he began his political career by setting himself up as an expert on economic questions and succeeded in some measure in making this image a convincing one. His ideas about what the heritage was, however, were quite different from Horner's. He chose to appeal to Smith's authority without looking too closely into the lacunae, inconsistencies or unsolved questions in Smith's theory which had been the object of Stewart's investigation, and which had later attracted Horner's attention. This attitude derived partly from Brougham's personal lack of interest in genuine theoretical speculation - a lack of interest he affected to be proud of, praising empiricism and practical politics against the shortcomings of Scottish metaphysics. It was an attitude, however, which Jeffrey was inclined to share and which had some little influence upon the intellectual policy of the Edinburgh Review. The choice of turning the Wealth of Nations into the fundamental treatise on political economy implied a highly dismissive attitude towards the results attained by post-Smithian Scottish authors like Stewart and Lauderdale, and also towards specific fields of interest (such as Physiocracy) which had been at the centre of their investigation. As a matter of fact, Brougham did not ignore or reject the results of Stewart's or Lauderdale's speculation; indeed in most cases- when discussing the labour theory of value or the notion of productive labour - he simply used their own arguments. But, as we have seen, it

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was to Smith's authority that the arguments were attributed, stretching the boundaries and implications of his analysis to cover the whole span of the discussion. This operation was rendered possible only by presenting an oversimplified and impoverished reading of some of the topics which had been at the centre of the 18th-century economic debate. At the same time, the appeal to Smithian orthodoxy did not result in the rejection of new theoretical approaches: on the contrary, it went together with a considerable degree of eclecticism. Provided that Smith's authority was firmly established, the actual content of the doctrines which went under his name could be considerably altered and revised. In this process of adjustment Brougham always proved extremely receptive. His long-standing friendship with James Mill in particular kept him in constant touch with opinions which, if they often coincided with the opinions of the Edinburgh Review on issues of economic policy, still remained in the eyes of the Scottish group ideologically and intellectually suspect.84 Brougham's early writings reflected the change in the historical background to economic theorising at the beginning of the 19th century. Some of the questions Brougham discussed - such as the advantages and disadvantages of colonial trade in the Inquiry, or the limits to capital accumulation in the review of Lauderdale - were 'classical' topics which had been fully explored in the 18th-century Scottish debate. Of these, Brougham presented an impoverished version, in which, while most of the old concepts and arguments survived, the original questions for which they had been devised had become completely lost to sight. One of the crucial issues in the 18th-century Scottish debate had been the comparison between Scotland and England, and thus between poor and rich countries. The debate turned upon the conditions which create economic development (or economic backwardness) and upon the possibility for a commercial nation to maintain its prosperity and supremacy in the international market.85 Now underdeveloped Scotland disappeared from the map, while England's economic supremacy became an undisputed reality. Brougham and James Mill centred their reflections upon the image of a world-wide, commercial empire, essentially without a rival. It was England, as a developed commercial country and a colonial power, which had become the central object of economic investigation.


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Editing the Wealth of Nations', from Gamier (1802) to McCulloch (1828) In the very first years of the 19th century- more precisely, in the brief moment of political detente which followed the peace of Amiens - the Wealth of Nations became the focus of sympathetic attention from French writers on political economy. The interest in Smith's work in France was associated with the development of a critique of Mercantilism and of Physiocracy. Politically, it was an attack upon the persistently protectionist policies of French governments. The popularity of Smith in France was greatly promoted by the publication of Germain Garnier's translation of the Wealth of Nations in 1802.86 Count Germain Gamier, an emigre and intimate of Louis XVI, had taken part in the events of the 18 th brumaire and had become prefect and finally president of the Senate under the empire. His translation of the Wealth of Nations was introduced by a highly laudatory assessment of Smith's contribution to political economy. After a detailed criticism of Mercantilism and Colbertism- which he portrayed as the causes of the backwardness of French industry in modern timesGamier presented a comparison between the doctrines of the Physiocrats and those of Smith. He argued that the reason why the Physiocrats had failed politically was the extreme abstraction and obscurity which characterised the presentation of their doctrines: Les idees speculatives presentees par ces philosophes, quoique difficiles a contester au fond, s'accordent toutesfois si peu avec le train des affaires humaines, elles offrent une application si eloignee aux interets de la societe, tels que le monde les comprend, qu'elles ne furent generalement accueillies par l'opinion publique que comme d'ingenieuses reveries.87

In the end, the ideas of the Economists aroused the general hostility of ministers, public administrators and virtually every social class: from the manufacturers and traders - who resented the definition of their activities as sterile - to the landowners and farmers who were greatly alarmed by the proposal for a generalised land tax. Smith's work, on the other hand, had, according to Gamier, the merit of being extremely easy to understand and readily accessible to common sense. The Physiocratic theory had at its basis the idea of land, while the Smithian one was founded on the concept of labour. The former thus displayed the character of a 'speculative' (or 'natural') science; while

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the latter stood in much closer relation to the current activities and preoccupations of men: Ainsi la science de l'economie politique, consideree sous le point de vue qu'ont adopte les economistes, rentre dans la classe des sciences naturelles, qui sont purement speculatives, et qui ne peuvent se proposer autre chose que la connaissance et l'exposition des lois qui regissent l'objet dont la science s'occupe; au lieu que, vue sous l'aspect sous lequel Smith nous la represente, cette science se trouve reunie aux autres sciences morales qui tendent a ameliorer leur objet et a le porter au plus haut degre de perfection dont il est susceptible.88

It is interesting to notice that Gamier continued to maintain his wholehearted Smithianism in the face of the critiques of the Wealth of Nations advanced by Mai thus, Ricardo and others in the 1810s. In the introduction to the 2nd edition of his translation, published in 1821, he argued that the economic developments of recent years had only confirmed the validity of Smith's analysis; and that the criticism of the latter's opponents had proved unfounded and was contradicted by historical experience.89 In these ways Gamier's work (which was read extensively on the Continent), certainly contributed to establish and defend the prestige of the Smithian orthodoxy. The year after the appearance of the first edition of Gamier's translation, the Genevan economist Jean-Charles Simonde de Sismondi (1773-1842), the brother-in-law of James Mackintosh and a contributor to the Review, published his first work: De la richesse commerciale (1803),90 which was to a large extent a summary of Smith's views on commercial policy. In the same year Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832), in the preface to this Traite d'economie politique (1803), likewise paid homage to Smith affirming that: 'avant lui il n'y avait pas d'economie politique'.91 The liberal opinions expressed in the Traite and his support of Smith's views on free trade, caused Say to fall into disgrace with the new regime; his work was withdrawn from circulation, only to be republished triumphantly after Waterloo.92 In 1814 the project for an English critical edition of the Wealth of Nations, which Francis Horner had contemplated eleven years before, was finally accomplished by David Buchanan (1779-1848), a Scottish journalist and occasional contributor to the Review?1 Buchanan's edition, which included a volume of notes and critical commentary, was purportedly an attempt to correct and supplement Smith's analysis, so as to maintain for the Wealth ofNations its character of complete and sys-


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tematic treatise on political economy: "The object of the present work is, to rectify what is amiss in Dr Smith; to supply omissions; to give his reasonings an application to modern times; and to exhibit, as far as the author is qualified, a complete system of political economy.'94 The points raised by Buchanan in his commentary were in general the same as those which Horner had treated in his articles in the Review. He endeavoured to clarify the mechanism of the determination of prices and the functioning of bounties; offered some account of the experience of the suspension of payments of 1797; and restated Stewart's and Lauderdale's arguments about the definition of productive and unproductive labour.95 Possibly the most interesting and original feature of Buchanan's commentary was his intuition that the results of the analysis in Malthus's Essay should be embodied within the Smithian theory of the determination of wages and rent. Buchanan argued that, since the publication of Smith's work, Malthus had been the only author who could be said to have extended the boundaries of political economy.96 Buchanan laid particular emphasis on Malthus's criticism of Smith on the issue of the wages fund. In the Essay Malthus had argued that Smith was wrong to represent every increase of the revenue or stock as a proportional increase of the funds destined to the support of labour. If the question of an increase of stock was considered in relation to the whole country, the additional stock would not be 'an effectual fund' for the maintenance of an additional number of labourers, unless part of it were actually convertible into an additional quantity of provisions. But the additional stock could not be convertible into more provisions where the increase had arisen merely from the product of labour and not from the produce of land. In other words, according to Malthus it was possible to have an increase in the capital employed in manufactures without an increase in the capacity to maintain labour.97 Against Malthus's argument, Buchanan insisted that- as Smith had indicatedlabourers' wages were not necessarily spent only on food but could also be spent in the purchase of other necessities and comforts; the more so if workers in a given country were experiencing rising living standards. Thus Buchanan endorsed Smith's argument of the necessary interdependence of the growth of manufacture and agriculture, and the idea that agriculture could benefit only from the improvement of manufacture and trade.98 In 1844, Buchanan published a work entitled Inquiry into the Taxation and Commercial Policy of Great Britain, with Observations on the Principles of

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R ethinking the politics of commercial society

Currency and Exchangeable Value (Edinburgh), in which he collected the

notes, comments and observations he had set forth thirty years before in his edition of Smith. By that time, his criticism - which simply ignored Ricardo's work - had lost most of its interest, and appeared completely out of date in the context of the current economic debate. At the time of its publication, however, the Buchanan edition, despite its modest intentions, did help to sustain the impression of an active process of revision of Smith on the part of the Scottish school. The fact was observed in particular by the French economist Charles Ganilh (1758-1836), a protectionist who had held various public offices during the revolution and the empire and was then member of the Chamber under the Restoration. In the second edition of his Systemes d'economie politique (1821)" Ganilh quoted Buchanan's Wealth of

Nations, together with Ricardo's and Malthus's writings, as proof of the existence of profound dissent among political economists: 'Le sceptre conquis si glorieusement par Adam Smith est glorieusement dispute, mais il n'est pas encore a personne.'100 Thus Ganilh presented his book - which soon became an extremely popular exposition of current economic doctrines - under the title of Systemes, in order to stress that political economy was still an aggregate of controversial doctrines and opinions rather than a completed science.101 The issue of the validity of Smith's heritage received a conciliatory and lasting summary with the publication of McCulloch's edition of the Wealth of Nations in 1828. 102

John Ramsay McCulloch, born in Whithorn (Galloway) in 1789 and educated at the University of Edinburgh between 1807 and 1811, began his connection with the Edinburgh Review in 1818, when he published a review of Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy.103

McCulloch soon became the chief contributor of the Review for economic issues (at the same time, between 1817-21, he was the editor of the 'liberal' Edinburgh newspaper The Scotsman) and in the following twenty years he produced some seventy-eight articles on various topics in economic theory and economic policy.104 His contribution came to an end in 1838, when Lord Melbourne obtained for him the Stationery Office Controllership and a stable income.105 Like Buchanan, McCulloch's initial premise in his edition was the necessity to correct and complete Smith's investigation in the light of the dense historical experience of the previous thirty years. McCulloch argued that the war had so profoundly and rapidly transformed the


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European economy that new, though not always exhaustive, theoretical insights had inevitably to be added to the old doctrines. The extraordinary changes occasioned by the late war in every department of the public economy, deeply affected the interests of all classes,and created the most anxious universal attention. The experience of centuries was crowded into the short space of thirty years; and while novel combinations of circumstances served as tests by which to try existing theories, they enabled even inferior writers to extend the boundaries of the science, and to become the discoverers of new truths.106

Unlike some of the previous commentators, who discussed the doctrines of Mercantilists, of Physiocrats and of Smith as conflicting theoretical options and alternative solutions to current economic problems, McCulloch gave an essentially historical presentation of the sequence in which these doctrines had succeeded each other at the centre of economic debate. In presenting this historical sketch of the development of political economy from Mercantilism to Ricardianism, McCulloch relied substantially on the fourth book of the Wealth of Nations and, besides, on the model of Dugald Stewart's Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith101 and his lectures on political economy. The result was a smooth and apparently logical narrative of the progress of political economy from the origins to the present, very similar to the one which is now familiar to the modern reader. In his Introductory Discourse, McCulloch began by describing the role of slave labour in the ancient world, and the consequent lack of interest in economics on the part of classical writers. He then illustrated the association between the growth of commerce in the 15 th and 16 th centuries and the development of Mercantilism. He subsequently exposed the contradictions in the approach of the French Economists, who had advocated free trade and economic reforms while at the same time living at the court in Versailles, and displaying the characteristics of an exclusive aristocratic sect. Finally, the Wealth ofNations represented the mature stage in the reflection on commercial society, at the time when the European economy had at last emerged from its mercantile and feudal past. As far as the development of political economy after the Wealth of Nations was concerned, McCulloch indicated two points in which Smith's theory had proved particularly defective: the theory of value and the theory of rent.108 Firstly, on value: McCulloch argued that Smith had been correct to claim that, in the remote period which preceded the accumulation of

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capital and the establishment of the private ownership of land, the quantities of labour required to produce commodities determined their value in exchange. But he also considered that, after capital had been accumulated and land appropriated, the value of commodities no longer depended wholly on the labour required to produce them and bring them to the market. It continued to depend partly on it, and partly also on the amount of profits, wages and rent; and, if one or other of these elements remained constant, the value of the commodities would fluctuate according to the variations in the others. Smith's mistake, according to McCulloch - who was here presenting the arguments set forth by Ricardo in the first chapter of his Principles ofPolitical Economy was to believe that variations in the distribution of commodities would actually affect their value: 'It is not therefore true, as it is supposed throughout the Wealth of Nations, that variations in the price or wages paid for labour have the same influence over the value or price of commodities as variations in the amount of such labour.'109 Secondly, on the issue of rent, McCulloch pointed out that Smith had simply failed to articulate the idea of'decreasing returns' and the concept of 'marginal land'. He had ignored the fact that not all the land which yields food must also yield rent, as Malthus, Sir Edward West (1783-1828) and, long before them, James Anderson (1739-1808) had clearly indicated. The survey of the lacunae in Smith's work pointed directly at the achievements of political economy since the publication of the Wealth of Nations, According to McCulloch the principal examples of such achievements were: Malthus's theory of population and his theory of rent; Say's account of the nature and causes of gluts; and Ricardo's analysis of the cost, or real value of commodities.110 A last suggestive comment in McCulloch's Introductory Discourse concerned the general structure of the Wealth of Nations as a text. As we have seen, in the current comparisons between the writings of Smith and those of the Physiocrats, Smith's work was generally praised for its clarity, and for the richness of its practical illustrations. McCulloch thought instead that the Wealth of Nations was a particularly illconstructed text. The reasons he indicated were the same that had been adduced by Mackintosh and Horner in criticising Stewart's style. m The Wealth of Nations exhibited the typical defects of a work stemming from the teaching practice of Scottish universities. Digressions and historical illustrations were in fact essential to hold the attention of large audiences of young and ill-informed students. But they were un-


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necessary and out of place in a modern scientific treatise on political economy.112 The impact of David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy (1817) As McCulloch's edition of the Wealth ofNations indicated, a general anxiety to preserve the Smithian heritage was quite compatible with the recognition that political economy had made substantial progress in the decades of the French Wars. It is legitimate to ask at this point how the reviewers responded to the appearance of the work which remains, in the eyes of the modern reader, the most novel and influential contribution to economic theory in the 19th century: David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy.

By the time of the publication of his famous treatise in 1817 Ricardo was well known to the reviewers, who had found his writings a source of authoritative support in the debate over the resumption of cash payments. In his extensive and enthusiastic commentary on Ricardo's work in the Edinburgh Review, McCulloch declared that the author had done more for the improvement of political economy than any other writer, with the sole possible exception of Smith:113 a judgment which, it has been suggested, was responsible for causing the first edition to sellout. 114 Malthus's excommunication from the Review after the publication, in 1815, of his pamphlet supporting the Corn Laws115 helped to create the space for the adoption and popularisation of Ricardo's views.116 Yet, if in some sense it can be argued that, since 1817, McCulloch had brought the Review gradually under the influence of Ricardianism, this statement must be carefully qualified. A first relevant consideration is that McCulloch's account of Ricardo's theory, in the Edinburgh Review article as well as in the review which he had previously written for The Scotsman,XX1 was a rather free and, to some extent, misleading interpretation of the latter's views. This point is convincingly illustrated by O'Brien, who adds that McCulloch found it very difficult to defend his adaptation of Ricardo's doctrine against such critics as Robert Torrens.118 In his presentation, McCulloch ignored altogether the Ricardian notion of'invariable measure of value', and expressed little interest in the issue of the nature and origins of value itself, so crucial to Ricardo's thinking. Similarly, he dealt only superficially with the question of the role played by capital in determining the value, and hence the natural

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price, of commodities, an issue which was one of the central preoccupations in Ricardo's own approach. McCulloch's analysis focused simply upon the determinants of the exchange value of commodities, following very closely the lines of Smith's cost-of-production approach. The cost of production of commodities, in the long run and in advanced societies, resulted from the sum of the cost of (direct and indirect) labour and of profits. The only significant difference from Smith's analysis was that McCulloch introduced the theory of marginal productivity (or decreasing returns) of land to exclude rent from the determination of exchange value: Rents are only paid on those lands which yield an excess of produce after paying the expenses of labour and the ordinary profits of stock; but in every progressive country, lands are always taken into cultivation which yield at the time nothing but the profits of stock, and for which there can be no rent paid. Hence, it is evident, rent does not enter into the price of raw produce; for theprice of that produce is regulated by the price of the portion raised on the very worst lands in cultivation, and which pay no rent.119

In McCulloch's view, it was the adoption of the theory of rent which constituted the major element of novelty in Ricardo's investigation. The introduction of the theory of rent had in particular two relevant analytical consequences. In the first place, it offered an explanation for the historical tendency of profits to decline in advanced societies which was more convincing than the one formulated in the Wealth ofNations }1Q It was the necessity to have recourse to inferior lands, not the competition caused by the increase of capital, which checked the growth of profits in the long run. Secondly, the theory of decreasing returns enabled Ricardo to clarify and correct Smith's somewhat muddled treatment of the issue of the incidence of taxation, which had already been the target of criticism by Dugald Stewart. Ricardo in fact distinguished the incidence of taxation on the product of more fertile lands (which yield a 'pure' rent) and its incidence on the product of marginal land, the rent of which was in reality a form of profit generated by the capital invested in its cultivation.121 If McCulloch offered to the readers of the Review a rather free reconstruction of Ricardo's theory, what is relevant from our viewpoint is less the rigour and correctness of his interpretation than the fact that his reading stressed so strongly the continuity between the Principles and the Wealth of Nations. In his perspective, indeed, Ricardo's work was seen essentially as a helpful supplement to Smith, as offering


11

convincing and sophisticated solutions to a number of analytical puzzles which had long been debated within the Scottish school. The Principles - although it soon became an 'orthodox' text par excellence - could not serve to replace the ideological and pedagogical function performed by the Wealth of Nations. Paradoxical though it may seem - and for all the lengths to which they went to criticise the systematic character of Smith's ambitions, and the excessively wide and loose construction of his work- the reviewers could hardly hope to find in Ricardo's dry and slim treatise a comparable degree of inspiration and guidance. Ricardo had indeed offered a set of accepted and uncontroversial truths: but his book was not, in the end, what intellectuals for more than a generation had been taught to expect from a treatise on political economy: a complete handbook for the enlightened statesman and citizen alike. Despite the recurrent accusations, throughout the 1820s, that it had fallen under the spell of the Ricardian cant, the Review remained faithful to its own political commitments (inconsistent and opportunistic though these might sometimes have been) and made no attempt to establish and maintain a rigorous scientific orthodoxy. The sense of void left by Smith's work was not confined to the Scottish group. When in 1848 John Stuart Mill set himself to produce a comprehensive new treatise on political economy, assessing precisely the achievements of the Ricardian school, it was again the model of the Wealth of Nations, with its historical digressions and political asides, that he finally decided to adopt.122 What conclusions can be drawn from this somewhat disjointed array of comments, criticism and additions to the Wealth of Nations set forth by the reviewers in the first three decades of the 19th century? The first relevant indication is simply one of content: they tell us what had come to be acknowledged to be the weak points in Smith's work and they suggest the directions in which theoretical reflection on political economy was rapidly moving. Obviously the reviewers' claim that the Smithian doctrine had to be emended because of the sweeping impact of new events and new circumstances was to some degree misleading. The evidence indicates that some of the alleged inconsistencies in Smith's approach had long since been identified and discussed by his commentators; and that Smith's views had never attained an unchallenged dominance, even within the restricted world of Scottish universities. In this context it is not surprising that new theoretical insights, such as those set forth by Ricardo, Mai thus and others, should

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be readily accepted, since they provided solutions to analytical difficulties the existence of which had long been recognised. If we consider more specifically the reviewers' handling of Smith's heritage, what is most striking is the ambivalence of their intentions. Undoubtedly the reviewers were concerned both to preserve and to appropriate Smith's authority. They felt themselves committed to defend and popularise his views, and to confront them with contemporary economic experience. In addition, they claimed for themselves the role of privileged interpreters of his text. In some cases- such as the discussion of colonial trade in Brougham's Inquiry—the retention of the framework of Smith's approach disguised the fact that the actual content of the arguments had changed profoundly, together with the historical context to which they were addressed. Inevitably, the project of testing and improving Smith's doctrine in the light of new historical circumstances and of contemporary political needs was bound to result in its extensive and substantial amendment. Moreover, it was bound to jeopardise the monopoly that the reviewers were trying to exercise over its interpretation. To expose Smith's theory to the test of contemporary political debate meant at the same time to favour its appropriation by different traditions of thought, and to promote the process through which the arguments which made up the Scottish 18thcentury discourse on commercial society gradually became embodied in a variety of politically and intellectually rival approaches.

The definition of political economy: political economy as a social science

The Edinburgh Review and the 'transition' to English classical political economy In the previous chapter we considered the changing content of Smithian economic theory throughout the years of the French war. It is now time to focus more specifically on what the Edinburgh reviewers thought of the nature of political economy as a discipline, and especially of its relations with political science as a whole. Like their mentor Dugald Stewart, the reviewers were keenly interested in the problem of the nature of scientific knowledge and in the philosophy of the moral sciences. It would make little sense to discuss the influence of Hume, Smith and Stewart on English classical political economy, or the acquisition of a monopoly of economic knowledge on the part of the young Scottish Whigs, without considering the degree to which the Scottish project for a scientific understanding of politics and society carried over into 19th-century English culture. In particular, the current assumption that the general science of society outlined by the writers of the Scottish Enlightenment gave birth at the beginning of the 19 th century to a series of separate scientific disciplines is both highly influential and inordinately vague, and it deserves closer - and more historically minded - attention. Previous scholarship, particularly in the history of economic thought, has largely ignored the contribution which the reviewers made to the definition of the nature and method of political economy both their popularisation of Dugald Stewart's ideas and their own original speculations on the subject. A number of influential reconstructions of the development of British economic thought, both in the 19th and in the 20th century, have endorsed the belief that the character and method of political economy underwent a radical transformation (more recently described also as a 'scientific revolution' or 'change of paradigm')1 in the years be79

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tween the publication of the Wealth of Nations and the appearance of David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy.

The argument - originally suggested by contemporary authors like Jean-Baptiste Say2 and Simonde de Sismondi,3 but still re-echoed in modern textbooks 4 - was, in short, that the contribution of David Ricardo and James Mill transformed political economy from an empirical discipline, based on wide historical and sociological observation (as it had been in Smith's work), into a rigorous and far more restricted a priori science. Ricardo was regarded as having supplied the content, James Mill the philosophical framework, of this change in the style of economic reasoning. On the other hand it was essentially the opponents of orthodox Ricardianism- from Mai thus and the Statistical movement' of Richard Jones (1790-1855) and William Whewell (1794-1866) at Cambridge5 to the German-oriented writers of the 'historical school'6 - who kept the Smithian method of observation and experience alive throughout the early and mid-Victorian period. The same interpretation suggested also that this change of method from an 'empirical' to an la priori' approach coincided with the transformation of political economy itself, from a general science of politics and society into a narrower discipline concerned with the motives and laws of the individual pursuit of wealth. Recent research in the field of early-19th-century English intellectual history has left very little standing in this interpretation- little at least that any scholar would thoughtlessly subscribe to. Hollander, in his monumental recent study of David Ricardo, has shown that Smith's and Ricardo's respective contributions to economic theory did not substantially differ in the methodology from which they were derived.7 Keith Tribe has shown convincingly how misleading it is to construct a history of economic thought which reads uncritically in a continuous sequence texts as profoundly heterogeneous in their intellectual character as Smith's Wealth of Nations and Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy} Pietro Corsi9 has drawn attention to the continuity which links Dugald Stewart's presentation of the methodology of social sciences to the ideas expressed by John Stuart Mill in his influential essay of 1836 on the definition of political economy.10 Finally, Neil de Marchi has criticised decisively the idea that James Mill was responsible for creating an original methodological approach, stressing his continuing dependence on the Scottish historical tradition.11 The very idea of the

Political economy as a social science

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hegemony in the early 19 th century of a compact 'Ricardian school' has come increasingly under attack.12 Further study of the variety of traditions of thought which pass under the name of classical political economy increases the complexity of the picture and makes the linear reading of the emergence of English 19thcentury political economy as the birth of a 'separate' 'apriori9 science, increasingly implausible. If the idea that the development of English classical political economy entailed a kind of methodological revolution must be set aside, it is still necessary to account for the beliefs and opinions about the nature of political economy as a moral science which underlay the 19th-century debate. What makes it especially hard for the historian to focus on this issue is the extremely repetitive and overwhelmingly rhetorical character of methodological debates as such. Such topics as the separation between political economy and politics, the appeal to Isaac Newton's or Francis Bacon's method, the counter-position of 'theoreticians' and 'practical men' have been discussed recurrently by practitioners over a long period of time (indeed for the whole lifetime of economic science) in such a way that it is hard to grasp, behind the ritual repetition of familiar formulas, the actual relations which they bear to particular intellectual contexts. In this framework the ideas which Dugald Stewart, James Mackintosh and the reviewers expressed on the subject of the definition of political economy offer a useful point of reference. They help, in part at least, to bridge the gap between the reflection on the philosophy of the moral sciences developed in the Scottish universities in the second half of the 18 th century, and the mainstream 'Ricardian' political economy popularised in the pages of the Edinburgh Review in the years subsequent to the end of the war. The 'restoration' of speculative philosophy In the introduction of his Elements of the Philosophy of Human Mind,

Stewart observed that: If we were to examine, in the like manner, the present state of morals, of jurisprudence, of politics, and of philosophical criticism, I believe we should find that the principal circumstance which retards their progress, is the vague and indistinct idea which those who apply to the study of them have formed to themselves of the object of their researches. Were these objects more clearly

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defined, and the proper plan for attaining them illustrated by a few unexceptionable models, writers of inferior genius would be enabled to employ their industry to much more advantage and would be prevented from adding to that rubbish which, in consequence of the ill-directed credulity of our predecessors, obstructs our progress in the pursuit of truth.13

This ambitious project of imposing order upon a wide range of practically oriented fields of knowledge offers a good summary of Stewart's overall intellectual project as it was viewed by his pupils at the beginning of the 19 th century. The impact of Stewart's philosophical speculation on the reviewers can be identified in two elements: firstly, the application of the philosophy of common sense to the foundation of experimental science, and, secondly, his more specific contribution to the study and definition of moral sciences. The very term 'philosophy of mind' which Stewart used to designate the object of his inquiry, indicated programmatically both the legitimate subject matter and the acceptable limits of philosophical investigation. It included the laws of the mind'as well as those of matter', thus going beyond the boundaries of a purely sensationalist or materialistic approach. But it confined speculation to those mental phenomena which were the possible object of observation and experience, and which bore some relation to the 'useful sciences and to the arts'.14 Stewart's versatile performances in all other fields of philosophical inquiry- ranging from esthetics to the theory of language - were perceived by his pupils as Francis Jeffrey's review of Stewart's Philosophical Essays of 1810 clearly indicated, as displays of erudition and rhetorical skill rather than as genuine contributions to knowledge.15 In his Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, Mackintosh dedicated to

Stewart a long and eulogistic chapter, in which Stewart's contribution to modern ethics was nevertheless presented as lying rather in his teaching, and in the defence and improvement of the doctrines of his master Thomas Reid, than in any original speculation on the subject.16 But if Stewart embodied, in the eyes of his pupils, the familiar vices of Scottish academic erudition and rhetoric, his work reached well beyond the limits of his own style and of mere popularisation. As a philosopher, Stewart was not simply a 'moralist' like the Adam Smith of the Theory ofMoral Sentiments,11 a writer of elegant historical dissertations like the historian William Robertson (1721-93),18 a builder of highly abstract sociological systems like John Millar.19 Nor did he, like


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the Aberdonian philosopher James Beattie (1735-1803), employ his talents to produce 'pieces of nursery eloquence' for the edification of 'bishops and good ladies'.20 Above all, he was not just a survivor from, and a populariser of, the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment itself. Having lived through the experience of the French revolution and well into the difficult years of the Napoleonic wars, Stewart had been able to reconsider critically some of the most influential features of 18th-century philosophical culture. His criticism confronted old philosophical enemies, clad in the fashionable shapes of French materialism and Bentham's utilitarian doctrine; it addressed at the same time comparatively new and exotic phenomena like the metaphysics of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Above all it reconsidered the dominating domestic heritage of Hume's scepticism and the controversial outcome of the Humian project for an inductive science of mind. If Stewart's reputation was that of a progressive and liberal thinkerif his teaching in Edinburgh undeniably possessed an innovative and even revolutionary connotation - the reviewers were ready to recognise, and to share, the 'conservative' (in the literal acceptation of the term) spirit of his work. In Mackintosh's words, Stewart's chief achievement was the 'restoration' of speculative philosophy, which had been shaken and undermined by the otherwise revivifying experience of the Enlightenment.21 Stewart's philosophy focused on the necessity to protect the patrimony of knowledge accumulated inside the Scottish universities in the name of the inductive science of mind and of the method of Newton, both from the threats of 18th-century materialism and scepticism, and from the consequences of the decline of Scottish civic humanist ideals and the emergence of mass education. George Davie's22 and Nicholas Phillipson's23 writings have illustrated brilliantly the dilemmas and tensions that Scottish 'civic' culture and academic institutions faced at the turn of the century. There is no need here to discuss the socio-political context of this debate; but it is important at least to outline the arguments directly relevant to the understanding of Stewart's position. In the context of the 18th-century Scottish debate, the diffusion of education, the general reaction against religious and philosophical dogmatism, the growth of scientific knowledge in the form of separate disciplines, had been recognised as the necessary, and in the last resort desirable, consequences of commercial progress.

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In particular, the project for an inductive science of mind endorsed by Stewart was associated from the beginning with the expectation first expressed by Newton in the concluding passage of his Optics - that the application of the experimental method to the study of man and society would result in the unprecedented expansion of the moral sciences.24 At the same time, the democratisation of knowledge raised a series of inescapable questions related to the issue of social control. Firstly, how should the new social groups who had recently acquired, or could shortly acquire, access to education be integrated within the existing structure of political power? Secondly, how could political authority be maintained despite the rejection of traditional moral and philosophical beliefs? Thirdly, what function should and could philosophy (metaphysics) retain vis a vis the expanding scientific disciplines which emanated from it? Though all these questions had long since been regarded as dilemmas that advanced commercial society had to face, and though they had been thoroughly debated in the course of the 18 th century, the French revolution had given them a new content and sharpened their significance. What, indeed, will be the particular effects, in the first instance, of that general diffusion of knowledge, which the art of printing must sooner or later produce, and of that spirit of reformation with which it cannot fail to be accompanied, it is beyond the reach of human sagacity to conjecture; but unless we choose to abandon ourselves entirely to a desponding scepticism, we must hope and believe that the progress of human reason can never be the source of permanent disorder to the world.25 The revolution had given a striking illustration of the ambivalence of the issue of the democratisation of knowledge, showing the dangers posed by atheism and scepticism and the risks involved in experiments of collective political self-education on the part of the lower orders. At the same time the role played by philosophical reflection in the genesis of the revolutionary process cast serious doubts on the function that metaphysics might still perform in post-revolutionary European society. By reacting against intellectual and religious dogmatism, the philosophy of the Enlightenment had promoted the revolution which had violently shaken the foundations of all existing European governments. Now the return to pre-revolutionary prejudices and despotism appeared unacceptable. But the new ideas had not resulted in any alternative, juster and more stable social order. On the contrary,


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they had become associated with mad crimes and with general chaos. The tribunal of reason had become identified with the guillotine and critical philosophy had discredited itself by generating a society in which all human beliefs and values had been discarded and trampled upon. In Stewart's words: The common sense of mankind, in consequence of the growth of a more liberal spirit of inquiry, has revolted against many of those absurdities, which had so long held human reason in captivity; and it was, perhaps, more than could reasonably have been expected, that, in the first moments of their emancipation, philosophers should have stopped short, at the precise boundary which cooler reflection and moderate views would have prescribed. The fact is, that they have passed far beyond it, and that in their zeal to destroy prejudices, they have attempted to tear up by the roots, many of the best and happiest and most essential principles of our nature.26 As we have seen, Stewart, and the reviewers with him, were prepared to defend the Philosophes (with the sole exception perhaps of Rousseau) against the accusation of direct responsibility for the violently subversive outcome of the revolution.27 Their allegation was not that philosophy as such had exercised an evil influence upon contemporary society, but rather that by questioning all existing beliefs it had finally undermined its own critical function. Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of Human Mind - first published in 1792, and later28 carefully revised by the author in the light of the suspicions of Jacobinism and religious scepticism which had been voiced against him - was intended as a rehabilitation of metaphysics. As Stewart wrote in the Introduction, 'The prejudice which is commonly entertained against metaphysical speculations seems to arise chiefly from two causes: first, from an apprehension that the subjects about which they are employed are placed beyond the reach of human faculties; and, secondly, from a belief that these subjects have no relation to the business of life.'29 Stewart argued that these charges were perfectly justified in the case of some sectors of metaphysics (those which explored questions such as the existence of God or the immortality of the soul) which fell beyond the reach of human experience. But he thought that they had also been levelled, quite unjustly, at the most fruitful and useful forms of philosophical inquiry, those which had their foundation in 'experimental philosophy'. Experimental philosophy made no attempt to unravel insoluble problems about substances and first causes. It confined itself to

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investigating, through observation and experiment, the general laws of nature and human behaviour and to laying the foundations of scientific knowledge, morality and the practical arts of life. Two centuries of 'steady' and 'humble' application of the experimental method had brought substantial achievements both in the field of the study of human mind and in the pursuit of scientific inquiry in general.30 It was on the basis of these results that Stewart's common-sense metaphysics derived the credentials to perform, in the aftermath of the French revolution, the social function from which the doctrines of the Enlightenment had abdicated altogether. Stewart's insistence on the application of the experimental method, both to the study of human nature and to the sciences, is important since he believed that this practically oriented attitude was what distinguished his own approach from that of Thomas Reid. Stewart thought that Reid had made a fundamental contribution to the definition of the method and characteristics of human knowledge; but that he had taken insufficient interest either 'in the logical discussions concerning the means of advancing the philosophy of human nature' or 'in tracing the numerous relations by which this philosophy is related to the practical business of life'. Stewart believed that the strength of his own contribution consisted precisely in filling the gap between Reid's definition of man's cognitive powers and the practice of the moral sciences.31 Stewart's criticism addressed in particular four major products of 18 th-century philosophical culture: the materialism of the 'Sensational School', represented by Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715-80), Claude-Adrien Helvetius (1715-71), Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) and Joseph Priestley in Britain; the sceptical philosophy of Hume; Kant's metaphysics; and, finally, the revival of utilitarianism presented in writings of Jeremy Bentham. In his critique of materialism- the doctrines that mental phenomena can be explained by material modification, and that the mind must be regarded as the reflex of a material organism- Stewart followed closely the arguments originally set forth by Berkeley, Hume and Reid.32 In discussing the notion of perception he argued that, though the way in which external objects affect the mind suggests the presence of a material vinculum, no evidence of the existence of any such link can be obtained, and the belief itself belongs to a primitive and naive form of philosophical speculation. He stated that the mind could not appropriately be regarded as a tabula rasa, a receptacle to be impressed or


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filled by the materials introduced in it by the external senses; and he suggested that the similarity between the phenomena of perception and physical phenomena- such as the concept of motion introduced by Priestley - was purely analogical: Although, therefore, we should acquiesce in the conclusion that, without our organs of sense, the mind must have remained destitute of knowledge, this concession could have no tendency whatever to favour the principles of materialism, as it implies nothing more than that the impressions made on our senses by external objects furnish the occasions on which the mind, by the laws of its constitution, is led to perceive the qualities of the material world, and to exert all the different modifications of thought of which it is capable.33

According to Stewart, we have the same evidence for the existence of the mind as we have for the existence of the body and matter: we know the former through the phenomena exhibited to our senses and the latter through the phenomena of which we are conscious. Thus the choice to confine philosophical investigation to the manifestations of the body and of matter was perfectly arbitrary. Rather than being false, materialism was simply unphilosophicah. it proceeded from a misapprehension of the proper object of human knowledge.34 In his review of Priestley'% Memoirs of 1806, Jeffrey restated diligently Stewart's arguments, insisting in particular on the threat which materialism represented in relation to the belief in the existence of God.35 Jeffrey's article made it explicit that, after the 1790s, the principal preoccupation behind the criticism of Priestley had become essentially political. It stemmed from the need to protect liberal opinion (and in particular the Review and the Whig party) from the recurrent accusations of complicity with French and domestic atheism and Jacobinism. The attitude towards religion and the treatment of religious topics in the Review was a constant preoccupation for its contributors. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that Jeffrey, Horner and Brougham were all, if not professed atheists, at least sceptical or indifferent in matters of religion. Even Sydney Smith's commitment to 'a sober and rational Christianity' and to religious tolerance precluded excessive displays of piety and devotion.36 His merciless satires in the pages of the Review on members of the High Church37 and on the bigotry of religious sects38 were never forgiven. Even in the 1830s, when the Whigs were finally in office, Lord Holland was unable to overcome the opposition of the Church establishment and obtain for him a bishopric.39 There was, nevertheless, general agreement among its contributors

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that the Review must avoid all suspicions of atheism or impiety, which would inevitably alienate the public and undermine the efficacy of the campaign in favour of religious tolerance and Catholic emancipation. It was Sydney Smith who took upon himself the task of alerting Jeffrey, whenever he felt that some contributor had gone beyond the acceptable limits in discussing the authority of the Church or the validity of religious dogmas.40 The rejection of materialism went together with a negative view of the influence that the revolution had exercised on French philosophy and French intellectual life. Obviously the direct association of materialism with Jacobinism and disbelief was an allegation of conservative propaganda which Stewart and the reviewers re-echoed and responded to rather than one which they wholly shared. But they did believe that materialism had triumphed with the revolution, and that it had ultimately exercised a destructive influence on French philosophical thinking. By focusing on the study of the body and matter, instead of speculating on the mind and the soul, French philosophy, dominated by Condillac's Sensationalism, had abdicated its proper function in favour of natural science.41 Political persecution, both during the revolution and under Bonaparte, had contributed to the suffocation of free philosophical thinking. In particular the reviewers subscribed to the belief that the revolution had actually fostered the growth of natural sciences and mathematics at the expense of the study of moral sciences, which they believed to have experienced a sharp decline.42 While the attack upon materialism, founded both on theoretical and political grounds, could be expressed without reservations, the criticism of Hume's philosophy was a more delicate and controversial issue, since it went right to the heart of the Scottish intellectual tradition. Stewart rejected Hume's sceptical conclusions on the possibility of human knowledge in favour of Reid's common-sense approach: he followed Hume in admitting that the knowledge of concepts such as cause, substance, self-existence, personal identity, etc. transcended human experience; but he agreed with Reid in accepting human belief as the foundation of the true knowledge of the self and of personal identity.43 What is interesting here is not so much the content of Stewart's theory of knowledge - which did closely follow the ideas of Reid - but the arguments which he employed in his critique of Hume.


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Stewart's allegation against Hume was not that his views about human knowledge were actually false; but that he had not been sufficiently preoccupied with the consequences that sceptical philosophy entailed for the foundation of scientific knowledge. Hume had been seduced by the rigour and elegance of sterile intellectual speculations and had carried them to extreme conclusions, ignoring altogether their destructive potential. In particular Stewart believed that Hume had failed to learn adequately from the writings of Newton and Bacon and the direct experience of the practice of scientific investigation on which these had been based.44 Stewart did not underestimate Hume's crucial contribution to the creation of the inductive science of mind; and he fully acknowledged the importance of his intervention in specific fields of inquiry such as political economy and political theory: in fact he thought that these very achievements were in patent contradiction with Hume's epistemological views. This judgment about the 'sterility' of scepticism in contrast to the 'fertility' of experimental philosophy became a recurrent theme in the writings of the reviewers: A system of universal scepticism [wrote James Mackintosh to Stewart in 1805] (if that be not a contradiction in terms) can never be entitled to rank higher than an exercise of ingenuity, and an amusement of contemplative leisure. It is impossible to consider as serious, attempts, the success of which would render all reasoning impossible, and all action absurd.45

Some restatement of this judgment can be found in the chapter on H u m e in the Dissertation on the Progress ofEthical Philosophy,46 while Jeffrey

developed the same theme in his review, l~Drummond's Academical Questions',41 and cursory observations to the same effect can be found in Brougham's writings and in Homer's and Sydney Smith's correspondence. This critique of the cognitive sterility of scepticism was intertwined with the critique of Hume's alleged lack of political commitment. As Jeffrey stressed in his review ofFox's History ofthe Reign of James the II, in politics and morals, as in his theory of knowledge, Hume had displayed a reprehensible aristocratic nonchalance, setting an excessively high value on the ideal of'private happiness' and neglecting party politics and the service of the commonwealth. In Jeffrey's eyes, Hume was 'chiefly responsible for the Epicurean and ignoble strain of sentiment' which pushed early-19th-century British society towards the pursuit of luxury and government patronage rather than the defence of civic

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liberty.48 The High Church and Tory sympathies which he evinced offered further proof of the erratic character of part at least of Hume's speculations. Jeffrey's views, expressed in the context of his rather 'pious' review of Fox, were recurrently counterbalanced in the Review by eulogies of Hume's contribution to philosophy, political economy and political theory. Not merely did the Review defend Hume from the current charges of atheism, materialism and impiety; but, like Stewart, the reviewers were ready to recognise that Hume's opinions about the limits of human knowledge had not in fact prevented him from making a substantial contribution to moral science; and that the very notion of belief- which was at the basis of common-sense philosophy- was in the end a Humean concept. As Horner wrote after his emigration to London in 1804, Hume was the only Scottish philosopher who had made a serious impact on English culture, and the person who had actually formulated the major questions with which Scottish philosophy had concerned itself.49 While it is not surprising that the judgment on Hume's contribution should have remained highly controversial, it is equally predictable that the discussion of Kant's work should have occupied a fairly marginal role in the debate. German metaphysics was not yet as central to Stewart's work as it was to be to the reflection of the Scottish philosophers of the following generation, William Hamilton (17911856) and James Ferrier (1808-64).50 Stewart (who read no German) had only a second-hand knowledge of Kant's ideas from Anthony Florian Willich's and Charles Villier's presentations51 and from Germaine de Stael's enthusiastic chapter on Kant in De I'Allemagne,52 and he did not show much interest in them until about 1810. James McCosh undoubtedly had good reason to complain retrospectively about the extreme superficiality and ignorance displayed by Stewart in his discussion of Kant's doctrines in his Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical and Political Philosophy.53

Amongst the reviewers, James Mackintosh was the only one who took serious interest in Kant's work. Mackintosh's correspondence indicates that he became acquainted with Kant's writings around 1804—5 during his stay in Bombay.54 In this as in other matters he showed a more 'cosmopolitan' sensibility than his Scottish friends, and in his review of De I'Allemagne, published in 1813, he offered a rather perceptive and sympathetic appraisal of Kant's philosophy.55 He did not, however, write anything more on the subject, and the familiarity with


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transcendental philosophy remained among his numerous unexploited Continental accomplishments. It is a fact, however, that the second issue of the Edinburgh Review included an article on Kant, a review of Charles Villier's Philosophie de Kant written by the Scottish philosopher Thomas Brown (17781820).56 The presence of this topic in one of the opening issues of the Review - despite its extremely limited popularity - indicates some sensibility on the part of the Edinburgh group to the leading philosophical tendencies of the time, and shows the need which they felt to give as complete a picture as possible of the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment. In his Memoires pour servir a I'histoire dujacobinisme, the

Abbe Barruel had addressed to Kant the same accusations of atheism and Jacobinism which he levelled at the Philosophes. It is not surprising accordingly that some vindication of German metaphysics should have appeared in the Review alongside Jeffrey's defence of the Philosophes in his famous article on Mounier. The appraisal of Kant offered by Stewart, Mackintosh and Thomas Brown was undeniably influenced by commonplace anti-German intellectual prejudices. Each of them complained of the 'obscurity' of Kant's style and of his deplorable habit of creating philosophical neologisms, and they viewed Kant's transcendental philosophy as inextricably interwoven with the 'dogmatic' spirit of Leibniz and Descartes, a sterile metaphysics, a philosophy, or rather logic of the mind, with no possible applications to the sciences. Stewart criticised in particular the systematic ambitions of Kant's doctrine, expressing strong reservations over the efficacy of the 'spirit of system' both in philosophical and in scientific investigation.57 Kant's Scottish critics were nevertheless agreed in acknowledgingacross the barrier of national cultural differences - that Kant's transcendentalism did have something in common in its aims with the Scottish philosophy of common sense. Kant's critical philosophy was in the first place a reply to Hume and an attempt to overcome the impasse of scepticism and the false alternative between rationalism and empiricism. In Mackintosh's words, . . . the system of Kant and the works of Reid, dissimilar as they are, in their form and spirit, were contemporary and independent attempts to defeat scepticism, by weapons more apparently philosophical. . . The extensive technical language of Kant, and the unfortunate term Common Sense adopted by Reid, both denote the same ultimate laws of thought which mark the boundaries of reasoning, and against which all disputation is a vain mockery.58

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Stewart, Mackintosh and Brown differed in their judgment about how successful Kant's approach to the paradoxes of scepticism had been; certainly Stewart and Brown shared the opinion that Scottish Common-Sense philosophy had succeeded where Kant had failed, the notion of belief being a much more valid foundation for human knowledge than Kant's elaborate system of logical categories. Mackintosh, on the other hand, was more inclined to interpret the differences between Kant and Reid as differences in philosophical style rather than differences in the level of their achievements. In general they agreed in recognising the compatibility of the two projects, and in deriving from them substantially optimistic expectations for the future of experimental philosophy.59 The work ofJeremy Bentham, by contrast, was a much more pressing and relevant issue for the reviewers than it ever was for Stewart. In his lectures on political economy, at the turn of the century, Stewart was able to introduce references to Bentham's contribution within his own erudite digressions about usury laws and excise taxes, but he never felt the need to undertake any real confrontation with Bentham's thought as a whole.60 The reviewers on the other hand were engaged over decades in a tense competition with the political and theoretical views of the Philosophic Radicals, which culminated in the dispute between James Mill and Macaulay on the subject of the theory of government in 1829.61 Stewart and the reviewers shared both a genuine admiration for Bentham's talents and competence as a reformer and a profound distaste for his style and for the 'sectarian' character of his teaching.62 In a letter to Fox, written in 180 3, Sydney Smith expressed the opinion that Bentham had 'two minds': one clear, practically oriented, efficient, the mind which had produced the studies on the usury laws (much praised by Stewart himself) and the proposals for the reform of the penal code; the other muddled, obscure, given to obsessionally elaborate speculations about the calculation of pleasure and pain.63 Over twenty years later, in his review of Bentham's Book of Fallacies, he wrote: Whether it is necessary that there should be a middleman between the cultivator and the possessor, learned economists have doubted; but neither gods, men nor booksellers can doubt the necessity of a middleman between Mr Bentham and the public. Mr Bentham is long; Mr Bentham is occasionally involved and obscure; Mr Bentham invents new and alarming expressions; Mr Bentham loves divisions and subdivisions; - and he loves method itself more than its consequences.64


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The inadequacies of a fundamentally utilitarian approach were - long before the topic was revived by Bentham's writings- widely discussed in Scottish philosophical debate, and Stewart and the reviewers were therefore able to rely, in their criticism of Bentham, on a set of preexisting traditional arguments. The general argument against utilitarianism was, in short, that, although the pursuit of utility was undeniably an important component of human behaviour, it could neither be regarded as a universal rule of conduct nor be identified with a principle of justice. General expediency was not a universal canon for human conduct, as Godwin, Paley and, before them, Hume and Hutcheson, had claimed.65 In other words, the force of the principle of utility (both in the Hutchesonian and Smithian acceptation of 'benevolence' and in Paley's and Godwin's sense of'self-interest') was essentially that of a sociological category. Its presumptions about human motivation did capture quite accurately some general characteristics of all societies, characteristics which were particularly salient and of particular practical importance in advanced commercial society. But this importance had long since been recognised by a multiplicity of thinkers, and Bentham's emphasis upon it could claim little, if any, originality. The motivational basis of utilitarian theory was too partial to form part of an adequate general theory of human nature; and the principle of utility itself could not provide a valid foundation for a complete theory of morality. In Mackintosh's words, Mr Bentham preaches the principle of utility with the zeal of a discoverer. Occupied more in reflection than in reading, he knew not, or forgot, how often it had been the basis, and how generally an essential part, of moral systems. . . . The confusion of moral approbation with the moral qualities which are its objects, common to Mr Bentham with many other philosophers, is much more prominent and uniform in him than in most others. This general error . . . has led him more than others to assume, that because the principle of utility forms a necessary part of every moral theory, it ought therefore to be the chief motive of human conduct.66

In conclusion, as Jeffrey's review of the Traite de legislation of 1804 clearly indicated,67 the reviewers were prepared to accept some of the content of Bentham's doctrines and propositions. But they stoutly refused to ascribe a scientific status to utilitarianism, either in its psychological assumptions, or in its detailed social prescriptions.

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Thus far the opinions of Stewart and the reviewers on contemporary philosophical schools and ideas have been presented as if they were essentially in agreement. It is now necessary to ask whether there were in fact points on which their views differed substantially. No doubt the reviewers themselves thought that they had advanced beyond Stewart's Edinburgh teaching. The difference was to some extent just a difference in style. London society life and London politics required a different language and a different frame of mind from the Edinburgh classroom. The correspondences of Horner, Brougham and Sydney Smith contain frequent ironic allusions to Stewart's old-fashioned manners, to his pedantic erudition and professional rhetoric. In addition to the question of style, the reviewers thought Stewart had in some measure deceived himself over the real relevance of his own contribution. He had dispersed his energies in pursuing traditionally prestigious fields of philosophical inquiry - such as metaphysics and the philosophy of mind - while, in their appraisal, his chief merit had been his ability to provide extensive practical applications of the philosophy of mind to the various fields of moral inquiry. They thought that the core of Stewart's system - the application of the notion of common sense to experimental philosophy - had already been outlined in the writings of Hume, Smith and Reid. What Stewart had done was to reformulate this more clearly, to show that it could be applied to, and how to apply it to, the sciences, and, finally, to create a school of followers committed to the task of promoting progressive ideas both in politics and in science. As Mackintosh observed, Stewart's disciples were 'among his best works': 'The system of conveying scientific instruction to a large audience by lectures, from which the English universities have in a great measure departed, renders [Stewart's] qualities as a lecturer a most important part of his merit in a Scottish university, which still adheres to the general method of European education.'68 This appreciation of Stewart's teaching did not imply that he was just a populariser, although it questioned, to a certain extent, the originality of his contribution. Rather it suggested that the improved organisation and diffusion of scientific knowledge was the principal and proper concern of experimental philosophy in the society of postFrench-revolution Europe. The proof was in the Review itself: the distinctive character of the Edinburgh Review as an intellectual enterprise was exactly that of a pop-


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ular encyclopedia of both natural and moral sciences, a principled digest of philosophical and scientific opinions for the consumption of the educated middle classes. As Jeffrey wrote in his famous review of Germaine de StaeTs De la litterature, The age of original genius, and of comprehensive and independent reasoning is over. . . Instead of such works as those of Bacon, and Shakespeare, and Taylor, and Hooker, we have Encyclopaedias, and geographical compilations, and country histories, and editions of black-letter authors . . . One man spends his life in improving a method of dyeing cotton red; - another in adding a few insects to a catalogue which nobody reads; - a third in setting the metres of a few Greek choruses; - a fourth in decyphering illegible romances, or old grants on farms; - a fifth in picking rotten bones out of the earth; - a sixth in describing all the old walls and hillocks in his parish; - and five hundred others in occupations equally liberal and important: each of them being, for the most part, profoundly ignorant of everything out of his own department . . .69

In a culture in which metaphysics had exhausted its function, all that was left were separate scientific disciplines and their popularisation: what George Davie has effectively, if gloomily, described, in relation to the reviewers, as a culture based on 'unphilosophical common sense'.70 Commenting on Jeffrey's review of Stewart's Life ofReid, in which the editor of the Review denounced the uselessness of metaphysics for the purpose of scientific investigation,71 Davie observes that: . . . Jeffrey's comparison between science as experimental, real analysis, and philosophy as an introspective and merely logical analysis, points to a new version of Adam Smith's educational programme according to which popular science is all that is necessary to enable the general populace to appreciate the meaning and purpose of their science-based society.72

This judgment is undeniably a fair appraisal of the intellectual poverty and the narrowly sociological character of Jeffrey's views. But it should not be forgotten that the impoverishment and vulgarisation of the Scottish intellectual tradition promoted by the Review was also a necessary condition for its survival and for the acquisition of a powerful influence on early-19th-century British society and public opinion. Jeffrey and the reviewers were fully aware of this ambiguity in their editorial project, both of its limits and its success; and they cheerfully endured both the decadence and the triumphs. Besides, if the reviewers had a good, if rather pessimistic, sociological understanding of the new world created by popular education

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and the periodical press, they did not in fact literally believe that the time had come for philosophical speculation to give way to the study of separate scientific disciplines. The stress they laid on the pursuit of social sciences indicated a shift in the focus of their interest from that of the previous generation, rather than a belief that the function of philosophy had been exhausted. The reviewers thought, with Stewart, that all scientific disciplines ultimately had their foundation in the philosophy of mind. It was in fact the philosophy of mind which alone could define the first principles on which the individual sciences were founded. The modern phenomenon of the expansion of sciences, and especially of moral sciences, made the relations between the philosophy of mind and the individual disciplines more complex and difficult to describe, but the dependence of the latter on that philosophy remained nonetheless real and inescapable.73 The reviewers recognised the definition of the laws of human knowledge and the development of a general system of sciences as equally important subjects for philosophical investigation. But they did not seriously engage in either task, confining themselves to the role of popularisers or of practitioners of a particular science. The definition of political economy: from Dugald Stewart to John Stuart Mill If the chief concern of the Scottish school in restoring the prestige of the philosophy of mind was its application to the social sciences, political economy was undoubtedly the discipline at the centre of their methodological reflection, ambiguously poised as it was between a general preoccupation of the legislator and a separate scientific field. In order to outline the Review's contentions about the scientific status of political economy, it is helpful once again to begin by considering Stewart's own contribution to the issue. In his Memoir of Dugald Stewart\ prefixed to the tenth volume of Stewart's works, the editor John Veitch wrote: We who live in these days can hardly appreciate the debt to the political teachings of Stewart. At the time when he began to give his separate course of political economy, the science had hardly assumed shape and definiteness in the general mind of the country; there was no adequate appreciation on the part even of the cultivated portion of the nation, either of its proper sphere, or of the importance of a scientific discussion of its topics.74


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If this appraisal was correct, it is legitimate to ask in what sense Stewart's writings helped to give 'shape and definiteness' to the current image of political economy. In the Introduction 75 to his lectures on political economy, Stewart presented a general outline of the place that political economy occupied within political science at large. He explained that his use of the term 'political economy' was somewhat wider than the traditional one. In the literature of the 17 th and 18 th century - and in particular in the writings of Quesnay, Sir James Steuart and Adam Smith - the name 'political economy' had been used to refer to all (systematic and unsystematic) inquiries on the subject of wealth and population. Stewart's own definition on the other hand included '. . . all those speculations which have for their object the happiness and improvement of political society, or, in other words, which have for their object the great and ultimate ends from which political regulations derive all their value.'76 The adoption of this wider definition on Stewart's part was aimed essentially at stressing the systematic character that political economy had acquired in the course of the 17 th and 18 th centuries. It indicated that political economy was an organised body of knowledge and an organic sector of political science rather than a loose collection of inquiries related to the art of public administration. Stewart considered that political economy, in this wider acceptation, constituted one of the two great departments of political science; the other being represented by what he called the 'theory of government'. Stewart acknowledged that this partition of the science of politics was less than rigorous or clear-cut. In principle, the rationale of the distinction between political economy and theory of government was that political economy described the conditions of prosperity and improvement of human societies^r/br to legislative intervention, and in abstraction from the specific constitutional forms which prevailed in each society. The theory of government, on the other hand, dealt specifically with the shape of constitutional and legislative arrangements. Within the framework of this distinction, Stewart advanced once more the Humean argument that the happiness of a given society was dependent immediately, and in the first place, on the economic organisation of the society itself and only secondarily on the form of its constitution.77 Although he fully endorsed the idea that the economic structure of society and its political constitution could be discussed as two

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conceptually distinct issues, Stewart acknowledged the ambiguity of the notion of the intervention of the state in the economy. The reason why it was impossible to trace with any great precision the border between political economy and the theory of government was that, in order to do this, one had first to establish which aspects of the economic life of a country could be left to the natural laws of the market and human behaviour, and which on the other hand were desirable objects for the legislator's intervention. As Burke had pointed out, the main task of political economy was precisely to ascertain what the state ought to take upon itself and what it ought to leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual initiative: In point of fact, it is the very problem stated by Mr Burke, which renders it so difficult to define with precision the object of Political Economy. Its general aim is to enlighten those who are destined for the functions of government, and to enlighten public opinion with respect to their conduct; but unless it be previously ascertained how far the legitimate province of the Statesman extends, it is impossible to draw the line between the subjects which belong properly to the science of Legislation and those of which the regulation ought to be entrusted to the selfish passions and motives inseparable from human nature.78 Stewart was not particularly troubled by the fact that the demarcation between political economy and theory of government was bound to remain a trifle vague, at least in the analysis of specific sets of circumstances. It was inevitable that the two great departments of political science - the one concerned with the 'natural' laws of the happiness of human society, and the other dealing with the forms of political intervention - should be both conceptually separated, and in practice also strictly interdependent. 79 The problem of the limits of political economy - the wall to be built around the city of science once the construction of the city itself had been completed, in John Stuart Mill's famous metaphor80 - was not an obsessive concern in Stewart's presentation of the subject. In particular, Stewart did not attempt to define the field of investigation of political economy by tracing back its first principles to a definite set of laws of human nature. Stewart indicated in his lectures that a rigorous definition of the principles of political economy could be derived only from the study of those 'springs of human action' which guided and determined all individual and collective economic choices. Without the definition of such general laws of human nature, the description of political economy as the 'science of wealth and population' remained necessarily vague:


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The only infallible rules of political wisdom are founded ultimately on a knowledge of the prevailing springs of human action, and he who looses himself in the details of the social mechanism, while he overlooks those moral powers which give motion to the whole, though he might accumulate a mass of information highly useful in the pursuit of private life, must remain in total ignorance of those primary causes on which depend the prosperity and safety of nations.81

But he failed to pursue this line of investigation any further, leaving it an open but unexplored possibility. The proposition which John Stuart Mill discussed in his essay 'On the Definition of Political Economy', that political economy was: 'the science which treats the production and distribution of wealth, so far as they depend on the laws of human nature' or 'the science relating to the moral and psychological laws of the production and distribution of wealth'82 was not incompatible with Stewart's perspective; and Stewart himself did to some degree acknowledge its force. But it did not figure as centrally in his work as it was to do in the later 19th-century debate on the nature of political economy.83 As we have seen, Stewart was certainly interested in the definition of a general system of moral sciences, and in the relations between the individual sciences and the philosophy of mind. But he also believed that an exhaustive sketch of the body of moral sciences in this sensedespite the relevant contributions of Lord Bacon and Jean D'Alembert (1717-8 3) - still remained no more than a desideratum. The rapid growth of moral sciences in modern times had put such general assessment of their first principles and overall structure altogether beyond the reach of contemporary philosophical reflection.84 The truly distinctive feature of Stewart's presentation of political economy was the essentially historical character of his approach. The lectures, in particular, took the form of a review of the major economic theories and doctrines as these had emerged at different stages in the development of modern commercial society, and in the particular context of the different European countries. Political economy had a history, and its identity and boundaries were to a large extent defined by this history. It was the history of how a science of politics had been rendered possible in modern Europe by the advent of commercial society and by the political transformations associated with this advent: That the science of political economy, in the common acceptation of the phrase, is of modern origin, is universally admitted; and that the same observation is applicable to the other objects to which I propose to extend the same

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title, will appear in the course of the following remarks. Indeed, upon all of them, many of the conclusions which now very generally unite the suffrages of speculative men, stand in direct opposition to the maxims of ancient policy. It seems therefore naturally to occur as an object of preliminary inquiry, what are the peculiarities in the circumstances of Modern Europe which have given birth to this new science, and which have imposed on statesmen the necessity of searching other lights than what are to be collected from the institutions of Ancient Greece and Rome?85 In Stewart's reconstruction, the turning-point in this transition to the 'scientific' approach to politics, was marked by the contribution of the French Economists. In the chapter of the Elements dedicated to the method of politics, Stewart had observed that the Economists' attempts to promote economic reform in France had been arbitrarily mistaken by English observers for one of the many current' Utopian' political projects. Yet their method was, on the contrary, as he insisted, opposed to the very principle of political Utopias.86 Unlike Utopian projectors, the Economists did not regard social order as the product of human art, but of the 'wisdom of nature'. Their approach to politics was thus rigorously scientific; it rested on the knowledge and understanding of natural laws, and not on either the intimations of abstract ideals, or the weight of traditional authority. The Economists had aimed to accomplish 'a reformation in politics similar to what Kepler and Newton accomplished in astronomy'. They had transformed political economy from an esoteric skill in the hands of men 'initiated to the mysteries of government' into knowledge open to the common sense which guides the choices of mankind at large.87 The scientific revolution promoted by the Economists in the field of moral science had subsequently found a further and powerful impetus in the events of the 1780s and 1790s: Already, during the short interval which has elapsed since the publication of Mr Hume's writings, an astonishing change has taken place in Europe; the mysteries of the courts have been laid open; the influence of secret negotiation on the relative situation of states has declined; and the studies of those men whose public spirit or ambition devotes them to the service of their country have been diverted from the intrigue of cabinets, and the details of the diplomatic code, to the liberal and manly pursuit of political philosophy.88 Thus, the same crisis of European society which had produced the philosophy of the Enlightenment and generated the French revolution marked the starting-point of the modern 'scientific' understanding of politics.


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Generally speaking, in Stewart's historical sketch, the emergence of political economy as a science could not be separated from the development of political science at large. Political economy was merely a part of political science which - because it was so crucial to the understanding of commercial society- had solidified more rapidly than others into a coherent savoir, an organised body of doctrines. It was also, consequently, the part of political science in which it was easiest to identify the conditions for achieving a genuinely scientific status. Which were, in broad terms, the preconditions for a social science to be genuinely scientific? Firstly, Stewart believed in the unity of method between natural and moral sciences. The essential feature of the 'empirical' approach was in fact the extension of the experimental or inductive method, originally developed in the natural sciences, to the moral sciences.89 Secondly, Stewart thought, against the views of Leibniz and Condillac, echoed in Scotland by George Campbell (1719-96) in his Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), that mathematics was quite separate from the body of empirical sciences. The possibility of expressing the laws of empirical sciences in the language of mathematics emphasised by the Newtonian tradition90 did not imply that mathematics itself should be regarded as a form of inductive knowledge.91 Thirdly, Stewart argued that, in the empirical sciences, the application of hypothetical and a priori reasoning was perfectly legitimate and in no sense incompatible with the testing of theories against experience. The use of abstraction was particularly indispensable in those fields of social research where it was necessary to deal with very complex (and rapidly varying) sets of data. Thus the contrast between experience and theory which divided the practitioners of disciplines such as medicine and political economy was dangerously misleading. In the domain of political economy, the opposition between 'political arithmeticians' or 'statistical collectors' on the one hand and 'political economists' or 'political philosophers' on the other appeared to Stewart particularly vicious. The former were, supposedly, entirely committed to experience; the latter were regarded as little better than dreamers and visionaries. In reality, Stewart argued, this judgment was exactly the reverse of the truth: The facts accumulated by the statistical collector are merely particular results, which other men have seldom an opportunity of verifying or disproving; and which, to those who consider them in an insulated state, can never afford any important information. The facts which the political philosopher professes to

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investigate are exposed to the examination of all mankind; and while they enable him, like the general laws of physics, to ascertain numberless particulars by synthetic reasoning, they furnish the means of estimating the credibility of evidence resting on the testimony of individual observers.92

While Stewart's understanding of the nature of political economy as a discipline was essentially historical, and stemmed from a conception of the development of modern society as a whole, it would be misleading to exaggerate the distinctiveness of his approach in contrast with other early-19th-century thinking on the subject. A good indication of the seminal character of Stewart's contribution can be found in the writings of an author as comparatively distant from the Scottish tradition as John Stuart Mill.93 Mills's views of the nature of social sciences and of political economy in particular are too well known to require more than a brief outline. The core of Mill's argument can be found in his famous essays of 183840 on Bentham and Coleridge,94 in which he suggested that, just as there had always been detractors and advocates of modern civilisation, there had also been two basic approaches to the study of society, symbolised by Jeremy Bentham and Samual Taylor Coleridge respectively: the former progressive, metaphysical, experimental and sceptical; the latter conservative, historical, ontological and religious; the former committed to what Mill called the 'method of detail', the analytical criticism of existing institutions; the latter committed to the understanding of society as an organic whole. These two methods in Mill's view were equally crucial to the study of society, and both were, by themselves, partial and inadequate: it was only through their combination that valid knowledge could be achieved. Despite some mildly confusing alterations in terminology, this conception of the existence within the tradition of social thought of two complementary methodologies was essentially maintained by Mill in Book VI of the System of Logic. The 'method of detail' (Bentham's and James Mill's approach) was now called 'geometrical or abstract'; the historical approach of Coleridge and Macaulay was labelled 'chemical or experimental', while the synthesis of the two, the comprehensive method of social science, was described as 'physical or concretedeductive' method. This comprehensive method was complex in its explanatory approach: The Social Science, therefore (which, by a convenient barbarism, has been termed Sociology) is a deductive science; not, indeed, after the model of geometry, but after that of the more complex physical sciences. It infers the


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law of each effect from the laws of causation on which the effect depends; not, however, from the law merely of one cause, as in the geometrical method; but considering all the causes which conjunctly influence the effect, and compounding their laws with one another.95 Not only did Mill believe that the methodological differences between the critics of political economy, such as Coleridge, and its supporters, such as Bentham and James Mill, derived from a simple misunderstanding or at best an imperfect understanding of the true method of social science. He also argued that the separation of political economy from social science as a whole in no way conflicted with the attempt to achieve a comprehensive theory of society, but simply reflected the natural sequence of scientific reasoning. The motive for separating one particular group of social phenomena from the rest, and for creating a distinct branch of science relating to these, was that they depended mainly, at least in the first instance, on one class of circumstances only; and that, even when other circumstances interfered, 'the ascertainment of the effect due to one class of circumstances alone, [was] a sufficiently intricate business to make it expedient to perform it once for all, and then allow for the effect of the modifying circumstances'.96 Mill's methodological approach, although undoubtedly illuminating and helpful, was not, like Stewart's, wholly free from ambiguities. One relevant unclarity in his view was whether the 'physical' method he described as the 'proper' method of social science had in fact always been followed by political economists in the past, whether it was (as Auguste Comte had suggested) the one tentatively followed by Smith but later abandoned by his successors, or whether it was completely novel. In his influential essay 'On the Definition of Political Economy', Mill suggested that the method was far from being new, that it was simply the method applied by all the great political economists in the past, each of whom had combined analytical rigour with historical and political sensibility. 'Scientific' economic investigation had always been essentially the same: but a clear understanding of its nature had been reached only at a point when the science itself had attained a mature stage in its development.97 However, in some other of his writings, like the articles on 'Tocqueville' and on 'Civilisation' and in the System of Logic, Mill appeared more inclined to present his understanding of the nature of the social sciences as the product of a new approach, one made both possible and necessary by the profound changes brought about in European society

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by the French revolution: 'an entirely new science for an entirely new world'.98 The Preface to the first edition of the Principles of Political Economy suggests that Mill saw no immediate contradiction between these two perspectives. In this text he expressed both the intention of writing a treatise on political economy modelled on the Wealth of Nations, and the ambition of combining Smith's approach with 'the best social ideas of the present time'.99 But in general commentators on Mill's work have been inclined to stress the methodological break with the previous tradition of economic investigation, rather than its continuity.100 Mill's famous account of his 'spiritual crisis' in the Autobiography lent particular weight to the conception of a radical turning-point in his way of thinking about social science. Mill's identification of Bentham and Coleridge as the two 'seminal minds' of his own age was in itself historically misleading, since his description of the character of social investigation, and in particular the model of the physical method, was much closer to, and far more directly influenced by Stewart's Elements and the works of the Scottish school than by either of them.101 Significantly, the reference in the 'Essay on Definition' to Turgot as the ideal political economist, with his combination of political experience and theoretical understanding (like the reviewers, Mill had read with great attention Condorcet's biography of Turgot) echoed a classical theme in Stewart's teaching.102 A particular source of confusion for commentators was Mill's description of political economy as a separate and independent social science, alongside his stress on its ultimate dependence on a general theory of human behaviour (ethology) on the one hand and on a comprehensive science of politics on the other. This ambiguity had been implicit, as we have seen, in Stewart's model, but in that context it had been seen not as indicating a genuine contradiction, but simply a natural shift in terminology. However, Mill's widely popular restatement of the terms of the distinction between political economy and political science became (and has remained) the occasion for recurrent dispute over where precisely (both theoretically and historically) the birth and limits of economic science itself should be properly located. Even a cursory survey of Mill's writings thus suggests that, if by the early 1830s Stewart's work was no longer an acknowledged point of reference for the debate on the scientific standing of political economy, the general framework of his approach was still very much alive and highly influential. Not only had Stewart supplied the basic conceptual apparatus still employed to discuss the philosophy of moral


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sciences, but in the first half of the 19th century the methodological debate kept revolving around a number of particular ambiguities and tensions, all of which had been present and indeed clearly articulated in his work. This was as true of the most effective and successful of his methodological conceptions as it was for the most inconclusive and potentially sterile aspects of his thinking. Science for all: McCulloch's Discourse on Political Economy (1824)

Further light on the reviewers' understanding of the nature of political economy as a discipline is cast by McCulloch's Discourse on the Rise, Progress, Peculiar Objects and Importance of Political Economy (Edinburgh,

1824), the introduction to the 'Ricardo Memorial Lectures' which he delivered in London in 1824—5.103 This text is in fact the sole document we possess by a member of the Edinburgh Review grouping which offers an academic presentation of the subject matter of political economy roughly comparable with that outlined in Stewart's lectures. In addition, McCulloch's Discourse has the merit of highlighting the problem of the scientific status of political economy from a slightly different angle from the one adopted thus far: not from the perspective of general philosophical speculation (where the reviewers had little, if anything, to add to Stewart's efforts) but from that of the audience and the social function of economic investigation. After Ricardo's premature death in 1823, a committee was set up by his friends to commemorate his work and political activity by a series of public lectures on political economy.104 The project aroused some initial misgivings and encountered a number of obstacles - many MPs and peers being apparently readier to subscribe for a bust or tablet to the memory of the illustrious political economist than to participate in the funding of a pioneering educational enterprise. The general mood was expressed by William Huskisson (1770-1830), the newly-elected president of the Board of Trade, who declared that'. . . in his public situation, he was not yet prepared to like having his name published as that of a political economist'.105 However, on 29 March 1824 the lectures (a series of about twenty) were finally advertised in the Morning Chronicle. The appointment of McCulloch as lecturer was a predictable one, both because of his previous teaching in Edinburgh106 and his public association with Ricardo's doctrines and because of his personal connection with members of the organising committee like James Mill. Despite the initial lack of enthusiasm on the part of potential sub-

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scribers, the lectures proved a great success and gathered a large and distinguished public. The audience (of some 250 people) included several (Whig and Tory) MPs, a few peers (Lords Russell, King, Calthorpe, Milton and Minto), members of the Cabinet, many prominent city figures and a large number of bankers and merchants. The lectures were repeated with equal success in 1825, and then discontinued in 1827 when McCulloch was elected to the Chair of Political Economy in the newly founded University of London.107 The 'Ricardo Memorial Lectures , with their two guineas fee for attendance and their public of peers and prominent politicians, can hardly be described as a popular educational initiative. They belonged nevertheless firmly within that campaign for the promotion of popular education which the reviewers - and above all Henry Brougham - undertook with such vigour in the 1820s and 1830s. They were inspired by the same ideal of 'science for all' which led to the foundation of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and of University College.108 In his review of McCulloch's Discourse, published in the Westminster Review in 1825, the 19-year-old John Stuart Mill wrote: If there is a sign of the times upon which more than any other we should be justified in resting our hopes of the future progression of the human race in the career of improvement, that sign undoubtedly is, the demand which is now manifesting itself on the part of the public for instruction in the science of Political Economy . . . And yet, surprising as it may appear, it is no less notorious that up to the year 1818, the science of political economy was scarcely known and talked of beyond a small circle of philosophers and that legislation, so far from being in conformity with its principles, was daily receding from them more and more.109

The point raised by Mill here was a crucial one; it is in fact only by looking at the goal of the lectures themselves, at the educational purpose for which they were intended, that it is possible to detect the principal difference between McCulloch's assessment of the nature of political economy and Stewart's views on the subject. The general outline of the characteristics of political economy in McCulloch's Discourse was in fact extremely close to the letter of Stewart's teaching. Firstly, McCulloch followed Stewart in his definition of the relations between political economy proper and the science of politics at large. He admitted that the two were strictly inter-related but also conceptually distinct.110 Like Stewart too, he subscribed to the belief that the laws of political economy were 'the same in every country and stage of


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society' and that they were consequently more stable and general in character than the principles of politics and government. Secondly, McCulloch endorsed Stewart's definition of political economy as an inductive or empirical science. He stressed the similarity between the natural and the moral sciences and maintained that political economy admitted 'as much a certainty in its conclusions as any science founded on fact and experiment [could] possibly do'.112 Many of the alleged differences among practitioners in the field of the moral sciences, he argued, were due to the latter's still comparatively recent and immature development. Like Stewart, he advocated the necessity of combining, in economic investigation, observation and experience with 'principles deducted from analytical reasoning': It is from the want of attention to these considerations that much of the error and misapprehension with which the science of Political Economy has been, and still is, infected, has arisen. Almost all the absurd theories and opinions which have successively appeared have been supported by an appeal to facts. But a knowledge of facts, without a knowledge of their mutual relations, without being able to show why the one is the cause and other an effect- is, to use the illustration of Mr Say, really no better than the indigested erudition of an almanack maker, and can afford no means of judging of the truth or falsehood of a general principle.113

McCulloch concluded his presentation of this point by repeating Stewart's old arguments against the blindly 'empirical' contribution to political economy of political arithmeticians and statisticians. Thirdly, McCulloch followed extremely closely Stewart's historical sketch of the emergence of political economy and its relations to the development of modern commercial society. In particular, the Discourse interpreted the contributions of both the Mercantilists and the Physiocrats as the expression of the beliefs and prejudices of distinct social groups with their own specific political and economic preoccupations. Within the framework of a rapidly expanding commercial economy, the regulations of manufactures and trade advocated by mercantilism, instead of appearing as the product of a selfish, monopolising spirit, had been regarded as dictated by the soundest policy, while the interests of the manufacturers and merchants had been held to be identical with those of the public: 'It cannot excite our surprise that a system having so many popular prejudices in its favour, and which afforded a plausible apology for the exclusive privileges enjoyed by the manufacturing and commercial classes, should have early

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attained, or that it should still prescribe . . . powerful practical influence.'114 Similarly, Quesnay's preoccupation with the depressed state of the French economy in his own time had led him to discover that 'the prevention of the exportation of corn to foreign countries, and the preference given by the regulations of Colbert to the manufacturing and commercial classes over the agriculturists, had formed the most powerful obstacles to the progress and improvement of agriculture.'115 It was from this somewhat ad hoc analysis of the state of French agriculture during the Ancien Regime that Quesnay had derived a theory which gave to agriculture the status of the sole genuinely productive form of economic activity. With the publication of the Wealth of Nations, and especially with the experience of the war period which in the short space of thirty years had accumulated a stock of economic knowledge which matched that of the preceding centuries, political economy had overcome this initial stage of suggestive, but somewhat fragmentary and partial analysis. Political economists had at last been enabled by the changing circumstances of modern commercial society to search for the principles of their science not in a few isolated facts or in metaphysical abstractions but in the exhaustive study of'the connection and relation subsisting among the various phenomena manifested in the process of civilization'.116 But, if McCulloch's understanding of the nature of political economy was in those respects extremely close to Stewart's own view, his image of the public to which the science of political economy must address itself was significantly different. What in Stewart's conception had been a privileged skill and the monopoly of a political elite, became, in McCulloch's presentation, a current form of knowledge which could assist any member of the society in his or her daily life and activities. It is important that this claim should be understood clearly. The 18th-century Scottish writers who saw in the growth of the middling ranks the distinctive feature in the development of modern commercial society, were quite vague as to who precisely the middling ranks were. The writings of Smith, Millar and Stewart employed the term extremely broadly, using it to refer to all sections of society, from the wealthiest (non-aristocratic) members of the community, down to the artisans and skilled labourers. The reviewers were hardly more precise in their terminology. A similar vagueness and ambiguity naturally


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characterises the view that, with the growth of commercial society, political power should be extended to the middling ranks. In itself this formula reveals very little about the provisions which those authors who employed it actually had in mind on the question, for example, of political representation. It is only by inspecting the ways in which the expression is employed in highly specific contexts and at particular points in time that we can recover what exactly they meant when they referred to the 'middling ranks'.117 Stewart's teaching of political economy in Edinburgh, and his commitment to the philosophy of common sense, can be, and in fact were, regarded on occasion by his contemporaries as an index of the advent of a 'popular' and 'middle-class' culture. In Thomas Love Peacock's unflattering formula, an age of greatness had an Epicurus or a John Locke; the age of the epicier settled for a Dugald Stewart.118 However, Stewart's own notion of the appropriate audience for political economy hardly extended to the epicier (although of course post-revolutionary European society offered no protection against the possibility of one finding epiciers in the capacity of virtuous citizens, marshals of France and even political economists): In mentioning as one of the principal effects of civilization its tendency to familiarize the mind to general terms and to general propositions, I did not mean to say, that this influence extends equally to all the classes of men in society. On the contrary, it is evidently confined, in a great measure, to those who receive a liberal education; while the mind of the lower orders, like those of savages, are so habitually occupied about particular objects and particular events, that, although they are sometimes led, from imitation, to employ general expressions, the use which they make of them is much more the result of memory than of judgment; and it is but seldom that they are able to comprehend fully, any process of reasoning in which they are involved.119

McCulloch's claim about the potential beneficiaries of scientific reasoning was much more radical. Political economy was indeed a necessary and indispensable skill for the legislator; the ignorance of the science which had to inspire all financial and commercial measures of legislation would affect the interests of every individual and actually 'endanger the subsistence of many families'.120 But the ability to comprehend the principles of political economy and the interest in doing so extended to all members of the community: There is no class of persons to whom this knowledge can be considered as either extrinsic or superfluous. There are some, doubtless, to whom it may be of more advantage than to others; but it is of the utmost consequence to all.

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The prices of all sorts of commodities - the profits of the manufacturer and merchant - the rent of the landlord - the wages of the day labourer - and the incidence and effect of taxes and regulations, all depend on the principles which Political Economy can alone ascertain and elucidate.121

The Discourse contained a series of unobtrusive but definite indications that the content of Smithian political economy was being affected and altered by this deliberate broadening in its intended public. One such indication was McCulloch's insistence not only on the importance of the division of labour for the achievement of economic growth but on the theological necessity and moral significance of labour itself: 'the eternal law of providence has decreed, that wealth can only be procured by industry - that man must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. . .'122 In a similar light, also, should be read McCulloch's presentation of the moral implications of Malthus's Essay, where he suggested that the key objective of Malthus's work was to show that 'the lower classes [were] in a very great degree the arbiters of their own fortunes';123 or his insistence on Ricardo's contribution to the definition of the laws of distribution, and, in particular, to understanding of that inverse relationship between wages and profits which, in his view, was responsible for the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in advanced commercial society.124 In McCulloch's sketch, the evaluation of the comparative advantages and disadvantages of commercial society remained essentially the same as in previous Scottish pronouncements on the subject. But its public presentation had to be phrased more cautiously and more defensively. The new 'popular' audience was bound to ask questions, and it might not be inclined to share the cool scepticism of its instructors over the inevitable social costs of economic growth. From now on the theoretical understanding of commercial society was to need the garnish of a new, moralising rhetoric, alert to social dangers and popular preoccupations. What then was the outcome of the ambitious Scottish project for the 'restoration' of speculative philosophy? Here, as in other fields, the reviewers' achievements proved double-edged. The effort to struggle free from the tides of the French revolution left little occasion for the display of philosophical depth and systematic intellectual ambition. Only Brougham's disproportionate and unfaltering self-esteem would lead him, in his old age, to produce volume after volume of philosophical synthesis, to be left mercifully unopened by future generations.


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Yet the project for a philosophy in the service of the social sciences proved a sweeping success, and the promotion of political economy in particular remained the star achievement of the Review, It was a result gained at high intellectual costs, marching thoughtlessly over an impressive array of unsolved problems, philosophical ambiguities and conceptual unclarities. Luckily the epicier was not squeamish: the new moral sciences rose triumphantly on their shaky and inelegant foundations of readers' digests and the penny press, readily fulfilling some of the wildest dreams and the worst fears of their founders.

4 ^

The Edinburgh reviewers and the Whig party

Political economy and party politics In the concluding section of Chapter 1 we suggested that the reviewers' conception of the science of politics had many theoretical similarities to that outlined in the writings of Hume, Millar and Stewart. We indicated at the same time that the experience of the French revolution had resulted in the aspiration- deeply felt by many in the reviewers' genera tion - to a more direct participation in party politics; and we mentioned the influence of Burke's notion of politics as a skill and ^profession on the reviewers' attitudes towards politics (see above pp.40-5). Among the early contributors to the Edinburgh Review, two in particular became 'professional' politicians and took their seats in Parliament as representatives of the Whig party: Francis Horner and Henry Brougham. Their respective personalities and careers differed strikingly: Horner died in 1817, having exercised only a marginal influence on the fortunes of the party he had served. But Brougham lived to become not only one of the most controversial but also one of the most versatile and dominating political figures of his time. If their achievements were unequal, their political experiences in many respects run parallel with one another. Their background and education were very similar (they had been childhood playmates and attended the same school in Edinburgh).1 And both (Brougham with some arriere-pensees) chose the Whig party and promoted, amongst the members of the Edinburgh Review grouping, the most progressive and liberal political line. Most important of all, both pursued their political ambitions by the same means. In each case it was by presenting themselves as 'experts' on political economy that they initially gained the confidence and support of enlightened members of the Whig aristocracy. The success of their enterprise, however limited, was sufficient to 112


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puzzle 19th-century observers. Commenting on the impressive public response to Horner's death, Walter Bagehot wrote: It is no explanation of the universal regret, that he was a considerable political economist: no real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist: he is much more likely to be sorry for his life. There is an idea that he has something to do with statistics; or, if that be exploded, that he is a person who writes upon 'value': says that rent is- you cannot very well make out what; talks excruciating currency; he may be useful as drying machines are useful; but the notion of crying about him is absurd. The economical loss might be great, but it will not explain the mourning for Francis Horner. 2

It is now necessary to consider Horner's and Brougham's contribution to practical politics: the role that they played as political economists in the English Parliament and in the shaping of the new, post-French-revolution Whig party. Two issues in particular require exploration. Firstly, to what extent did the political economy which they had learnt from Dugald Stewart guide and inspire Horner's and Brougham's interventions in economic policy? Secondly, and more generally, how far did they in fact succeed in imposing the imprint of their Scottish economic expertise on the economic policy pursued by the Whig party? In other words, was there ever a distinctively Whig political economy? As early as 1810, Lord Holland had expressed the opinion that of the three allegedly 'Whig' ideals of 'peace, economy and reform' the Whigs had almost never been committed to any.3 Yet modern historians are still inclined to presume the existence of some continuity between political economy and Whig policies: the new ideas of the pioneering economic science becoming naturally embodied (with the degree of approximation which must be allowed in face of the constraints of practical policy) in the political strategy of the Whig opposition. This interpretation underlies in particular John Clive's influential study of the Edinburgh Review ,4 and it certainly demands closer attention. An accessory issue amongst the same cluster of questions concerns the personal position of Brougham and Horner themselves. What degree of autonomy did they succeed in maintaining in their relations with the leadership of the Whig party, and how far were they forced into personal dependence on the patronage of particular members of the aristocracy?5 Their participation in public life was marked from the start by a tension between their role as clients and advisers on the one hand and the surviving ideals of civic virtue and political independence,

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the dignity of the urban, educated Edinburgh elite, on the other. Not even Brougham's immoderate and endlessly scheming ambition was sufficient to overcome the handicap of his having been born on the fringes of the Scottish gentry.6 Certainly, the fact that he did not belong to the Whig cousinage was the major (although not the only)7 obstacle in the way of his recurrently unsuccessful attempts to become the acknowledged leader of the party in the House of Commons. Yet both Horner and Brougham were confident about the indispensability of their services, and of the solidity and durability of their social elevation. In the aftermath of the French revolution it did not require a vivid imagination to expect that talent would finally obtain its due reward. To address these questions it is helpful to outline the salient steps in Horner's and Brougham's respective careers as economic reformers. Francis Horner: from Edinburgh to London Two particular circumstances in Homer's quiet and rather uneventful life were crucial to the shaping of his public career: the first of these was his decision to leave Edinburgh and enter the London Bar; the second was his resolution to lend his support to the Whig party. When they finally took office in the 1830s, the Scottish Whigs probably exaggerated, in retrospect, both their own juvenile political Radicalism and the danger that they had represented to the Tory establishment. 8 However -even if we exclude deliberate political persecution the lack of opportunity for social advancement, the great immobility in the local distribution of power and offices and the increasingly clear understanding that the focus of the political debate was shifting irreversibly to England and to Parliament itself, together furnished more than adequate grounds to drive the young Whig intellectuals away from Edinburgh, whether to London or to the colonies.9 The circumstances which prompted so many young intellectuals and professional men in Homer's generation to emigrate from Scotland may be regarded as an advanced stage in a decline of Scottish towns as intellectual and political centres which had become perceptible by the end of the 18 th century and which had been further aggravated in the 1790s by the political reaction that followed the French revolution. Only the encouragement and financial support of his father, a prosperous Edinburgh merchant, spared Horner the distressing experience common to several of his contemporaries - and in particular Francis


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Jeffrey, James Mill and Henry Brougham himself- of attempting to make a living out of the legal profession in Scotland, or, alternatively of engaging in literary or journalistic activity in London. Horner's first separation from Edinburgh life occurred when he was sent to England at the age of nineteen, between 1796 and 1797, to Shacklewell, where he studied for about a year under the supervision of a private tutor, the declared aim of his visit being 'to unlearn his Scottish accent'.10 The letters exchanged between Horner and his family during his first English residence suggest the existence of an early design on the part of his father to prepare his talented elder son for the possibility of a professional, and perhaps even political, career on the English scene. The following years, from 1798 to 1802- the last years he spent in Edinburgh- were regarded by Horner as a period of intensive training for the legal profession, and it was principally in this light that he viewed his participation in the activities of the Speculative Society and the Academy of Physics: as useful practice in the indispensable art of speaking and debating in public. His journal for these years shows him firmly committed to the intellectual life of Edinburgh and not too dissatisfied with its provincial routine. n But, in a letter written on 17 April 1802, during a short visit to London, he can be found formally requesting his father to endorse his decision to enter his name at Lincoln's Inn- a decision which he described as the result of long and careful scrutiny which had convinced him of the advantages of practising the legal profession in London.12 Although the opportunity for a better professional future was the justification which he gave for the move, it is also clear that political ambition played a major part in the decision. Horner believed that it was still possible to achieve professional distinction at the Edinburgh Bar, even if the profession was not likely to be particularly lucrative. But he had no illusions about the poor chances that Scotland offered to a young, Whig-oriented politician.13 Between 1798 and 1804 his journal and correspondence indicate a recurrent preoccupation with the question of his political commitment .The doubts he was attempting to resolve were not doubts about party allegiance: his Whig opinions were clearly stated from the beginning,14 and he had a deep antipathy towards the kind of opportunistic calculations which were simultaneously leading his friend, Henry Brougham, in his somewhat vulgar quest for Pitt's favour. Horner's problem rather was to choose whether he should cultivate his Whig opinions in private, giving priority to his professional and intellectual exertions, or whether he should

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jeopardise both his success in the legal profession and his personal autonomy by becoming a professional politician. This antithesis between political independence and party allegiance, between the corrupt and the constructive aspects of political factions, was not just a conflict of ideals, a theoretical dilemma. On the contrary, it bore directly upon Horner's individual experience. Horner believed that to be a Whig in Edinburgh could only mean upholding personal integrity and retaining a certain independence from the establishment. In Scotland, in other words, the crushing Tory rule made philosophic Whiggism a necessity rather than a choice. London, on the contrary, offered viable opportunities for direct participation in politics; and there the conditions of'independence' and 'party loyalty' took definite shape in the relationships which Horner was establishing with his Whig patrons, Lord Webb Seymour, Lord Holland and Lord Richard Grenville (1776-1839). By 1804 he had made up his mind on the desirability of a political career, though he remained pessimistic over the chances of achieving what he regarded as the only acceptable way of entering Parliament: 'a good close Whig borough'. 15 As matters turned out, he did not have to wait for long. In June 1806 he was frantically consulting his friends about the possibility of accepting a seat. Lord Kinnaird, through the mediation of Lord Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice (1780-1863) (both old Edinburgh friends), had offered to purchase for him the borough of St Ives, giving a full guarantee that he attached no conditions to the offer. Horner was returned for St Ives at the beginning of November of the same year, thereby attaining what he described as 'one of the earliest objects of [his] ambition'. 16 These doubts and hesitations make clear that Horner's final commitment to party politics was in no sense uncritical, but embodied a new conception and a fresh perspective upon the function of political parties. His attitude involved a due respect for his patrons and a certain degree of party loyalty, but it also expressed a residual concern with 'civic virtue' and political independence, as well as a contempt for the uninformed and amateurish politics of the aristocracy. He saw the support which he gave to the Whig party not as the acceptance en bloc of a set of traditional principles and alliances, but as the temporary choice of a political strategy and a system of measures which appeared most advantageous to public welfare.17 When he took up an active political role in the Whig party in 1806, Horner was not joining a well-established political force, nor subscrib-


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ing to an influential and triumphant ideology. Indeed, the party was at the time - by general agreement of its supporters and ideologues - in a state of severe political division and utter ideological disorientation. The accusations of Jacobinism - and, later, of Bonapartism - had paralysed its political initiative. War-time politics had exhausted its political creativity, and the long period which it had been obliged to spend in opposition had exhausted its rhetorical resources.18 Two months before Horner's election to Parliament, the death of Fox had deprived the party of the only presence still capable of keeping its factions together and embodying its moral unity as a party.19 After the brief experience of the Ministry of All Talents, it had become clear that the prospect of a new Whig administration had been rendered impossible and in the end undesirable - by the personal hostility of the king and the lack of popular support. Horner lacked the driving ambition, energy and flair necessary for success in someone who lacked fortune or family connections. Unlike 'sweeping Brougham', he moved discreetly among family disputes and factional intrigues, enjoying the sympathies of both Foxites and Grenvillites, observing punctiliously the rules of aristocratic patronage. An admirer of Jeremy Bentham - for purely intellectual reasons20 - he never showed the least sympathy for the Radicals, nor acquired the easy popular rhetoric which occasionally characterised both Brougham's speeches and Jeffrey's articles. If he never became a party leader, he is certainly to be credited with a conscious and successful effort at renewing the language and political style of the Whigs. The commitment to London politics had to a certain extent alienated Horner from his Scottish intellectual background. But in Parliament his Scottish accomplishments proved a useful corrective to the weaknesses of Whig political strategy. In Horner's opinion, if in his appraisal of the French revolution Stewart had committed the error of attaching an excessive weight to economic reform, and underestimating the force of political changes, the Whig leader Fox had been guilty of a symmetrical political illusion. In France, Fox had believed in the efficacy of the constitutional changes introduced by the Jacobins, just as in England he had trusted the inviolability of the constitution. In practice, his irresponsible support for the French Jacobins had been the major cause of the political reaction that now threatened English liberty and the English constitution and it was also the major cause of the party's present disarray.21 Horner saw two solutions for the crisis which paralysed the Whig

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party. The first of these was to open the party itself to a broader political audience - in particular, to those 'middling ranks' which the development of commercial society had raised to prosperity and to civic self-consciousness. The second was to move the party from its defensive position and focus its intervention on popular issues such as war finance, Catholic relief and commercial policy.22 The Scottish commitment to the scientific understanding of commercial society made a fresh appearance both in Horner's attempt to give socio-economic content to traditional Whig concepts such as those ofpeople zndpopular party, and in his aspiration to replace the politics of the aristocratic factions with a professional 'politics for experts' in which the political economist might hope to play a leading role.23 The Bullion Report Horner's most important political performance in the ten years of his parliamentary life (from 1806 to 1816, when ill-health forced him to an early retirement) was his appointment as chairman of the Bullion Committee in 1810.24 As we mentioned above (pp. 56-9), Horner had taken an early interest in the consequences of the suspension of gold payments on which the Bank of England- pressed by increasing demands for credit by Pitt's government - had decided in February 1797.25 Initially his concern - which he expressed in his articles on Thornton and Lord King in the Edinburgh Review in 1802-3 - was essentially a theoretical one. His analysis focused upon the implications of the contemporary experience of a paper-money circulation for 18th-century theories of money and credit, and in particular for Smith's views on the subject. In 1804 Horner, although still not as yet a member of Parliament, had nevertheless been closely involved- through his personal contacts with Henry Thornton - in the activity of the parliamentary committee which investigated the exchange value of the Irish pound.26 For a few years after that, the issue of the suspension of payments disappeared from political debate. But in 1809 a sharp new increase in the paper price of gold, and the fall of the paper pound on the European exchanges, once again attracted public attention to the state of currency.27 By 1810, the question of whether the Bank of England had in fact been responsible for feeding an inflationary process by its overissue of paper money had gained sufficient political relevance to become the subject of a parliamentary inquiry, and Horner found him-


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self the natural candidate both for the task of privately instructing Lord Grenville on the mysteries of monetary theory, and for that of representing the Whigs on the committee. Although he certainly enjoyed Lord Grenville's personal trust, Horner's appointment, like that of the other members of the committee, is generally agreed to have been dictated by his technical expertise, rather than by his personal political qualifications.28 Both the draft of the Report itself, in which Horner summarised the views of the committee, and the parliamentary debate of May 1811, in which the sixteen resolutions which he proposed were defeated, offer an interesting insight into the limitations and the effectivenes of his approach to politics. In a letter to his friend John Archibald Murray - often cited by historical commentators on the Bullion Report - Horner described the Report as a 'motley composition', 'very clumsily and prolixly drawn'; 'stating nothing but very old doctrines on the subject it treats of, and stating them in a more imperfect form than they have frequently appeared before'.29 In other words, the Report represented a rough compromise between the views of its authors, Horner, William Huskisson and Henry Thornton, and the views which they thought might be intelligible and acceptable to the majority of members of Parliament. It is certainly true that most of the opinions that Horner had stated firmly and explicitly a few years before in his articles on Thornton and Lord King reappeared in the Report expressed in a far more cautious and prudent form. In the article on Lord King, Horner had adopted two firm positions. In the first place he maintained that the high price of bullion and the unfavourable conditions of foreign exchanges had been determined by an over-issue of paper money and not by adverse circumstances of trade or by military expenditure abroad, as was claimed by the advocates of the suspension.30 In the second, he described the directors of the Bank of England as representatives of a large commercial company, naturally acting in the interests of the company itself and not necessarily very knowledgeable of the principles of political economy; and he suggested that they could not be safely entrusted with the regulation of the issue of paper currency.31 In the Report, by contrast, the authors were essentially preoccupied with establishing that there was some kind of connection between the state of foreign exchanges and the price of bullion on the one hand and the circulation of paper currency on the other. Thus, far from indicating

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the over-issue of paper money as the sole cause of inflation, the Report made substantial concessions to the so-called 'anti-bullionist' opinion that military expenditure on the Continent and the conditions of trade might be partly responsible for the high price of bullion.32 Finally, all statements in the Report involving any kind of judgment on the behaviour of the Bank directors were carefully phrased in the most prudent and respectful of terms. The Report's suggestion was that the Bank directors were not responsible for any kind of mismanagement, but simply ignorant of the requirements of the new and peculiar circumstances in which they had been placed by the pressure of political decisions.33 A series of articles in support of the Bullion Report which appeared in the Quarterly Review between 1810 and 1811 - partly inspired, partly directly drafted by Huskisson and Canning - show that there was a similar distance between the text of the Report and at least Huskisson's personal opinions.34 If we follow this hint, however, and read the Report not as a theoretical manifesto, but as a straightforwardly political document, we are again faced with slightly disconcerting results. It is far from clear what precisely was at stake in the debate of May 1811. Certainly the issue was not simply - as in the post-war debates on resumption - an immediate return to cash payments. It was generally agreed that no step in that direction could be taken before the end of the war; and Horner himself - though of course in principle favourable to resumption - suggested that a period of two years from the time of the debate (instead of the six months from the end of the war, which the government itself had proposed) would be prudent, in order to avoid the traumatic effects of a sudden return to convertibility.35 What Horner apparently had in mind in his Resolutions was a measure of acknowledgement on the part of the government that the principles underlying their monetary policy were unsound, and that some of the institutional implications of the Bank Restriction Bill were against the constitution.36 This caution, and the failure which it represented to focus on any immediate political target, undoubtedly contributed to the defeat of Horner's proposal, since he contrived to leave the House under the impression that their time was being wasted on an empty doctrinal dispute. Nicholas Vansittart (1766-1851), in his speech of 7 May, could argue very persuasively that, had the committee been really convinced of the correctness of their analysis of the responsibility of the Bank,


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they should have asked for the immediate resumption of cash payments, and hence that their hesitation was a proof of their eagerness to save the credit of their theory, and their reluctance to face the hazard of applying it: I can see only one method of accounting for such conduct, consistently with the known character and talents of the Committee; namely that they are not serious in the propositions they have brought forward; that they either suspect some latent fallacy in their own doctrines, or think them inapplicable to practical purposes. While they feel desirous of saving the credit of their theory, they shrink from the hazard of its application; and we now see those gentlemen trembling on the brink of the precipice to which they have led the nation, under the delusive hope of safety, and afraid either to advance or to recede.37 It is not surprising that the debate on the Report should have resulted in a particularly odd array of political forces. On the one hand, the Tories found themselves completely divided on the issue, Huskisson and Canning giving open support to Horner, both in Parliament and in the pages of the Quarterly Review. On the other hand, none of the Whig grandees participated in the debate, and Horner was left alone to stand for the principles of political economy and the defence of the constitution. This desertion can be explained to a certain extent by the rather inopportune timing of the discussion,38 and by the general crisis in the Whig leadership which characterised the last years of the war; but it certainly indicates that the issue itself was not regarded as particularly popular or politically rewarding. In the absence of more straightforward political targets, the debate on the Report abounded in methodological subtleties and philosophical niceties. In the article on Thornton, Horner had praised the contribution of practical men of business, while arguing against the prejudices generated by the 'spirit of system'. In the Report, however, this perspective was reversed, and Horner found himself fighting against the fallacies of practical men and politicians in the name of the science of commercial society. His treatment of the monetary issue in the Report focused upon two points in particular. The first was the existence of a significant relationship between the quantity of notes in circulation, the price of bullion and the course of foreign exchanges.39 The Report stressed that those witnesses, merchants and bankers, heard by the committee, who had denied the existence of such a relationship - attributing the high price of bullion to its 'scarcity' or to the 'commercial situation with the

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Continent' - had visibly contradicted their own evidence, and fallen into patent logical mistakes, as was to be expected from people untrained in scientific reasoning.40 Similarly, the Report implicitly exposed the ignorance of the directors of the Bank, who had candidly admitted that they saw no relationship whatsoever between the observed anomalies in the price of bullion and their task of regulating the issue of paper money.41 The second point was the existence of a legal standard. It was argued in the Report that the principle that legal coins and legal banknotes should be equivalent to a given quantity of gold and silver was established by law, and that the government was responsible for ensuring that the value of the money of the country did actually correspond to a given quantity of precious metals. Horner attributed great relevance to this point, and the first seven of his Resolutions referred to the history of legislation on coinage since the reign of Queen Elizabeth.42 The political implication of this argument about the standard is evident: if the government was responsible for keeping the money at its legal standard, then the depreciation of currency was not only generally speaking undesirable, but had to be regarded as an abuse, similar to the debasement of coin practised by kings and emperors in the ancient world. Through the alteration of the standard, the government was arbitrarily undertaking a significant redistribution in the resources of the community, in a way which affected in particular all monied incomes. The most important consideration to a civilized nation is the standard value of coin. All civilized nations have at all times considered a measure of value as essential to the interest of the state. If your measure of value be deteriorated or lost, then it becomes to the legislature to provide a remedy. What is the consequence of this deterioration? It is the cause of infinite loss to creditors, has a great effect upon monied incomes, gives an undue advantage to debtors, and affects materially persons holding stations in society, which property of that description gives.43

Both in the case of the argument over the effect of the issue of paper currency on foreign exchanges and the argument about the legal standard, Horner affirmed the existence of a general law or principle, regulating the functioning of the monetary system, against a style of politics ruled by piecemeal empiricism and the logic of political faction. It was on this basis- the recognition of the existence of laws and principles which set a constraint on political authority - that Horner held common ground with the dissenting Tories, Huskisson and Can-


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ning, and with an independent monied man of uncertain political sympathies like Ricardo.44 The redistribution of the national revenue effected through the depreciation of currency might be regarded as a mere sign of administrative abuse or mismanagement, as in Ricardo's view, or be described in the Whig jargon as Encroachment of the executive' and 'abuse of the Crown': but the agreement on the monetary issue which the Quarterly and the Edinburgh expressed was essentially an agreement on the indispensability of employing the language of political economy in analysing the functioning of contemporary society: We did not, we confess, feel greatly disposed to follow the proffered guidance of these northern lights on the occasion, and even doubted whether their illumination was particularly required. The controversy, bred by the Bank Restriction Bill, had doubtless exhibited, like most other controversies, many specimens of fierce contradiction, of intemperance and insolence, of false pretensions and vanity, of error, of absurdity. We were satisfied, however, that it had on the whole considerably promoted the progress of the science to which it related.45 Accordingly, the strategy successfully employed by George Rose (1744-1818) and Vansittart in the parliamentary debate in order to demolish Horner's position was one of denying not the correctness of his arguments, but simply their practical relevance. The language of political economy might very well be a rigorous scientific language; but it had no impact whatsoever on reality. Politics had no need for abstract principles and dogmas. The country could not be led to bankruptcy for the sake of the laws of political economy, nor for the extravagant pleasure of running scientific experiments: That hon. gentleman tells us it [resumption] will do mischief, but will establish a principle. A principle of what? The great principles of religious and moral truth are fixed and unalterable, and to them we ought to sacrifice every other consideration; but what are called principles of political economy are no more than maxims of prudence collected from observation and experience. Such a principle, whenever its application is mischievous, is, in that case, false, however true and important it might be in other cases apparently, but not really, analogous; and in such a case, to adhere inflexibly to the principle, is not wisdom or firmness, but blundering pedantry.46 On 6 May, Rose began his speech with an open attack on political economy, illustrating in great detail the disagreement amongst the classic writers on the subject of monetary theory, and arguing that the issue which was being discussed in Parliament had nothing to do with

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their sterile speculations, the truth or fallacy of which did not affect the question.47 Similarly, on the question of the legal standard Vansittart argued that the notion of a standard was purely empirical - the standard value of money being what the market determined from time to timeand accused Horner of transforming the concept of standard into a kind of metaphysical entity. Both by Rose and Vansittart, Horner and his supporters were depicted as a clique of blundering philosophers, pursuing a dangerous Utopia of scientific control over economic phenomena at the expense of national security. We read in Rasselas of an unfortunate philosopher who, by intense meditation on the most abstruse theories, so bewildered his understanding, that he fancied himself entrusted with the direction of the winds and weather, and was worn with continual care and anxiety in the management of his imaginary charge. Such, but much worse, would be the situation of the Bank Directors under the control of the Bullion Committee. This poor astronomer was, indeed, harassed with visionary cares and useless solicitude; but he could do no real harm. But the Directors of the Bank would be compelled, in the pursuit of an object which they knew to be equally chimerical, to inflict real and substantial evils on their country.48 Their rhetoric proved persuasive: Horner's Resolutions were voted down by a large majority of the House, Vansittart's Resolutions were passed, and the question of the suspension of payments was set aside for the time being. When the issue was reconsidered in 1819, as Boyd Hilton has convincingly argued, it was not under the pressure of a finally triumphant 'Whig' bullionism,but rather because of the patient efforts of Tory administrators such as Huskisson and Canning.49 The experience of the Bullion Report reveals the limitations in Horner's political performance. As chairman of the Committee, Horner had the opportunity to show his competence and abilities, but he was unable to rally the Whigs (let alone the House) around a set of proposals the political implication of which remained more than a little obscure. The debate on the Bullion produced indeed a warfare of pamphlets, but it was not accompanied by any popular campaign of the kind successfully employed by Brougham a few years later to enforce the repeal of the Orders in Council in 1812 and of the Property Tax in 1816. The debate also indicates that important sections of the political class remained utterly unimpressed by the proffered guidance of political economy, and either ignored it altogether, or simply denied its validity. This, however, is to look at only one side of the picture. By the time


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of his death, in 1817, Horner had undoubtedly acquired a solid reputation, which has to be accounted for in terms of his 'Scottish' accomplishments rather than in terms of his political talents. Twenty years after his unsuccessful attempt to convert Parliament to the mysteries of monetary theory, public opinion at large had been persuaded by a flourishing and influential periodical press that they were living in a world ruled by those laws of political economy he had been preaching, however little these might actually affect political decisions. The Bullion Report of 1810 was bound to remain in the records of intellectual history as the starting-point of the hegemony of 19th-century classical political economy. The extent to which things had actually changed since the time at which Horner attended Stewart's lectures in Edinburgh, is indicated by a minor episode in the history of the relationships between Horner and Stewart. In 1811, when Horner drafted the Bullion Report, Stewart expressed privately to Lord Lauderdale his disappointment that his pupil, on such a crucial occasion, had not thought it necessary to seek his advice. Having presented a series of comments on the Report, he wrote: If I have stumbled upon anything that you think worth shewing to Horner, I can have no objection to your communicating my papers, either in whole or in part, to one in which I have so entire a confidence, provided only you mention to him my anxiety that nobody whatever shall hear of such a communication . . . I have sometimes wished that I had seen the Report before it was printed, as nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have contributed anything, however trifling, towards its improvement.50

Stewart's notes to the Report, buried as they are in the appendix to the ninth volume of his Worksite not without interest, and they certainly deserve the attention of historians of economic thought. Stewart endorsed the conclusion of the Report that the increased issue of banknotes had occasioned a depreciation of currency or, in other words, a general rise of prices; but he differed in his interpretation of the manner in which this depreciation had occurred. In his opinion- an opinion apparently shared by Lauderdale - the problem was not the sudden increase of the circulating medium, but the sudden extension of credit: The general result of the reasoning which I have hitherto stated is, that the increased issues of paper currency since the year 1797, have operated on the prices of commodities chiefly by means of that sudden extension of credit that they necessarily suppose, and of the communication of this credit to those

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classes of individuals whose capitals have the greatest influence on the state of the market. Had the increased issues been divided in equal shares, according to the population of Great Britain, and had every inhabitant of the island received his trifling quota at one and the same instant, how comparatively insignificant would the effects have been!51

This argument, especially in the light of contemporary assessments of the causes of inflation during the French war, appears suggestive and perceptive. Yet it is sufficient to glance briefly at the labyrinth of erudite quotations and elaborate references to the classical literature in Stewart's comments, to realise that his notes could have been of little use to Horner in his task as chairman of the Committee. Henry Brougham and free trade If Horner's political career can be adequately summarised in relation to the experience of the Bullion Committee, our account of Brougham's political performance must be a highly incomplete and fragmentary one. His long career has been reconstructed in great detail - in some cases with remarkable intelligence - by more than one political historian;52 and indeed it is virtually impossible to find a book concerning the political and intellectual history of the period which does not contain references to or information about 'the learned friend'.53 Brougham's political opportunism, his inconsistencies and volte-faces have become proverbial. As to his writings, in the ninety years of his life they attained an utterly unmanageable amount. The contributions to the Edinburgh Review alone were so numerous that in their later life even Francis Jeffrey and Brougham himself were unable to provide an entirely reliable reconstruction of their authorship. Brougham's life-long association with the Whig party - influential as it was on the fortunes of the party itself- needs to be briefly characterised. In the very early years of the century, Brougham's political sympathies fluctuated considerably, and they did not exclude the hope of an offer of employment or office on Pitt's part. Individual opportunism undeniably played an important role in determining his attitude. However, the evidence suggests also that one should not take for granted the evolution from his Edinburgh education into militant Whiggism. Brougham experienced the political frustration of the young Edinburgh intelligentsia and shared their alienation from the party in power. Yet in his early writings - in particular in the Inquiry on Colonial Policy, but also in his contributions to the Edinburgh Review up


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to 1806—7 - he used the arguments of political economy to support Tory policies and to justify the French war.54 The conceptual separation between political economy and policy, between the conditions of economic prosperity and those of political liberty, which underlay Stewart's teaching allowed a flexible and instrumental approach to party allegiance. Brougham chose the Whigs after long hesitation, and certainly retained many reservations about his commitment. He lacked completely Horner's capacity for personal deference and never concealed his contempt for the shortsightedness of aristocratic policies. He never fully gained the trust of the Whig aristocratic leadership (as late as 1822 they still suspected him, not altogether without foundation, of preparing his defection to Canning), and on several occasions, at different stages of his career, he complained bitterly of the party's failure adequately to recognise his abilities. Even in his later memoirs - written when most personal conflicts must presumably have faded away - he continued to insist upon the distinction between his personal contribution and the position of the party to which he belonged. Quite apart from Brougham's own notoriously idiosyncratic personality, this lack of identification can be accounted for by the growing tension between the Whig aristocracy and the new professional men who had become a vital component in the party's leadership.55 Like Horner, Brougham thought that modern political parties could no longer be merely the expression of aristocratic factions, or the natural representatives of the interests of social ranks, but that they must necessarily become divisions within a vigorous and influential public opinion. Unlike Horner, however, he attempted in person to give an especially energetic and aggressive illustration to the principle. After Pitt's death and the formation of the Ministry of All Talents in 1806, Brougham began his connection with the Whig party by writing - at Lord Holland's request - the pamphlet Inquiry into the State of the Nation at the Commencement of the Present Administration (London, 1806), a

violent attack upon the conduct of the war. Between 1806 and 1809 he wrote extensively for the Whig press (meanwhile, he was called to the London Bar in 1808) and finally, when his friend Lord Henry Petty succeeded to the Marquisate of Lansdowne in 1809, he took up his vacant seat of Camelford at the Commons. His first important performance as a Whig MP was the successful campaign for the repeal of the Orders in Councils in 1812.56 The issue was first discussed between 1807 and 1808, when the Orders were

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introduced with the Whigs' support by the administration of All Talents as a response to Napoleon's Berlin and Milan Decrees, and successively reconfirmed and extended (against Whig opposition) by the Portland administration.57 It was during this first stage of the debate that the Edinburgh Review became involved in the discussion of William Spence's (1783-1860) pamphlet Britain Independent of Commerce ™ a provocative and naive defence of the policy of retaliation adopted by the British government. The issue of the Orders was raised again in 1812 when, in the face of the threat of war with the United States, petitions for the repeal of the embargo were presented by the representatives of the manufacturing and commercial interests all over the country. Brougham had been engaged as counsel against the Orders by a number of London, Liverpool and Manchester merchants and manufacturers in 1808. In 1812, successfully exploiting the petitions campaign - together with Alexander Baring (1774-1848), who held substantial financial interests in the American trade - ,59 he promoted and directed the committee investigating the distress in the manufacturing districts, and his exertions undeniably had a decisive influence upon the repeal of the Orders when this was finally obtained on 26 June 1812. The debate on Spence's work - long abstracts of which had been republished and enthusiastically applauded in Cobbett's Political Register™ - did not really offer any new or stimulating theoretical insight. James Mill in his pamphlet Commerce Defended?1 Robert Torrens in his The Economists Refuted*2 and Malthus in his article 'Spence on Commerce' in the Edinburgh Review™ agreed in describing Spence's attack upon trade as an unoriginal and maladroit revival of the Physiocratic doctrine to which only the alarm and anxiety created by the blockade had given a measure of credibility and popularity. Such questions as the definition of productive and unproductive labour and the function of luxury consumption had been extensively discussed by writers on political economy in the 18th century. The interest of Spence's pamphlet was to give these issues an immediate political significance in relation to the experience of the war .The stress laid on the unproductivity of manufacturing labour and of trade provided a rationale for the embargo; while the arguments emphasising the necessity of unproductive consumption could be employed to justify war-time taxation and the accumulation of the national debt. Spence's opponents, in reply, restated diligently a long series of arguments, familiar from the confrontation between the doctrines of Smith


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and those of the Physiocrats, disentangling these from the lapses and inconsistencies of Spence's presentation. By reaffirming Smith's criticism of the Physiocratic definition of productive labour, or denying the possibility of a general crisis of over-production, they rejected the aspiration to return to a pre-commercial economy implicitly embodied in Spence's work. At the same time, they rejected Spence's highly rhetorical style of argumentation which they considered excessively loose in contrast with their own more rigorous language and presentation. In their own right, Spence's erratic speculations did not appear very threatening and, as Mill suggested in his pamphlet, the real political target in the Spence debate was William Cobbett (1762-1835).64 On Cobbett, the Edinburgh Review had already taken up a firm position about a year before. In his article 'Cobbett's Political Register'65 Francis Jeffrey described the changes and inconsistencies in Cobbett's political commitments - from his early anti-Jacobinism to Radicalism -thus exposing the intrinsic ambiguity and weakness of'extreme' political ideologies. The article made it clear that the crucial difference which separated the position of the Edinburgh Review from Cobbett was the question of Parliamentary representation and the reform of the franchise. Both Jeffrey in his article and Mill in the pamphlet on Spence expressed their respect for Cobbett's personal courage and intelligence, and their recognition of the extraordinary influence he exercised on the lower orders, the interests of whom he had meritoriously undertaken to defend. In Mill's view, Cobbett, unlike Spence, did not derive his hostility to commerce from a false theory about the origin of wealth. He simply saw and denounced the corruption of the existing government, and in doing so he erroneously believed that the present government could be identified with the 'commercial interests'. At the origin of his misunderstanding was the fact that English political discourse was generally influenced by mercantilistic rhetoric and doctrines; but, as a matter of fact, English governments had been very little influenced by commercial interest; and, insofar as that influence had existed, it had always proved progressive and beneficial: 'Mr Cobbett's opinion is contradicted by the whole of our own experience. All over Europe where the population has chiefly consisted of landlords and peasants, arbitrary power and poverty have invariably reigned. In Great Britain, where commerce has been established, much more freedom and opulence have been enjoyed.'66 Unlike Spence, Cobbett was not misled

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by obsolete economic doctrines; but he was completely mistaken in the target which he selected for his political opposition, and in seeing commercial society and commercial progress as the enemy. While the discussion of Spence's work centred on the comparative productivity of manufacture and agriculture, the parliamentary debate on the Orders in Council - like its echoes in the Edinburgh Review — was initially formulated in terms of the doctrine of international rights. The argument put forward by the opponents of the Orders was that, while retaliation against France was obviously justified, the enforcement of the embargo implied violent interference with the trade of neutral countries; that this was a patent and unprecedented violation of the law of nations; and that by adopting such a policy Great Britain would follow France on the road to abuse and arbitrary violence. In Lord Erskine's words: Great Britain alone can answer this question for the world; she alone can pronounce whether the injustice of France shall be received as a warrant for universal injustice, or whether standing as we do, upon this proud eminence, surrounded by that impregnable moat with which the divine providence has fortified this island, we can say, as the instruments of that providence, to the portentous evils which so remarkably characterize this unexampled period: 'Thus far shall ye advance, and no farther.'67 Accordingly, the argument on the government's side (as expressed in particular by George Rose and Viscount Castlereagh (1769-1822) was that retaliation was the only means to accelerate the end of the war and counteract Bonaparte's aggression; and that the seizure of neutral ships, far from being unprecedented, was a current measure of war which had been adopted on several previous occasions. In a series of articles published in the Edinburgh Review between 1807 and 1809, Brougham, while condemning the Orders on the ground of the law of nations and the rights of neutral powers, pointed out their destructive economic consequences: above all, the loss of the American trade - to be added to the loss of Continental trade, forming a total of some 15 million pounds - and the intolerable fiscal pressure created by the commercial crisis. He denounced in particular the abuses of the system of licences, and the sinister influence exercised on the government by the West Indian planters, who advocated war with the United States in the hope of eliminating the competition of American products.68 It was with the petitions campaign of 1812 that Brougham was able to present fully to Parliament the ruinous balance of the experience of


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the Orders. In his decisive speech on the issue on 16 June 1812, he began by describing the dramatic conditions in the manufacturing districts, comparing the effects of the unemployment created by the embargo to those of the Great Plague. He stressed in particular the distress of the owners of manufactures, who were in despair not because they faced bankruptcy, but because they had no longer wages to give the thousands. . . because, having already exhausted their whole means, all the accumulation of their lives, in the charitable office of employing those poor people, they were now brought to the brink of that dreadful alternative, either of leaving them to perish, or of shutting their ears to the wants of connections that had still stronger claims.69 Brougham did not hesitate to invoke the threat of popular insurrection in order to add to the strength of his arguments: I am aware that the language I use may be misinterpreted - i t may be perverted into a threat; but I speak of incontrovertible facts from the evidence before you, that if you this night say 'no' to the petitions against the Orders in Council, you let loose upon the country thousands and thousands - I will not say of riotous, or disorderly, or seditious, or even discontented people - but only of hungry men, who must either find food or perish.70

The supporters of the Orders claimed that the loss of foreign trade would be compensated by the expansion of home trade in the absence of foreign competition. But the home market, Brougham argued, was 'depressed in an unexampled degree'.71 This was due to two factors: first, the goods destined for the foreign market had naturally been forced by the embargo into the home market, which was, therefore, greatly overstocked. Second, the demand for necessary and luxury goods in the home market had been sharply reduced in all the districts affected by the commercial crisis. As to the war expenses, Brougham described them as 'apparent* rather than 'real' trade, 'a mere transference of money from the tax-payer through the tax-gatherer to the manufacturer or merchant.'72 Brougham's violent peroration elicited a very weak response on the government's side. No argument was put forward which could provide a persuasive justification for the government's policy. All that was produced was piecemeal objections virtually unsupported by empirical evidence. Castlereagh, for example, suggested that, if it was impossible to deny the existence of great distress, the cause of the distress was not the embargo but the French blockade; and that the loss of trade with

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the United States would be compensated by the acquisition of new markets such as South America, previously monopolised by the American carrying trade.73 In conclusion, no remedy was offered apart from the hope that endurance would finally force France to repeal the blockade. The energy with which Brougham had organised and exploited the Orders in Council campaign took the government (and, especially, the Whigs) by surprise, since it inaugurated a new, and unprecedently aggressive, style of opposition. As Brougham wrote to Charles Earl Grey (1764-1845) after the repeal of the embargo, 'an opposition can hardly be too active and adventurous' and the Whigs should not behave as if they were in the Cabinet .74 In his late Memoirs he could conclude: 'The repeal of the Orders in Council was my greatest achievement. It was second to none of the many efforts made by me, and not altogether without success, to ameliorate the condition of my fellowmen. In these I had the sympathy and aid of others, but in the battle against the Orders I fought alone.'75 What was new in this debate about the old doctrines and the wellknown truths of the desirability of free trade? The first new element was the emergence of the image of England as a modern commercial empire. This point has already been mentioned with reference to Brougham's work on the colonies. The debate on the Orders in Council provides a further illustration of this change in the setting of economic debate. Both Mill and Malthus, in their interventions on Spence, denounced the traditional image of England as a mercantile power, England 'ruling the sea', as an outdated and obsolete myth. They agreed with Spence when he argued that the importance of commerce in the British economy was generally overrated. Commerce, as Smith had taught, was important only in its vital connection with manufacture and agriculture. The French war had given a dramatic new relevance to the question of England's position in the world market. As Mill wrote, in an assessment of the effects of the blockade: Let us only contemplate for one moment the vast extent of the habitable globe, and consider how small in comparison is that portion of coast over which the sway of Bonaparte extends; and we shall probably conclude with considerable confidence that the wide world channels will be found for all the commerce to which this little island can administer . . . the man who knows but the outline of geography [will be satisfied that] while Britain is mistress of the sea, she might have scope for a boundless commerce, though the whole continent of Europe were swallowed by an earthquake.76


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The blockade, and the threat of a commercial crisis of unprecedented dimensions, identified England as the heart of a world-wide trading empire, showing both the strength and the weakness of such a position: the strength being the immense resources which the country had been able to mobilise in financing a long and incredibly costly war - sure proof of its indisputable economic superiority and unrivalled development; the weakness being her dependence on the international market, and the alarming dimensions of the distress and disorder that any accidental arrest in the process of growth might create. The second noticeable element was the peculiar nature of the French war. To read the debate on the Orders in terms of the opposition between such principles as 'free trade' and 'state intervention' is completely meaningless, unless we are prepared to recognise the specific character of the conflict with France and its ideological implications. The opposition of England and France as, respectively, a free commercial society and a despotic agrarian society was not new, but it had acquired new relevance with the French revolution. In one of his speeches on the Orders, Brougham elaborated on the ideological presuppositions of the embargo. The Orders in Council - he suggested had their origin in the same ideology which inspired Napoleon's blockade: the dream of the return to an agrarian society in which the social unrest which had characterised the period of the revolution might be finally settled. In order to gloss over this system with the tinsel of theories, we find the French ministers declaiming on the advantages of agriculture. A book has been published by Talleyrand, in which he labours to show that the exclusive encouragement of agriculture is the true and natural policy of the French government since the revolution. Commerce he represents as leading men into large societies and rendering them restless, inquisitive and turbulent, while agriculture disperses them, tranquillizes them, and fits them for submission.77

At the same time, in his numerous articles on the conduct of the war, Brougham clearly identified the origin of Napoleon's success in the 'popular' and 'revolutionary' character of the French army: an army open to talents and to new men against the corrupt armies of the coalitions, ruled by aristocratic prejudice and stupidity. The paradox in the conduct of the English government was that they fought their war against France while at the same time subscribing to just those prejudices of French agrarian despotism which were at the origin of Napoleon's aggression. Consequently, the struggle for free trade

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meant also resisting the illusion that the effects of the French revolution might be completely swept away and that in modern Europe economic prosperity could be compatible with despotism. A final consideration concerns the political outcome of the campaign against the embargo. In 1811 the Duke of Bedford was forced by financial difficulties to sell the borough of Camelford, thus depriving Brougham of his seat. Brougham attempted to obtain a new seat by standing for Liverpool at the general election of October 1812, in the persuasion that the popularity acquired with the Orders campaign would gain him the support of the electorate in a town which had suffered particularly from the consequences of the embargo. At the time of the petitions campaign, Brougham had made it clear that the struggle ought to be confined to the issue of the embargo, without bringing in the question-which obviously arose in relation to i t - of the reform of the electoral representation of large manufacturing towns. In a letter to a London manufacturer supporting the campaign he wrote: In the same spirit, I venture to express my hopes that at any meetings which may be held for the purpose of petitioning the legislative, the greatest care will be taken to avoid the introduction of political topics unconnected with the serious matters which immediately press on you. If any exception could be permitted to this remark, it might perhaps be found in the consideration which so naturally suggests itself, that those great and populous cities, among the first in the empire . . . Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield - are unfortunately left without any representation in that branch of the Legislature. But this reflection, however material at any other time, ought, together with everything of a political nature, to be kept separate from the present objects.78

At Liverpool, Brougham tried to exploit the political and electoral potential of the embargo campaign. Addressing the electors, he argued: Now, I ask you whether you will be represented in Parliament by the men who have brought this grievous calamity [i.e. the American war] on your heads, or by those who have constantly opposed the mad career which was plunging us into it ? Whether you will trust the revival of your trade -the restoration of your livelihood - to them who have destroyed it, or to me whose counsels, if followed in time, would have averted this unnatural war, and left Liverpool flourishing in opulence and peace?79 The result of the elections showed how little the success of the freetrade campaign actually weighed both upon electoral decisions and on


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the balance of power inside the Whig party. Despite what Aspinall described as his 'superhuman exertions', Brougham was defeated by the Tory candidate George Canning. On the occasion, all the Whig grandees except Grey expressed mild sympathy and regret- thanking him, as he bitterly pointed out, for 'past services';80 and he had to wait for four long, restless years - until 1816 - before Grey offered him another opportunity to obtain a new seat.

The post-war economic depression The years Brougham spent out of Parliament, from 1812 to 1816, were for him a period of great frustration. He resented deeply the neglect in which he had been left by his Whig patrons, meditated once more the possibility of defecting to the Tories, and finally turned for support to the Radicals. Through the mediation of James Mill and Francis Place, he became involved in the preparation of the Westminster election of 1814, which followed the expulsion from the Commons of Lord Cochrane, held responsible for the Stock Exchange hoax of 20 February 1814. The election ended in a rien de fait since Cochrane was acquitted and retained his seat. In the meanwhile, however, Brougham had the opportunity of committing a catastrophic faux pas by publicly subscribing to the three points of Francis Burdett's programme for Parliamentary reform - extension of the franchise to all tax payers, equal electoral districts and annual Parliaments - a programme which was patently in contradiction with the opinions which he notoriously held on the matter. Brougham re-entered Parliament in February 1816, when Lord Darlington, at Grey's request, offered him the borough of Winchelsea. He resumed his Parliamentary activity with a highly ambitious and remarkably heterogeneous political programme. The programme, as he communicated to Grey at the beginning of the session, included, first, questioning the foreign policy of the government, i.e. the treaties of peace and the restoration of the Bourbons in France and of Ferdinand VII in Spain; second, attacking the government on the budget, advocating a drastic retrenchment of public expenditure and, above all, the repeal of income tax; third, undertaking the defence of the agricultural interest by proposing the abolition of tithes and of the poor laws, and by supporting protectionist measures, in particular the Corn Law of 1815; and, finally, pressing a series of social-reform issues

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such as reforms of prisons and the penal code, education of the poor and the slave trade.81 Brougham's personal design in proposing this wide political manifesto was to gain the leadership of the party in the Commons - and he attempted to strengthen his position by forming a front which included the moderate Radicals, both inside and outside Parliament (Burdett, James Mill82 and Francis Place), the 'Mountain' of the Whig party, and individually representative political characters like Squire Western. Despite the success of some of the issues proposed- for example the repeal of income tax - Brougham's strategy failed all along the line. The alliance with the Radicals - held together by the common desire to exploit the post-war climate, but not sustained by any common political perspective - broke down very quickly. Influential representatives of Radicalism such as Cobbett had distrusted Brougham's good faith from the start, and by 1817 he was already under violent attack in the Radical press.83 Similarly, Brougham's ambition of becoming the leader of the Whigs in the Commons met recurrent defeats from the end of the war throughout the 1820s. His reputation for 'Jacobinism', revived by the fear of popular agitation between 1816 and 1820; his spectacular and breathtaking blunders - from the famous speech against the regent in March 1816, to his involvement in the affairs of Princess Charlotte and Queen Caroline; his utter inability to mediate the factional warfare between Foxites and Grenvillites: these are only a selection of the reasons which can be produced to explain why he was a wholly unacceptable candidate for the role of party leadership that was discharged first by John Ponsonby (1770-1855) and later by George Tierney (17611830). It is interesting, however, to look more closely at some of the arguments which he used in formulating the 1816 economic-reform programme and at his interpretation of the post-war economic depression more generally. We shall focus in particular on three Parliamentary speeches which summarise his views on the matter, and which had some impact on the political debate of the immediate post-war period: his speech in support of Western on agricultural distress of 9 April 1816; his speech on the state of trade and manufactures of 13 March 1817; and, finally, his unfortunate speech on the distress of agriculture and trade of 11 February 1822, which met Ricardo's merciless criticism and, it has been suggested, completely ruined Brougham's reputation as a political economist.84 Brougham's analysis of the post-war economic crisis was remarkably


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unsubtle, and presented no real alternative to the government's views. In the 1816 debate on the budget which led to the repeal of income tax, economic arguments were virtually absent. Vansittart's proposal to continue income tax for two years after the end of the war, at the reduced rate of 5% (instead of 10%), was so unpopular, and the spontaneous mobilisation against it so impressive, that its opponents were dispensed from presenting any coherent alternative for the reorganisation of state finance.85 Even the Radicals were aware of the financial unsoundness of the repeal, and James Mill was persuaded to support it only by the argument that the issue was extremely popular, and that its success might seriously affect the government's stability.86 Brougham's arguments against what he described as 'the most odious, most inquisitorial, most oppressive and most intolerable' of all taxes87 were purely political. The tax was a dangerous instrument of arbitrary power in the hands of the government. Once the principle of a direct tax on property and income was established, the ministers could increase the rate at their discretion, and drain as much money as they wanted from the productive resources of the country in order to finance state patronage and enlarge the numbers of their clients. The fact that, when the war had come to an end, the ministers were not prepared to dismantle the war establishment and to operate substantial reductions in state expenditure clearly indicated that Great Britain was being transformed into a 'military monarchy', inspired by the principles of the 'despotic governments of Europe'.88 What was completely missing from Brougham's considerations was the question of how the government could possibly give up the 14 million pounds per year produced by the income tax and proceed at the same time with the repayment of the national debt. He confined himself to the suggestion that public expenditure must be cut drastically. Ricardo's and Richard Heathfield's (1775?-1859) project for a capital levy which could pay off the debt without further borrowing and without increasing the burden of indirect taxation found even less attention among the opposition than amongst the government itself.89 Similarly, the opinion expressed by Ricardo in the Principles of Political Economy that direct taxation could be a satisfactory means of financing public expenditure, was too much at odds with Smith's hallowed arguments in favour of indirect taxation to be easily accepted and have a real impact upon the debate.90 Even after the repeal of income tax, the idea that taxation was the major cause of distress dominated Brougham's interpretation of the

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post-war depression. He subscribed to the current opinion according to which - apart from the natural effects of the transition from war to peace - the origins of the crisis were essentially financial. On the one hand, there was the excessive burden of taxation, the landed interest being oppressed by tithes and poor rates, while trade, instead of recovering with the reopening of the world market, was still crushed under an elaborate and obsolete system of protective duties. On the other hand, the crisis fed on war inflation: the easy credit created by the suspension of payments, together with the altered state of international trade, had caused a frenzy of speculation. Not only professional investors, but people from all ranks of society, including the lower, had risked their savings in a wide variety of commercial enterprises: The bubble soon burst, like its predecessors of the South Sea, the Mississippi and Buenos Ayres. . . The great speculators broke; the middling ones lingered out a precarious existence, deprived of all means of continuing their dealings either at home or abroad; the poorer dupes of the delusion had lost their little hoards, and went upon the parish.91 The consequences of over-investment and the glut of capital thus created were even more disastrous, Brougham thought, in the agricultural sector than they were in trade, since it was in fact even more difficult to disinvest whatever capital had been employed in the cultivation of new lands. What Brougham found most alarming among the signs of the depression were those symptoms which seemed to suggest the possibility of a sharp change in the direction of commercial progress. He was particularly alarmed by the decrease in wages and the resulting possibility that the mechanism through which new needs stimulated production might be arrested, and by the extension of unemployment to a point at which the introduction of labour-saving machinery might well become superfluous. . . . the House will learn with surprise and vexation that mechanical improvement has, as it were, reached its limit. It is now found, for the first time in the history of mankind— so low are wages fallen- so great is the pressure of distress - that manual labour is now making reprisals on machinery, standing a successful competition with it, beating it out of the market, and precluding the use of an engine, far from costly in itself, which saves three labourers in four. The further introduction of the power loom is actually stopped by the low rate of weavers' wages.92


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On the subject of machinery Dugald Stewart had offered in his lectures an especially positive and optimistic appraisal, stressing - more even than Smith had done - the comparative merits (rather than the disadvantages) of the mechanisation of labour. Brougham clearly shared this optimism and was inclined to take the introduction of laboursaving machinery as a straightforward index of commercial progress and prosperity.93 In general the experience of the war offered new insights into the dangers to which advanced commercial society was exposed. There were, to begin with, old dangers which had re-emerged in the case of the recent war in new and formidable shapes: a paper-money experiment of unprecedented dimensions; extended commercial conflicts among European powers; colonial insurrections; a new, powerful military despotism growing, in the space of a few years, from the ruins of the Ancien Regime; political corruption flourishing within a state bureaucracy that the war had reinforced and expanded. In addition, and emerging behind these more familiar evils, there were new, frightening and less readily identifiable threats: the complexity and unmanageable size of the world market; the possibility of gluts, both of commodities and capital, of unknown proportions; the perception that agriculture had reached the point of its maximum expansion. The idea that commercial society might come to the peak of its growth, after which only decadence and stagnation would be possible, was in itself not new; but the forms that this decadence might actually take, and the exact point at which the limit had to be fixed, were questions still to be explored. Having identified taxation and war inflation as the major causes of the depression, Brougham hesitated - just as the Tory ministers had done - over the choice between forms of intervention and policies of laissez-faire. He accused the government of failing to obtain, through the treaties of peace, privileged conditions for English trade in the international market, while himself demanding at the same time freedom of trade and the abolition of various custom duties. He fully recognised that the war had caused an undesirable extension of cultivation which could only result in the collapse of corn prices, and yet he also supported protectionist^ measures in defence of the agricultural interest. The issue which best exemplified this uncertainty and which demonstrates the extreme empiricism of Brougham's political choices was the support which he gave to the Corn Law of 1815. Not only was

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the Whig party as a whole divided on this particular issue, but the reviewers themselves, despite the guidance of Smith's doctrine, and the reputation for free trade which they have enjoyed among historians, held widely differing opinions on the matter. Horner opposed the Corn Law of 1815 with the same energy he had employed in opposing the Corn Law of 1804.94 Jeffrey, on the contrary, in a letter to Malthus, declared himself a convert to protectionism, and accused Horner of being too 'Smithish'.95 Brougham supported the Corn Bill, while denouncing the disagreement existing among political economists on the subject: I certainly am disposed to think favourably of [the Corn Bill], although I am well aware how diffidently it becomes to us to speak upon a measure which has divided so widely the ablest men, both in Parliament and out of doors, marshalling in almost equally formidable array on the opposite sides of the dispute the statesmen and political authors, whose opinions upon such a subject are the most entitled to respect.96

Brougham's response to the post-war depression revealed the inconsistencies and weakness of Whig economic policy, and its lack of any clear theoretical perspective. It is not surprising that in 1822 Ricardo had an easy task in demolishing his arguments, showing that overproduction, and not taxation, was the real cause of agricultural distress.97 Nor is it any more surprising that the Tories should have continued to play their cards on economic reform well enough to remain in office throughout the 1820s. The 1820s: McCulloch and the dilemmas of economic growth The somewhat erratic and confused responses of the Whig party to the upheavals of the post-war period had a more coherent and lucid counterpart in the analysis of the character and prospects of the British economy which McCulloch developed in the Review in the course of the 1820s. Although in no sense systematic, McCulloch's extensive reviews of economic literature turned principally on a single pivotal question that constantly reappeared, as we have seen, in political debate: the overall impact of capital accumulation and technological progress upon advanced commercial society. It was virtually inevitable that the new leading economic editor of the Review should find himself scrutinising afresh a number of the judgments expressed by Smith and Stewart on


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the conditions and social costs of economic growth, in the light of the country's post-war experience. The first relevant topic which he discussed was the old vexata questio of the merits and demerits of machinery, a topic which had been brought again to public attention around 1820, both by the conditions of British trade, and by the writings of Say, Mai thus and Sismondi.98 According to McCulloch, the period from 1776 to 1815 had seen general agreement on the principle that: The great practical problem of the science of political economy resolved itself into a discussion of the means whereby the greatest possible produce might be rendered obtainable with the least possible expense; and that the true measure of the increase or diminution of national wealth is the excess of production over consumption."

More recently, however, this basic truth, so convincingly illustrated by Smith, had been disputed by those who argued, with Malthus, that the real aim of economic science was to promote consumption rather than production, and that to improve the means of production as such could prove useless, and even harmful, if it did not correspond to the real needs of the population. The commercial crisis which had followed the end of the war had lent credibility to the argument that overproduction and commercial distress were natural consequences of technological improvement and capital accumulation. To these arguments McCulloch responded by insisting on the belief, forcefully expressed by Stewart, that machinery was the primary agent of modern civilisation; and that the ability to augment the conveniences of life (and in this respect machinery was no different from any properly human skill) could never in principle be a source of poverty and distress. Not only were human needs potentially unlimited, but the aspiration to work less (or to exempt from work some selected groups in the population, such as for example children) was in itself an entirely natural and benign desire, which machinery could be employed to satisfy. As for recent commercial distress, its cause was to be found not in any excess of production, but in the disruption of ordinary market relations brought about by the war and by commercial restrictions, and, besides, in the poor competitiveness of British commodities and British prices in the international market. The real difficulty, in other words, was not in 'the eating of a good dinner, but in getting a good dinner to eat'.100 Crises of overproduction were indeed likely to occur, but

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they were necessarily confined to particular sectors of the economy, and were brought about by exceptional external circumstances (like commercial restrictions during the war), or by miscalculations on the part of merchants and producers, or, finally, by changes in price caused by unsound monetary policies. Thus McCulloch denied altogether that market society might have any inherent structural tendency to generate gluts and depression and, ultimately, to bring about its own decline. While stigmatising the arbitrary interference of the state in the economy, he stressed the importance, and also the efficacy, of sound and well-informed political intervention.101 Another major issue discussed by McCulloch in the Review, in the light of the growing social unrest of the years between 1819 and 1824, was the repeal of the Combination Laws. McCulloch argued that the combination of workers to maintain or raise the level of wages, far from being an arbitrary interference in the natural functioning of the market, was necessary precisely in order to allow some degree of free competition. As Smith had suggested, employers were in fact always in a kind of tacit combination amongst themselves to protect their own interests and to keep wages as low as possible. What McCulloch was especially anxious to stigmatise, was less the arbitrary and abusive character of the Combination Laws themselves than the blindness and inconsistency of the belief that the British economy could flourish, in the long run, under a regime of low wages: 'Have the low wages of the people of Ireland, Poland and Indostan made them industrious? or the high wages of the Americans, the English and the Hollanders made them lazy, riotous and profligate? Just the contrary. The former are as notoriously and proverbially indolent, as the latter are laborious, active and enterprising.'102 The Smithian and Humean theme of the desirability of high wages and high prices played a central role in McCulloch's interesting treatment of the issue of the Poor Laws. Writing in 1828, he began by disputing the main current argument against the Poor Laws, an argument to which, as he confessed, he had himself previously subscribed.103 The claim in question was the conclusion that the Poor Laws were in themselves, and had always in the past been, an encouragement to idleness and improvidence, and to the unrestrained growth of the population. Contrary to this widely shared belief, McCulloch argued, historical evidence in fact suggested that, since their establishment in the Elizabethan age, the Poor Laws had served as a powerful instrument in the hands of the landlords precisely to restrain the disorderly habits of


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the lower orders and to prevent undesirable additions to the local population. This result had been achieved partly because the landowners were in a position to exercise a very strict and discriminating control over the administration of relief; and partly because they could effectively prevent the building of cottages or the settlement of new families in their lands. In McCulloch's view, it was the sudden collapse of this system of control in the 1780s and 1790s, following the Gilbert's Act of 1782, which had caused an unprecedented increase in the size of the population. It was precisely when the Poor Laws had ceased to function that 'the flood-gates of pauperism were set open'.104 Why had the landlords suddenly retreated in this way from their traditional role as guardians and controllers of the working population? McCuUoch's persuasion was that they had simply been allured by the prospect of being able to keep agricultural wages low by allowing the growth of a large and fluctuating population of paupers at the expense of the taxpayers at large. In doing this, they had greedily seized the easiest opportunity to keep rents high in the face of growing agricultural prices, without a thought for the ruinous and socially disruptive consequences of their policy. If the Poor Laws were not in fact responsible for the growth of pauperism, McCulloch believed that it was no longer possible to revert to the old system of paternalistic control, effective though this had indeed proved for centuries. The growing mobility of the working population had become an essential feature of modern commercial economy. As Dugald Stewart had stressed in his lectures, the existence of pauperism was the price that modern commercial society had to pay for the abolition of slavery. It was against M#/historical experience that it had to be measured, not against some imaginary golden age. It was because of this that Stewart believed in particular that the decision on the part of the French National Assembly to sanction the right to assistance in the 1793 constitution was an anchronism in itself, and a patent contradiction of the principles of the revolution.105 Pauperism was a problem which had to be solved by means compatible with the recently acquired mobility and independence of the working classes. The practical remedy which McCulloch had in mind was the gradual dismantling of the most archaic and harmful (as well as the most indulgent and lax) aspects of the system of relief, and their replacement by forms of organised self-support on the part of the workers themselves, eked out by the encouragement of emigration.106 But the main point which he wished to emphasise was that what was

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wrong with the Poor Laws was not that they could not in principle work (they might indeed have worked perfectly satisfactorily if only the landowning classes had been less rapacious and less shortsighted), but rather that they were in themselves politically and socially unacceptable.107 It is easy to see that McCulloch's appeal to the Smithian model of an economy characterised by high wages, high prices and an emancipated labour force could have only a distant, and somewhat casual bearing on the political measures advocated by the Whig party throughout the 1820s. There is in fact a deep cleavage between his insistence on the classical Scottish model of growth, and the stumbling economic strategy of the Whigs, both before and after their promotion to the status of a party of government. The policy of retrenchment practised by the prudent Tory administrations of the 1820s had left no room for popular campaigns on economic issues of a kind that the Whig party had exploited so successfully during the war, or in its immediate aftermath; nor was it in any sense on account of their merits as economic reformers that the Whigs were finally able to gain access to office in 1830.108 Those economic experts who were active on the side of the opposition in the settlement of the post-war fiscal and monetary system- in particular those who took part in the Finance Committee of 1828, which finally liquidated Pitt's sinking fund- were in no case Scottisheducated intellectuals. Henry Parnell (1776-1842), former member of the Bullion Committee of 1810, author of Financial Reform (London, 1830); Charles Edward Poulett Thompson, Lord Sydenham (17991844), the future vice-president of the Board of Trade under the Whig administration; John Spencer, Lord Althorp (1782-1845), the chancellor of the exchequer to-be of the 1830 cabinet, were each undoubtedly more familiar with the writings of Ricardo than with the teaching of Dugald Stewart. It is true that they were in fact personally close to McCulloch, who co-operated with them on occasion over particular issues. But this was a connection of which Brougham in particular keenly disapproved (McCulloch, it should be remembered, was no Whig) as being wholly at odds with the Review's (that is to say his own) political stance.109 Historians have differed considerably in the assessment of the influence of Ricardian political economy upon both the thrifty Tory policies of the 1820s, and on the less frugal Whig administration of the early 1830s.110 But even if we were to assume that Ricardo's theory


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exercised an effective influence on political decisions - and it seems decidedly more likely that any such influence was slight indeed - it is impossible to associate early-19th-century Whig economic policy with either a single economic doctrine, or a particular set of reform issues. Whether the leading influence on British politics was in fact that of Ricardo, or that of the Tory Oxford High Church theologians, or some combination of the two, the dream of a 'Scottish' monopoly on political economy had now receded firmly into the past. Writing to Edward Davenport in 1824, Sydney Smith observed: 'Political economy has become, in the hands of Malthus and Ricardo, a school of metaphysics. All seem agreed what has to be done; the contention is, how the subject is to be divided and defined. Meddle with no such matters.'111 It would, however, be incorrect to conclude that the project of setting the imprint of Scottish economic expertise upon English politics had proved altogether a failure. It was no failure in the first place because the reviewers themselves actually succeeded in securing appreciable personal influence and prestige. And, if by 1830 the arguments of political economy had been appropriated, and had come to be shared, by a variety of political groups and intellectual traditions, the reviewers could certainly congratulate themselves on having played a pioneering role in their promotion, amongst the reading public at large as much as within the ranks of the political entourages of both the opposition and the government. Secondly, and more importantly, McCulloch's writings made it clear that the real commitment of the Review was not to economic reform as such, nor to particular economic policies such as free trade, or the retrenchment of government expenditure, or the abolition of poor relief. It was a commitment to a belief in the political and human resources of modern society and its capacity to resolve the principal difficulties which it initially faced. Here the stress onpolitical resources is extremely important. If some of the judgments sponsored by the Review about the characteristics and prospects of the British economy seem to us surprisingly and indeed ruthlessly optimistic, their optimism did not rest on any 'vulgar' faith in the laws of the market, nor upon a crude utilitarian indifference to the human and social costs of commercial progress. It rested, rather, on the confident expectation of the progressive emancipation and democratisation of modern society. In this sense the appeal to the Smithian model of economic growth was neither more nor less Utopian than the project for the extension of

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political participation which was to become the central preoccupation of the reviewers in their struggle for parliamentary reform.

Commercial society and its enemies: the debate on the First Reform Bill

The reviewers and the Reform Bill One of the issues which has recurred repeatedly in the course of our analysis of the reviewers' writings is the question of the social identity and political influence of the 'middling ranks' and the implications of the impact which the extension of prosperity and education in advanced commercial society was bound to exert upon the state of parliamentary representation. In the debate on the First Reform Bill, a debate in which the reviewers took a prominent part from the late 1820s up to the year 1832 itself, this question naturally acquired a crucial relevance.1 It is generally acknowledged that the Edinburgh Review played a leading role in promoting the 1832 Reform Act, though it remains questionable how far the reviewers themselves exercised a direct influence on the conduct and decisions of the Whig ministers. Among the reviewers, Brougham as lord chancellor was alone in being a member of Grey's Cabinet, and historians are agreed that the Whig leadership went to considerable lengths to limit his influence (although they are less unanimous in their estimate of the success of these efforts).2 What is certain, however, is that the return of the Whigs to office in 1830 brought the reviewers suddenly much closer to the centre of political decision-making than they had ever been in the past. While Brougham became an exceptionally troublesome lord chancellor, Jeffrey too had been promoted, in the preceding year, to dean of the Scottish Faculty of Advocates.3 In that capacity, he became actively involved in the stormy Edinburgh election of 1831 and, through the good offices of Brougham, advised the Whig Cabinet on various issues of Scottish legal reform.4 Again, in 1830, on the strength of his startling debut in the Edinburgh Review (and in particular of his attack upon the Benthamites), the young Macaulay was offered by the Marquess of Landsdowne the parliamentary seat of Calne.5 147

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' "How funny" - commented Sydney Smith- "to see all the Edinburgh reviewers in office." '6 He was indeed himself approaching a turning point in his relations with his Whig patrons. In 1834 his eldest daughter Saba married Henry Edward Fox, Lord Holland's second son and the future 4th Baron Holland.7 If the extent and the importance of the reviewers' direct participation in the making of parliamentary reform may be questioned, their contribution to the formation of British public opinion on the subject is undisputed. The theatrical performances of Brougham in the Lords, and the speeches of the young Macaulay in the Commons, have become part of the legend of the Reform Bill. The Edinburgh Review itself is generally regarded by historians as both the manifesto and major vehicle of propaganda for parliamentary reform.8 In the year 1829 Jeffrey retired from the editorship of the Review. Jeffrey himself offered the post to Macaulay, who was willing to accept, provided only that he were allowed to reside in London rather than Edinburgh. But Brougham, with characteristically invidious meddling, chose to promote instead the candidature of the less brilliant and popular Macvey Napier (1776-1847), son-in-law ofJeffrey and editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.9 Despite the constant frictions with Brougham, Macaulay continued to write extensively for the Review, and his fertile contribution assured a measure of continuity to that unique authority as a publicist which Jeffrey had enjoyed.10 In the course of the public debate over the Reform Bill, the reviewers, and particularly Brougham and Jeffrey, were attacked by the conservative press for abandoning the opinions on parliamentary representation that they had expressed in the Review in the previous two decades. u In the past, the critics alleged, the Review had advocated only minor amendments to the existing system of representation, stressing the dangers which any substantial extension of the franchise would necessarily involve. But now they had chosen to cast aside this prudent and well-considered view either simply for reasons of political opportunism, or, in a more charitable interpretation, because they had allowed themselves to be intimidated- along with the rest of the Whig party - by the threat of popular violence.12 The Radicals on the other hand also took pains to emphasise the reviewers' early positions on the franchise, citing these as a proof of their persistent commitment to the maintenance of the status quo, and a clear refutation of their alleged dedication to the cause of reform.13 While both allegations were obviously malicious in intent, the Radicals

Commercial society and its enemies: debate on the First Reform Bill

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were at least justified in portraying the reviewers' attitude towards reform as fairly consistent throughout the 1810s and 1820s. The direct engagement of the Whig Cabinet in revising the franchise - a choice undoubtedly dictated by purely instrumental political considerations, rather than by any deeply felt ideological commitment - sharply altered the degree of emphasis which the reviewers laid upon the issue; but it did not substantially modify their approach towards parliamentary reform itself.14 The core of the Whig argument in favour of reform, as repeatedly stated by Macaulay and Brougham in the two Houses, and stressed insistently in the pages of the Review itself, can be summarised in the formula that timely reform was essential in order to avoid revolution; and that the preservation of the constitution required that it be adapted to the circumstances of modern British society. John Burrow has argued convincingly that the conception of historical progress which underlay Macaulay's plea for gradual political change was the product of at least two distinctive intellectual traditions.15 The first was that section of'old Whig' political opinion- ranging from the writers who had supported Walpole against the attacks of Bolingbroke, up to Edmund Burke himself - that, at different points in time, had insisted that to defend the constitution was not to defend antiquity as such. Their view, effectively restated by Macaulay in his famous cry, 'Sir, we are legislators, not antiquaries',16 was that liberty was essentially a modern achievement, not an ancient heritage: that the ancient gothic constitution had stood for feudal anarchy, and that the modern British constitution itself could be preserved only by keeping it alive to the needs of the present.17 The second source of Macaulay's conception, in Burrow's view, was the Scottish tradition of conjectural history, which viewed historical progress as linked intimately to the development of modes of production and the emergence of commercial society, and which insisted that constitutional arrangements must be rendered compatible with the requirements for economic growth. If Macaulay's central argument for gradual political change had such complex intellectual origins, it is hardly surprising that the reviewers' opinions on the subject of reform were heterogeneous and not altogether coherent. Some of the arguments which they endorsed on the necessity, for example, of suppressing bribery and disfranchising the rotten boroughs had never in the past been specifically associated with Whiggism. Others, such as the rejection of the principle of a 'natural right' to the franchise, stood in sharp contrast with important

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sections of the Whig political tradition of the 17 th and 18 th century.18 The crucial presupposition of the reviewers' approach was that reform was a matter of expediency, not one of principle. The appeal to the alleged ancient rights of the people of England had no historical foundation and offered no valid support whatever for the claim for universal suffrage. In his review of Bentham's Plan of Parliamentary Reform,1* Mackintosh expressed his agreement with Bentham that a theory of natural right could not serve as a valid foundation for reform, and maintained that the criterion of utility was the sole safe guide for legislative intervention.20 What the legislator had to concentrate his attention upon was the question of'What mode of representation is most likely to secure the liberty, and consequently the happiness, of a community circumstantiated like the people of Great Britain?'21 The argument that expediency alone provided the rationale for reform offered a convenient justification for the divisions in the Whig ranks on how far the franchise should be extended. Mackintosh argued that men who were equally committed to the defence of the constitution, might reasonably hold quite different views on what measures would best conduce to its preservation.22 This argument proved particularly helpful thirteen years later, when Grey's Cabinet committed together to the promotion of reform a group of statesmen who in the past had notoriously held widely diverging opinions on the subject. While the Cabinet could boast the (potentially somewhat embarrassing) political pertinacity of Grey himself, who had remained faithful for forty years to the memory of his juvenile militancy in the Society of the Friends of the People,23 amongst the ministers only John George Lambton, Lord Durham24 (1792-1840) and Lord John Russell25 (17921878) had a plausible record as reformers. Of the others the best that could be said was, as Macaulay put it, that they had 'profited from experience',26 coming to support a measure towards which in the past they had been indifferent if not openly hostile. The idea that legislators ought in fact to be guided by considerations of political expediency also served to justify the reformers' claim that the government should be prepared to give way to the threat of revolution and popular violence. In Macaulay's eyes, the issue was not whether the lower and middle classes in their agitation for reform were or were not in the right. They might well indeed be disloyal and ungrateful subjects, and the principles on which they acted might well


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be false and even evil. But the very fact that their disaffection and discontent had rendered the country ungovernable was in itself a sufficient reason to make concessions in the face of their pressure. From this viewpoint, the only difference between repressing popular discontent by force and assuaging it by satisfying popular demands was that the latter remedy was less short-sighted and more effective. The distrust with which the nation regards this House may be unjust. But what then? That it is an evil cannot be denied. That it is an increasing evil cannot be denied . . . We have had laws. We have had blood. New treasons have been created. The Press has been shackled. The Habeas Corpus Act has been suspended. Public meetings have been prohibited. The event has proved that these expedients were mere palliatives. You are at the end of your palliatives. The evil remains. It is more formidable than ever. What is to be done?27 It is therefore irrelevant to this argument itself (although of obvious historical interest) whether Macaulay and the reviewers did actually believe in the danger of an impending revolution. In his study ofJames Mill's political thought, Joseph Hamburger has maintained at length that Mill, and at least some of the other radical leaders, regarded the threat of revolution as essentially a rhetorical device and used it to apply political pressure to influence public opinion, without ever really believing that popular discontent - serious though it was - actually presaged a revolution on the French model. The fact that in the 19 th century historians tended for the most part to take their rhetoric at its face value does not make the presence of a revolutionary situation in 1831-2 any more plausible.28 As John Arthur Roebuck observed, in the course of the reform campaign itself, 'much was said that no one really believed':29 a judgment which can be safely extended to the reviewers. James Mill's letters to Brougham from 1830 to 1832 offer good evidence that the latter was well informed of the real extent of popular discontent and of the efforts of the reformers- not all of which Mill himself approved- to dramatise the picture.30 There is therefore reason to presume that, when the lord chancellor fell on his knees on the Woolsack and begged the Lords to pass the Bill, lest the country be plunged into the horrors of revolution, he was somewhat exaggerating the situation.31 Macaulay's rhetoric was displayed in an equally instrumental fashion. On one occasion he argued in the Commons that the conditions of Great Britain were in no way comparable with those of France, and that there was no danger of the country experiencing a level of disorder or discontent comparable with that which had provoked the revolution of

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183O.32 In a subsequent speech, on the other hand, he threatened the Lords in a dramatic prophecy, with the fate of the Ancien Regime aristocracy: Have they never seen the ruins of those castles whose terraces and gardens overhang the Loire? Have they never heard that from those magnificent hotels, from those ancient castles, an aristocracy as splendid, as brave, as proud, as accomplished as ever Europe saw, was driven forth to exile and beggary, to implore the charity of hostile Governments and hostile creeds, to cut wood in the back settlements of America, or to teach French in the schoolrooms of London?33

But, if the reviewers did not literally believe that a second Jacobin revolution lay just around the corner and if they used the rhetoric of threat to force their arguments upon public opinion, upon the political class at large and upon the Whig ministers in particular, this did not imply any doubt as to the necessity of reform. To the committed exponent of a scientific approach to politics the risk of prolonged political mismanagement was just as serious a threat as a new fall of the Bastille might seem to a more conservative public opinion. In the end fear was the sole means of imposing on the ruling class a form of political prudence which in itself was simply indispensable. If for the reviewers reform was a matter of expediency rather than principle, which precise goals did they suppose that the legislator should seek to attain? What criteria should guide him in selecting the appropriate form and scope of the franchise? The theory of parliamentary representation that the reviewers inherited from the 18 th century (mainly Whig, but also partially Tory in its origins) and, in its more recent version, from Burke, was far from neat in its prescriptions. Although they succeeded in elaborating an original and interesting reformulation of this theory, it was one which preserved some of the vagueness and instability of the sources from which it was drawn.34 The principal ambiguity of the 18th-century idea of representation as formulated, for example, by Burke, lay in its commitment to at least two very different principles. The first was that Parliament ought to represent the different orders and ranks of society, the various opinions and interests, in a way which corresponded to their effective importance and influence in the country itself. The criterion was not merely social but also, for example, geographical. Much of the 18thcentury discussion indeed turned on the issue of how to recognise local as opposed to national interests. A closely related issue (discussed by


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Horner in his 'Essay on the Metropolis' - see pp. 48-9 above) was that of the balance between town and countryside. The belief that, ceteris paribus, the former would always carry more weight and display a greater propensity towards unrest than the latter, and that this tendency must be corrected by appropriate legislative measures, had been a political commonplace long before it acquired central relevance in the shaping of the Reform Bill. The second relevant principle was that of independence. Although it was essential for the different ranks and orders to be represented in Parliament, Parliament itself was something more than a mere assembly of 'ambassadors' of conflicting interests. The strength of political representation lay precisely in its capacity to transcend particular and local claims to realise a general interest. Discussing the delegation of political decisions, Burke had stressed that, whilst it was desirable for members of Parliament to be well acquainted with and sympathetic to the interests of those by whom they were elected, their judgment must remain independent. As he argued in his famous speech, the member for Bristol was indeed chosen by the electors of the city of Bristol, but, once the choice was made, what he became was a member of Parliament,35 In stressing the need for real interests to be represented and for members to retain their autonomy of judgment, Burke was expressing an anxiety, deeply felt by the Whigs after 1760, at the growth of the influence of the crown and political corruption. But the argument for independence was also advanced on the Tory side on the grounds that a part at least of the members ought always to be free from direct local and party influence. In this form it was an argument which offered a justification both for the preservation of the close and rotten boroughs and for the sale of seats.36 The reviewers rejected the idea, much touted by the Tories in 18312, that the close and rotten boroughs ought to be maintained since they represented the only means by which men of talent with no personal influence or fortune (such as were the reviewers themselves, as they were all too often reminded by the Tory press) could get into Parliament.37 But they had no real objections to the sale of seats as such, insofar as this was plainly a convenient way of opening up to independent property access to Parliament. It was altogether unclear where the border line between 'natural influence of property' and 'corruption' precisely lay.38 Disagreement and confusion in the Whig camp on the subject of the sale of seats had already emerged as early as 1811

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in the debate on John Christian Curwen's Bill inhibiting the practice.39 A further feature of the reviewers' theory of parliamentary representation was their belief that, in modern British society, the balance of the constitution was no longer guaranteed by both Houses, but rested entirely on the House of Commons. This suggestion was to be found in 18th-century writers such as William Blackstone (1723-80);40 and it had been adopted by Stewart in his lectures.41 It was more a historical than a theoretical argument, describing what it took to be the natural decline of the Lords and the absorption of aristocratic influence into the House of Commons. It was therefore natural that, during the debate on the Reform Bill, in which the Lords' obstruction was of crucial importance, the reviewers (and with them the Radicals)42 should have found themselves unprepared for and profoundly irritated by the resistance of an institution the historical decadence of which they had long proclaimed.43 Burke's argument in favour of the 'real' representation of the People in Parliament had no very definite sociological reference. It was an argument about orders, factions, interest groups, localities. But in the reviewers' reformulation the same theory acquired a socio-economic content drawn from the Scottish doctrine of the historical emergence of the middling ranks or middle classes (both terms were employed). In their analysis the general problem of achieving a successful system of representation came to be identified with the specific objective of securing for the middle classes a degree of political influence proportional to the importance which they had now acquired de facto in the social and economic life of the country. In one of Macaulay's most vivid rhetorical images: If, Sir, I wished to make . . . a foreigner clearly understand what I consider the great defects of our system, I would conduct him through that immense city which lies in the north of Great Russell Street and Oxford Street, a city superior in size and population to the capitals of many mighty kingdoms; and probably superior in opulence, intelligence, and general respectability, to any city in the world. I would conduct him through that interminable succession of streets and squares, all consisting of well built and well furnished houses. I would make him observe the brilliancy of the shops, and the crowd of well appointed equipages. I would show him that magnificent circle of palaces which surrounds the Regent's Park. I would tell him that the rental of this district was far greater than that of the whole kingdom of Scotland at the time of the Union. And then I would tell him that this was an unrepresented district.44


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The theory of commercial society provided a powerful rationale for reform, since it furnished this with a more specific prescriptive content, and presented the extension of the franchise as the product of a historical process which could not, in the long run, be successfully resisted. But whilst the theory made clear the general direction in which legislation ought to proceed- broadly speaking that of gradual democratisation - it could not in principle provide specific prescriptions on the speed of the process or the particular forms which it should take. The prudent views which the Review had expressed on the franchise in the 1810s were not theoretically at odds with the bolder demands which it set forth in 1830, since the only commitment ever expressed was that of finding suitable (and temporary) arrangements for the present. In the first place, if it was claimed that the interests of the middling ranks ought to be represented in Parliament, this did not imply that all those belonging to a given social group were entitled to a vote.45 There was no reason in principle why the franchise should not be restricted to a representative and influential elite. In 1817 Mackintosh wrote, for example: The reasons which make it important to liberty, that the elective franchise should be exercised by large bodies of the lower classes, do not in the last degree require that it should be conferred on them all. It is necessary to their security from oppression that the whole class should have some representatives; but as their interests are everywhere the same, representatives elected by one body of them, are necessarily the guardians of the rights of all.46

Similarly, in a speech delivered at a point when the discussion of the Reform Bill was at its height, Macaulay insisted that the labouring classes, although included within that section of the community whose living standards had been improved by the development of commercial society, could be safely offered the franchise only under conditions of generalised prosperity and social stability which Great Britain had not yet achieved: I consider this, Sir, as a practical question. I rest my opinion on no general theory of government. I distrust all general theories of government. I will not positively say, that there is any form of polity which may not, in some conceivable circumstances, be the best possible. I believe that there are societies in which every man may safely be admitted to vote. Gentlemen may cheer, but such is my opinion. I say, Sir, that there are countries in which the conditions of the labouring classes is such that they may be safely entrusted with the right of electing Members of the Legislature. If the labourers of England were in that

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state in which I, from my soul, wish to see them, if employment were always plentiful, wages always high, food always cheap, if a large family were considered not an encumbrance but a blessing, the principal objections to suffrage would, I think, be removed.47 Secondly, the very notion of middling ranks, so effective in focusing the discussion, remained in itself both blurred and volatile. Who in fact were the middling ranks? It is legitimate to suppose that, in the transition from the Scottish local communities to the complexities of the population of Great Britain that faced the members of Grey's Cabinet, the meaning of the term middling ranks must have undergone some change. The most important difference was the far more definite descriptive content which the term had acquired by 1830, in contrast with its usage, in the late-18 th-century, in the writings of Smith, Millar and Stewart. This does not imply that the reviewers were actually interested in, or paid much attention to, real changes in class composition in Britain in their own time. They were inclined to take it for granted that there was a more even distribution of income than in the previous century, and that the number of middle-size fortunes was much greater than ever before.48 In its strictly economic acceptation - as a description of practical activities and levels of income- the term middling ranks covered a wide range of persons. It included merchants, monied men, manufacturers (the word being still used to indicate both the owners of factories and the skilled workers employed in them), artisans, professional men, civil servants, sections of the clergy and the middle and lower strata of the gentry. It is difficult, however, to be sure of the precise limits of the upper and lower ends of the relevant section of the social scale. As Macaulay's passage above indicated, the labouring classes were certainly excluded from it insofar as they were reduced to mere toiling machines without opportunity for leisure or education. But the potential improvement of their material and moral conditions meant that they could hope to be included within it in due course. Similarly, while birth provided a fairly precise demarcation between the upper strata of the middling ranks and the aristocracy, the experience of the French revolution had shown that a 'natural' or 'real' aristocracy must be something different from a mere hereditary caste, and that the very notion of aristocracy could not be adequately conceived in detachment from the exercise of a given set of moral and political virtues. All things considered, the concept of middling ranks was by no means narrowly economic. Commercial growth generated not only


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material welfare but also intelligence, education, taste, refinement, the progress of the arts and sciences and, above all, political consciousness. Thus the identity of the various sections of the middle class depended as much on shared systems of political and moral values as it did upon their purely economic status. The issue of the compatibility of commercial growth with civic virtue still lurked in the background of the reviewers' discussion of the extension of the franchise. Those historians who have presented the Victorian ideal of middle-class virtues straightforwardly as the product of a new set of economic relations and class conflicts have wholly overlooked the dense political significance originally embedded in the Scottish notion of middling ranks.49 The stress on the desirability of opening parliamentary representation to talent, which appeared so often in the debate on the Reform Bill, is especially revealing. In the language of the reviewers, the term talent designated something very similar to Stewart's conception of civic virtue, what Nicholas Phillipson has described as the ideal of the 'virtuous expert'. Talent implied a combination of civic virtue with professional skill and political knowledge and expertise. It presented an ideal of citizenship extended far beyond a restricted aristocratic elite, to larger groups of educated and politically alert members of the community.50 Writing in the Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1831, Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) used this conception of talent to mount a personal attack against Brougham. The personality and political career of the lord chancellor, he argued, were a living example of the utterly unacceptable character of the ideal of the 'promotion of talent' that the reformers were presenting to the nation. Brougham did indeed possess remarkable qualities. But his qualities - arrogance, fluency, violence ready to break into 'womanish weakness', a 'vigorous but unrefined' intellect- were no better than a parody of the aristocratic virtues that a true statesman ought to possess. And the worst was still to come:

Mr Brougham, we must recollect, Mohawk as he showed himself upon suitable excitement, was still modified and checked, unconsciously to himself, by the spirit of the assembly in which he acted. The present constitution of that body secures a very preponderating infusion of the high bred courtesies and the sobriety of demeanour which distinguish British gentlemen. But, on his new model, adjusted to a democratic standard of plain-speaking and ferocious insolence, these temperaments and restraints would disappear.51

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De Quincey's unflattering portrait of the lord chancellor may be compared with the illustration of the virtues of Sir Samuel Romilly offered by Macaulay in one of his interventions on the Reform Bill. In his speech Macaulay suggested that the metropolitan districts of Westminster and Southwark - notwithstanding their scot-and-lot franchise - had always elected not only perfectly respectable but indeed illustrious representatives to Parliament. Having mentioned the examples of Fox, Sheridan and Tierney, the orator turned to Romilly: Was he a mob orator? Was he a servile flatterer of the multitude? Sir, if he had any fault, if there was any blemish on the most serene and spotless character, that character which every public man, and especially every professional man engaged in politics, ought to propose to himself as a model, it was this, that he despised popularity too much and too visibly . . . He never solicited one vote; he never showed himself to the electors, till he had been turned at the head of the poll. Even then, as I have heard from one of his nearest relatives, it was with reluctance that he submitted to be cheered. He shrank from being made a show. He loved the people, and he served them; but Coriolanus himself was not less fitted to canvass them.52

In sum, as the reviewers articulated it, the theory of commercial society gave to the project of parliamentary reform a quite specific historical, both social and economic, content. They conferred upon it an explicit and immediate social significance, which alone could make it intelligible and appealing to public opinion at large. But they made no attempt to offer specific technical prescriptions. In particular, they did not try to challenge the anomalies of the existing electoral system by defending against them a unitary criterion of appropriate representation. Commenting on the Reform Act, a Tory observer claimed that, of the three criteria which Grey's Cabinet might conceivably have adopted - property, taxation (as applied in the French system) and populationnone had been consistently followed.53 It is not altogether surprising that the reform proposal advanced by the Whig Cabinet should have been dictated mainly by considerations of political tactics (the chances for the Bill being carried) and especially by the consideration of its potential consequences for the distribution of advantage between the two major parties. Professor David Moore's controversial interpretation of the Reform Act is persuasive in its claim that the hidden rationale of the reform, both on the Whig and on the Tory side, was to maintain for the landed interest the highest possible degree of control over Parliament.54 But the main explicit preoccupation of the Whigs in


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designing the Reform Bill appears to have been the degree to which they might expect their own parliamentary power to be affected by the abolition of the close and rotten boroughs from which the party was the chief beneficiary.55 If we compare the four major stages in the Whig reform struggle first, the plan submitted by Brougham to Grey in 1830, which was rejected on grounds that it would seriously diminish Whig influence;56 second, the plan sketched by the Whig committee which designed the Bill itself, which was drawn up by Durham, Russell, Viscount Duncannon (1781-1847) and Sir James Robert George Graham (1792-1861);57 third, the Bill introduced in March 1831; and, fourth, the Reform Act as this was actually passed in June 183258 - it is difficult to rank them in terms of their more or less 'advanced' or 'conservative' character. Some of the principles set forth in the original Whig plan (secret ballot, reduction of the maximum duration of Parliament from seven to five years) had to be abandoned in the final version of the Bill. On the other hand the qualification for household suffrage in the boroughs was lowered from £20 in the Whig committee's proposal to £10 in the Bill itself. Brougham's original proposal left one member to the nomination boroughs under Schedule A, and he was subsequently compelled to admit that the Whig committee's decision to abolish Schedule A altogether may well have been what carried the Bill.59 The general verdict was that the final proposals approved by Parliament were more daring and advanced than the reformers had ever expected. From the reviewer's viewpoint, the form of the constitution certainly mattered; but it did so only in the sense that it ought to facilitate rather than impede the progress of civil society. It was neither necessary nor desirable for it to be modelled rigidly on a supposed ideal polity. Reform itself ought always to respect existing social relations and the fundamental, if not the relative, balance of political power. For the reviewers, accordingly, the debate of 1831-2 on parliamentary representation was also inevitably, once again, a debate on the nature and future prospects of commercial society. Because their main argument for the necessity of reform depended upon a specific theory of historical progress, there were essentially two different ways in which their political opponents might choose to respond to it. The first of these, for those who shared their main historical assumptions, was to dispute the degree of control that should be exercised on the growth of the middling ranks, and the extent to which their expansion should be either encouraged or resisted by existing political institutions. The

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second was to deny altogether the relevance of the theory of commercial progress to the understanding of British society, its suitability for political analysis and its capacity to assess the merits of a course of political conduct, and to set forth instead an alternative set of historical and political values. Obviously these two attitudes were not wholly independent of one another. They often overlapped in the writings of a single author, and varying degrees of optimism and pessimism about the future of modern society may be detected both among the supporters and among the detractors of commercial progress. It is important, however, to stress that the dialogue between the reviewers and their opponents about the Reform Bill was not just a clash between well-defined political ideologies - Whiggism, Radicalism, Toryism. It gave expression at the same time to a continuing confrontation between political economy (in the broad sense) and other competing approaches to the understanding and shaping of society. The Scottish heritage: the reviewers, James Mill, Walter Scott Few aspects of early-19th-century British intellectual debate have received as much attention from historians as the running dispute between Whigs and Utilitarians on the methods of political understanding and the principles of reform. The controversy, begun by Jeffrey in his review of Bentham's Principles of Legislation in 1804,60 was to culminate in Macaulay's belated attack upon James Mill's Essay on Government in 1829.61 There has been increased interest in the relations between philosophic Whigs and philosophic Radicals and less in the making of parliamentary reform which recent historians have been inclined to attribute to the latter.62 It is necessary here only to summarise the main outlines of the debate and to indicate a few general conclusions. Historians seem agreed today in acknowledging not only the patent and declared incompatibilities between Whig and Utilitarian intellectuals but also their (perhaps less obvious) similarities. The prestige that Bentham himself continued to enjoy with the reviewers, despite all their criticism; the long-lasting friendship between Brougham and James Mill; Etienne Dumont's connections with the Whig salons- are only a few of the indices of continuing intellectual exchange between the two groups. Moreover, the periodical press, although it reflected the main political


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and party divisions, could hardly do so with complete fidelity. Contributors were often recruited quite independently of political allegiance. Both the Quarterly and the Westminster employed authors who had at one point written for the Edinburgh', while the Encyclopaedia Britannica, under Napier's editorship, provided further occasion for intellectual exchange across party divisions. Despite the marked difference in the style of their polemical interventions, therefore, the two groups shared important elements of their historical and political analysis: their understanding of the emergence of the middling ranks, of the function of popular education and of the genesis of revolutions in the modern world. Their political activities, although competitively pursued, also often converged on compatible, if not identical, objectives. That the rivalry between philosophic Radicals and reviewers was not a product of sheer theoretical incompatibility is well illustrated by the bitterness with which the two groups contended for the monopoly over political economy.63 As already mentioned, in 1818 Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy had been reviewed appreciatively in the Review by McCulloch,64 while in the succeeding years the extensive and virtually exclusive contribution made by McCulloch himself on the subject of political economy created the impression that the Review had entirely fallen under the spell of orthodox Ricardianism. In a famous letter to Sismondi, written in 1821, Mai thus conveyed the impression that the Review had adopted Ricardo's system so entirely that neither Sismondi nor Malthus himself had any further hope of ever being mentioned in it again.65 It has been suggested too that, at least for the original founders of the Review, the name of Ricardo carried no charismatic power, that they regarded his work as an especially successful assessment of a series of theoretical problems which had been left unsolved in Smith's system, and that they disapproved of the 'metaphysical' and 'scholastic' character that Ricardianism had assumed in the writings of the author's Utilitarian friends and followers. James Mill on the other hand, while acknowledging the important contribution of the reviewers to the diffusion of economic knowledge, attacked them violently for having 'prostituted' political economy to the service of the Whig aristocracy, and, consequently, of the worst form of aristocratic privilege, the one disguised under intellectual and liberal pretensions.66 The issue of the resemblances and contrasts between Whigs and Utilitarians is especially relevant to an understanding of James Mill's

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work. Historians have long been baffled by the seemingly schizophrenic character of Mill's intellectual development. His association with Bentham and Utilitarianism has been seen as irreparably at odds with his Scottish education and his early connection with the school of Stewart; a text as ^historical' and 'abstract' as the Essay on Government (1824)67 has seemed an anomalous complement to an enterprise as close to 18th-century Scottish conjectural history as his laboriously compiled History of British India (1818).68 More recently, and especially following Duncan Forbes's suggestive interpretation of the History of British India,69 historians have become more disposed to acknowledge the importance of the Scottish origins of Mill's thought, and to seek to reconcile these with his later intellectual attitudes.70 While it would be foolish to attempt to present Mill's writings as an integrated theoretical system, a clearer understanding of his style of reasoning and exposition now makes it possible to offer a more complete and convincing picture of his contribution as a whole. Mill's general theoretical approach is perplexing, but the Essay on Government in particular has long occasioned puzzlement and controversy amongst its interpreters. 71 Scholars disagree whether the Essay ought properly to be read as a political manifesto or as a philosophical treatise; whether the argument which it advances calls for restricted or universal suffrage; whether it was in fact, as Macaulay claimed, contradictory, or whether it was entirely coherent with its own premises. Here, too, recent historical debate, if it has failed to remove all disagreement, has at least provided much helpful clarification. Particularly illuminating is William Thomas's argument that the Essay was not written with the aim of supporting a particular measure of reform; that it can be read equally plausibly as an argument for restricted or for universal suffrage; and that Mill himself was essentially uninterested in the practical consequences of his own arguments.72 On Mill's reluctance to make explicit the implications of his theory, commentators seem now to be agreed, although they offer different explanations for his reticence. Some emphasise Mill's desire to avoid open political confrontation at a time when the Radicals were divided on the issue of the franchise.73 Others, including Thomas himself, stress the abstractness and dogmatism of Mill's style of reasoning and the intrinsic obscurity of the Essay itself as a piece of writing, and suggest that Mill's critical animosity was directed more against the main advocates of parliamentary reform than against the particular measures which they were pro-


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posing.74 Thomas also maintains that Macaulay's choice of the Essay as a polemical target (five years after its publication) was based more on its intolerance towards piecemeal reform and the Whigs' efforts to promote it than on any compelling need to refute Mill's theory of parliamentary representation as such. This reading of the Essay diminishes the importance, which has troubled some of Mill's ideologically more preoccupied commentators, of reconciling his eulogy of the middle classes with his apparent commitment to universal suffrage.75 In the face of parliamentary reform Mill found himself in fact in a position much like that of the reviewers themselves. Like them, he was committed to a powerful historical theory that suggested a necessary growth of the middle classes and democratisation of the political system. Like them, he was unable to derive from that theory of history any specific indications on the possible or desirable speed or modalities of the process of democratisation itself. Again, like the reviewers, he faced an array of potential contradictions between traditional ideas about parliamentary reform and the existing machinery of the representative system. Like them, for example, he was unable to reconcile the argument against bribery with the claim that independent property ought to be represented in Parliament.76 The reviewers took advantage of the comparative laxity of their theoretical framework to push forward those issues which they regarded as politically more desirable and more likely to succeed. Mill, on the other hand, plunged himself more deeply into theoretical inconsistencies in his attempt to express the demand for reform in a more rigorous theoretical language. His theory of human motivation in the Essay, for example, stood, as Macaulay memorably stressed, in stark contradiction with his account of the best possible representative system.77 Where, however, Mill's position did differ very sharply from that of the reviewers, was in his judgment of the strength and character of the existing political forces. The reviewers (like the Whigs more generally) saw the promotion of even a moderate and imperfect reform programme as an opportunity to undermine Tory influence, and to redistribute political power to their own advantage. Mill condemned both political parties impartially as fundamentally corrupt, and saw piecemeal reform as an instance of unforgivable complicity with the political status quo. Macaulay's attack on the Essay, as we have seen, stemmed more from

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irritation with the arrogant, sectarian and unco-operative attitude of the Radicals than from deeply felt theoretical dissent: Our readers - he wrote- can scarcely mistake our object in writing this article. They will not suspect us of any disposition to advocate the cause of absolute monarchy, or any narrow form of oligarchy, or to exaggerate the evils of popular government. Our object at present is not so much to attack or defend any particular system of polity, as to expose the vices of a kind of reasoning utterly unfit for moral and political discussion.78

His plea for an empirical or inductive approach to politics was thus nothing but a bare restatement of positions on the subject often previously expressed by the Review. It offered a particular interpretation of the character of political understanding, and it was in no sense an argument against the possibility of a science of politics as such: How then are we to arrive at just conclusions on a subject so important to the happiness of mankind? Surely by that method which, in every experimental science to which it has been applied, has signally increased the power and knowledge of our species, - by that method for which our new philosophers would substitute quibbles scarcely worthy of the barbarous respondents and opponents of the middle ages- by the method of Induction; - by observing the present state of the world, - by assiduously studying the history of past ages, by sifting the evidence of facts, - by carefully combining and contrasting those which are authentic, - by generalizing, with judgment and diffidence, - by perpetually bringing the theory we have constructed to the test of new facts, - by correcting or altogether abandoning it, according as those new facts prove it to be partially or fundamentally unsound.79

To attain a more complete picture of the relations between the Scottish theory of commercial society and of the middling ranks and the debate on parliamentary reform, it is instructive to compare the position of the reviewers and James Mill with that of Walter Scott. Scott's views on parliamentary representation have understandably received much less attention than those of James Mill or Macaulay. Although at the time of his death, in 1832, Scott was a writer of fame, and although he had been associated for over two decades with the Tory press, his reputation was essentially that of an outstandingly popular novelist, not that of a politician or political philosopher. Since (like Jeffrey, the editor of the Edinburgh Review itself) he continued to reside in Scotland rather than move to London, his occasional interventions in politics were also mainly associated with local rather than national affairs.80 Yet, like James Mill, Scott himself was an intellectual with a Scottish education, who had absorbed the influence of the Edinburgh culture of


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the Enlightenment and had even for a few years (up until 1809) been associated closely with the Edinburgh Review. Like James Mill also, he shared with the reviewers a series of assumptions about the nature of commercial development and historical progress which formed the background to (and which can be readily traced within) several of his novels and historical writings. Where he was in fundamental disagreement with the reviewers was over their political choices and party allegiances.81 Scott's views on parliamentary reform were set out (in a form which was certainly extremely remote from the style of Mill's Essay on Government) in a series of satirical articles for the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, which were reprinted together in 1819 under the title The Visionary*2 In the introduction, Scott stated his belief in the necessity for there to be both a ministerial and an opposition party to preserve the balance of the constitution. He argued that property- and the 'natural influence' associated with i t - ought to form the basis for parliamentary representation. Finally, he appealed to the prudence of the 'Whigs of Scotland' whom he sought to dissuade from supporting ill-considered and abrupt measures of reform. The vision expressed in the satire consisted of three 'dreams'. In the first dream, Mr Vitruvius Whigham, a capricious and foolish architect of fashion, is obsessed with the problem of a set of unaesthetic garrets which are spoiling the elegance and symmetry of an old Gothic castle: These garrets Mr Whigham held in utter hatred and detestation. The dry rot, he said, had got into them; nor was there a single inconvenience which he did not ascribe to these d-d rotten holes. If the cook scalded himself, or the kitchen chimney took fire, or the dogs eat [sic] up the leg of mutton, he averred it was all along of these garrets; and Mr Whigham was ready to pawn his own salvation that nothing could restore the original stability and beauty of the edifice, excepting his being instantly called to exercise his skill in removing these vile dungeons, which defaced the most sublime structure that ever was or would be erected on the face of the earth.83

Determined to destroy the garrets, and oblivious of the fact that in the past they 'had been found very convenient for the accommodation of those who could not otherwise be lodged',84 Vitruvius seeks the support of the mob of riotous peasants who inhabit the estate and hold the castle itself in utter detestation. Vitruvius soon proves to be unable to control his troublesome new allies and the whole castle is finally pulled down and reduced to a complete ruin by the mob.

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After this gloomy prediction of the consequences of the Whig policy of reform, Scott described, in the second dream, the effects of the destruction of the castle. After a bloody civil war, Scotland has been transformed into the 'land of Radicals', and private property has been abolished. The country is reduced to a state of complete anarchy and barbarism and its few surviving inhabitants form a tribe of half-starved brutes. The equation of Radicalism and the abolition of property with a return to barbarism was obviously a commonplace of reactionary propaganda following the French revolution. It is interesting, however, that Scott's vision is expressed very much in the terms of the Scottish political economists. Under the new political system, each inhabitant has his own portion often acres of arable ground. It is the elimination of the division of labour brought about by this transformation of the population into small peasant proprietors which is actually the cause of the return to primitive society: 'We do not care so much for the want of capital,' said the native, 'for it is our maxim, that a man had better starve as a master than live in plenty as a domestic; but we are now troubled by another want-1 mean the deficiency of tools- the old implements of agriculture are worn out, and I suppose we shall shortly have to scratch up the earth with our own nails.' 'Then you have no smiths and carpenters?' 'How the devil should we?' answered the savage; 'each man has his own ten acres to mind, and has no time to make tools for anyone else.'85

In the third dream, finally, the political orator Bob Bubblegoose sets himself to describe the functioning of the new 'democratic' political system, in which everybody (including women and children) has a right to the franchise. The whole country is paralysed by endless popular meetings, electoral campaigns and elaborate and grotesque procedures of balloting, while corruption reigns everywhere: 'I thought,' said I, 'that ballot was the mode recommended as fairest and most effectual by our itinerant politicians.' 'We made the experiment, sir, but no single vessel could be found large enough to contain the number of ballots true and false, that poured upon us. We tried the Glasgow gasometer (as we don't light the streets now) and it was full in the course of a day; for such is the laudable partiality of the people to this new privilege that no one thinks he can exercise it too often, and when a man's only qualification is that he has a nose on his face (even that is not strictly required) it is difficult to detect imposition.'86 O n closer observation of the apparently unruly crowd of electors, however, the Visionary notices that in fact workers and artisans vote


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for their employers and masters, tenants for their landlords and, needless to say, clans of highlanders for their chiefs. Thus Scott suggested that, despite the elaborate democratic machinery, wealth and authority would inevitably retain all their influence: 'It appears to me', said I, addressing Bubblegoose, 'that this scheme of yours has not greatly altered the final result of matters, after all the splutter and inconvenience which it has occasioned. It has just come to this, that men in general will and must vote for those who pay and who feed them, and that property will have nearly the same influence in the new system of things as in the old; only that, perhaps, a man of estate has, under your plan, the direction of the voices of a thousand other persons, instead of simply voting himself as formerly . . . Men of property will have most votes, and must necessarily attain the upper hand; and the lower orders are only mocked with an imaginary franchise, which fear of starving will prevent their exercising otherwise than for the benefit of those who maintain them.'87

In addition to this, the lower strata of the community, the unemployed, the 'outcasts of hospitals' and 'rejects of jaiF would become the object of systematic corruption. As Bubblegoose philosophically comments in the end, who else, save the 'dissolute and illiterate' would be prepared to make him a Member of Parliament?88 Scott's treatment of the issue of reform in The Visionary was far from subtle, and largely re-echoed commonplace themes of the conservative propaganda. But some of the main arguments which he set forth in his satire were far from alien to, or incompatible with, the vision of the reviewers themselves. Scott agreed with them in acknowledging that the existing system of parliamentary representation was both eccentric and inadequate. But he argued that the risks involved in attempting to improve it were too high, since this would embolden the demands of the disaffected and riotous part of the lower orders, and transfer political power to these. What Scott was expressing here was essentially a judgment on the potential success and efficacy of the strategy of the Whigs and their ability to keep control over their Radical allies in the struggle for reform. He made no general statement about the theory of representation as such, and indeed, in his description of Vitruvius, mocked the Whig cult of the 'perfection' of the British constitution. Moreover, two of the important issues which he addressed in his satire were ones on which the reviewers' own position was extremely problematic and controversial. The first was the question of the influence of property and the extent to which this could be, or ought to be, restricted by the system of political representation. Scott's opinion

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on this matter was inspired by a strict sociological determinism. It was the influence of property and of traditional authority, he maintained, not the form of constitutional arrangements, which constituted the real skeleton of civil society. The second was the question of the possibility of improvement open to the lower orders. Scott's 'vision' implied that a part at least of the labouring classes would always be condemned to a condition of abject poverty and ignorance, and must consequently be excluded from the exercise of political virtue. Both of these judgments were actually consistent with, and even implied by, Smith's and Stewart's analysis of modern commercial society. What they highlighted were some of the negative consequences of economic progress- its corrupting influence on the political system, and its reduction of manual workers to brainless machines under the regime of the division of labour- which had been extensively discussed by the 18th-century Scottish writers. To stress these similarities between the opinions on parliamentary reform expressed by the reviewers and by James Mill and Scott is not, of course, to deny the major political and intellectual differences which divided these authors. Our aim is rather to show that the theory of commercial society and the middling ranks, when applied to the understanding of the conditions of Great Britain in 1830, could sanction a wide range of different political positions, and evoke sharply contrasting expectations over the future of British society. In March 1831, during the Reform Bill campaign, Scott, despite the declining state of his health, was persuaded by the local Tories to speak at a political meeting in Jedburgh. In his address he unleashed his flamboyant rhetoric upon Brougham's recent defence in the Review of the French revolution of 1830. His speech, however, 'delivered in a tone so low, and with such hesitation in utterance, that only a few detached passages were intelligible to the audience', proved a complete failure. The illustrious speaker was booed and mocked by a crowd of disrespectful artisans, and left the meeting sarcastically shouting: 'Moriturus vos saluto* to his unsympathetic audience.89 A few days later, on 25 March, on receiving the news that the Bill had been carried by the House of Commons, he noted philosophically in his journal: The measure carried by a single vote. In other circumstances one would hope for the interference of the House of Lords, but it is all hab nab at a venture [sic], as Cervantes says. The worst is, that there is a popular party, who want personal power, and are highly unfitted to enjoy it. It has fallen easily, the old consti-


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tution; no bullying Mirabeau to assail, no eloquent Maury to defend. It has been thrown away like a child's broken toy. Well- the good sense of the people is much trusted to; we shall see what it will do for us. The curse of Cromwell on those whose conceit brought us to this pass. Sed transeat. It is vain to mourn what cannot be mended.90

Scott's resigned and cool comment on the passing of the Reform Bill suggests that neither optimism nor pessimism was confined to a single side of the party divide. If Scott's novels were saturated with nostalgia for Scotland's historical past, the image which they presented of the life of Scottish local communities was far from idyllic and uncritical.91 James Mill's conspiratorial view of parliamentary politics - which associated both Whigs and Tories in the practice of corruption - was little more encouraging than Scott's gloomy fantasies on the prospective consequences of democracy. This ambivalence is well illustrated by the judgment which both the Westminster and the Scottish Tory press passed on the Edinburgh Review, In his famous article 'Periodical Literature', in the first issue of the Westminster, James Mill did not merely criticise the politics of the Review and of the Quarterly, he also expressed his revulsion at the intrinsically superficial and corrupting character of periodical publications as such. The education of public opinion was, in theory, a necessity and even a duty; but in practice it plainly struck him as highly distasteful. The Review especially was guilty of only too much success in meeting the taste and captivating the interest of the public.92 John Gibson Lockhart (1794—1854), Scott's son-in-law and biographer and a pillar of the Scottish conservative press, proved equally critical, but possibly less bigoted, in his assessment of the function of periodical publications. In his popular Peter's Letters to his Kinfolk93 - a survey of contemporary Scottish life and culture - he attacked the reviewers for their subversive political preferences, their fidelity to Hume's scepticism and lack of patriotic and religious feelings; and expressed his disapproval of the arrogant and aggressive style of their literary criticism. He admitted however that the 'astonishing degree of spirit'94 of the Review had greatly contributed to the prestige of Scottish culture, and was understandably and for good reasons one of the main causes of the decline of Tory influence and principles in Scotland. Thus, in Peter's Letters, the narrator recorded his encounter in Glasgow with an 'educated' artisan of radical opinions whom he described as a 'philosophical weaver'. After a conversation about the

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merits and demerits of the Review, of which the weaver plainly proved to be a keen reader and admirer, the latter triumphantly concluded: * As David Hume says, honest man, there's no resisting the general progress of opinion. The march of intellect will carry a' before it, sir',95 leaving the puzzled Tory journalist to speculate on the alarming success of Jeffrey and his acolytes. Commercial society, progress and pessimism In 1830, after his election as a member of Parliament, Macaulay wrote for the Review two articles in refutation of the anti-Malthusian tract by Michael Thomas Sadler (1780-1835), The Law ofPopulation?* Sadler, MP for Newark from 1829 to 1832, was an active promoter of factory legislation and a supporter of the creation of small-scale peasant property in Ireland. During the debate on the Reform Bill he opposed the Bill on the grounds that the imposition of a uniform middle-class franchise would result in the disfranchisement of the rural districts.97 His work was a refutation of Malthus's Essay based on the argument that the law of population was a direct contradiction of any belief in the benevolence of God. This theological argument had been developed earlier, in far more skilful and plausible terms, by William Paley (17431805) in his Natural Theology ?% In Sadler's work the argument was supported by an impressive but erratic display of statistical tables and mathematical illustrations, in which the author 'proved' that human fertility had a natural tendency to increase in underpopulated areas and a natural tendency to diminish in highly populated ones. Sadler's violently abusive language, his extravagant rhetoric, poetical digressions and erratic reckoning made his work hardly worth the effort of refutation, except for the many opportunities it afforded for the exercise of a reviewer's irony. An article by John Wilson (17851854) in Blackwood's, which argued, in support of Sadler, that 'men are not naturally the brute beasts those writers [Malthus and the political economists] represented them to be' and that they did not 'propagate morepecudum* was little more cogent.99 In a letter to Napier, Macaulay himself described it as 'the Blackwood's trash', and confessed he had not been able to read it to the end.100 The attack upon Sadler was clearly stimulated by more than the intrinsic merits and relevance of his work. In reminding public opinion of the essential validity of Malthus's theory of population (at a time when Malthus himself had become politically and intellectually some-


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what alienated from the Review) Macaulay focused upon one of the crucial questions which emerged from the debate on parliamentary reform. What kind of hopes and expectations was it legitimate to entertain for the future improvement of the lower orders? In other words: what precisely were the predictable constraints on the progress of commercial society? This was not a new question. Since the emergence of political economy as a distinctive discourse it had been levelled constantly at political economists by their opponents (both conservative and Radical) whenever they felt called on to denounce one or other of the evils allegedly associated with economic growth. It was a question, moreover, on which political economists in general, and the reviewers in particular, had never ceased to interrogate themselves, as Stewart's lectures and the writings of Horner, Brougham and McCulloch clearly indicate. The protracted debate over the Scottish Poor Laws punctiliously recorded by the Review throughout the first three decades of the 19 th century- had offered ample occasion to discuss the merits and demerits of the industrial system.101 In the face of parliamentary reform, however, the question acquired new relevance and urgency as the sudden promotion of the Whigs to governmental office exposed the Whig intellectuals and political economists directly to the assaults of their numerous critics. Because the exclusion of the lower orders from the exercise of political rights was justified on the ground of their poverty and ignorance, the question of whether poverty could or could not be eliminated became a key element in the shaping of political arguments and decisions. The extension of the franchise to the middling ranks made it clear that, at least in principle, there was no limit to the process of democratisation, provided only that economic growth could keep pace with the demands and pressures of those social groups which were excluded from political representation.102 The issue in question was in fact broad. In strictly economic terms it embraced such matters as the causes of economic crisis, the limits to the expansion of the market and effective demand, the effects of the introduction of machinery upon employment and the changes in the ratio between rural and urban population brought about by industrial growth.103 In a political perspective, it involved the problem of the growth of popular pressure, the risk that this pressure represented for political stability and the potential dynamics of revolution. In cultural terms, moreover, it raised the whole issue of the loss of traditional,

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moral, religious, political values inevitably associated with commercial progress. In the face of such a wide and tangled array of questions those contemporary observers who were fully aware of their complexity could scarcely offer exhaustive and unambiguous answers. It is not surprising for example that- in the experience of a generation who had witnessed spectacularly rapid social and political changes - optimistic expectations about the future of modern society should be combined with feelings of cultural loss and nostalgia. The reviewers' approach to the issue of progress offers only a limited (and obviously a politically qualified) insight into what was to become in the 1830s the extensive debate on the 'condition of England'.104 But their views do show clearly enough what it was that political economy and philosophic Whiggism stood for, and what sort of answers they were in a position to offer to the pressing questions raised by the reform movement. The reviewers' attitude towards progress remained in fact fairly stable throughout the period under consideration. There were sharp changes, of course, in their appraisal of what was politically feasible and auspicious, and neither their strategies nor their rhetoric remained unaltered. But there is no evidence to sustain the conclusion that their long-term expectations had become either more or less 'pessimistic' in 1830 than they had been thirty years earlier. This point is worth noticing only because historians have so often assumed that political economy underwent a significant transformation from a relatively 'optimistic' version, offered by Smith in the Wealth of Nations, to a 'pessimistic' one advanced by Mai thus and Ricardo in the early 19th century. It can certainly be argued that the Ricardian theory offered a more specific and articulated insight into the limits on economic growth than Smith had indicated.105 And it is obviously true that the anxieties over economic development of a 19th-century world haunted by the spectre of overproduction and stagnation were no longer those of an 18th-century society obsessed with the problems of grain supply and famine. Yet, at least within the approach of the Scottish Whigs, the terms of the problem remained substantially the same. Commercial society, it was believed, had a greater capacity than any other form of social organisation to provide general welfare. But this result could be attained only at the price of great inequality in the distribution of resources; and the trend towards economic prosperity itself might be


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upset at any point in time by independent political factors. The real change was not in the spirit of the theory itself, but rather in the nature of social expectations. Levels of inequality, which before the French revolution had appeared perfectly tolerable even to progressive and enlightened observers, had by 1830 become profoundly disturbing to important sections of public opinion. Moreover, the shift of economists' attention from the relations between 'poor Scotland' and 'rich England' to the problems of the British economy at large had removed a strong emotional and cultural motivation which had inspired and sustained Smith's analysis. A second relevant aspect of the reviewers' approach was the extent to which their vigorous faith in the efficacy of commercial progress was counterbalanced by an equally strong sense of the precariousness of the achievements of civilisation and in particular of the values of the intellectual elite to which they belonged. Unlike the English Whigs who, understandably, regarded the reform of the electoral system as a dangerous experiment and an alarming threat to their own power and prestige, the reviewers did not belong to the landed aristocracy. Sons of an educated, self-conscious, urban professional class, they never assimilated, and made no attempt to imitate, the values of the landed gentry. England's or Scotland's feudal past for them was no more an occasion for nostalgia than the dream of an Ancient Republic at the core of the civic humanist tradition. But, if they knew only too well that the clock of history could not be turned back ,and had neither attachment to nor illusions about such declining political ideals, they were far from exempt from sentiments of nostalgia. Their regrets were directed in the first place (with a degree of intensity which varied with their individual experiences) at the declining autonomy of Scottish local communities and the Scottish ideal of'polite society'.106 They were directed especially towards a set of classical values which had formed the core of their own education, and which were being swept rapidly away by the very process of popularisation of culture that the Review itself was promoting. An especially revealing example of this 'pessimistic' and 'nostalgic' strain in the Review, was the review of Germaine de Stael's De la litterature written by Jeffrey in 1813.107 The article began with a long digression on the notion of progress, in which Jeffrey criticised the author's claim that every step in human history was gained for posterity forever. The idea of perfectibility expressed by Mme de Stael was closer to the spirit of Condorcet than to Scottish conjectural history. It was based on

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a presumption of the natural evolution of the human mind and of the arts and sciences, not on any theory of specifically economic development. Jeffrey was particularly attracted by its identification of the struggle between the races of the North and those of the South with the key element in the development of modern Europe - a theory with deep roots in the French historical tradition, and one which played a central role in Mme de Stael's reading of the evolution of literature.108 In her conception those periods of human history identified as 'dark ages' were only the necessary steps towards the emergence of the virtues of a new race and its new intellectual achievements. Jeffrey, however, argued that Mme de Stael, like all believers in human perfectibility, had derived her conclusions from a cursory and inadequate study of the historical evidence. He fully recognised that those forms of human knowledge which 'admitted of demonstration', the natural sciences, were likely to undergo constant improvement. But he expressed severe doubts over the prospects of general progress in human happiness and morals. In the case of the wealthy and educated classes, for example, prosperity generated boredom and idleness: 'The more is already known, the less there remains to be discovered; and the more time a man is obliged to spend in ascertaining what his predecessors have already established, the less he will have to bestow in adding to their amount.'109 The popularisation of culture and its fragmentation into a multiplicity of specialised fields made men's knowledge increasingly limited and their intellectual interests correspondingly superficial. As to the lower orders, the progress of human industry and science had only had the effect of making their material and moral conditions still more wretched than they had been in the past: In the whole history of the species, there has been nothing at all comparable to the improvement of England within the last century; never anywhere was there such an increase of wealth and luxury - so many admirable inventions in the arts- so many works of invention and ingenuity- such a progress in cultivation - such an enlargement of commerce: - and yet, in that century, the number of paupers in England has increased fourfold, and is now rated at one tenth of her whole population; and notwithstanding the enormous sums that are levied and given privately for their relief, and the multitudes that are drained off by the waste of war, the peace of the country is perpetually threatened by the outrages of famishing multitudes.110


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Manufacturers, Jeffrey argued, were only too keen to attract to industrial districts a large population of peasants, who found there only precarious and fluctuating employment. This excess population was in fact a sure means of keeping wages low and guaranteeing high profits: The effect, then, which is produced on the lower orders of society, by that increase of industry and refinement, and that multiplication of conveniences which are commonly looked upon as the surest test of increasing prosperity, is to convert the peasants into manufacturers, and the manufacturers into paupers; while the chance of their ever emerging from this condition becomes constantly less, the more complete and mature the system is which had originally produced it.111

Sixteen years later, in 1829, Jeffrey's gloomy reflections on the effects of industrial progress were re-echoed in the Review, with far greater rhetorical resonance, by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) in his famous article 'Signs of the Times'.112 Like Jeffrey, in discussing the characteristics of what he described as 'the Age of Machinery', Carlyle insisted on the destruction of moral, religious and intellectual values by industrial progress; and he contrasted the achievements of modern science and technology with the growing social inequality and material and spiritual misery of the people: What wonderful accessions have thus been made, and are still making, to the physical power of mankind; how much better fed, clothed, lodged and, in all outward respects, accommodated men now are, or might be, by a given quantity of labour, is a grateful reflection which forces itself on every one. What changes too this addition of power is introducing into the Social System; how wealth has more and more increased, and at the same time gathered itself more and more into masses, strangely altering the old relations, and increasing the distance between the rich and the poor, will be a question for Political Economists, and a much more complex and important one than any they have yet engaged with.113

Like Jeffrey, he denounced the impoverishment of creativity in the arts and sciences under the impact of popular education and the organised diffusion of knowledge: Philosophy, Science, Art, Literature, all depend on machinery . . . In defect of Raphaels, and Angelos, and Mozarts, we have Royal Academies of Painting, Sculpture, Music; whereby the languishing spirit of Art may be strengthened, as by the more generous diet of a Public Kitchen. Literature, too, has its

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Paternoster-row mechanism, its Trade-dinners, its Editorial conclaves, and huge subterranean puffing bellows; so that books are not only printed, but, in great measure, written and sold, by machinery.114 Finally, he lamented the decline of metaphysics and of the philosophy of mind, which, he argued, the Scottish school of Stewart and Reid had in vain attempted to revive.115 Obviously Carlyle did not belong within the philosophic Whig tradition, and his connection with the Review itself was a trifle contingent. His collaboration was a product of his personal friendship with Jeffrey, who believed in his talents and gave him some employment in order to help him in his financial troubles.116 Moreover, Jeffrey's repeated attempts to persuade his eccentric protege to write 'in plain English' were a complete failure, and Carlyle's idiosyncratic style caused much irritation to other contributors to the Review, for example to Macaulay.117 But, although Carlyle's passionate and quasi-mystical rhetoric, his intense concern with German philosophy and his scepticism about political economy were somewhat alien to the spirit of the Review, his article developed at least two themes which were common not only to the relatively 'conservative'Jeffrey, but also to the more 'progressive' and politically committed Macaulay. The first was the author's obvious fascination with machinery and technological improvement; the second his insistence on the necessity to look steadily into the problems of the present, renouncing all historical illusions and recriminations. Commenting upon the scandalised reaction of conservative public opinion to Catholic Relief, he argued: Meanwhile, we too admit that the present is an important time; as all present time necessarily i s . . . We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own aims and endeavours in it, may also become clearer.118 Both themes - albeit phrased in ironic and commonsensical rather than in prophetic and philosophical terms - were to be found a year later in Macaulay's review of Robert Southey's (1774-1843) essay Sir Thomas More: or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society,119 In the

Colloquies the Poet Laureate (under the name of Montesinos) conversed


\11

about the condition of England with a mysterious visitor to the Lake District, initially presumed to be an American traveller, but later identified as the ghost of Thomas More. The visit of the illustrious ghost offered the author the opportunity for a lengthy comparison between the state of the country in the 15 th and in the 19th centuries, from which the era of Thomas More emerged to its fullest advantage. The literary structure of Southey's work was, to say the least, unfortunate, and the conservatism to which he had become a convert was badly served by his cumbersome and awkward presentation. Macaulay began his review with a criticism of the irrational and sentimental character of Southey's political opinions. He contrasted the poet's weak arguments and purely emotional responses, his dealing with politics as if it were 'one of the fine arts', with Burke's passionate, but theoretically robust conservatism.120 He also exposed Southey's hostility towards the manufacturing system - which he presented as a form of modern slavery- arguing that any nostalgia for England's rural past must be based on simple ignorance of the poverty and squalor in which the English peasantry had lived in the past centuries: Mr Southey has found out a way, he tells us, in which the effects of manufactures and agriculture may be compared. And what is this way? To stand on a hill, to look at a cottage and a factory, and to see which is prettier. Does Mr Southey think that the body of the English peasantry live, or ever lived, in substantial or ornamented cottages, with box-hedges,flower-gardens,beehives and orchards? If not, what is the parallel worth?121 Whatever the evils of the industrial system might be, Macaulay insisted, the general conditions of the lower orders in Britain had steadily improved, and they were now superior to those of the working classes in any other country in Europe. The recurrent alarms aroused in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries by the growth of the national debt and state expenditure had also proved unjustified. If some prophet, the reviewer suggested, had been bold enough to describe to the Parliament which faced the financial crisis of 1720 the levels of wealth and prosperity achieved by the country in 1830, his prediction would have sounded as fanciful as a tale out of Gulliver's Travels. Similarly: If we were to prophesy that in the year 1930 a population of fifty millions, better fed, clad and lodged than the English of our time, will cover these islands, that Sussex and Huntingdonshire will be wealthier than the wealthiest parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire now are, that cultivation, rich as that of aflowergarden, will be carried up to the very tops of Ben Nevis and Helvellyn, that machines, constructed on principles yet undiscovered, will be in every house, that there

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will be no highways but railroads, no travelling but by steam, that our debt, vast as it seems to us, will appear to our great-grand-children a trifling encumbrance, which might be easily paid off in a year or two, many people would think us insane . . . On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?122

Macaulay's fascination with machinery and the symbols of technological progress was at least as strong as Carlyle's.123 Obviously the idea that commercial society was also, and indeed essentially, industrial, was far from being new to the Scottish political economists and to Stewart's pupils in particular. But in Macaulay's writings the identification of commercial society with modern industry, the belief that the superiority of Great Britain lay as much in her factories as in her constitution, found a popular and effective rhetorical expression. In the framework of his defence of the manufacturing system, Macaulay discussed Southey's confused perorations against paper money, showing that the Poet Laureate's opinions about political economy were too confused and too ill-informed to be worth serious consideration.124 Finally, he rejected Southey's ideal of an interventionist and 'paternal' state, committed to the religious education of the people and the relief of poverty: It is not by the intermeddling of Mr Southey's idol, the omniscient and omnipotent State, but by the prudence and energy of the people, that England has hitherto been carried forward in civilisation; and it is to the same prudence and the same energy that we now look with comfort and good hope. Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest.125

Macaulay's article denounced Southey's Christian and romantic conservatism as theoretically and politically indefensible. Some of the ideals he presented in the Colloquies - for example the emphasis on Christian charity and on the paternal role of the landed classes- were in themselves, the reviewer suggested, perfectly respectable. But they could not be effectively advanced unless they were embodied within a scientific approach to politics. Above all, they could not be successfully promoted in the ignorance of those laws of human progress and prosperity which political economy alone was capable of teaching. It is therefore plainly difficult to offer a neat assessment of the


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reviewers' attitudes towards progress or the improvement of the lower orders. It is difficult in the first place because the opinions and sensibilities of individual reviewers were often somewhat at odds with one another; and, secondly, because the simple contrast between 'optimism' and 'pessimism' is too crude to offer a clear definition of the position of any thinker. What can, however, be concluded with confidence, is that the Review was neither the vehicle of an uncritical apology for commercial society, nor the expression of Malthusian pessimism and the 'dismal science' of political economy. The two images are equally misleading. If the Review's conception of the progress of society is to be assessed at all, it must be identified as a prudent and sceptical optimism, while the attitude which it adopted towards the lower orders was inspired, if not by the aristocratic arrogance of the Whigs themselves, at least by a no less aristocratic variety of intellectual elitism.126 In sum, the debate on the First Reform Bill offers an important perspective on what political economy had come to represent by the time the Whigs assumed government office. It also illuminates the role that political economy now played in the shaping of political argument. Certainly, the particular circumstances which surrounded the Reform Bill campaign helped to confer on the Scottish theory of commercial society and the middling ranks a more precise and focused historical significance. But a survey of the confrontation between the reviewers, along with their political allies, and their opponents in the struggle for reform indicates that the prescriptive content of the theory of commercial society as such was distinctly limited. What the theory offered was only general indications of a process of democratisation and modernisation in British and European society following the French revolution, and of the identity of the principal historical agents in this transformation. It clearly implied also a measure of commitment, although not a wholly uncritical and unconditioned measure, to the values of progress and modernity themselves. But these general beliefs and sentiments were unable, in and of themselves, to give shape to a programme for the administration and reform of British society, unless combined with, and sustained by, other and independent political attitudes and ideals and the rules of professional politics. The issue of the 'neutrality' or otherwise of political economy, which became a major theoretical obsession for the mid- and late-19thcentury practitioners of the science itself, caused little anxiety to the

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reviewers, since they were only too well aware of the disjunction between the framework of their historical and economic analysis, their own personal political ideals, and the conditions of political practicability. If political economy had no precise prescriptive content, and if it could in fact be associated with sharply contrasting policies, it nevertheless represented a major theoretical divide. The relevant distinction was not that between opponents of the existing political order and its supporters, between promoters of the improvement of the working classes and their oppressors, between advocates of the reform or conservation of the existing political institutions. In principle political economists (in the sense in which the reviewers were political economists) were neither reformers nor apologists of industrial capitalism, although of course it can be maintained that on occasion they did in fact perform one or other of these roles. For the reviewers the crucial distinction remained that between a scientific and an unscientific- a sentimental, Utopian, authoritarian, or amateurish - approach to politics. It little mattered to the shape of their argument if their aspirations towards a rigorous and comprehensive science of politics remained largely unfulfilled. For them, to accept or to reject the validity of political economy meant to accept or to reject the heritage of an experimental science of man and society, and the guidance of the laws and principles which it offered. It was not surprising that it was essentially on this claim to a scientific status that the confrontation between the political economists and their opponents continued to be focused in the political debate of the 1830s and 1840s.

Conclusion

What, then, had become of'philosophic Whiggism' by 1832? To what extent did an intellectual tradition which had, after all, been profoundly provincial and idiosyncratic in its origins, achieve an enduring impact on the culture of 19th-century Britain? There are two different angles from which this question may be approached. The first is the success of the efforts of the reviewers as a group and the influence which the Review itself attained as an ideological and political medium. The second is the importance of the views which they developed in their protracted assessment of the politics of commercial society. If we attempt to draw up a balance sheet of the reviewers' personal achievements, we are confronted with a somewhat puzzling combination of failure and success. On the one hand it is reasonable to claim that the founders of the Review fell short of their early intellectual ambitions in that they never produced, in any of the fields to which they applied their talents, a comprehensive and durable contribution comparable with those of their 18th-century Scottish mentors. The case of political economy is of course the most apparent since it was precisely in this field that the reviewers came closest to possessing a genuinely exclusive expertise. As we have seen in our survey of early19th-century interpretations of the Wealth of Nations, not only did the reviewers fail to produce a new theoretical synthesis to correct and develop the results of Smith's work, but the Review itself came to be increasingly open to the circulation and promotion of economic doctrines and approaches which were related only very loosely (if at all) to the Smithian tradition. When the Review first appeared in 1802, the pupils of Dugald Stewart held what, at least in Britain, was virtually a monopoly over the most important components of 18th-century economic knowledge. But by the 1830s, when John Stuart Mill wrote his Unsettled Questions of Political Economyp, it is necessary to look hard to 181

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detect, between the lines of the 'Essay on the Definition of Political Economy' the influence of Stewart's methodology. The reviewers' inevitable alienation from Edinburgh and from Scottish intellectual life diverted them from the pursuit of those essentially academic disciplines - such as moral philosophy and the philosophy of mind - which traditionally benefited from the habits of university life and could hardly be cultivated with much success (as James Mackintosh's career showed so strikingly) in the brief intervals snatched from political and worldly activities. Faithful to their desire to break away from provincial life (and perhaps in some measure victims of this same desire) the reviewers maintained only tenuous and external links with those aspects of the intellectual tradition of the North which continued to develop fruitfully within the Scottish universities and dominated the political and religious concern of Scottish society throughout the 19 th century. In the case of the reviewers' parliamentary careers, while some of them gained a measure of personal reputation and influence, they never, as a group, came anywhere near to representing an established political force inside or outside the Whig party, and never acquired any real power within the party's leadership. If we consider the reviewers' contribution to the making of political decisions in the first three decades of the century, it is not possible to identify any great ideological and theoretical coherence in the strategy of the Whig party, and there is little evidence that the intellectual attitudes and expertise of the reviewers did succeed in promoting a clear and well-designed set of policies. What the record of Francis Homer's and Henry Brougham's somewhat ineffective parliamentary undertakings shows is that the economic and social policy of the Whigs during the first few decades of the century has only a loose and transitory affinity with any hypothetical ideology of economic and political liberalism.1 On balance, the impact of the reviewers upon the political language of their time was more one of superficial brilliance and eclat than one of genuine and durable substance. Alongside these elements of comparative failure, it is also easy to identify a number of respects in which the reviewers achieved unmistakable success. Certainly in their journalism the reviewers discharged in the fullest measure the educational commitments and responsibilities as public moralists which had been such a central feature of 17 th- and 18th-century Scottish civic culture. If none of the individual members of the Edinburgh grouping ever contrived to complete

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intellectual work of any great scale and distinction, the Review itself proved extraordinarily successful in transmitting to the British political class and to the educated public at large the central ideals of 'philosophic Whiggism': the identification of modern European civilisation with the progress of commercial society, the belief in the necessity for economic expansion, the non-partisan commitment to civil liberty, and the aspiration towards a professional and scientific style of politics. It is clear that the reviewers' success required a very special set of historical circumstances. The combination of academic learning and administrative and political practice in the experience of a single generation of successful intellectuals has been a relatively rare event in the history of Britain, which only the marked social and political mobility generated by the French revolution could have brought about. It is scarcely surprising that, in the course of this successful venture, which was rendered possible only by an unprecedented expansion of the reading public, the original Scottish identity of the group should have been to a certain extent lost, or that, on the map of 19th-century British culture, 'philosophic Whiggism' should no longer figure (or figure only marginally) as a well-defined intellectual school or political ideology. Crucial to this comparative loss of identity was of course the very character of periodical writing itself, with its implicit betrayal of the elitist bias of Scottish civic culture. The reviewers, as we have seen, were well aware of the ambiguous implications of winning the favour of public opinion, and they clearly identified popularisation of culture as both a necessary instrument for general progress and improvement, and an occasion for the irresistible corruption and decadence of taste and intellectual habits. Moreover, the tradition of thinking within which they had received their own education - while it of course stemmed from a fairly restricted geographical and social environmenthad always proved itself open and cosmopolitan, and indeed eager to overcome the handicaps of a backward economy and a provincial culture. This openness became still more pronounced when, at the turn of the century, the reviewers faced the need to win intellectual and political distinction for themselves on the London scene. As an intellectual tradition 'philosophic Whiggism' had been open not merely in the sense that it cultivated cosmopolitan rather than provincial tastes and ambitions, but also in the sense that, by definition, the attempt to generate a scientific understanding of society precluded the maintenance of a self-reproducing, defensive and 'orthodox' style

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of thought. The science of society, as Hume and Smith had outlined this, was on the contrary by definition subject to strong centrifugal forces, potential sources of unpredictable developments and of innumerable and indeterminate ramifications. (If Macaulay, as John Burrow has recently reminded us, believed that Whiggism should be seen as the product of historical tradition, while Walter Bagehot saw it more as a natural disposition in human character, neither of them for a moment supposed that it could be defined by its dogmatic content.) 2 It was because of this exposure to fresh influences and novel experiences that the relation of the Edinburgh reviewers to the political culture of 19th-century Britain appears, at first sight, so profoundly ambivalent. It was because of this exposure that they were able to exert a central influence on the mentality of their contemporaries, while at the same time being gradually displaced from their privileged position of public mentors and educators by a miscellany of other, theoretically more sophisticated, if often more dogmatic, thinkers. Despite this comparative effacement of the tradition of'philosophic Whiggism', a number of major representative products of early- and mid-Victorian culture- Macaulay's influential historical synthesis, Bagehot's political journalism, and even (notwithstanding its lack of spiritual sympathy with the idiom of the reviewers) John Stuart Mill's system of social science- all owe much to the contribution of the Edinburgh Review, not, to be sure, as its immediate heirs, but through a close, if in some respects problematic, affinity. What, in conclusion, did the reviewers have to teach their contemporaries, and what (if anything at all) can they still tell us? A number of possible answers to this question have already emerged from the discussion of the intellectual sources of the Review. When Jeffrey and his friends published their successful first number in October 1802, they were already in a position to rely upon some strong intellectual assets, above all a powerful theory of commercial civilisation and a novel approach to the investigation of its laws and mechanisms. Yet this was only the starting point. What the reviewers added to it over the decades was primarily a sweeping, uncompromising commitment to politics: not only to politics as a science, but to politics as a practice and as a style of public discourse. They did not simply help to produce neat theories and enlightened schemes for reform; they also made a crucial attempt to understand how these ideas and expedients could actually be made to work in a world torn by violent and confused conflicts between executive power, political parties and class interests. The Review did in fact bring into focus and give shape to (if in a some-

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what disjointed and confused manner) a problem which confronted all progressive liberal politicians and political thinkers after the turmoil of the French revolution. The problem was that no project to modernise and democratise society could hope to succeed without the aid of genuine political skill and an effective mastery of the instruments for intervening in politics. In other words, to be of the least political relevance, any interpretation of the development of socio-economic forces had to be supplemented by a consciousness of the accidents and failures of human agency and by a precise understanding of the legislative and administrative machinery of the state. Unlike their French counterparts, British liberals were not confronted directly with the need to design a new constitutional framework for commercial society, but they too faced the task of transforming existing institutions to facilitate economic and political democratisation. If the intellectual heritage of the Scottish Enlightenment centered on a theory of the priority of civil society, the aftermath of the French revolution had made all too evident the ineliminable frictions and conflicts of the relation between civil society and the state, between the development of commercial civilisation and the preservation of political authority. A generation of intellectuals who had been taught to believe in the ideals of individual independence under a free commercial government and laissez-faire was forced to learn over the years how much political skill and statesmanship was necessary in practice to create, protect and foster such liberties. There is perhaps some irony in the fact that the reviewers, who had been educated in the cult of theoretical lucidity and the spirit of system, should have spent their lives in the attempt to cast light upon the ineliminable opacity of daily political reality. The cheerfulness with which they set themselves to this task, and the confidence which they showed that solutions were in fact available, may seem in retrospect a little misplaced. Their optimism and enthusiasm had come mainly from the feeling that their actions and writings could hope to have some real impact upon the political opinion and choices of their contemporaries; a feeling which would be readily available today only to the most complacent and naive of intellectuals. Yet it is also clear that, when they began, the expectation that anyone would be willing to listen to them, in a society rent by intense conflicts, and in the face of an as yet amorphous and unenthusiastic readership, must have been just as remote and Utopian. It is for us to decide whether their efforts should be a ground for hope or for discouragement.

Notes

Preface 1 Ed. by W. Houghton, 3 vols. (Toronto, 1966). 2 See W. A. Copinger, On the Authorship of the First Hundred Numbers of the 'Edinburgh Review' (Manchester, 1895); Leroy H. Buckingham, 'The Authorship of the First Twenty-Five Numbers of the Edinburgh Review, 1802-1808', Yale Doctoral Dissertation, 1938; Irwin Griggs, John D. Kern and Elisabeth Schneider, 'Brougham's Early Contributions to the Edinburgh Review: a New List', Modern Philology, 42 (1945), 152-73; 'Early Edinburgh Reviewers: a New List', Modern Philology, 43 (1946), 192210. Introduction 1 The development and influence of Scottish 'conceptual history' in the 19 th century is outlined inj. W. Burrow, Evolution and Society: a Study in Victorian Social Theory (Cambridge, 1966). 2 Two influential examples are Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (Oxford, 1954); Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect (2nd ed., Homewood, 111., 1968). 3 Derek Roper, Reviewing before the 'Edinburgh' - 1788-1802 (London, 1978). 4 John Clive, Scotch Reviewers- the 'Edinburgh Review' 1802-1815 (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1957). 5 Donald Winch, 'The System of the North: Dugald Stewart and his Pupils', in S. Collini, D. Winch and J. Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 23-61. 6 Walter Bagehot, 'The First Edinburgh Reviewers', in Norman St JohnStevas, ed., The Collected Works of Walter Bagehot, 11 vols. (London, 1965), vol. 1, pp. 308-41. 7 Henry Thomas Cockburn, Lord Cockburn, Life ofLord Jeffrey 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1852); Walter Bagehot, LordJeffrey, in The Collected Works of Walter Bagehot, vol. 1, pp. 342-8; J. A. Greig, FrancisJeffrey ofthe 'Edinburgh Review' (Edinburgh, 1948); Philip Flynn, Francis Jeffrey (Newark, 1978). 8 Francis Homer, Memoirs and Correspondence, ed. L. Horner, 2 vols. (London, 1843); Frank Whitson Fetter, 'Introduction' to The Economic Writings of Francis Horner in the Edinburgh Review 1802-6, ed. F. W. Fetter (London, 186

Notes to pages vii-4

9

10

11

12 13 14 15 16

17 18

19

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1957), pp. 1-22; D. Ricardo, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. P. Sraffa, 11 vols. (Cambridge, 1962-6), vol. 6, pp. xxxiv-xxxv. The Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham Written by Himself, 3 vols. (New York, 1871); R. H. M. Buddie Atkinson and G. A.Jackson, eds., Brougham and his Early Friends-Letters toJames Loch 1798-1809, 3 vols. (privately printed and London, 1908); Walter Bagehot, 'Lord Brougham', in The Collected Works of Walter Bagehot, vol. 3, pp. 156-98. History of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1845); William K. Dickson, The History of'the Speculative Society 1764-1904 (Edinburgh, 1905); 'Correspondence Book of the Academy of Physics' (Edinburgh, May 1798), National Library of Scotland, MS 756. Nowell C. Smith, ed., The Letters of Sydney Smith, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1953); Hesketh Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (London, 1934); Alan Bell, Sydney Smith, a Biography (Oxford, 1980); A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith, by his daughter Saba, Lady Holland (London, 1855); Stuart J. Reid, The Life and Times of Sydney Smith (London, 1896). See Nicholas T. Phillipson,'Culture and Society in the 18 th Century Province', in L. Stone, ed., The University in Society, 2 vols (Princeton, 1975), vol. 2, 4 0 7 ^ 8 , pp. 444-5. Jeffrey to Homer, 11 May 1803, Lord Cockburn, Life of Lord Jeffrey, vol. 2, p. 72. On Napier see Macvey Napier, ed., Selectionfrom the Correspondence ofthe Late Macvey Napier (London, 1879). John Clive, Scotch Reviewers, pp. 133-5; see also Thomas Constable, ed., Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1873), vol. 1. Samuel Smiles, A Publisher and his Friends: Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray(London, 1911), chapters 5 and 6, pp. 35-68; J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, 7 vols. (Edinburgh, 1837), vol. 2, chapter 6, pp. 195-238. Alexander Bain, James Mill- a Biography (London, 1882), pp. 260-2; G. L. Nesbitt, Benthamite Reviewing: the First Twelve Years ofthe 'Westminster Review' (New York, 1934). For an illuminating characterisation of this tradition, see Duncan Forbes, 'Scientific Whiggism, Adam Smith and John Millar', Cambridge Journal, 7 (Aug. 1954), 643-70; 'Sceptical Whiggism, Commerce and Liberty', in A. S. Skinner, T. Wilson, eds., Essays on Adam Smith (Oxford, 1975), pp. 179201. Sir William Hamilton, ed., The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, 10 vols. (Edinburgh, 1854^60); see also N. T. Phillipson, 'The Pursuit of Virtue and University Education: Dugald Stewart and Scottish Moral Philosophy in the Age of the Enlightenment', A Conference to Celebrate the 400th Anniversary of the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, May 1983); J. C. Stewart-Robertson, 'Education in the Scottish Enlightenment', Journal of the History of Ideas, 42 (July-Sept. 1981), 503-25; W. W. Currie, ed., James Currie - Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Correspondence, 2 vols. (London, 1831).

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Notes to pages 4-7

20 D. Stewart, Works, vols. 8 and 9. 21 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1976). 22 On Millar see John Craig, 'An Account of the Life and Writings of John Millar', prefixed to the 4th ed. ofj. Millar, The Origin and Distinction ofRanks (London, 1806); William C. Lehmann, 'Introduction' to John Millar of Glasgow (Cambridge, I960); see also T. Mackie, The University of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1954). 23 Lord Cockburn, Life of Lord Jeffrey, vol. 1, p. 66. 24 D. Stewart, Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas ReidD. D., in Works, vol. 10, 243-324. 25 F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 108-9. 26 R J. Mackintosh, ed., Memoirs ofthe Life ofthe Rt Hon. SirJames Mackintosh, 2 vols. (London, 1835); see also Jane L. Rendall, 'The Political Ideas and Activities of Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832): a Study in Whiggism between 1789 and 1832', Ph.D. Dissertation, University College, London, 1971; Esther Lynn Barazzone, 'Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832): the Political Philosopher', Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1981. 27 Lord Cockburn, Life of Lord Jeffrey, vol. 1, pp. 11-12. 28 L. C. Sanders, The Holland House Circle (London, 1908); Leslie Mitchell, Holland House (London, 1980); The Earl of Ilchester, ed., The Journal of Elisabeth Lady Holland (1791-1811), 2 vols. (London, 1909). 29 G. O. Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (Oxford, 1978); J. Hamburger, Macaulay and the Whig Tradition (Chicago, 1976); John Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay: the Shaping of the Historian (London, 1973). 30 D. P. O'Brien,/^/? Ramsay McCulloch (London, 1970). 31 F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 25; J. Mackintosh, Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 187. 32 'The Rev. Doctor Folliott — . . . There is a set of persons in your city, Mr MacQuedy, who concoct every three or four months a thing which they call a review: a sort of sugar-plum manufacturers to the Whig aristocracy. Mr MacQuedy- Not in our city exactly; neither are they a set. There is an editor, who forages for articles in all quarters, from John O'Groat's house to the Land's End. It is not a board, or a society: it is a mere intellectual bazaar, where A, B and C bring their wares to market.' T. L. Peacock, Crotchet Castle, in T. L. Peacock, Nightmare Abbey - Crotchet Castle, ed. Raymond Wright (Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 158. 33 On the Scottish theories of commercial society, see D. Forbes, Hume's Philosophical Politics {Cambridge, 1975); 'Sceptical Whiggism, Commerce and Liberty', in A. Skinner and T. Wilson, eds., Essays on Adam Smith (Oxford, 1975), pp. 179-201; Nicholas T. Phillipson, 'Culture and Society in the 18th Century Province', in L. Stone, ed., The University in Society, 2 vols., vol. 2: Europe, Scotland and the United Statesfrom the 16th to the 20th Century (Princeton, 1975), pp. 4 0 7 ^ 8 ; 'The Scottish Enlightenment', in R Porter and M. Teich, eds., The Enlightenment in National Context (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 1 9 ^ 0 ; 'Adam Smith as a Civic Moralist', in I. Hont and M. Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and Virtue: Political Economy in the Scottish

Notes to pages 7-11

34

35 36 37 38

39

40

189

Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 179-202; J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975); 'The Mobility of Property and the Growth of Eighteenth Century Sociology', in A. Parel and T. Flanagan, eds., Theories ofProperty: Aristotle to the Present(Waterloo, Ontario, 1979); I. Hont andM. Ignatieff, 'Introduction' to Wealth and Virtue: Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment', A. S. Skinner, A System of Social Science- Papers Relating to Adam Smith (Oxford, 1979). D. Stewart, Account ofthe Life and Writings ofAdam Smith LL. D., in Works, vol. 10, 3-98, p. 34. For the origins of the term Conjectural history', see Judith N. Shklar, 'D'Alembert and the Rehabilitation of History', Journal of the History of Ideas, 42 (Oct.-Dec. 1981), 643-64. D. Ricardo, Works, vol. 3, p. 10. Salvatore Veca, Marx e la critica dell'economia politica (Milano, 1973); B. Fontana, 'Materialismo storico e prasseologia', Quaderni della Fondazione Feltinelli, 3 (1978), 49-59. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1963). Crane Brinton, The Political Ideas of the English Romanticists (Oxford, 1926); Alfred Cobban, Edmund Burke and the Revolt against the Eighteenth Century (London, 1929, repr. I960); J. O. Hayden, ed., Romantic Bards and British Reviewers, a Selected Edition of the Contemporary Reviews of the Works of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats and Shelley (London, 1971). On political economy and its critique see also Ursula Vogel, 'The Dismal Science: The Romantic Critique of Political Economy'; Gregory Claeys, 'Owenism in the Mirror of Political Economy: Progressive Primitivism and the Transformation of "Moral Economy" in Early British Socialism, 1815—50'; B. Fontana, 'Democracy and Civilisation: John Stuart Mill and the Critique of Political Economy'; papers presented t a the Political Theory Workshop: 'The Identity of Political Economy- Between Utopia and the Critique of Civilisation', Cambridge, July 1984. See, for example, Boyd Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce (Oxford, 1977); William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817-1841 (Oxford, 1979). 1 Scottish theories of commercial society and the French revolution

1 On Scotland during the French revolution see Henry, Lord Cockburn, Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1872); H. W. Meikle, Scotland and the French Revolution (Glasgow, 1912); N. T. Phillipson, 'The Scottish Whigs and the Reform of the Court of Session', Ph.D. Diss., University of Cambridge, 1967. See also F. O'Gorman, The Whig Party and the French Revolution (London, 1967); P. A. Brown, The French Revolution in English History (London, 1918); A. Cobban, The Debate on the French Revolution, 17891800 (London, 1950). 2 John Veitch, Memoirs of Dugald Stewart, in Dugald Stewart, The Collected Works, ed. W. Hamilton, 10 vols. (Edinburgh, 1854-60), vol. 10, vii-cxv, p. lxxiv.

190

Notes to pages 11-15

3 Lord Cockburn, Life of Lord Jeffrey, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1852), vol. 2, p. 51; R. H. M. Buddie Atkinson and G. A. Jackson, eds., Brougham and his Early Friends - Letters to James Loch 1798-1809, 3 vols. (privately printed and London, 1908), vol. 1, p. 344. 4 James Mackintosh, Vindiciae Gallicae, in Miscellaneous Works, 3 vols. (London, 1846), vol. 3,1-166, p. 55. E. Burke, Reflectionson the Revolution in France, ed. C. Cruise O'Brien (Harmondsworth, 1968). 5 Ibid., p. 6. 6 James Mackintosh, Defence of Jean Peltier, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3, p. 261. See also F. Jeffrey, 'State and Prospects of Europe', Edinburgh Review, 23 (April 1814), 1-40, p. 28. 7 F.Jeffrey, "Vo^sHistory of James IF, Edinburgh Review, 12(July 1808), 271306, p. 278. 8 H. Brougham, 'M. Carnot's Memorial*, Edinburgh Review, 24 (Nov. 1814), 182-207, p. 186. 9 For the Country Party tradition see D. Rubini, Court and Country 16881702 (London, 1967); P. Zagorin, The Court and the Country; the Beginning of the English Revolution (London, 1969); C. Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman (New York, 1968); I. Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle: the Politics ofNostalgia in the Age ofWalpole (Cambridge, Mass., 1968);J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975). 10 J. W. Burrow, A Liberal Descent Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 36-60. 11 Thomas Babington Macaulay, Napoleon and the Restoration ofthe Bourbons, ed. J. Hamburger (London, 1977), p. 43. 12 William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817-1841, pp. 47-57. 13 1. Hont and M. Ignatieff, 'Introduction' to Wealth and Virtue. 14 Dugald Stewart, Works, vol. 8, p. 23. 15 Duncan Forbes, Hume's Philosophical Politics, pp. 172ff; Lawrence L. Bongie, David Hume: Prophet of Counter-Revolution (Oxford, 1965). 16 John Millar, The Origin of the Distinction ofRanks (3rd ed., London, 1779), as reprinted in W. C. Lehm&nn, John Millar of Glasgow (Cambridge, I960), pp. 166-322. 17 For Stewart's and Millar's reactions to the French revolution see below, pp. 42-5. 18 F. Jeffrey, 'Mounier,De I'influencedes Philosophes', Edinburgh Review, 1 (Oct. 1802), 1-18. 19 Jean Antoine Caritat de Condorcet, Vie de M. Turgot, 2 vols. (London, 1787). 20 F. Horner, Memoirs and Correspondence, ed. L. Horner, 2 vols. (London, 1843), vol. 1, pp. 100-1; for details on this editorial project see below, pp. 47-8. 21 Hedva Ben-Israel, English Historians on the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 33-50. 22 On the Whig party and the French revolution, see L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox and the Disintegration of the Whig Party, 1782-1794 (Oxford, 1971);


191

James J. Sack, The Grenvillites 1801-29 (Urbana, 111., 1979); Michael Roberts, The Whig Party, 1807-1812 (London, 1965); F. O'Gorman, The Whig Party and the French Revolution (London, 1967); Archibald S. Ford, His Majesty's Opposition (Oxford, 1964), pp. 369^466. See also H. R. V. Fox (3rd Baron Holland), Memoirs of the Whig Party (London, 1852). 23 'Don Pedro Cevallos on the French Usurpation of Spain', Edinburgh Review, 13 (Oct. 1808), 215-34. 24 'You have no idea of the consternation which Brougham's attack upon the titled orders has produced: the Review not only discontinued by many, but returned to the bookseller from the very first volume: the library shelves fumigated, etc.!' Sydney Smith to Lady Holland, 10 Jan. 1809- A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith by his Daughter Lady Holland, ed. Mrs.

Austin (London, 1869), p. 315. See also J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs ofthe Life of Sir Walter Scott, 7 vols. (London, 1837), vol. 2, pp. 195-238. 25 J. Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 1, pp. 339-87. 26 I find extremely convincing the argument that it did not change very substantially. See William Christian, 'James Mackintosh, Burke and the Cause of Reform', Eighteenth Century Studies, 7 (1973^), 193-206; Lionel A. McKenzie, 'The French Revolution and English Parliamentary Reform: James Mackintosh and the Vindiciae Gallicae', Eighteenth Century Studies, 14 (1981), 265-85; Esther Lynn Barazzone, 'Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832): the Political Philosopher', Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1981. See alsoj. Mackintosh, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 133, where Mackintosh dissociated his mature political views from his juvenile 'recantation' of Vindiciae Gallicae. 27 F. Jeffrey, 'Memoires de Bailly', Edinburgh Review, 6 (April 1805), 13761. 28 D. Stewart, Works, vol. 10, pp. cxxiv-cxxxvi. 29 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes ofthe Wealth ofNations, vol. 1, pp. 13-36, 376-427,473-98. See also Istvan Hont, 'The "rich countrypoor country" debate in Scottish classical political economy", in I. Hont andM. Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and Virtue, pp. 271-315; A. S. Skinner, 'Adam Smith on American Economics', Journal of the History of Ideas, 37 (Jan.March 1976), 59-78. 30 Duncan Forbes, ' "Scientific" Whiggism, Adam Smith and John Millar', Cambridge Journal, 7 (Aug. 1954), 643-70. 31 A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, vol. 2, pp. 758-814; J. Millar, An Historical View ofthe English Government, 4 vols. (London, 1812), vol. 4, Essay VI: 'The Effects of Commerce and Manufactures and of Opulence and Civilisation upon the Morals of a People', pp. 174—234. 32 James Mackintosh, Vindiciae Gallicae, in Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3, pp. 1011. 3 3 F.Jeffrey, 'Memoires de Madame de la Larochejaquelin', Edinburgh Review, 26 (Feb. 1816), 1-36. Walter Scott, Life ofNapoleon Bonaparte, 5 vols. (Edinburgh, 1875, 1st ed. 1827), vol. 1, p. 15. 34 For a general outlook see Shirley M. Gruner, 'Political Historiography in Restoration France', History and Theory, 8 (1969), 346-65; S. Mellon, The

192


Political Uses of History. A Study of Historians in the French Restoration (Stanford, California, 1958). See also R. de Montlosier, De la monarchie francaise (Paris, 1814); R. Casanova, Montlosier et lepartipretre (Paris, 1970); Augustin Thierry, Dix ans d'etudes historiques (4th ed., Paris, 1842); Henri Gouhier, La jeunesse d'Auguste Comte et la formation du positivisme, 3 vols. (Paris, 1933), vol. 1, 'Sous le signe de la liberte'; R. Mauduit, Auguste Comte et I'economie politique, (Paris, 1929); Elie Halevy, 'La doctrine economique de SaintSimon', La revue du mois, 4 (1908), 641-76; H. See, 'A propos du mot "Industrie" ', RevueHistorique, 149 (1925), 58-61; Paul Harsin, 'De quand date le mot "industrie"?', Annales d'histoire economique et sociale, 2 (1930), 235-42; Michael James, 'Pierre Louis Roederer, Jean-Bap tiste Say and the Concept of Industrie', History of Political Economy, 9 (1977), 455-75. 35 L. Sanders, The Holland House Circle; Leslie Mitchell, Holland House. The relations between British and French liberal thought in the early-19thcentury are discussed in Larry Siedentop, 'Two Liberal Traditions', in Alan Ryan, ed., The Idea of Freedom. Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin (Oxford, 1979), pp. 153-74; Stephen Holmes, 'Liberal Uses of Bourbon Legitimism', Journal of the History of Ideas ,43 (1982), 229^8. See also the recent Ceryl B. Welch, Liberty and Utility - The French Ideologues and the Transformation of Liberalism (New York, 1984). 36 W. Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), ed. I. Kramnick (Harmondsworth, 1976); The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. P. S. Foner, 2 vols. (New York, 1945); E. Halevy, The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism (London, 1928); A. H. Lincoln, Some Political and Social Ideas of English Dissidents 1763-1800 (Cambridge, 1938); C. B. Cone, The English Jacobins (New York, 1968); R. R. Fennessy, Burke, Paine and the Rights of Man (The Hague, 1963); E. P. Thompson, The Making ofthe English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1963); J. Brewer, 'English Radicalism in the Age of George IIP, in J. G. A. Pocock, ed., Three British Revolutions (Princeton, 1980); Don Locke, A Fantasy ofReason: the Life and Thought of William Godwin (London, 1980). 37 J. A. Passmore, ed., Priestley's Writings on Philosophy, Science and Politics (New York, 1965); J. Priestley•, Memoirs oj Dr Joseph Priestley'- Written by Himself\ 2 vols. (London, 1806-7); Clarke Garrett, 'Priestley and the French Revolution', Journal of the History of Ideas, 34 (Jan.-March 1973), 51-66. 38 See also A. M. Osborn, Rousseau and Burke (Oxford, 1940). 39 F. Jeffrey, 'Mounier, De Vinfluence des Philosophes\ 40 Les memoires pour servir a I'histoire du Jacobinisme, 5 vols. (Hamburg, 1798). See also his Le patriote veridique, ou discours sur les vraies causes de la revolution actuelle (Paris, 1789). 41 J. B. Morrell, 'Professors Robison and Playfair, and the Theophobia Gallica: Natural Philosophy, Religion and Politics in Edinburgh, 17891815', Royal Society Notes and Records, 26 (1970-1), 43-63. For the 'conspiracy' theories of the French revolution seej. M. Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies (London, 1972). 42 John Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy etc. (London, 1797), p. 425. 43 Ibid., p. 366.

Notes to pages 21-7

193

44 J. J. Mounier, De Vinfluence attribuee aux Philosophes, aux Franc-Macons, et aux illumines sur la revolution de France (Tubingen, 1802) - On Mounier see also J. Egret, La revolution des notables: Mounier et les monarchiens (Paris, 1950). 45 F. Jeffrey, 'Mounier's De Vinfluence des Philosophes', pp. 2, 5. 46 Ibid., p. 8. On French conservative views of the revolution see also Jaques Godechot, La contre-revolution: doctrine et action, 1789-1804 (Paris, 1961), English translation: The Counter-Revolution: Doctrine and Action, 1789-1804 (Princeton, 1971). 47 Duncan Forbes, 'The Rationalism of Sir Walter Scott', CambridgeJournal, 1 (1953), 20-35. See also Peter D. Garside, 'Scott and the "Philosophical Historians" ', Journal of the History of Ideas, 36 (1975), 497-512. 48 Augustin Thierry, 'Sur l'histoire d'Ecosse, et sur le caractere national des ecossais', republished in Dix ans d'etudes historiques (4th ed., Paris, 1842), p. 193. 49 J. S. Mill, 'Scott's Life of Napoleon', Westminster Review, 9 (April 1828), 251-313. 50 T. B. Macaulay, 'Hallam's Constitutional History', Edinburgh Review, Al (Sept. 1828), 96-169; reprinted in Critical Essays, 2 vols. (London, 1856), vol. 1, pp. 51-98. 51 English Historians on the French Revolution, pp. 53-62. 52 D. Hume, The History of England, 8 vols. (London, 1792). 5 3 F. Jeffrey, 'Millar's View ofthe English Government', Edinburgh Review, 3 (Oct. 1803), 154-81; 'Craig's Life of Millar', Edinburgh Review, 9 (Oct. 1806), 8 3 92. 5 4 ' Millar's View of the English Government', p. 157. 55 'Craig's Life of Millar', p. 89. 56 Ibid., p. 84. 57 'Stewart's Account of Dr Robertson', Edinburgh Review, 2 (April 1803), 22949. 58 J. Mackintosh, A Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations, Works, vol. 1, p. 365. 59 See footnote 26 above. 60 J. G. A. Pocock, 'The Political Economy of Burke's Analysis of the French Revolution', Historical Journal, 25, 2 (1982), 331-49. See also J. G. A. Pocock, 'Burke and the Ancient Constitution- a Problem in the History of Ideas', HistoricalJournal, 3, 2 (I960), 125-43; Paul Lucas, 'On Edmund Burke's Doctrine of Prescription; or, an Appeal from the New to the Old Lawyers', HistoricalJournal, 11,1 (1968), 35-63; D. Barrington, 'Edmund Burke as an Economist', Economica, 21 (1954) 252-8. 61 L. G. Mitchell, CharlesJames Fox and the Disintegration ofthe Whig Party 17821794, pp. 153-93. 62 J. Mackintosh, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 114-15. 63 F.Jeffrey, 'Memoires de Bailly', Edinburgh Review, 6 (April 1805), 137-61, p. 142. 64 Ibid., pp. 142-3. 65 E. Burke, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1906), vol. 5, pp. 1-136.

194


66 David Hume, * Of Parties in General', in Essays, Moral, Political and Literary', ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, 2 vols. (London, 1874), vol. 1, pp. 12732; 'Of Parties of Great Britain', ibid., pp. 1 3 3 ^ 3 . 61 D. Hume, Essays, vol. 1, pp. 137-8. 68 See also D. Forbes, Hume's Philosophical Politics, pp. 193-223. 69 A. Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), ed. with an introduction by D. Forbes (Edinburgh, 1966); D. Kettler, The Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson (Columbus, Ohio, 1965); 'History and Theory in Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society: a Reconsideration', Political Theory, 5 (Nov. 1977), 437-60. 70 J. Millar, An Historical View of the English Government, vol. 4, pp. 69-101. 71 D. Stewart, Works, vol. 10, p. 54. On 18th-century understanding of political parties see also J. A. W. Gunn, Factions No More: Attitudes to Party in Government and Opposition in Eighteenth Century England {London, 1972); Caroline Robbins, 'Discordant Parties: a Study of the Acceptance of Party by Englishmen', Political Science Quarterly, 73 (1958), 505-29. 72 F. Jeffrey, 'States and Prospects of Europe', Edinburgh Review, 23 (April 1814), 1^0, p. 33. 73 H. Brougham, 'Mr Burke - D r Laurence', Edinburgh Review, 46 (Oct. 1827), 269-303, p. 286. 74 J. Hamburger, 'Introduction' to Thomas Babington Macaulay, Napoleon and the Restoration of the Bourbons. See also T. B. Macaulay, 'Dumont's Recollections of Mirabeau', Edinburgh Review, 55 (July 1832), 552-76; 'Barere's Memoirs'\ Edinburgh Review, 79 (April 1844), 275-351; both articles are reprinted in Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay (London, 1882), pp. 267-84, 285-340. 75 Hedva Ben-Israel, English Historians on the French Revolution, p. 34. 76 D. Stewart, Life of A. Smith, Works, vol. 10, p. 56. 77 W. Scott, Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, vol. 1, pp. 54-5. D. Stewart, Works, vol. 10, p. cxxvii. For the States General and French Parliaments see J. Egret, LouisXV et I'oppositionparlementaire 1715-1774 (Paris, 1970); J. H. Shennan, The Parlement of Paris (London, 1968); W. Doyle, 'The Parlements of France and the Break-down of the Old Regime, 1770-1788', French Historical Studies, 6 (Autumn 1970), 415-58; P. Alatri, Parlamentie lottapolitica nella Francia del 1700 (Bari, 1977). 78 On the French constitutions from the revolution to the Restoration, see L. Duguit and H. Monnier, Les constitutions de la France depuis 1789 (Paris, 1898; repr. Paris, 195 2); J. Godechot, Histoire des institutions de la France sous la revolution et I'empire (Paris, 1951; new ed. 1969). 79 D. Stewart, Works, vol. 10, p. cxxiv. 80 F. Jeffrey, 'Memoires de Bailly', pp. 145-6. 81 J. Thiry,LesenatdeNapoleon 1800-1814 (Paris, 1932), andP. Bastid, Sieyeset sa pensee (Paris, 1970), suggest that the judgment was historically inaccurate. 82 On French finance during the Ancien Regime and the revolution, see J. F. Bosher, French Finances 1770-1795 (Cambridge, 1970); Rene Stourm, Les finances de I'ancien regime et la revolution, 2 vols. (Paris, 1885); Charles Gomel,

Notes to pages 31-3

195

Les causes financieres de la revolution frangoise, 2 vols. (Paris, 1892-3); Robert

D. Harris, Necker (Berkeley, 1979). 83 J. Necker, De la revolution francoise, 4 vols. (Coppet, 1796); Mme de Stael, Considerations sur les principaux evenements de la revolution francoise, in Oeuvres

completes, 17 vols. (Paris, 1820), vol. 12, pp. 64-94; F.Jeffrey, 'Madame de Stael's Sur la revolution francaise, Edinburgh Review, 30 (Sept. 1818), 275-317. See also G. E. Gwynne, Madame de Stael et la revolution francaise (Paris,

1969). 84 J. Necker, Compte rendu au roi, Paris, 1781; D. Stewart, Works, vol. 9, p. 79. 85 'The depreciation of the Assignats still continues, but cannot last long. I saw a gentleman yesterday, who told me that a friend of his had received a letter from one of the most eminent bankers in Paris, in which he recommends it as the best of all possible speculations, for a monied man to purchase Assignats, as he thinks before the end of the year they will be very little under par.' D. Stewart to the Rev. Alison, 27 Nov. 1791, Stewart, Works, vol. 10, p. cxxxiv. 86 J. Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 3, pp. 63-7. 87 Sydney Smith, 'Necker's Last Views', Edinburgh Review, 1 (Jan. 1803), 38295, p. 395. 88 J. Mackintosh, Trance', Edinburgh Review, 24 (Nov. 1814), 505-37, pp. 528-9. 89 E. Faure, La disgrace de Turgot (Paris, 1961). 90 We have of course to suppose that the reviewers confined their criticism to La Fayette and Mirabeau, while applying more indulgent standards to their Whig patrons. In his preface to the Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, Lord John Russell, illustrating the reasons why Lord Holland had abandoned the enterprise of editing the book, wrote: '. . . Lord Holland's life was a busy one, the noble idleness of refined society and classical reading took up a great part of his remaining time, and little was left for transcribing, commenting, narrating'. Lord J. Russell, Memorials and Correspondence of CharlesJames Fox, 2 vols. (London, 1853), vol.

1, p. vii. 91 Francis Jeffrey, 'Letter on the French Government', Edinburgh Review, 16 (April 1810), 1-30, p. 21. 92 T. B. Macaulay, Barere in Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches, p. 309. 9 3 F. Jeffrey, 'Letter on the French Government', Edinburgh Review, 16 (April 1810), 1-30, p. 23. 94 T. B. Macaulay, Napoleon and the Restoration of the Bourbons, p. 57. 95 Benjamin Constant, Oeuvres (Paris, 1957), p. 955. 96 In a letter to John Allen, travelling to France in 1802, Francis Homer formulated a long series of detailed questions on the state of the French economy, hoping that Allen might collect for him the relevant information. (Undated letter, Horner Correspondence, London School of Economics, vol. 1, fol. 74.) 97 T. R Malthus, The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn (London, 1815), footnote p. 12. See also S. Hollander,

196

98

99 100 101 102 103

104 105

106 107 108

109 110 111 112 113 114

115 116 117

118

Notes to pages 'Malthus and the Post-Napoleonic Depression', History of Political Economy,vol. 1 (1969), 306-35. On the growth of the executive during the Napoleonic wars see Henry Roseveare, The Treasury, the Evolution of a British Institution (London, 1969); S. Buxton, Finance and Politics: a Historical Study, 2 vols. (London, 1888), vol. 1. J. Mackintosh, Trance', p. 530. Ibid., p. 506. Ibid., pp. 525-6. Ibid., p. 532. Mackintosh's judgment was interestingly in contrast with most current opinions about conscription. F. Jeffrey, 'State and Prospects of Europe'; H. Brougham, 'M. Carnot's Memorial', pp. 182-207; T. B. Macaulay, Napoleon and the Restoration of the Bourbons, pp. 96-7. F Horner, Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 254-7. H. Brougham, 'Carnot's Memorial', pp. 191-2; T. B. Macaulay, Napoleon, p. 82. The reviewers attacked Louis XVIII in particular on the issue of article 8 of the Charter on the freedom of the press. T. B. Macaulay, Napoleon, p. 69. T. B. Macaulay, 'The Present Administration', Edinburgh Review, 46 (June 1827), 245-67, p. 266. 'French Law of Libel', Edinburgh Review, 32 (July 1819), 192-208. The attribution of the article to Brougham is tentative, (Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, vol. 1, p. 459); it seems to me unmistakably in his style. On Louis Simond see The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, vol. 10, pp. 270-3, 281-2. 'France', Edinburgh Review, 34 (Aug. 1820), 1-39, p. 11. Ibid., p. 12. J. A. Chaptal, De I'industrie francoise, 2 vols. (Paris, 1819). 'French Commercial System', Edinburgh Review, 50 (Oct. 1829), 48-75, p. 49. A. Aspinall, Lord Brougham and the Whig Party (Manchester, 1927), p. 178. On the impact of the French revolution of 1830 on the General Election see N. Gash, 'English Reform and French Revolution in the General Election of 1830', in R. Pares andj. P. Taylor, eds., Essays Presented to Sir Lewis Namier (London, 1956). H. Brougham, 'The Late Revolution in France', Edinburgh Review, 5 2 (Oct. 1830), 1-25, p. 1. Ibid., p. 24. P. P. Viard, 'Les aspects juridiques de la revolution de 1830', Revue d'histoire moderne, 6 (1931), 89-100; Paul Bastid, Les institutionspolitiques de la monarchie parlementaire francaise, 1814-1848 (Paris, 1954); David H. Pinkney, The French Revolution of1830 (Princeton, 1972). See also G. Bonno, La constitution britannique devant I'opinion francaise de Montesquieu a Bonaparte (Paris, 1932). J. Mackintosh, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 72; and also his Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, Works, vol. 1, pp. 133-46. On the Scottish conception of

Notes to pages 42-7

119 120 121

122 123

124

125 126

127 128

197

a 'science of politics' see also Donald Winch, Adam Smith's Politics, an Essay in Historiographic Revision (Cambridge, 1978); A. S. Skinner, A System of Social Science - Papers Relating to Adam Smith (Oxford, 1979). See his correspondence with Horner (in F. Homer, Memoirs, passim) and with Mackintosh (in J. Mackintosh, Memoirs, passim). D. Stewart, Works, vol. 10, pp. 54-5. John Craig, An Account of the Life and Writings of John Millar, prefixed to the 4th ed. of J. Millar, The Origin and Distinction of Ranks (London, 1806), pp. ciii-cxiv. F.Jeffrey and H. Brougham, 'Parliamentary Reform', Edinburgh Review, 17 (Feb. 1811), 253-90, p. 288. 'Will the people act against their own interest? Or will the middle rank act against its own interest? Or is the interest of the middle rank identical with the interest of the people? If the people act according to the directions of the middle rank, as Mr Mill says they assuredly will, one of these three questions must be answered in the affirmative. But, if any of the three be answered in the affirmative, his whole system falls to the ground. If the interest of the middle rank be identical with that of the people, why should not the powers of government be entrusted to that rank?' T. B. Macaulay, Mill's Essay on Government, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 179. [J. Millar?], Letters of Crito: on the Causes, Objects and Consequences of the Present War (15 letters serially published in Scots Chronicle, Edinburgh, May to Sept. 1796). The attribution to Millar has been recently disputed; the author was possibly someone in his entourage; see Knud Haakonssen, 'Natural Justice: the Development of a Critical Philosophy of Law from David Hume and Adam Smith to John Millar and John Craig', Ph.D. Dissertation, Edinburgh, 1978. D. Stewart, Works, vol. 9, pp. 442-3. F. Jeffrey, 'Cobbett's Political Register', Edinburgh Review, 10 (July 1807), 386-421, pp. 411-13; 'Parliamentary Reform', 14 (July 1809), 277-306, p. 287. See also J. A. Gunn, 'Influence, Parties and the Constitution', Historical Journal, 17 (1974), 301-28. F.Jeffrey, 'The State of Parties', Edinburgh Review, 15 (Jan. 1810), 504-21, p. 504. Ibid. 2 Adam Smith's heritage: the Edinburgh reviewers and the Wealth of Nations

1 2 3 4 5 6

See in particular D. Stewart, Works, vol. 8, pp. 269-308. D. Stewart, Works, vol. 8, pp. 44-5. F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 100-1. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 75. J. A. Caritat de Condorcet, Vie de M. Turgot, vol. 1, p. 54. For Morellet's translation of Smith, see Memoires de I'Abbe Morellet (Paris, 1823), p. 243; Lettres del'Abbe Morellet a LordShelburne (Paris, 1898), p. 105; see also David Murray, French Translations of the "Wealth of Nations' (Glasgow, 1905).

198


7 F. Homer, 'Playfair's Edition of The Wealth of Nations', Edinburgh Review, 7 (Jan. 1806), 470-1. 8 Horner to T. Thompson (15 Aug. 1803); F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 229. 9 Horner died in 1817, at the age of 39. 10 For an appraisal of Horner's contribution to political economy see Frank Whitson Fetter, 'Introduction' to The Economic Writings of Francis Horner in the Edinburgh Review 1802-6, ed. F. W. Fetter (London, 1957). pp. 1-22; P. Sraffa, ed., The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, vol. 6, pp. xxxivXXXV.

11 Two other essays listed in the Minutes of the Speculative Society - 'Political Effects of the General Diffusion of Knowledge' and 'Remarks on the Opposition Party in Parliament' - were destroyed by the author; see History of the Speculative Society, pp. 212-16; Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 69. 12 Both the draft of the Essay on the Metropolis and the Notes on my Progress in Studying the system of the Economists are included in the Kinnordy Papers. All quotations in this text are from a transcription of the manuscripts made by Professor Kenneth Bourne with the permission of Lady Lyell. This material may not be reproduced or cited without the owner's permission. 13 After Francis Horner's death, his brother Leonard sent the Notes to McCulloch, asking his advice on whether they should be considered for publication. McCulloch replied with a letter (now in the Kinnordy Papers) in which he warmly praised Francis Horner's talents, but discouraged the publication of what he regarded as necessarily fallacious speculations, written before 'the true doctrine of rent was discovered by Mr West and Mr Malthus'. 14 Here Horner was possibly referring to the influential work of George Chalmers, An Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain (London, 1782). 15 Essay on the Overgrowth of the Metropolis, typescript p. 10. 16 Notes, typescript, p. 2. 17 For Stewart's assessments of the merits and limits of the contribution of the Physiocrats see D. Stewart, Works, vol. 8, pp. 306-8. 18 For Smith's definition of productive and unproductive labour, see A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, pp. 330-49; vol. 2, pp. 663-78. 19 Notes, typescript, p. 11. 20 Notes, typescript, p. 10. 21 'I likewise attend Stewart's lectures, and strive to imbibe some portion of that elegant taste and comprehensive spirit which are diffused over his speculations. At the same time, I confess that I begin to suspect him of excessive timidity on the subject of political innovation, and the practicability of improvement by individual exertion. I am not sure if the great elegance and sensibility of his composition have not in some degree an unfavourable effect in the investigation of truth and in the communication of knowledge: in so pleasing a dress, error and involuntary sophistry might insinuate themselves undetected, because without suspicion, and even truth itself finds admission too easily when the severities of attention

Notes to pages 52-3

199

have been lulled into reverie by the claims of the most selected diction and the most attractive imagery.' F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 135—6. 22 F. Horner, 'Translation of Mr Fox's History', Edinburgh Review, 15 (Oct. 1809), 190-7. 23 'Did not Adam Smith judge amiss, in his premature attempt to form a sort of system upon the wealth of nations, instead of presenting his valuable speculations to the world under the form of separate dissertations? As a system, his work is evidently imperfect; and yet it has so much the air of a system, and a reader becomes so fond of every analogy and arrangement, by which a specious appearance of system is made out, that we are apt to adopt erroneous opinions, because they figure in the same fabric with approved and important truths. That illustrious philosopher might therefore have contributed more powerfully to the progress of political science, had he developed his opinions in detached essays; nor would he have less consulted the real interests of his reputation, which indeed may have been more brilliant at first, by his appearance as the author of a comprehensive theory, but will ultimately be measured by what he shall be found to have actually contributed to the treasures of valuable knowledge.' F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 126. 24 Horner's criticism of Smith's 'spirit of system' and its implications in terms of the conception of political economy as a science are discussed by Donald Winch in his recent 'The System of the North: Dugald Stewart and his Pupils', in S. Collini, D. Winch and J. Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics. 25 'Canard's Principesd'economiepolitique\ Edinburgh Review, 1 (Jan. 1803), 4 3 1 50. 26 D. Stewart, Works, vol. 8, pp. 350-1. 27 James Maitland, Lord Lauderdale, Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth and into the Means of its Increase (Edinburgh, 1804), pp. 21-37. 28 'Canard's Principes d'economie politique', pp. 436-7. 29 A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, vol. 2, pp. 847-8. See also E. R. A. Seligman, On the Shifting and Incidence of Taxation (Baltimore, 1892). 30 F. Horner, 'Observations on the Bounty upon Exported Corn', Edinburgh Review, 5 (Oct. 1804), 190-208. See also D. G. Barnes, A History of the English Corn Laws 1660-1846 (London, 1930), pp. 68-98; W. Smart, Economic Annals of the Nineteenth Century, 1801-1830, 2 vols. (London, 1910), vol. 1, pp. 90-7; W. F. Galpin, The Grain Supply in England during the Napoleonic period (New York, 1925). 31 'Observations on the Bounty', p. 190. 32 Ibid., p. 192. 33 Ibid., p. 198. 34 Ibid., p. 199. 35 James Mill, An Essay on the Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exportation of Grain (London, 1804), repr. in James Mill, Selected Economic Writings, ed. D. Winch (London, 1966), pp. 39-84. 36 Patricia James, Population Malthus - His Life and Times (London, 1979), pp. 112-13. 37 For Malthus and population, see T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of

200

Notes to pages

35-60

Population (London, 1798); Robert Wallace, Various Prospects of Mankind, Nature and Providence (Edinburgh, 1761); Sir F. M. Eden, An Estimate of the Number ofInhabitants in Great Britain and Ireland {London, 1800); W. Godwin, An Enquiry into Political Justice; Of Population - An Enquiry Concerning the Power of Increase of the Numbers of Mankind, Being an Answer to Mr Malthus' Essay

38 39 40 41

42 43

(London, 1820). See also James Bonar, Malthus and his Work (2nd ed., London, 1924); G. F. McCleary, The Malthusian Population Theory (London, 1953); F. Rosen, 'Godwin and Malthus on Population and Political Theory'', Journal of'the History of Ideas, 31 0an.-March 1970), 33-48. F. Horner to R. Sharp (29 March 1806), Horner Correspondence, L.S.E., vol. 3, fol. 18. F. Horner , Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 221-2. S. Smith, 'Rennel's Sermons', Edinburgh Review, 1 (Oct. 1802), 83-90, p. 88. Sydney Smith described to Jeffrey the aim of his review in the following terms: '[Nares] has been hangman for these ten years to all the poor authors in England, is generally considered to be hired by Government, and has talked about social order till he has talked himself into 6 or £700 per annum . . . I confess I cannot see why the cumulation of public and private vengeance should not fall upon his head . . . I do not care for justice or injustice a fig. My business is to make the archdeacon as ridiculous as possible.' Nowell C. Smith, ed., The Letters of Sydney Smith, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1953), vol. 1, p. 73. S. Smith, 'Nares' Sermon9, Edinburgh Review, 1 (Oct. 1802), 128-30. 'Thornton on the Paper Credit of Great Britain', Edinburgh Review, 1 (Oct. 1802), 172-201. a review of Henry Thornton, Inquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (London, 1802), ed. F. A. Hayek

(repr. London, 1939). 44 'Lord King on the Bank Restriction', Edinburgh Review, 2 (July 1803), 40221, a review of Lord King, Thoughts on the Restriction ofPayments in Specie at the Banks of England and Ireland (^London, 1803). O n Lord King's work, see also

F. W. Fetter, The Irish Pound 1797-1826 (London, 1955). 45 'Thornton on Paper Credit', pp. 176-7. 46 For a modern appraisal of Thornton's contribution to economic theory see J. H. Hollander, 'The Development of the Theory of Money from Adam Smith to David Ricardo', Quarterly Journal of Economics, 25 (1911), 429-70; J. R. Hicks, 'Thornton's Paper Credit', in Critical Essays in Monetary Theory (Oxford, 1967), pp. 174-88; D. A. Reisman, 'Henry Thornton and Classical Monetary Economies', Oxford Economic Papers, 23 (1971), 70-89; C. F. Peake, 'Henry Thornton and the Development of Ricardo's Economic Thought', History of Political Economy, 10 (1978), 193-212; E. J. T. Acaster, 'Henry Thornton - the Banker', Three Banks Review, 104 (1974), 46-57; 105 (1975), 38-52; 106 (1975), 51-61. 47 'Thornton on Paper Credit', p. 196. 48 D. Ricardo, Works, 9, p. 164. 49 Nowell C. Smith, ed., The Letters of Sydney Smith, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1953), vol. 1, pp. 107-8.

Notes to pages 60-3

201

50 Henry Brougham, Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1803). 51 In a letter from Andrew Clephane to James Loch, of 11 April 1801, we find the following description: 'Henry Brougham does not purpose going any more on the Circuits. I do not know what he does, for when I call on him I find the book he pretends to read, always open at the same place. I rather think he sleeps a great deal. Whether it is that his Clerk, from whom he expected so much, has really no business to give him, or does not choose to employ him, is more than I can say, but true it is that he has never had but one cause for him.' K H. Atkinson and G. A. Jackson, eds., Brougham and His Early Friends, vol. 1, p. 245. 52 On San Domingo during the French revolution see C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins (London, 1938); D. Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution: the British Occupation of Saint Domingue 1793-98 (Oxford, 1982). 53 Nowell C. Smith, ed., The Letters of Sydney Smith, vol. 1, p. 91. 54 James Mill, 'Brougham's Inquiry into Colonial Policy of European Powers', The Literary Journal, 2 (Nov. 1803), pp. 513-27. 55 'Dug. Stewart has only, to my knowledge, ventured one question (in his own peculiar style): "Pray Mr Smith (Sydney), what are the public saying of Mr Brougham's book?" ' H. Brougham to J. Loch, 19 June 1803, Brougham and his Early Friends, vol. 2, p. 68. 56 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 69. 57 After his emigration to London, Brougham wrote, at Wilberforce's request, the pamphlet, A Concise Statement of the Question Regarding the Abolition of the Slave Trade (London, 1804). 58 On theories of colonial trade in classical political economy see K. E. Knorr, British Colonial Theories, 1570-1850 (Toronto, 1944); R. L. Schuyler, The Fall ofthe Old Colonial System: a Study ofBritish Free Trade 17701870 (New York, 1945); D. N. Winch, 'Classical Economics and the Case for Colonization', Economica, n.s. 30, no. 120 (Nov. 1963), 387-99; Classical Political Economy and the Colonies (Cambridge, Mass., 1965); B. Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism (Cambridge, 1970). 59 Inquiry, vol. 1, pp. 5-6, 117-18. 60 Inquiry, vol. 1, p. 121. 61 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, vol. 2, pp. 591-641. 62 Inquiry, vol. 1, p. 8. 63 Ibid., p. 215. 64 Inquiry, vol. 2, pp. 218-19. 65 Brougham is generally credited with originality on this particular point by historians of economic thought (K. E. Knorr, British Colonial Theories, and B. Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism), though the idea may be regarded as already present in the 18th-century debate, and in Bentham's writings on the subject. 66 H. Brougham, 'Talleyrand sur les colonies', Edinburgh Review, 6 (April 1805), 63-79. 67 Inquiry, vol. 2, pp. 215 ff. In his review of the Inquiry James Mill judged the final section on slavery the most successful part of the work.

202

Notes to pages 63-4

68 Inquiry, vol. 2, pp. 259-64. 69 H. Brougham, 'Lord Lauderdale On Public Wealth', 4 (July 1804), 343-77. In his answer, Observations by the Earl of Lauderdale on the Review of his Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth (Edinburgh, 1804), Lauderdale

complained bitterly about the 'petulant invective', 'presumptuous flippancy* and 'unfeeling ease' with which the reviewer had handled his work; and produced a detailed list (and even an analytic table) of Brougham's blunders: inaccurate quotations both from the Wealth of Nations and from the Inquiry, arbitrary and misleading paraphrasing of the text; contradictory statements, etc. Jeffrey urged Brougham to produce privately a reply {{Thoughts Suggested by Lord Lauderdale's Observations upon the 'Edinburgh

70

71 72 73 74 75

76 77

Review', anonymous, London, 1805), but he respected the rule he had imposed on the Review, which never answered officially any criticism or attack against one of its articles. In a letter to Thomas Creevey from his friend Dr Currie (2 Oct. 1804), we find the following interpretation of Brougham's editorial enterprise:'. . . the review of [Lauderdale's] book in the Edinr. Review is in any way unfair and foul. It is by a scatter-brained fellow, one Brougham, who wrote two volumes on colonial policy, the two practical objects of which were - to abolish the slave-trade and to propose that we should join our armies to those of the French for the extirpation of the Negroes of St Domingo . . . He has got a sort of philosophical cant about him, and a way of putting obscure sentences together, which seems to fools to contain deep meaning, especially as an air of consummate petulance and confidence runs through the whole. He has been taken up, I am told, by Wilberforce, and is paying his court to Pitt. He is a notorious prostitute, and is setting himself up to sale. It seems Ld. Lauderdale offended him by refusing to be introduced to him, but it is to pay court to Pitt, depend on it, that he writes as he does.' H. Maxwell, ed., The Creevey Papers, 2 vols. (London, 1904), vol. 1, p. 30. On the evolution of Lauderdale's political views, see Herbert Fergus Thomson Jr, 'Lauderdale's Early Pamphlets on Public Finance', History of Political Economy, 2 (1970), 344-80. F. Homer, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 264-5. F. W. Fetter, 'The Authorship of Economic Articles in the Edinburgh Review, 1802-1847', Journal of Political Economy, 61 (June 1953), 232-59, p. 244, footnote 55. F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 256-7. James Mill, 'Lauderdale's Inquiry', The LiteraryJournal, 4 (July 1804), 1-18. This use of Mill's review as a term of comparison might require some justification; it is not meant to attach any privileged hermeneutic value to Mill's contribution, though he is on the whole infinitely more clear than Brougham. It is interesting, however, to see how two pupils of Dugald Stewart arrived independently at a very similar assessment of Lauderdale's work. 'Lord Lauderdale, On Public Wealth', p. 346. In his review, James Mill observed that: 'The name of Dr Smith is so high


78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102

20 3

that it becomes an object of vanity to find defects in his writings' (J. Mill, 'Lauderdale's Inquiry', p. 10). Obviously this comment could apply equally to Brougham's own handling of Smith's work. H. Brougham, 'Lord Lauderdale, On Public Wealth), p. 349. J. Mill, 'Lauderdale's Inquiry', p. 4. On Lauderdale's interpretation of the theory of value see M. Paglin, Malthus and Lauderdale: the Anti-Ricardian Tradition (New York, 1961). 'Lord Lauderdale On Public Wealth', p. 362. James Maitland, Lord Lauderdale, Inquiry into the Nature and Origin ofPublic Wealth and into the Means of its Increase, pp. 204-5. 'Lord Lauderdale On Public Wealth', p. 373. See also H. Brougham, 'Bishop Watson on the National Debt', Edinburgh Review, 3 (Jan. 1804), 468-86; 'Morgan's Comparative View of the Public Finances', Edinburgh Review, 4 (April 1804), 75-84. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 3, p. 24; Alexander Bain, James Mill: a Biography (London, 1882), pp. 75-6. Istvan Hont, 'The "Rich Country-Poor Country" Debate in Scottish Classical Political Economy'. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse de nations, trans. Germain Gamier, 5 vols. (Paris, 1802). Germain Gamier, 'Preface' to La richesse de nations, vol. 1, p. xviii. Ibid., p. xix. 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Paris, 1821), vol. 1, pp. lxxxvi-lxxxvii. Jean Charles Simonde de Sismondi, De la richesse commercial, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1803); on Sismondi and Smith see Marco Minerbi, 'Introduction' toj. C. S. de Sismondi, Recherches sur les constitutions despeuples libres (Geneva, 1965), pp. 7-75. Jean-Baptiste Say, Traite dfeconomie politique, 2 vols. (Paris, An XI, 1803), Discours preliminaire, vol. 1, p. xx. See J. Valynseele, Les Say et leur alliances (Paris, 1971). A. Smith, Inquiry into the Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. D. Buchanan, 4 vols. (Edinburgh, 1814). On Buchanan, see R H. I. Palgrave, ed., Dictionary of Political Economy, 3 vols. (London, 1915), vol. 1, pp. 183-4. D. Buchanan, 'Introduction' to A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, p. xv. D. Buchanan, Observations on Smith, in A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, vol. 4. Ibid., vol. 1. p. xi. T. R Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1st ed., 1798), ed. A. Flew (Harmondsworth, 1970), pp. 183-91. D. Buchanan, Observations on Smith, pp. 49-57. 2 vols. (Paris, 1821); the first edition was published in 1809. C. Ganilh, Systemes, vol. 1, p. x. Ibid., p. xi. A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations with a Life of the Author, an Introductory Discourse, Notes, and Supplemental Dissertations byj. R. McCulloch, 4 vols. (Edinburgh, 1828). A second and third edition,

204

103 104

105

106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115

116 117 118

119 120 121 122

Notes to pages 72-9 with some additions and corrections, were published by McCulloch in 1838 and 1863. J. R. McCulloch, 'Ricardo's Political Economy', Edinburgh Review, 30 (June 1818), 59-87. See D. P. O'Brien,/. R. McCulloch - a Study in Classical Economics (London, 1970), pp. 34-42; and also F. W. Fetter, 'The Authorship of Economic Articles in the Edinburgh Review, 1802-1847', JournalofPolitical Economy, 61 (June 1953), 232-59. The end of McCulloch's contribution to the Edinburgh Review was possibly caused also by his personal conflict with Brougham at the time of the former's appointment as lecturer at London University. See O'Brien,/. R. McCulloch, pp. 41-2, 61-8. J. R. McCulloch, Introductory Discourse, in A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations (3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1863), pp. liii-liv. D. Stewart, Works, vol. 10, pp. 3-98. McCulloch, Introductory Discourse, p. xlvi. Ibid., p. xlvii. Ibid., pp. 1-lvi. J. Mackintosh, Dissertation on the Progress ofEthical Philosophy, in Miscellaneous Works, vol. 1, p. 215; F. Homer, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 135-6. McCulloch, Introductory Discourse, p. xlix. J. R. McCulloch, 'Ricardo's Political Economy', p. 60. P. James, Population Malthus, p. 310. T. R. Malthus, Grounds ofan Opinion on the Policy ofRestricting the Importation of Foreign Corn (London, 1815); this pamphlet was published by Murray shortly after the publication of another pamphlet by the same author, Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent (London, 1815). P. James, Population Malthus, p. 259. The Scotsman (May 3 1817), 119-20. D. P. O'Brien,/ R. McCulloch, pp. 126-46; See also L. Robbins, Robert Torrens and the Evolution of Classical Economics (London, 1958), pp. 60-7, 277-8. J. R. McCulloch, 'Ricardo's Political Economy', p. 76. Ibid., p. 80. Ibid., p. 84; see also C. S. Shoup, Ricardoon Taxation (New York, I960), pp. 12-14 and 129-37. J. S. Mill, The Principles of Political Economy, ed. by J. M. Robson and V. W. Bladen, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vols. 2 and 3 (Toronto, 1965); preface to the first edition of 1848, vol. 2, pp. xci-xcii.

3 The definition of political economy: political economy as a social science See, for example, Spiro Latsis, ed., Method and Appraisal in Economics (Cambridge, 1976); D. P. O'Brien, 'The Longevity of Adam Smith's Vision: Paradigms, Research Programmes and Falsifiability in the History

Notes to pages 80-1

205

of Economic Thought', Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 23 (Feb. 1976), pp. 13 3-51; T. W. Hutchinson, On Revolutions and Progress in Economic Knowledge (Cambridge, 1978). 2 Jean-Baptiste Say, Traite d'economie politique, 2 vols. (4th ed. Paris, 1819), 'Discours preliminaire', vol. 1, pp. lxiv-lxv. 3 J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi, Nouveauxprincipes d'economie politique, 2 vols.

(Paris, 1819), vol. 1, pp. 58-9. 4 See, for example, Mark Blaug, The Methodology of Economics, or How Economists Explain (Cambridge, 1980); D. P. O'Brien, The Classical Economists (Oxford, 1975); Phyllis Deane, The Evolution of Economic Ideas

(Cambridge, 1978). 5 See D. Ricardo, Notes on Malthus's Principles ofPolitical Economy, in P. S raff a, ed., The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, vol. 2; I. Todhunter, William Whewell, D.D. An Account ofhis Writings with Selectionsfrom his Literary and Scientific Correspondence, 2 vols. (London, 1876); Richardjones, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation (London, 1831); and

6

7 8 9 10

also N. B. de Marchi and R. P. Sturges, 'Malthus and Ricardo's Inductivist Critics: Four Letters to William Whewell', Economica, 40 (Nov. 1973), 379-93; W. L. Miller, * Richard Jones: A Case-Study in Methodology', History of Political Economy, 3 (1971), 198-207; Lawrence Goldman, 'The Origins of British Sociology: Political Economy, Natural Science and Statistics, 1830-1835', unpublished seminar paper. R. L. Smyth, ed., Essays in Economic Method, Selected Papers read to the section I of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, I860— 1913 (London, 1962); A. W. Coats, 'The Historist Reaction in English Political Economy, 1870-1890', Economica, 21 (May 1954), pp. 143-53; G. M. Koot, 'T. E. Cliffe Leslie, Irish Social Reform and the Origins of the English Historical School of Economies', History of Political Economy, 7 (1975), pp. 312-36; Paul Adelman, 'Frederic Harrison and the 'Positivist' Attack on Orthodox Political Economy', History of Political Economy, 7 (1975), 178-89. Samuel Hollander, The Economics of David Ricardo (Toronto, 1979), pp. 652-60. Keith Tribe, Land, Labour and Economic Discourse (London, 1978), chapter 1, 'History and Discourse', pp. 5-23. Pietro Corsi, 'The Formation of Political Economy in Oxford: Copleston, Whateley, Nassau Senior and the Reshaping of Dugald Stewart's Methodology', unpublished seminar paper. J. S. Mill, 'On the Definition of Political Economy', in Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844), i n j . M. Robson, ed., Collected

Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 4 (Toronto, 1967), pp. 309-39. 11 N. B. de Marchi, 'The Case for James Mill: a Methodological Revolution?', unpublished seminar paper. 12 S. G. Checkland, 'The Propagation of Ricardian Economics in England', Economica, 16 (1949), 40-52; R L. Meek, 'The Decline of Ricardian Economics in England', Economica, 17 (1950), 43-62; M. Blaug, Ricardian Economics (New Haven, 1958); F. W. Fetter, 'The Rise and Decline of

206

Notes to pages 82-7

Ricardian Economies', History of Political Economy, 1 (Spring 1969), 6784. 13 D. Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, new ed. (London, 1842), p. 25. 14 Ibid., p. 1. 15 F. Jeffrey, 'Stewart's Philosophical Essays', Edinburgh Review, 17 (Nov. 1810), 167-211. 16 James Mackintosh, Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, in Miscellaneous Works, vol. 1, pp. 209-26. 17 J. Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 1, pp. 147-8. 18 Henry Brougham, 'Stewart's Account of Dr Robertson', Edinburgh Review, 2 (April 1803), 229-49, p. 240. 19 F. Jeffrey, 'Millar's View of the English Government', Edinburgh Review, 3 (Oct. 1803), 154-81, p. 157. 20 F. Jeffrey and W. Scott, 'Sir William Forbes's Life of Beattie', Edinburgh Review, 10 (April 1807), 171-99, p. 199. 21 J. Mackintosh, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 177-80. 22 G. E. Davie, The Democratic Intellect - Scotland and her Universities in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1961); see also L. J. Saunders, Scottish Democracy 1815-1840 (Edinburgh, 1950). 23 N. Phillipson, 'Culture and Society in the 18th Century Province' and 'The Scottish Enlightenment'. 24 D. Stewart, Works, vol. 10, p. 269. 25 D. Stewart, Elements, p. 20. 26 Ibid., p. 18. 27 F. Jeffrey, 'Mounier, De Vinfluence des Philosophes\ 28 The second part of the Elements was published only in 1814. 29 D. Stewart, Elements, p. 1. 30 Ibid., p. 3. 31 D. Stewart, Account ofthe Life and Writings of Thomas Reid D. D., in Works, vol. 10, pp. 273-4. 32 J. Veitch, Memoir of Dugald Stewart, in D. Stewart, Works, vol. 10, p. lxv; D. Stewart, Philosophical Essays, Works, vol. 5, pp. 137^48. 33 D. Stewart, Elements, pp. 53-4. 34 Ibid., pp. 3-4. 35 F. Jeffrey, 'Memoirs of Dr Joseph Priestley', Edinburgh Review, 9 (Oct. 1806), 136-61; see also his 'Dtummond's Academical Questions', Edinburgh Review, 7 (Oct. 1805), 165-85. Obviously from Priestley's own viewpoint the accusation of atheism was more than a little tendentious. 36 Sydney Smith, 'Ingram on Methodism', Edinburgh Review, 11 (Jan. 1808), 341-62. 37 See, for example, Sydney Smith, 'Rennel's Sermons', Edinburgh Review, 1 (Oct. 1802), 83-90; 'Nares's Sermon', ibid., 128-30; 'Letter on the Curates' Salary Bill', Edinburgh Review, 13 (Oct. 1808), 25-34; 'The Bishop of Peterborough and his Clergy', Edinburgh Review, 37 (Nov. 1822), 432-49. 38 See, for example, Sydney Smith, 'Indian Missions', Edinburgh Review, 12 (April 1808), 151-81; 'Styles on Methodists and Missions', Edinburgh Review, 14 (April 1809), 40-50.


207

39 Nowell C. Smith, ed., The Letters of Sydney Smith, vol. 1, pp. 596-8. 40 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 109. On the religious background of Stewart's school, see also J. D. Hoeveler Jr, James McCosh and the Scottish Intellectual Tradition (Princeton, 1981), pp. 3-32; A. L. Drummond and J. Bulloch, The Scottish Church 1688-1843: the Age of the Moderates (Edinburgh, 1973); J. H. S. Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland (New York, I960). 41 D. Stewart, Elements, p. 36; see also W. Hamilton, 'M. Cousin's Course of Philosophy', Edinburgh Review, 50 (Oct. 1829), 194-221. 42 Richard Chenevix, Comparative Skill and Industry of France and England', Edinburgh Review, 32 (Oct. 1819), 340-89; 'State of Science in England and France', Edinburgh Review, 34 (Nov. 1820), 383-422; the reviewer prudently stressed the superiority of British natural sciences and technology. 43 J. Veitch, Memoir of Dugald Stewart, inD. Stewart, Works, vol. 10, pp. xcviixcix. See also Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind (1788) (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 267-72. 44 D. Stewart, Works, vol. 10, pp. 258-9. 45 J. Mackintosh, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 257. 46 J. Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 1, pp. 133-46. 47 Edinburgh Review, 7 (Oct. 1805), 165-85. 48 F. Jeffrey, 'Fox's History of James IF, Edinburgh Review, 12 (July 1808), 271-306, p. 276. 49 F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 282. 50 James McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy, Biographical, Expository, Critical, from Hutcheson to Hamilton (London, 1875), pp. 415-55; G. E. Davie, The Democratic Intellect, pp. 262-3. 51 A. F. Willich, Elements of Critical Philosophy (London, 1798); C. Villiers, Philosophie de Kant, ou principes fondamentaux de la philosophie transcendentale

(Metz, 1801). See also Rene Wellek, Immanuel Kant in England 1793-1838 (Princeton, 1931), chapter 2: 'The Scottish Philosophy and Kant', pp. 2562. 52 Mme de Stael, Oeuvres completes, vol. 11, pp. 225-52. 53 J. McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy, pp. 302-4; D. Stewart, Works, vol. 1, pp. 389-427. See also J. Mackintosh, 'Stewart'*s Introduction to the Encyclopaedia'', Edinburgh Review, 36 (Oct. 1821), 220-67, pp. 262-3. 54 J. Mackintosh, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 234, 250. 55 J. Mackintosh, lDe I'Allemagne, par Madame de Stael', Edinburgh Review, 22 (Oct. 1813), 198-238. 56 Thomas Brown, 'Villiers's Philosophie de Kant', Edinburgh Review, 1 (Jan. 1803), 253-80. See also J. McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy, pp. 317-37. 57 D. Stewart, Works, vol. 1 pp. 389-427. 58 J. Mackintosh, 'De I'Allemagne, par Mme de Stael', pp. 236-7. 5 9 On Kant and Scottish philosophy, see also V. Cousin, Cours de Philosophie, 4 vols. (Paris, 1855-7), vol. 3: Philosophie ecossaise. 60 D. Stewart, Works, vol. 9,15 6-7 5; for an illuminating and historically minded assessment of Bentham's thought, see the recent study by Ross Harrison, Bentham (London, 1983). 61 T. B. Macaulay, 'Mill's Essay on Government: Utilitarian Logics and Polities',

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62 83 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

84 85 86 87 88 89

Notes to pages 92-101 Edinburgh Review, 49 (March 1829), 159-89; 'Utilitarian Theory of Government, and "the Greatest Happiness Principle" '. Edinburgh Review, 50 (Oct. 1829), 100-24. Lord Cockburn, Life ofJeffrey, vol. 2, pp. 87-8. No well C. Smith, ed., The Correspondence of Sydney Smith, vol. 1, p. 80. Sydney Smith, 'Bentham's Book of Fallacies', Edinburgh Review, 42 (Aug. 1825), 367-89, p. 367. J. Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 1, pp. 187-209; J. McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy, pp. 356-7. J. Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 1, p. 193. F. Jeffrey, 'Bentham, Principes de legislation par Dumonf, Edinburgh Review, 4 (April 1804), 1-26. J. Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, vol. 1, p. 211. F. Jeffrey, 'Madame de Stael, Sur la literature' [sic], Edinburgh Review, 21 (Feb. 1813), 1-50, pp. 20-1. G. E. Davie, The Social Significance of the Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense, The Dow Lecture 1972 (Dundee, 1973). F. Jeffrey, 'Stewart's Life of Reid', Edinburgh Review, 3 (Jan. 1804), 26987. G. E. Davie, The Social Significance of the Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense, p. 15. J. Mackintosh, Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 151-2. D. Stewart, Works, vol. 10, p. li. It is necessary to remember that the lectures were published posthumously, and that the order of the arguments is not necessarily that of Stewart's original exposition. D. Stewart, Works, vol. 8, p. 10. Ibid., pp. 2 3 ^ . Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 25. J. S. Mill, 'On the Definition of Political Economy', i n j . M. Robson, ed., The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 4, p. 310. D. Stewart, Works, vol. 8, p. 17. J. M. Robson, ed., The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 4, p. 318. See N. W. Senior, An Outline of the Science of Political Economy (London, 1838; lsted. 1836); J. E. Cairnes, The Character and Logical Method ofPolitical Economy (London, 1869);J. Neville Key nes, The Scope and Method of Political Economy (1st ed. 1891; repr. New York, 1955); L. Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (London, 1932). D. Stewart, Works, vol. 10, pp. 272-3. D. Stewart, Works, vol. 8, p. 30. D. Stewart, Elements, pp. 132-3. Ibid., p. 134. D. Stewart, Elements, p. 146. In his writings Stewart indicated alternatively Lord Bacon, Isaac Newton and, on occasion, John Locke, as his predecessors in the definition of the 'inductive' or 'empirical' method. Consequently, his references to the


209

'Baconian' or 'Newtonian' method should not be taken too literally. 90 Christine M. Shepherd, 'Newtonianism in Scottish Universities in the Seventeenth Century', in R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, eds., The Origins and Nature of the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 6585. 91 D. Stewart, Elements, pp. 35 3-7. See also Richard Olson, Scottish Philosophy and British Physics, 1750-1880, a Study in the Foundations of the Victorian Scientific Style (Princeton, 1975), pp. 57-60. 92 D. Stewart, Elements, p. 516. 93 On the methodology ofJames and John Stuart Mill, see D. Forbes, 'James Mill and India', Cambridge Journal, 5 (Oct. 1951), 19-53; J. H. Burns, The Light of Reason: Philosophical History in the Two Mills, inj. M. Robson and M. Laine, eds., James and John Stuart Mill: Papers of the Centenary Conference (Toronto, 1976), 3-20. 94 F. R. Leavis, ed., John Stuart Mill on Bentham and Coleridge (Cambridge, 1980). 95 J. S. Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, ed. J. M. Robson, The Collected Works, vols. 7 and 8 (Toronto, 1974), vol. 8, p. 895. 96 Ibid., p. 901. 97 J. S. Mill, 'On the Definition of Political Economy', in Essays on Economics and Society, The Collected Works, vol. 4, pp. 309-39. 98 J. S. Mill, 'Civilization', inj. M. Robson and A. Brady, eds., Essays on Politics and Society, The Collected Works, vols. 18 & 19 (Toronto, 1977), vol. 18, p. 126. 99 J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, The Collected Works, vol. 2, p. xcii. 100 For a recent reassessment of this issue see William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals, pp. 147-205. 101 P. Corsi, 'The Formation of Political Economy in Oxford: Coplestone, Whateley, Nassau Senior, and the Reshaping of Dugald Stewart's Methodology'. 102 J. S. Mill, Autobiography (London, 1873), pp. 69, 113. 103 For a detailed account of the organisation of the 'Ricardo Memorial Lectures', see D. P. O'Brien,/. R. McCulloch, pp. 48-57. 104 According to Mrs Grote, the committee included James Mill, John Lefevre, John Home Tooke, George Grote and Henry Warburton. See A. Bain, James Mill: a Biography (London, 1882), p. 214. 105 James Mill, Letter to McCulloch, 10 Jan. 1824, MSS AL 187, University of London Library, cit. in O'Brien,/. R. McCulloch, pp. 48-9. 106 D. P. O'Brien,/ R. McCulloch, pp. 45-8. 107 Ibid., pp. 61-8. 108 Henry Brougham, Practical Observations upon the Education of the People, Addressed to the Working Classes and their Employers (London, 1825); Address of the Committee of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (London, 1846). See also H. Hale Bellot, University College London 1826-1926 (London, 1929); J. H. Burns, Jeremy Bentham and University College (London, 1962).

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109 John Stuart Mill, ' McCulloch's Discourse on Political Economy', Westminster Review, 4 (July 1825), 88-92, repr. in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 5, p. 757. 110 J. R McCulloch, Discourse, pp. 72-3. 111 Ibid., p. 72. 112 Ibid., p. 9. 113 Ibid., pp. 14-15. 114 Ibid., p. 33. 115 Ibid., p. 42. 116 Ibid., p. 52. 117 The more frequently quoted 'definition' of the 'middling ranks' is in a letter of Jeffrey to Homer written in 1806: '. . . I cannot resist the conviction, that, in spite of appearances, there is in the middling order of people in this country a broad foundation for a popular party, constituted by the opinions, interests and habits of those numerous families who are characterized by moderate but increasing incomes, a careful education of their youth, and a strict observance of the great common virtues.' F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 397-8. 118 T. L. Peacock, The epicier, in H. F. B. Brett-Smith and C. E.Jones, eds., Works of Thomas Love Peacock, lOvols. (London, 1924-5), vol. 9, pp. 293-^4. Quoted in G. E. Davie, The Social Significance ofthe Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense. 119 D. Stewart, Elements, p. 118. This passage can be contrasted with others in which Stewart pronounces himself in favour of the education of the lower orders. See for example his favourable account of Robert Owen's activity in New Lanark: Works, vol. 8, pp. 183-8. 120 McCulloch, Discourse, p. 77. 121 Ibid., pp. 2-3. 122 Ibid., p. 2. 123 Ibid., pp. 57-8. 124 Ibid., p. 69. 4 The Edinburgh reviewers and the Whig party 1 The Life and Times of Lord Brougham, vol. 1, p. 22. 2 Walter Bagehot, Literary Studies, 2 vols. (London, 1911), vol. 1, p. 17. 3 Donald Southgate, The Passing of the Whigs 1832-1886 (London, 1962), p. xv. 4 John Clive, Scotch Reviewers - The 'Edinburgh Review' 1802-1813. 5 W. Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals, pp. 55-6. 6 Brougham was particularly sensitive about his social background and always insisted on the 'aristocratic' origins of his family: The Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham, vol. 1, pp. 15-20. 7 H. Maxwell, ed., The Creevey Papers, vol. 1, pp. 249-51. 8 J. Clive, Scotch Reviewers, pp. 86-7. 9 Lord Cockburn, Life of Lord Jeffrey, vol. 2,p. 5 1 ; K H . M . Atkinson, G. A. Jackson, eds., Brougham and his Early Friends, vol. 1, p. 344.

Notes to pages 115-18 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18

19

20 21

22 23

24

211

F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 41-3. Ibid., pp. 139-40. Ibid., pp. 188-91. Tarty politics in Edinburgh are a miserable waste of mind; from the unavoidable disadvantages of a provincial residence they must narrow the judgment and debase the temper, in the worst manner. And what is to be got by this sacrifice that might not be almost certainly secured by an independent and resolute cultivation of the genuine qualifications that belong to the profession?' F. Horner to J. A. Murray, 13 Nove. 1804, F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 268-9. F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 69-70 (Journal, 1798). Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 357. Ibid., p. 377. Ibid., pp. 35-6, 266-7. The crisis in the Whig party after Fox's death is discussed in M. Roberts, 'The Leadership of the Whig Party in the House of Commons from 1807 to 1815', The English Historical Review, 1 (1935), 620-38; A. Foord, His Majesty's Opposition 1714-1832 (Oxford, 1964); A. Mitchell, The Whigs in Opposition 1815-1830 (Oxford, 1967); J. J. Sack, The Grenvillites 1801-1829 (Urbana, Illinois, 1979). Writing to Horner on the occasion of Fox's death, Jeffrey commented: 'I look upon what has been called Mr Fox's party, the remains of the old Whig faction, as extinguished entirely with him; his name alone kept the fragments together, after the party had been long ago broken to pieces.' Quoted in F. Horner,Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 374. F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 236-7. See also Horner's letters to Jeffrey in BL Add. MSS, 33.544, fols. 329, 364, 390, 434, 438. 'The great error of Fox, in the late years of opposition, appears to have consisted in that favourable expectation of the issue of the French Revolution, which was natural in young and speculative thinkers, but hardly to be permitted in a practised statesman.' F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 242. See also F. Jeffrey, 'Fox's History of James IF. F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 431. Horner noted in his Journal in 1806: 'Form a connection with the Whig aristocracy of England. Upon what footing do I join? Upon what footing am I at present received or invited? As lawyer to be - as having already studied political philosophy - preserve this independent character.' F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 364. On the Bullion Committee and the Bullion Report of 1810 see J. Viner, Studies in the Theory of International Trade (repr. London, 1964); F. W. Fetter, The Development of British Monetary Orthodoxy (Cambridge, Mass., 1965); 'The Bullion Report Re-examined', Quarterly Journal of Economics, 56 (1941-2), 655-65; 'The Politics of the Bullion Report', Economica, 26 (1959), 95-120; 'Economic Controversies in the British Reviews 18021850', Economica, 32 (1965), 424-37; N. J. Silberling, 'Financial and Monetary Policy of Great Britain during the Napoleonic Wars', The Quarterly Journal ofEconomics, 38 (1924), 214-33; E. V. Morgan, 'Some Aspects of the

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25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32

33

Notes to pages 118-20 Bank Restriction Period, 1797-1821', Economic History, 4 (Feb. 1939), pp. 205-21; The Theory and Practice of Central Banking (Cambridge, 1943); B. A. Corry, Money, Saving and Investment in British Economics1800-1850 (London, 1962); D. P. O'Brien, The Classical Economists (Oxford, 1975), pp. 140-69. The text of the Report is republished in E. Cannan, ed., The Paper Pound of 1797-1821 (2nd ed., London, 1925; repr. 1969). Sir John Clapham, The Bank of England - a History, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1970), vol. 1, pp. 260-72. F. W. Fetter, The Irish Pound, 1797-1826, p. 30; W. Smart, Economic Annals of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (London, 1910), vol. 1, pp. 83-4. It was on this occasion that Ricardo produced his first contribution to economic theory, a series of letters which appeared in the Morning Chronicle between Sept. and Nov. 1809, then expanded and republished under the title: The High Price of Bullion, a Proof of the Depreciation of Bank Notes (London, 1811), in Ricardo, Works, vol. 3, pp. 13-127. F. W. Fetter, 'The Politics of the Bullion Report', p. 106. F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 20. F. Horner, 'Lord King on the Bank Restriction', p. 411. Ibid., pp. 404-5. Horner's proposed 13th resolution stated that: '. . . although the adverse circumstances of our Trade, together with the large amount of our Military Expenditure Abroad, may have contributed to render our Exchanges with the Continent of Europe unfavourable; yet the extraordinary degree, in which the Exchanges have been depressed for so long a period, has been in a great measure occasioned by the depreciation, which has taken place in the relative Value of the Currency of this Country as compared with the Money of Foreign Countries.' E. Cannan, ed., The Paper Pound, appendix, p. 9. In a letter to the Morning Chronicle, published on 6 Sept. 1810, Ricardo observed:'. . . I trust the day is not far distant when we shall look back with astonishment at the delusion to which we have so long been subject, in allowing a company of merchants, notoriously ignorant of the most obvious principles of political economy, to regulate at their will, the value of the property of a great portion of the community; in a country, too, justly famed for the protection which it affords to the produce of the industry of the meanest of its inhabitants' (Ricardo, The Letters on the Bullion Report, in Works, vol. 3, p. 133). The Report on the other hand stated apologetically that: 'The suspension of cash payments has had the effect of committing into the hands of the Directors of the Bank of England, to be exercised by their sole discretion, the important charge of supplying the country with that quantity of circulating medium, which is exactly proportioned to the wants and occasions of the Public. In the judgment of the Committee, that is a trust, which it is unreasonable to expect that the Directors of the Bank of England should ever be able to discharge. The most detailed knowledge of the actual trade of the Country, combined with the profound science in all the principles of Money and Circulation, would not enable any man or


34

35

36

37 38

213

set of men to adjust, and keep always adjusted, the right proportion of circulating medium in a country to the wants of trade' (E. Cannan, ed., The Paper Pound, p. 52). On the passage quoted above, Ricardo commented: 'The proportion of currency which can conveniently be maintained in a country where a paper currency not convertible into specie exists can be adjusted by human wisdom and skill, as the Commee themselves assert in several parts of the Report. It is precisely at its proper limit whilst gold does not rise above or fall below the mint price' [sic]. ('Notes to the Bullion Report', Works, vol. 3, p. 349. F. W. Fetter, 'The Economic Articles in the Quarterly Review and Their Authors, 1809-1852', The Journal of Political Economy, 66 (1958), 47-64, 154-70. If we compare the text of Horner's rejected resolutions with Vansittart's resolutions which were approved by the House, we find that, but for the formulation, they differ very little indeed in terms of their operative prescriptions. Horner's 16th resolution runs: 'That in order to revert gradually to this Security [i.e. convertibility] and to enforce meanwhile a due Limitation of the Paper of the Bank of England as well as all the other Bank Paper of the Country, it is expedient to amend the Act which suspends the Cash payments of the Bank, by altering the time till which the Suspension shall continue, from Six Months after the Ratification of a Definitive Treaty of Peace, to that of Two Years from the present Time.' Vansittart's 17th resolution stated: 'Resolved, that it is the opinion of this Committee, That, under the circumstances affecting the political and commercial relations of this Kingdom with foreign Countries, it would be highly inexpedient and dangerous now to fix a definite period for the removal of the Restriction of Cash payments at the Bank of England, prior to the term already fixed by the Act 44 Geo. Ill c. 1. of six months after the conclusion of a Definitive Treaty of Peace.' E. Cannan, ed., The Paper Pound, appendix, pp. 10, 19. In the review of a pamphlet by Arthur Condorcet O'Connor, The Present State of Great Britain (Paris, 1804), published in the Edinburgh Review, 5 (Oct. 1804), pp. 104-24, Henry Brougham made a clear distinction between the arguments which the Whig opposition was prepared to use against the Bank Restriction Bill, and the 'visionary predictions' of popular pamphleteers such as O'Connor, Thomas Paine and Francis D'lvernois. No allusion to the French assignats, for example, was used in Horner's or ParnelFs speeches. Parliamentary Debates, XIX, p. 920. The Report was presented just before the prorogation of Parliament and copies reached the members only by mid-August. Consequently the discussion had to be postponed until Autumn 1810 (W. Smart, Economic Annals, vol. 1, p. 255). Horner offered to write the review of the Report in the Edinburgh, fearing that Jeffrey might entrust the article to James Mill, at the time known as a declared anti-bullionist (Horner, Memoirs, vol. 2, p.

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39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47

48

49

Notes to pages 24). The review was then proposed to Ricardo, who declined (Ricardo, Works, vol. 3, p. 10), and finally produced by Malthus ('Depreciation of Paper Currency', Edinburgh Review, 17 (Feb. 1811), 339-72). 'The Bullion Report', in E. Cannan, ed., The Paper Pound, p. 36. Ibid., pp. 10, 21; Parliamentary Debates, XIX, pp. 824, 1022. See the discussion of the evidence given by Mr Withmore and Mr Pearse in the Report, in E. Cannan, ed., The Paper Pound, pp. 33-4. See Horner's resolutions No. 7 and 8. Parliamentary Debates, XIX, p. 807. Ricardo's alleged 'influence' on the Bullion Report is discussed in J. H. Hollander, 'The Development of the Theory of Money from Adam Smith to David Ricardo', and F. W. Fetter, 'The Politics of the Bullion Report'. The Tory party's attitude to the resumption of payments is exhaustively explored in Boyd Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce. Previous to his friendship with James Mill, Ricardo's political sympathies inclined apparently towards the Tories (D. Weatherall, David Ricardo: a Biography, The Hague, 1976). During the Bullion debate he advised both Horner and Huskisson, and carefully avoided identification with either party. Before entering Parliament (he was the member for Portarlington from Feb. 1819), he declared his intention to be 'neither Whig nor Tory' but to promote 'every measure which should give us a chance of good government' (Ricardo, Works, vol. 5, p. xix). William Greenfield (?), 'Sir P. Francis and Ricardo on Bullion', Quarterly Review, 3 (Feb. 1810), 152-60, p. 153. Parliamentary Debates, XX, p. 7. 'Almost all writers on the intricate subject of the theory of money and exchange have differed widely from each other, and some of them from themselves. This is the case with no less considerable a man than Mr Hume . . . Almost every writer since has taken a separate line, agreeing only that formerly received opinions were mistaken . . . Under such circumstances as these, it would be inexcusable in me to enter into a contest on the theory of money in this House; and it would be the more impardonable because the truth or fallacy of such theories do not, in my opinion, affect the present question.' Parliamentary Debates, XIX, p. 837. Parliamentary Debates, XX, pp. 11-12. In a similar spirit, Thornton argued that: 'When Galileo first promulgated the doctrine that the earth turned around the sun, and that the sun remained stationary in the centre of the universe, the holy fathers of the Inquisition took alarm at so daring an innovation, and forthwith declared the first of these propositions to be false and heretical, and the other to be erroneous in point of faith. The holy office 'pledged itself to believe' that the earth was stationary and the sun movable. This pledge had little effect in changing the natural course of things: the sun and the earth continued, in spite of it, to preserve their accustomed relations to each other, just as the coin and the banknote will, in spite of the right hon. gentleman's resolutions.' Parliamentary Debates, XX, p. 112. Cash, Corn, Commerce, p. 37.


215

50 D. Stewart, Works, vol. 9, p. 452. Homer sent to Stewart a copy of the Report after its publication: F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 38-9. 51 D. Stewart, Works, vol. 9, p. 436. 5 2 See in particular A. Aspinall, Lord Brougham and the Whig Party (Manchester, 1927), and C. New, Life of Henry Brougham to 1830 (Oxford, 1961). 5 3 'I am out of all patience with this march of mind. Here has my house been nearly burned down, by my cook taking it into her head to study hydrostatics, in a sixpenny tract, published by the Steam Intellect Society, and written by a learned friend who is for doing all the world's business as well as his own, and is equally well qualified to handle every branch of human knowledge. I have a great abomination of this learned friend; as author, lawyer, and politician, he is triformis, like Hecate: and in every one of his three forms he is bifrons, like Janus; the true Mr Facing-both-ways of Vanity Fair.' T. L. Peacock, Crotchet Castle, in T. L. Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, Crotchet Castle, ed. R. Wright (Harmondsworth, 1969), pp. 1334. 54 See, for example, H. Brougham, 'Bishop Watson on the National Debt', Edinburgh Review, 3 (Jan. 1804), 468-86; 'Morgan's Comparative View of the Public Finances', Edinburgh Review, 4 April 1804), 75-84.

5 5 'The truth is too that you are of their party, and you only quarrel with them because they fall short of their profession and do not act up to their principles. Now would it not be better to mend them than to make them over again, and is it not the obvious policy to enter their church and, being in, to reform their policies with the authority of a pastor and the zeal of an apostle?' F. Jeffrey to H. Brougham, Brougham MSS, U.C.L., 25 July 1808; quoted in W. Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817-1841, p. 51. 56 It may seem surprising that Brougham should have played no role in the debate on the Bullion. As a matter of fact, he wrote a few articles on monetary policy in the Edinburgh 'Guineas an Incumbranee to Commerce', 2, (April, 1803), 101-16; 'Wheatley on Currency and Commerce', 3 (Oct. 1803), 231-52; 'O'Connor's Present State of Great Britain', 5, (Oct. 1804) 104-24; 'Lord Liverpool on the Coin', 7 (Jan. 1806), 265-95. But he was voted off the Bullion Committee in 1810, and then again excluded from the Bank of England Committee in 1819. He deeply resented the exclusion, and complained publicly about it in a parliamentary speech on 11 Feb. 1822 {Parliamentary Debates, VI, n.s., p. 249). 57 On the Continental blockade, see F. M. J. Crouzet, L'Economie Britannique etleBlocus Continental, 1806-13, 2 vols. (Paris, 1958); E. Silberner, The Problem of War in 19th Century Economic Thought (Princeton, 1946); E. Hecksher, The Continental System. An Economic Interpretation (Oxford, 1922). 5 8 Britain Independent of Commerce; or Proofs deducedfrom an Investigation into the True Causes of the Wealth of Nations, that our Riches, Prosperity and Power are derived from Sources Inherent in Ourselves, and Would not be Affected even though our Commerce were Annihilated (London, 1807). 59 Alexander Baring, An Inquiry into the Causes and Consequences of the Orders in Council, and an Examination of the Conduct of Great Britain Towards the Neutral

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Commerce ofAmerica (London, 1808); H. Brougham (or F. Jeffrey), 'Baring and Others on the Orders in Council', Edinburgh Review, 12 (April 1808), 226-46. 60 Terish Commerce', Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, 12 (1807), Nov. 7,21, 28, and Dec, 5,12. 61 James Mill, Commerce Defended, an Answer to the Arguments by which Mr Spence, Mr Cobbett, and Others, have Attempted to Prove that Commerce is not a Source of National Wealth, 2nd ed. (London, 1808), partially reprinted in James Mill, Selected Economic Writings, ed. D. Winch (Edinburgh, 1966), pp. 85-159. 62 K Torrens, The Economists Refuted, or an Enquiry into the Nature and Extent of the Benefits conferred by Trade and Commerce, etc. (London, 1808), repr. in Principles of Sir Robert Peel's Act of 1844 (2nd ed., London, 1857). 63 T. K Malthus, 'Spence on Commerce', Edinburgh Review, 11 (Jan. 1808), 429—48. See also David Buchanan and Francis Jeffrey (?), 'Spence on Agriculture and Commerce', Edinburgh Review, 14 (April 1809), 50-60. 64 See G. D. H. Cole, The Life of William Cobbett (London, 1924; 3rd ed. rev., 1947); J. W. Osborne, William Cobbett: his Thought and his Times (New Brunswick, N.J., 1966); W. Reitzel, ed., The Progress ofa Plough-Boy to a Seat in Parliament (London, 1933), repr. as The Autobiography of William Cobbett (London, 1967); M. L. Pearl, William Cobbett, a Biographical Account ofhis Life and Times (Oxford, 1953); James Sambrook, William Cobbett (London, 1973). 65 Edinburgh Review, 10 (July 1807), 386-421. 66 James Mill, Commerce Defended, in Selected Economic Writings, p. 155. 67 Parliamentary Debates, X, p. 929. 68 The following are Brougham's more relevant articles in the Review on the subject of the Orders in Council and on West Indian affairs: 'Randolph and Others on the Neutral Question', 11 (Oct. 1807), 1-30; 'Sir W. Young and Others on West Indian Affairs, 11 (Oct. 1807), 145-67;'Examination of the Late Orders in Council', 11 (Jan. 1808), 484-98; 'Pamphlets on West Indian Affairs', 13 (Jan. 1809), 382-413; 'Lord Sheffield and Others on Foreign Affairs', 14 (July 1809), 442-82; 'Disputes with America' 19 (Feb. 1812), 290-317; 'Of Peace', 20 (July 1812), 213-34. 69 Parliamentary Debates, XXIII, p. 489. 70 Ibid. 71 Parliamentary Debates, XXIII, p. 506. 72 Ibid., p. 507. 73 Ibid., pp. 537-41. 74 H. Brougham to Lord Grey, 2 Aug. 1812, quoted in The Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham vol. 2, p. 25. 75 Ibid., p. 7. 76 James Mill, Commerce Defended, in Selected Economic Writings, p. 92. 77 Parliamentary Debates, XXI, p. 1096. 78 H. Brougham to J. Walker, 6 March 1812, quoted in The Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham, vol. 2, p. 14. 79 Ibid., p. 72. 80 The Creevey Papers, vol. 1, p. 174.

Notes to pages 136^41

217

81 A. Aspinall, Lord Brougham and the Whig Party, pp. 5 0 - 1 ; Creevy Papers, vol. 1,

pp. 247-9 (Brougham to Mr Creevy, 14 Jan. 1816). 82 On Brougham's personal friendship with James Mill, see Alexander Bain, James Mill: a Biography, pp. 75-6. 83 W. Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals, pp. 57-66; A. Aspinall, Lord Brougham and the Whig Party, pp. 52-4. 84 A. Aspinall, Lord Brougham and the Whig Party, p. 227. Obviously, Brougham had equally critical views about Ricardo. In a speech on agricultural distress, on 30 May 1820, he argued: 'His Hon. friend, the member of Portarlington, had argued as if he had dropped from another planet; as if this were a land of the most perfect liberty of trade - as if there were no taxes- no drawbacks- no bounties- no searchers- not any other branch of trade but agriculture; as if, in this Utopian world, of his Hon. friend's creation, the first measure of restriction ever thought of was that on the importation of corn; as if all classes of the community were alike- as if all trades were on equal footing; and that, in this new state, we were called upon to decide the abstract question, whether or not there should be a protecting price for corn?' Ricardo, Works, vol. 5, p. 56. 85 On the war income tax see E. R. A. Seligman, The Income Tax (New York, 1911); A. Hope-Jones, The Income Tax in the Napoleonic Wars (Cambridge, 1939); W. Kennedy, English Taxation 1640-1799, an Essay on Policy and Opinion (London, 1964); B. E. V. Sabine, A History of the Income Tax (London, 1966). 86 James Mill to F. Place, BL Add. MSS, 35152, fols. 158, 163. 87 Parliamentary Debates, XXIII, p. 810. 88 Ibid., pp. 856-9. 89 On the national debt and post-war financial policy see S. Buxton, Finance and Politics, a Historical Study 1783-1885, 2 vols. (London, 1888), vol. 1; A. W. Acworth, The Financial Reconstruction in England 1815-1822 (London, 1925); E. L. Hargreaves, The National Debt (London, 1930). On the postwar economic depression, Thomas Tooke, A History of Prices and of the State ofthe Circulationfrom 1793-1837, 2 vols. (London, 1838); R. G. Link, English Theories of Economic Fluctuations (New York, 1959); A. H. Imlah, Economic Elements in the Pax Britannica (Cambridge, Mass., 1958). 90 C. S. Shoup, Ricardo on Taxation, pp. 160-5. 91 Parliamentary Debates, XXXIII, p. 1099. 92 Parliamentary Debates, XXXV, p. 1013. 93 D. Stewart, Works, vol. 8, pp. 316-26. 94 Horner to Malthus, 12 Feb. 1815, in F. Horner, Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 222-8. 95 F.Jeffrey to Malthus, 12 May 1814. Lord Cockburn, Life ofLord Jeffrey, vol. 2, pp. 145-6. 96 Parliamentary Debates, XXXV, p. 1013. 97 Ricardo, Works, vol. 5, pp. 124-7. 98 On the machinery question, Maxine Berg, The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy, 1815-1848 (Cambridge, 1980) offers a helpful, but somewhat insufficient outline; see, for a criticism, G. Claeys and P.

218

99 100 101

102 103 104 105 106 107

108 109 110

111

Notes to pages 141-7 Kerr, Mechanical Political Economy', Cambridge Journal of Economics, 5 (1981), 251-72, and Keith Tribe, 'Ricardian Histories', Economy and Society, 10, 4, pp. 451-66. J. R. McCulloch, 'Effects of Machinery and Accumulation', Edinburgh Review, 35 (March 1821), 102-23, p. 102. Ibid., p. 122. J. R. McCulloch, 'Commercial Revulsions', Edinburgh Review, 44 (June 1826), 70-93; see also J. R. McCulloch, 'Babbage on Machinery andManufactures', Edinburgh Review, 56 (Jan. 1833), 313-32. 'Combination Laws - Restraint on Emigration', Edinburgh Review, 39 (Jan. 1824), 315-45, p. 334. 'Poor Laws', Edinburgh Review, 48 (May 1828), 303-30. Ibid., p. 318. D. Stewart, Works, vol. 9, p. 280. 'Emigration', Edinburgh Review, 45 (Dec. 1826), 49-74. On the Poor Laws, see also G. C. Wood, ed., Dr Chalmers and the Poor Laws (Edinburgh, 1911), and S. G. and E. O. A. Checkland, eds., The Poor Laws Report of 1834 (Harmondsworth, 1974). D. Southgate, The Passing of the Whigs, pp. 1-36. D. P. O ' B r i e n , / ^ Ramsay McCulloch, p. 103. S. Buxton, Finance and Politics, pp. 27—42; Lucy Brown, The Board of Trade and the Free-Trade Movement, 1830-1842, pp. 1-19; B. Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, pp. 241—68. N. C. Smith, ed., The Letters of Sydney Smith, vol. 1, p. 409.

5 Commercial Society and its enemies: the debate on the First Reform Bill 1 On the First Reform Bill see J. R. M. Butler, The Passing of the Great Reform Bill (London, 1914, repr. 1964); O. F. Christie, The Transition from Aristocracy 1832-1867 (London, 1927); M. G. Brock, The Great Reform Act (London, 1927); D. C Moore, The Politics of Deference, a Study of MidNineteenth Century English Political System (New York, 1976); Norman Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel, a Study in the Technique of Parliamentary Representation 1830-1850 (London, 1953); J. Cannon, Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832 (Cambridge, 1973); Asa Briggs, 'The Background of the Parliamentary Reform Movement in Three English Cities', Cambridge Historical Journal, 10 (1952), 293-317. Relevant contemporary sources are: A. Aspinall, ed., Three Nineteenth Century Diaries (of Sir D. Le Mar chant; E. J. Littleton, 1 st Baron Hatherton; and E. Law, 1st Earl of Ellenborough) (London, 1952); E. Bamfordand the Duke of Wellington, eds., The Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot, 1820-1832, 2 vols. (London, 1950); A. D. Kriegel, ed., The Holland House Diaries 1831-1840 (London, 1977); H. Maxwell, ed., The Creevey Papers-, Henry Earl Grey, ed., The Correspondence of the Late Earl Grey with H. M. King William IV, 2 vols. (London, 1867). 2 Frances Hawes, Henry Brougham (London, 1957), p. 231; G. T. Garratt,


3 4

5 6 7 8

9

10 11

12

13 14 15 16 17

18 19

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LordBrougham (London, 1935), pp. 246-80; J. R. M. Butler, The Passing ofthe Great Reform Bill, p. 156. Lord Cockburn, Life of LordJeffrey, vol. 1, pp. 305-13; see also G. W. T. Omond, The Lord Advocates of Scotland, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1883). Brougham Papers, U.C.L., Jeffrey to Brougham, 6 April 1829 (10.511) and 29 Nov. 1830 (22.140); see also G. T. Garratt, Lord Brougham, p. 256. G. O. Trevelyan, Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1876); repr. in one vol. (Oxford, 1978), p. 130. Saba Holland, A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith, p. 484, (Smith to Mrs Meynell, 3 Jan. 1831). Ibid., pp. 162-3. On public opinion and parliamentary reform, see A. V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation between Law and Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century (London, 19O5);J. E. Bowie, Politics and Opinion in the 19th century (London, 1954); A. Aspinall, Politics and the Press 1780-1850 (London, 1949); R H. Gretton, The English Middle Class (London, 1917). G. O. Trevelyan, Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, p. 173. See also M. Napier, ed., Selection from the Correspondence of the Late Macvey Napier (London, 1879). J o h n Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay - The Shaping of the Historian (London, 1973), pp. 96-141. F. Jeffrey and H. Brougham, 'Parliamentary Reform', Edinburgh Review, 17 (Feb. 1811), 253-90; for a comment on the article see Lord Cockburn, Life of Lord Jeffrey, vol. 2, p. 133; see also Henry Brougham, 'Parliamentary Reform', Edinburgh Review, 20 (July 1812), 127-43. See, for example, T. de Quincey, 'The Present Cabinet in Relation to the Times', Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 29 (Feb. 1831), 143-58; John Wilson, 'The Lord Advocate on Reform', ibid. (June 1813), 980-1040. James Mill, 'Periodical Literature', Westminster Review, 1 (Jan. 1824), 20668. A. Mitchell, 'The Whigs and Parliamentary Reform before 1830', Historical Studies 12 (1965), pp. 22-42. John Burrow, A Liberal Descent, pp. 21-35. Lord Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches (London, 1882), p. 486 (speech delivered in the House of Commons on 2 March 1831). I. F. Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle: the Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cambridge, Mass., 1968); J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1957); 'Burke and the Ancient Constitution: a Problem in the History of Ideas', in Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (New York, 1971), pp. 202-42. G. S. Veitch, The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform (London, 1913). J. Mackintosh, 'Universal Suffrage', Edinburgh Review, 31 (Dec. 1818), 174-203, a review ofj. Bentham, Plan of Parliamentary Reform, inj. Bowring, ed., The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols. (London, 1843), vol. 3, pp. 436622; see alsoj. Mackintosh, 'Parliamentary Reform', Edinburgh Review, 14 (July 1809), 277-306; 'Parliamentary Reform', Edinburgh Review, 34 (Nov. 1820), 461-501.

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20 J. H. Burns, 'Bentham and the French Revolution', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 16 (1966), 95-114, pp. 112-13. 21 J. Mackintosh, 'Universal Suffrage', p. 174. 22 J. Mackintosh, 'Universal Suffrage', p. 171. 23 G. M. Trevelyan, Lord Grey of the Reform Bill: Being the Life of Charles, Second Earl Grey (London, 1920); K Birley, The English Jacobins from 1789 to 1802 (London, 1924); H. Butterfield, 'Charles James Fox and the Whig Opposition in 1792', Cambridge Historical Journal, 9 (1949), pp. 293-330; J. Milton-Smith, 'Earl Grey's Cabinet', HistoricalJournal, 15 (1972), pp. 5574. 24 S. J. Reid, The Life and Letters of the First Earl of Durham, 1782-1840, 2 vols. (London, 1906); C W. New, Lord Durham (Oxford, 1929). 25 & Russell, ed., The Early Correspondence ofLord John Russell, 1805-40, 2 vols. (London, 1913); Spencer Walpole, The Life of Lord John Russell, 2 vols. (London, 1891); Lord John Russell, Recollections and Suggestions, 1813-73 (London, 1875); and also Essay on the History of the English Government and Constitution (London, 1865, 1st ed. 1821). 26 Lord Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches, (speech of 2 March 1831). 27 Ibid., p. 488. 28 J. Hamburger, James Mill and the Art of Revolution (New Haven, 1963), pp. 112-25; see also J. A. Roebuck, History of the Whig Ministry of 1830, 2 vols. (London, 1852). 29 Quoted i n j . Hamburger, James Mill, p. 125. 30 See, for example, J. Mill to Brougham, 3 Sept. 1832 (Brougham Papers, U.C.L., 10.765) in A. Bain, James Mill, pp. 363-7. 31 W. Harding, ed., The Speech of Lord Brougham, Delivered in the House of Lords, Oct. 7 1831, on the Second Reading of the English Reform Bill, with Earl Grey's Reply and a List of the Majority and Minority (London, 1831); M. Brock, The Great Reform Act, pp. 243-4; J. & M. Butler, The Passing of the Great Reform Bill, pp. 284-5. 32 Lord Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches, p. 495 (speech of 5 July 1831). 33 Ibid., p. 509 (speech of 30 Sept. 1831). 34 On theories of parliamentary representation before 1832 see G. S. Veitch, The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform-, Edward and Anne Porritt, The Unreformed House of Commons: Parliamentary Representation before 1832 (Cambridge, 1903); Sir Lewis Namier, The Structure ofPolitics at the Accession of George III (2nd ed., London, 1957); P. A. Gibbons, Ideas of Political Representation in Parliament 1651-1832 (Oxford, 1914); S. H. Beer, 'The Representation of Interests in British Government', American Political Science Review, 51 (Sept. 1957), 619-30; J. Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976). 35 E. Burke, Works, vol. 2, pp. 159-66 (speech to the electors of Bristol of 3 Nov. 1977); on the ambiguities of the concept of political representation in the French post-revolutionary debate see Pasquale Pasquino, 'E. J. Sieyes; la politique constitutionelle de la "commercial society" ', paper


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presented to the Political Theory Workshop, 'The Identity of Political Economy', Cambridge, July 84. 36 P. A. Gibbons, Ideas of Political Representation, p. 28. 37 Lord Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches, pp. 521-2 (speech of 16

Dec. 1831). 38 F. Jeffrey and H. Brougham, 'Parliamentary Reform', pp. 267-8. 39 J. Cannon, Parliamentary Reform, pp. 154-6. 40 W. Blackstone, Commentaries of the Law of England, 4 vols. (18th ed., London, 1829-54), vol. 1, pp. 146-89. 41 D. Stewart, Works, vol. 9, p. 445. 42 James Mill, 'Periodical Literature', p. 212; see also his letter to Brougham of 15 Sept. 1831 (Brougham Papers, U.C.L., 10.764), in A. Bain, James Mill, pp. 361-2; on Mill's views on the Lords see also his article 'Aristocracy', London Review, 2 (Jan. 1836), 283-306. 43 On Macaulay's increasing hostility towards the Lords see J. Hamburger, Macaulay and the Whig Tradition (Chicago, 1976), pp. 120-1. M. W. McCahill, Order and Equipoise: the Peerage and the House of Lords, 1783-1806

44 45

46 47 48

(London, 1978), suggests that the belief in the decline of the Lords was, at the very least, premature; see also D. Large, 'The Decline of the Party of the Crown and the Rise of Parties in the House of Lords, 1783-1837', English Historical Review, 78 (Oct. 1963), pp. 669-95. Lord Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches, pp. 485-6 (speech of 2nd March 1831). In order to compare this view with radical ideas of representation see M. W. Patterson, Sir Francis Burdett and his Times 1770-1844, 2 vols. (London, 1931); F. D. Cartwright, ed., Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright, 2 vols. (London, 1826); John Osborne, John Cartwright (Cambridge, 1972); N. C. Miller, 'John Cartwright and Radical Parliamentary Reform, 180819', English Historical Review, 83 (Oct. 1968), pp. 705-28; J. K. Buckley, Joseph Parkes of Birmingham (London, 1926). J. Mackintosh, 'Universal Suffrage', pp. 182-3. Lord Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches, p. 484 (speech of 2 March 1831). In a comparison between the wealth of Great Britain and that of Russia and Poland, for example, Macaulay wrote: 'It may be doubted whether there are not, in those countries, as many fortunes of eighty thousand a year as here. But are there as many fortunes of two thousand a year, or of one thousand a year? There are parishes in England which contain more people between three hundred and three thousand pounds a year than could be found in all the dominions of the Emperor Nicholas.' Lord Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to the 'Edinburgh Review', 2

vols. (London, 1856), vol. 1, p. 119. For a contemporary 'sociological' study of the middling ranks, see J. Wade, History of the Middle and Working Classes, with a Popular Exposition of the Economical and Political Principles which have Influenced the Past and Present Conditions of the Industrious Orders

(London, 1833). 49 See, for example, Asa Briggs, 'Middle-Class Consciousness in English

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50

51 52 53 54

55

56 57

58 59 60

61

Notes to pages 157-60 Politics, 1780-1846', Past and Present, 9 (April 1956), 65-74; 'The Language of Class in Early Nineteenth Century England*, in A. Briggs and J. Saville, eds., Essays in Labour History (London, I960); and also Francis Wilson, 'Public Opinion and the Middle Class', Review of Politics, 17 (Oct. 1955), 486-510. N. T. Phillipson, 'The Scottish Enlightenment', in L. Stone, ed., The University in Society, vol. 2; 'Lawyers, Landowners and the Civic Leadership of Post-Union Scotland', Juridical Review, 21 (1976), 97-120. See also pp. 171-5 below, in which it is suggested that, in the reviewers' analysis, the relation between 'civic virtue' and the middling ranks remained altogether rather problematic. T. de Quincey, 'The Present Cabinet in Relation to the Times', p. 149. Lord Macaulay, 'Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches, p. 505 (speech of 20 Sept. 1831); compare with B. Constant ElogedeRomilly', in Coursdepolitique constitutionelle, 4 vols. (Paris, 1818-20), vol. 4, pp. 5-74. Quoted in P. A. Gibbons, Ideas of Political Representation, p. 47. D. C. Moore, The Politics of Deference, pp. 416-^47. Although most historians would agree with Moore's general conclusions about the effects of the Bill, his reconstruction of social and political relations, and especially the notion of 'deference' have been criticised and disputed. See E. P. Hennock, 'The Sociological Premises of the First Reform Act: a Critical Note', Victorian Studies, 14 (1971), pp. 321-7, with a reply by D. C. Moore, in pp. 328-37; J. Cannon, Parliamentary Reform, pp. 246-50. See, for example, a letter of Grey to Brougham, of 28 Aug. 1830, in which he explains that, according to the government's experts, Brougham's plan would lead to the loss of 22 seats for the Whigs, instead of a gain of 44 which was Brougham's own calculation, in The Life and Times of Lord Brougham, vol. 3, p. 43. J. A. Roebuck, History of the Whig Ministry of 1830, vol. 1, p. 420. Sir Denis Le Marchant, ed., Memoir of John Charles, Viscount Althorp, Third Earl Spencer (London, 1876); C. S. Parker, Life and Letters of Sir James Graham, 2 vols. (London, 1907) (for Grey's instructions to the committee see vol. 1, pp. 114—22); Althorp's draft is discussed in C. W. New, Lord Durham. For a useful comparative table of the various proposals see M. Brock, The Great Reform Act, pp. 138-9. The Life and Times of Lord Brougham, vol. 3, p. 67. F. Jeffrey, 'Bentham, Principes de legislation par Dumonf, Edinburgh Review, 4 (April 1804), 1-26; see also H. Brougham, 'Bentham's Theory of Punishment", Edinburgh Review, 22 (Oct. 1813), 1-31; H. Brougham, 'Defence of Usury by Bentham', Edinburgh Review, 27 (Dec. 1816), 338-60; S. Romilly, 'Bentham on Codification', Edinburgh Review, 29 (Nov. 1817), 217-37. T. B. Macaulay, 'Mill's Essay on Government'. Utilitarian Logics and Polities', Edinburgh Review, 49 (March 1829), 159-89; 'Bentham's defence of Mill: Utilitarian System of Philosophy', Edinburgh Review, 49 (June 1829), 27399; 'Utilitarian Theory of Government, and "the Greatest Happiness Principle" ', Edinburgh Review, 50 (Oct. 1829) 100-24. The three articles


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are reprinted in Lord Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches, pp. 160225. 62 For the 'old' interpretation, see Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians, 3 vols. (London, 1900; L.S.E. reprint, 1950); E. Halevy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (London, 1928); repr. with a preface byj. Plamenatz, London 1972); compare with the recent D. Winch, 'The Case of Good Government: Philosophic Whigs Versus Philosophic Radicals', in That Noble Science of Politics, pp. 91-126. 63 J. Hamburger, Macaulay and the Whig Tradition, pp. 50 ff. 64 J. R. McCulloch, 'Ricardo's Political Economy', Edinburgh Review•, 30 (June 1818), 59-87. 65 Malthus to Sismondi, 12 March 1821, in P. Sraffa, ed., The Works of David Ricardo, vol. 8, p. 376. 66 J. Mill, 'Periodical Literature', p. 234. 67 James Mill, An Essay on Government, ed. by E. Barker (Cambridge, 1937); see also the ed. by C V. Shields (New York, 1955). 68 James Mill, The History of British India, 6 vols. (2nd ed., London, 1820). See also Walter Coulsom, 'Mill's British India', Edinburgh Review, 31 (Dec. 1818), 1^4. 69 D. Forbes, 'James Mill and India', Cambridge Journal, 5 (Oct. 1951), 1953. 70 See J. H. Burns, 'The Light of Reason: Philosophic History in the Two Mills'; and W. Thomas, 'James Mill's Science of Polities', in The Philosophic Radicals, pp. 95-146. 71 J. Hamburger, 'James Mill on Universal Suffrage and the Middle Class', Journal of Politics, 24 (Feb. 1962), 167-90; W. Thomas, 'James Mill's Politics: the Essay on Government and the Movement for Reform', Historical Journal, 12 (1969), 249-94; W. R. Carr, 'James Mill's Politics Reconsidered: Parliamentary Reform and the Triumph of Truth', Historical Journal, 14 (1971), 553-80; W. Thomas, 'James Mill's Politics: a Rejoinder', HistoricalJournal, 14 (1971) 735-90; W. R. Carr, 'James Mill's Politics: a Final Word', Historical Journal, 15 (1972), 315-20. J. Lively and J. Rees, eds., Utilitarian Logic and Politics (Oxford, 1978). See also J. H. Burns, 'John Stuart Mill and Democracy, 1829-61', Political Studies 5 (June-Oct. 1957), pp. 158-75, 281-94. 72 W. Thomas, 'James Mill's Politics: the Essay on Government"', p. 249. 7 3 The current reference is to a letter from Mill to Napier, 10 Sept. 1819 (BL Add.MSS. 34.612, fol. 287) in which Mill declared his intention to say 'nothing capable of alarming even a Whig'; see W. Thomas, 'James Mill's Politics: the Essay on Government', p. 257, footnote 50; and also J. Hamburger, 'James Mill on Universal Suffrage', pp. 170-1. 74 W. Thomas, 'James Mill's Politics: the Essay on Government', p. 256. 75 Such is, for example, W. R. Carr's position. See his 'James Mill's Politics Reconsidered'. 76 James Mill, Essay on Government, ed. E. Barker (Cambridge, 1937), pp. 48-9; 'The Ballot', Westminster Review, 13 (July 1830), 1-39; W. Thomas, 'James Mill's Politics: the Essay on Government\ pp. 280-1.

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11 Lord Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches, p. 179. Compare for example Mill's statement that: 'We have likewise seen, that when a few men have power given them over others, they will make use of it exactly for the same ends, and to the same extent, as the one man. It equally follows, that, if a small number of men have the choice of the Representatives, such Representatives will be chosen as will promote the interests of that small number, by reducing, if possible, the rest of the community to the abject and helpless slaves of their will. . . When we say the Few, it is seen that, in this case, it is of no importance whether we mean a few hundreds, or a few thousands, or even many thousands. The operation of the sinister interest is the same.' With his argument that the interests of the lower orders will be adequately represented by the middling ranks: 'There can be no doubt that the middle rank, which gives to science, to art and to legislation itself, their most distinguished ornaments, the chief source of all that had exalted and refined human nature, is that portion of the community of which, if the basis of Representation were ever so far extended [i.e. if there were universal suffrage], the opinion would ultimately decide. Of the people beneath them, a vast majority would be sure to be guided by their advice and example.'James Mill, Essay on Government, pp. 44, 72. 78 Lord Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches, pp. 179-80. 79 Ibid., p. 182. 80 J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, 1 vols. (Edinburgh, 1837); H. J. C. Grierson, ed., Letters of Walter Scott, 12 vols. (Centenary ed. London, 1932-7); Arthur Melville Clark, Sir Walter Scott:the Formative Years (Edinburgh, 1969). 81 D. Forbes, 'The Rationalism of Sir Walter Scott'; Peter D. Garside, 'Scott and the "Philosophical Historians" '. 82 W. Scott, The Visionary (Edinburgh 1819). See also C. Brinton, The Political Ideas of the English Romanticists (Oxford, 1926), pp. 108-22. 83 W. Scott, The Visionary, p. 22. 84 Ibid., pp. 22-3. 85 Ibid., p. 35. 86 Ibid., pp. 4 ^ 5 . 87 Ibid., pp. 47-8. 88 Ibid., p. 50. 89 J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. 7, pp. 265-7. 90 Ibid., p. 269. 91 On the historical significance of Scott's historical novels, see E. Muir, Scott and Scotland, the Predicament ofthe Scottish Writer (London, 1936); F. R. Hart, Scott's Novels, the Plotting of Historical Survival (Charlottesville, 1966); R C. Gordon, Under which King? A Study of Scott's Waverley Novels (London, 1969); J. Anderson, 'Sir Walter Scott as a Historical Novelist', Studies in Scottish Literature, 4 (July 1966-April 1967), 29-41, 63-78, 155-78; 5 (July 1967-Jan. 1968), 14-27, 83-97,143-66; J. H. Raleigh, 'What Scott Meant


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to Victorians', Victorian Studies, 7 (Sept. 1963), 7-34. On the reviewing of Scott's novels in the 19th century see J. O. Hayden, ed., Scott, the Critical Heritage (London, 1970). 92 On Mill's article see A. Bain, James Mill, pp. 264-85. Compare with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'Remarks on the Present Mode of Conducting Critical Journals', in Biographia Literaria (London, 1965; 1st ed. 1817), pp. 237-45. See also G. L. Nesbitt, Benthamite Reviewing: the First Twelve Years of the Westminster Review' (New York, 1934). 93 3 vols. (2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1819). See also Andrew Lang, The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, 2 vols. (London, 1897). 94 J. G. Lockhart, Peters Letters, vol. 3, p. 147. 95 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 212. 96 M. T. Sadler, The Law of Population, 2 vols. (London, 1830); A Refutation;of an Article in the 'Edinburgh Review* Entitled 'Sadler's Law of Population, and DisproofofHuman Superfecundity (London, 1830); T. B. Macaulay, 'Sadler's Law ofPopulation, and DisproofofHuman Superfecundity"', Edinburgh Review, 51 (July 1830), 297-321; 'Sadler's Refutation Refuted', Edinburgh Review, 52 (Jan. 1831), 504-29. 97 R B. Seeley, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Michael Thomas Sadler (London, 1842); M. T. Sadler, Ireland: its Evils, and their Remedies (London, 1828). 98 W. Paley, Natural Theology, Evidences ofthe Existence and Attributes ofthe Deity (1st ed., 1802), ed. by H. Brougham and C. Bell, 4 vols. (London, 1836-9). 99 John Wilson ['Christopher North'], 'Mr Sadler and the Edinburgh Reviewer', Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 29 (Feb. 1831), 392-^428. On John Wilson and the Blackwood's see also F. W. Fetter, 'The Economic Articles in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1817-1825", Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 7 (I960), 85-107, 213-31. 100 T. Pinney, ed., The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay, 6 vols. (Cambridge, 1974), vol. 1, pp. 318-19 (Macaulay to Napier, 12 Feb. 1831). 101 R Mitchison 'The Making of the Old Scottish Poor Law', Past and Present, 63 (1974), 58-93; 'The Movements of Scottish Corn Prices in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', Economic History Review, 2nd series, 18 (1965), 278-91; J. Lindsay, The Scottish Poor Law (Ilfracombe, 1975); N. T. Phillipson and R. Mitchison, eds., Scotland in the Age ofImprovement, Essays in Scottish History in the 18th Century (Edinburgh, 1970). 102 Compare this view with the one expressed in Emmanuel J. Sieves, Qu 'est-ce que le tiers etat?, ed. R. Zapperi (Geneva, 1970). 103 See the two articles by McCulloch: 'Effects of Machinery and Accumulation', Edinburgh Review, 35 (March 1821), 102-23; 'Commercial Revulsions', Edinburgh Review, 44 0une 1826), 70-93. 104 The term became famous with Thomas Carlyle's Past and Present (London, 1843). 105 For a survey and discussion of this question see S. Hollander, The Economics of David Ricardo, 'Capital, Employment and Growth', pp. 308-411. 106 The term has been used by N. T. Phillipson to designate the ideal of the

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113 114 115 116 117 118 119

120 121 122

123 124

Notes to pages 173-8 Scottish urban elites in the age of the Enlightenment. See his 'The Scottish Enlightenment' and 'Culture and Society in the Eighteenth Century Province'. F. Jeffrey, 'Mad. de Stael- sur la Literature' [sic] Edinburgh Review, 21, (Feb. 1813), 1-50. A review of Germaine de Stael, De la litterature, consideree dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, in Oeuvres completes, vol. 4. F. Jeffrey, 'Mad. de Stael - sur la Literature', p. 9. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 23. Thomas Carlyle, 'Signs of the Times', Edinburgh Review, 49 (June 1829), 439-59; repr. in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, 7 vols. (London, 1869; 1st ed., 1839), vol. 2, pp. 230-52. See alsoj. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle: a History of the First Forty Years of his Life, 1795-1835, 4 vols. (London, 1882, 1884). Ian Campbell, Thomas Carlyle (London, 1974) gives fuller information about Carlyle's life in Scotland. T. Carlyle, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, vol. 2, pp. 233-4. Ibid., p. 235. Ibid., p. 237. John Clubbe, ed., Froude's Life of Carlyle (London, 1979), pp. 227-62. T. Pinney, The Letters of T. B. Macaulay, vol. 2, p. 113 footnote 3. T. Carlyle, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, vol. 2, p. 232-3. Robert Southey, Sir Thomas More, or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, 2 vols. (London, 1829). See also R. Southey, Essays, Moral and Political, 2 vols. (London, 1832); C. C. Southey, ed., The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols. (London, 1849-50); G. D. Carnall, Robert Southey and his Age- The Development of a Conservative Mind(Oxford, I960). Macaulay's review, 'Southey's Colloquies on Society ' Edinburgh Review, 50 (Jan. 1830), pp. 528-65), is reprinted in Critical and Historical Essays, 2 vols. (London, 1856), pp. 98-121. On Burke and the Lake Poets see A. Cobban, Edmund Burke and the Revolt against the Eighteenth Century (2nd ed., London, I960). Lord Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays ,vol. 1, p. 105. Ibid., pp. 120-1; similarly, commenting on the necessity for a reform of the penal law, he observed: 'Can there be a stronger contrast than that which exists between the beauty, the completeness, the speed, the precision with which every process is performed in our factories, and the awkwardness, the rudeness, the slowness, the uncertainty of the apparatus by which offences are punished and rights vindicated?' Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches, p. 479 (speech of 5 July 1831). J. Burrow, A Liberal Descent, p. 60. ' "All wealth", says [Mr Southey], "was tangible and real till paper currency was introduced." Now, was there ever, since men emerged from a state of utter barbarism, an age in which there were no debts? Is not a debt, while the solvency of the debtor is undoubted, always reckoned as part of the wealth of the creditor? Yet is it tangible and real wealth? Does it cease to be wealth, because there is the security of a written ac-


227

knowledgement for it? And what else is paper currency? Did Mr Southey ever read a banknote?' Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays, vol. 1, p. 106. 125 Ibid., p. 121. 126 See Lord Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches ,pp. 623-30 (speech of 3 May 1842) where Macaulay used the same arguments he had employed in 1832 to support the Reform Bill to reject the People's Charter in 1842. Conclusion 1 The precise content of the notion of 'liberalism' is in fact increasingly blurred. See the classic studies Harold J. Laski, The Rise of European Liberalism (London, 1962; first published 1936), and Guido de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism, trans, by R G. Collingwood (Oxford, 1927); and compare with the recent Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford, 1969); John Dunn, Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future (Cambridge, 1979), chapter 2, 'Liberalism', pp. 28-54; Anthony Arblaster, The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism (Oxford, 1984). 2 J. Burrow, 'Sense and Circumstances: Bagehot and the Nature of Political Understanding', in That Noble Science of Politics, pp. 161-81.

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Unpublished papers and dissertations Barazzone, Esther Lynn. 'Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832): the Political Philosopher', Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1981. Buckingham, Leroy H. 'The Authorship of the First Twenty-Five Numbers of the Edinburgh Review, 1802-1808', Yale Doctoral Dissertation, 1938. Claeys, Gregory. 'Owenism in the Mirror of Political Economy: Progressive Primitivism and the Transformation of "Moral Economy" in Early British Socialism, 1815-50', Paper presented to the Political Theory Workshop, 'The Identity of Political Economy: Political Economy between Utopia and the Critique of Civilization' (Cambridge, July 1984). Corsi, Pietro. 'The Foundation of Political Economy in Oxford: Copleston, Whateley, Nassau Senior and the Reshaping of Dugald Stewart's Methodology', Seminar paper, 1982. Fontana, Biancamaria. 'Democracy and Civilization: John Stuart Mill and the Critique of Political Economy', Paper presented to the Political Theory Workshop, 'The Identity of Political Economy' (Cambridge, July 1984). Goldman, Laurence. 'The Origins of British Sociology: Political Economy, Natural Science and Statistics, 1830-1835', Seminar paper, 1982. Haakonssen, Knud. 'Natural Justice: the Development of a Critical Philosophy of Law from David Hume and Adam Smith to John Millar and John Craig', Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1978. Pasquino, Pasquale. 'Emmanuel Sieyes: la politique constitutionelle de la "commercial society" ', Paper presented to the Political Theory Workshop, 'The Identity of Political Economy' (Cambridge, July 1984). Phillipson, N. T. 'The Scottish Whigs and the Reform of the Court of Session', Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1967. Rendall, Jane L. 'The Political Ideas and Activities of Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832): a Study in Whiggism between 1789 and 1832', Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1971. Vogel, Ursula: 'The Dismal Science, the Romantic Critique of Political Economy', Paper presented to the Political Theory Workshop, 'The Identity of Political Economy' (Cambridge, July 1984).

Index

Academy of Physics, Edinburgh, 3, 115 Acaster, E. J. T., 200 Account of the Life and Writings of Adam

Smith, 28, 42, 73 Acworth, A. W., 217 Adelman, Paul, 205 Alatri, Paolo, 194 Alison, Rev. John, 30 All Talents, Ministry of, 117, 127, 128 Allen, John, 195 Althorp, John Charles, Viscount, 222 Anderson, James, 74, 224 Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, 27

Arblaster, Anthony, 227 Arbuthnot, Mrs Harriet, 218 Aspinall, George, 135, 196, 215, 217, 219 assignats, 31

Bacon, Francis, 81, 89, 99, 208 Bagehot, Walter, 113, 184, 186-7, 210, 227 Bailly, Jean Silvain, 26 Bain, Alexander, 187, 203, 209, 217, 220-1, 225 Bamford, E., 218 Bank of England, 35, 57-9, 118-20, 122 Barazzone, Esther Lynn, 188, 191 Barere de Vieuzac, Bertrand, 29 Baring, Alexander, 128, 215 Barker, E., 223 Barnes, D. G., 199 Barrington, D., 193 Barruel, Augustin, 20 Bastid, Paul, 194, 196 Beattie, James, 83 Beccaria, Cesare Bonesana, Marquis of, 29 Bedford, John Russell, Duke of, 134 Beer, S. H., 220 Bell, Alan, 187 Bell, C , 225

Bellot, Hale H., 209 Ben-Israel, Hedva, 15, 22, 190, 194 Bentham, Jeremy, 4, 83, 86, 92-3, 102-4, 117, 150, 160-1,207-9, 219, 222 Berg, Maxine, 217 Berkeley, George, 86 Berlin, Isaiah, 227 Birley, R., 220 Blackstone, Sir William, 154, 221 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 157, 170 Bladen, V. W., 204 Blaug, Mark, 186, 205 Board of Trade, 105, 144 'Bob Bubblegoose', 166-7 Bolingbroke, Henry St John, Viscount, 149, 219 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 12-14, 31, 339, 88, 133 Bonar, James, 200 Bongie, Lawrence L., 190 Bonno, G., 196 Book of Fallacies, 92

BosherJ. F., 194 Bourbons, 12, 15, 36-8, 135 Bourne, Kenneth, vii, 198 Bowie, J. E., 219 Brady, A., 209 Brewer, John, 192, 220 Briggs, Asa, 218, 221-2 Brinton, Crane, 189 Britain Independent of Commerce, 128 British Critic, 56

Brock, M. G., 218, 220, 222 Brougham and Vaux, Henry, Lord, 3-4, 6-7, 13, 15-16, 24, 26, 36, 38, 40, 53, 59-68, 78, 87, 89, 94, 106, 110, 112-15, 117, 124, 126-7, 13040, 144, 147-9, 151, 157, 159-60, 171, 182, 190-1, 194, 196, 201-3, 206, 210, 213, 215-16, 218-22, 225 Brown, Lucy, 218 Brown, P. A., 189 Brown, Thomas, 47, 91-2, 207

249

250

Index

Buchanan, David, 70-3, 203, 210 Buckingham, George Grenville, Marquis of, 37 Buckingham, Leroy H., 186 Buckley, J. K., 221 Buddie Atkinson, R. H. M., 187, 190, 201, 210 Bullion Report, 118-25 Bulloch,J., 207 Burdett, Sir Francis, 135-6, 221 Burke, Edmund, 12, 15-16, 25-8, 30, 32, 42, 45, 63, 98, 112, 149, 152-4, 177, 190, 194,219-20, 226 Burleigh, J. H. S., 207 Burns, James H., viii, 209, 223 Burrow, John, 13, 149, 184, 186, 190, 199, 219, 226-7 Butler, J. R. M., 218-20 Butterfield, H., 220 Buxton, Sydney, 196, 218 Cairnes, John E., 208 Calthorpe, Lord, 106 Campbell, George, 101 Campbell, Ian, 226 Campbell, R. H., 188,209 Campomanes, Pedro Rodriguez de, 29 Canard, Francois-Nicholas, 48, 53^£ Cannan, E., 212-14 Canning, George, 22, 120-3, 127, 135 Cannon, J., 218, 221-2 Carlyle, Thomas, 175-6, 225-6 Carnall, G. D., 226 Carr, W. R., 223 Carnot, Lazare Nicholas, 12, 36 Cartwright, F. D., 221 Cartwright, John, 221 Casanova, Robert, 192 Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Viscount, 130-1 Chalmers, Thomas, 8, 198, 218 Chaptal, Jean Antoine, 39, 196 Charles I, 12 Checkland, E. O. A., 218 Checkland, S. G., 205, 218 Chenevix, Richard, 207 Christian, William, 191 Christie, O. F., 218 Claeys, Gregory, 189, 217 Clapham, Sir John, 212 Clark, Arthur Melville, 224 Clephane, Andrew, 201 Cliffe Leslie, T. E., 205 Clive, John, 3, 113, 186-8, 210, 219 Clubbe, John 226 Coats, A. W., 205 Cobban, Alfred, 189, 226

Cobbett, William, 128-9, 216 Cochrane, Lord, 135 Cockburn, Henry, Lord, 5-6, 186-90, 208, 210, 219 Colbertism, 14, 69, 108 Cole, G. D. H., 216 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 102-4, 209, 225 Collingwood, R. G., 227 Collini, Stefan, 186, 199 Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, 176, 178

Combination Laws, 142-3, 218 Commerce Defended, 128 Compte Rendu, 15, 20, 31

Comte, Auguste, 19, 103 Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de, 86, 88, 101 Condorcet, Jean-Antoine Caritat, Marquis of, 11, 15, 20-1, 47, 104, 173, 190, 197 Cone, C. B., 192 Conjectural history, 7, 14, 17, 19, 23, 162, 173 Constable, Archibald, 4 Constable, Thomas, 187 Constant de Rebecque, Benjamin, 5, 33-6, 195, 222 Constitutional History, 22

Continental Blockade, 39 Copinger, W. A., 186 Copleston, Edward, Bishop of Llandaff, 205, 209 Corn Laws, 52, 54-6, 75, 135, 139-40 Corry, B. A., 212 Corsi, Pietro, 80, 205, 209 Coulsom, Walter, 223 Country Party, 12, 27 Cousin, Victor, 207 Craig, Joh, 197 Creevey, Thomas, 202, 217 'Crotchet, Mr', 1 Crouzet, F. M. J., 215 Currie, W. W., 187, 202 Curwen, John Christian, 154 D'Alembert, Jean, 99 Darlington, William Henry Vane, Earl of, 135 Darwin, Erasmus, 86 Davenport, Edward, 145 Davie, George Elder, 83, 95, 206-8, 210 Deane, Phyllis, 205 De Broglie, Duke of, 40 De la litterature, 95, 173 De la richesse commerciale, 70 De I'Allemagne, 90

Index De I'esprit de conquete et de I'usurpation,

34-5

De lfIndustrie francoise, 39 De I'influence des philosophes, 21

De Quincey, Thomas, 157, 219, 222 Descartes, Rene, 91 de Serre, Law, 38 de Stael-Holstein, Anne Louise Germaine Necker, 31, 33, 90, 95, 1 7 3 ^ , 195, 207-8, 226 Dicey, A. V., 219 Dickinson, William K., 187 Discourse on Political Economy, 105-7, 110 Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, 82, 89 Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical and Political Philosophy, 90

D'lvernois, Francis, 213 Doyle, W., 194 Drummond, A. L., 207 Duguit, Leon, 194 Dumont, Etienne, 160 Duncannon, John William Ponsonby, Viscount, 159 Dundas, Henry, 11 Dunn, John M., viii, 227 Durham, John George Lambton, Lord, 150, 159, 220, 222 Economist, French Economists, see : Physiocracy Economists Refuted, The, 128

Eden, Sir F. M., 200 Edinburgh Bar, 3, 115 Edinburgh Weekly Journal, 165

Egret, Jean, 193-4 Elements of the Philosophy of Human

Mind, 11, 81, 85, 100, 104 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 148, 161

Erskine, Thomas, 11 Essay on Government, 4 3 , 160, 162-3, 165 Essay on the Overgrowth of the Metropolis,

48-9, 153 Essay on the Principle of Population, 55,

71, 110, 170 Faure, Edgard, 195 Fennessy, R. R., 192 Ferdinand VII of Spain, 135 Ferguson, Adam, 4, 27, 194 Ferrier, James, 90 Fetter, Frank Whitson, 186, 198, 200, 202, 204-5, 211-14, 225 Financial Reform, 144

Flanagan, T., 189 Flew, A., 203

251

Flynn, Philip, 186 Fontana, B., 189 Foord, A., 211 Forbes, Duncan, 21, 187-8, 190-1, 193-4, 223-14 Fox, Charles James, 12, 15, 26, 61, 63, 89, 92, 117, 158, 211, 220 Fox, Henry Edward, 4th Baron Holland, 148 Fox, Henry Richard Vassal, 3rd Baron Holland, 6, 63, 87, 113, 116, 127, 148, 191, 195 Froude, J. A., 226 Galpin, W. F., 199 Ganilh, Charles, 72, 203 Gamier, Germain, 47, 69-70 Garratt, G. T., 218-19 Garrett, Clarke, 192 Garside, Peter D., 193, 224 Gash, Norman, 196, 218 Geggus, D., 201 Gibbons, P. A., 220-2 Gilbert's Act, 143 Girondins, 33 Glasgow University, 5 Godechot, Jacques, 193-4 Godwin, William, 19, 56, 93, 192, 200 Goldman, Lawrence, 205 Gomel, Charles, 194 Gordon, R. C, 224 Gouhier, Henri, 192 Graham, Sir James Robert George, 159, 222 Green, T. H., 194 Greenfield, William, 214 Greig, J. A., 186 Grenville, Lord Richard, 116, 119 Gretton, R. H., 219 Grey, Charles, Earl, 132, 135, 150, 158, 218, 220-1 Grierson, H. J. C, 224 Griggs, Irwin, 186 Grose, T. H., 194 Grote, George, 209 Growth of Philosophical Radicalism, The, 2

Gurner, Shirley M., 191 Gunn, J. A., 197 Gwynne, G. E., 195 Haakonssen, Knud, 197 Halevy, Elie, 2, 192, 223 Hallam, Henry, 22 Hamburger, Joseph, 151, 188, 190, 194, 220-1, 223 Hamilton, Sir William, 90, 187, 207

252

Index

Harding, W., 220 Hargreaves, E. L., 217 Harris, Robert D., 195 Harrison, Frederic, 205 Harrison, Ross, 207 Harsin Paul, 192 Hart, F. R., 224 Hawes, Frances, 218 HaydenJ. O., 189, 225 Heathfield, Richard, 137 Hecksher, E., 215 Helvetius, Claude-Adrien, 86 Hicks, J. R., 200 Hicks-Beach, Michael, 3 Hilton, Boyd, viii, 125, 189, 214, 218

Jackson, G. A., 187, 190, 201, 210 Jacobinism, 11, 14, 16, 18-20, 26, 31-2, 37, 85, 88, 117, 136 James, C. L. R., 201 James, Michael, 192 James, Patricia, 199, 204 Jardine, George, 5 Jeffrey, Francis, Lord, 3-4, 6-8, 1314, 16, 21, 24, 26, 28, 37, 45, 52, 61, 67, 82, 87-9, 91, 93, 95, 115, 126, 129, 147-8, 165, 170, 173-6, 184, 187, 190-6, 206-8, 211, 21617, 219, 226 Jones, Richard, 80, 205

History History History History

Kames, Henry Home, Lord, 4, 24 Kant, Immanuel, 83, 86, 90-2, 207 Kennedy, W., 217 Kern, John D., 186 Kerr, Prue, 217 Kettler, David, 194 Keynes, John Neville, 208 King, Peter, Lord, 57, 118-19, 200 King's College, Aberdeen, 5 Kinnaird, George William Fox, Lord, 116 Kinnordy Papers, vii, 198 Knorr, K. E., 201 Koot, Gerard M., 205 Kramnick, I., 190, 192, 219 Kriegel, A. D., 218

of British India, 162 of England, 23 of France, 13, 29, 37 of James II, 12, 89

Hoeveler, J. E. Jr, 207 Holland House, 6, 15, 19 Holland, Saba, Lady, 148, 187, 191, 219 Hollander, Samuel Jacob, 80, 195, 200, 205, 214, 225 Holmes, Stephen, 192 Hont, Istvan, viii, 188-91, 203 Hope-Jones, A., 217 Home Tooke, John, 209 Horner, Francis, vii, 3-4, 6-8, 13, 16, 26, 36-7, 47-61, 63, 65, 67, 70-1, 74, 87, 89-90, 112-27, 153, 171, 182, 186-8, 190, 195-200, 202, 204, 207, 211-15, 217 Horner, Leonard, 186, 198 Houghton, W., 186 Hume, David, 2, 4-5, 9, 13-14, 17, 23^4, 26-7, 29, 41, 79, 83, 86, 88-91, 9 3 ^ , 112, 170, 193-4, 214 Huskisson, William, 105, 119-23, 214 Hutcheson, Francis, 93 Hutchinson, T. W., 205 Ignatieff, Michael, 188-91 Ilchester, Earl of, 188 Imlah, A. H., 217 Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of European Powers, 6 0 - 3 , 68, 78, 126 Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth, 65-4, 66-7 Inquiry into the Nature of Paper Credit, 57 Inquiry into the State of the Nation at the Commencement of the Present Administration, 127 Inquiry into the Taxation and Commercial Policy of Great Britain, 71-2

La Fayette, Marie Joseph du Motier, Marquis of, 195 Lang, Andrew, 225 Laplace, Pierre Simon de, 21 Large, D., 221 Laski, Harold J., 227 Lauderdale, James Maitland, Earl of, 53, 59, 63-8, 71, 125, 199, 202-3 Lavoisier, Charles, 21 Law, Edward, Baron Ellenborough, 218 Law of Population, 170

Leavis, F. R., 209 Lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations, 16

Lefevre, John, 209 Lehmann, William C , 188, 190 Leibnitz, G. W. von, 91, 101 Le Marchant, Sir Denis, 218, 222 Letters of Crito, 43 Life of Dr Robertson, 24 Life of Napoleon, 21-2 Life of Reid, 95

Lincoln, A. H., 192 Lindsay, J., 225

Index Link, R. G., 217 Literary Journal, 6 1 , 64

Littleton, E. J., Baron Hatherton, 218 Lively, Jack, 223 Loch, James, 201 Locke, Don, 192 Locke, John, 109, 208 Lockhart, John Gibson, 169, 187, 224-5 Longmans, publishers, 4 Louis XIV, 18 Louis XVI, 12, 15, 23, 47, 69 Louis XVIII, 36 Louis Philippe, 38 Lucas, Paul, 193 Mably,- Gabriel Bonnot de, 20 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 6, 13, 29, 34, 37, 43, 92, 102, 147-51, 154-6, 158, 160, 162-4, 170-1, 175-7, 184, 190, 1 9 3 ^ , 207, 21927 McCahill, M. W., 221 McCleary, G. F., 200 McCosh, James, 90, 207 McCulloch, John Ramsay, 6, 8, 3940, 60, 69, 72-6, 105-10, 140-5, 161, 198, 204, 209-10, 218, 223, 225 McKenzie, Lionel A., 191 Mackie, T., 188 Mackintosh, Sir James, 5-7, 12-13, 16-18, 25-6, 31, 35-6, 41, 61, 64, 70, 74, 81-3, 89-94, 150, 155, 182, 188, 190-4, 196-7, 204, 206-8, 219-21 'McQuedy, Mr', 1 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 2, 8, 34-6, 55-6, 70-1, 80, 110, 128, 132, 1401, 161, 170, 172, 195, 198-9, 2034, 214, 216-17, 223 Marat, Jean Paul, 12 de Marchi, Neil, 80, 205 Marx, Karl, 9 Mauduit, R., 192 Maxwell, H., 202, 210, 218 Meek, R. L., 205 Meikle, H. W., 189 Melbourne, William Lamb, Viscount, 72 Mellon, Stanley, 191 Memoir of Duglad Stewart, 96 Memoirs of the Life of Lord Jeffrey, 6

Mercantilism, 61-2, 69, 73, 107 Mill, James, 2, 4, 8, 43, 55, 60-2, 648, 80, 92, 102-3, 105, 115, 128-9, 132, 136-7, 151, 160-5, 168-9,

25 3

199, 201-3, 209, 213-14, 216-17, 219-25 Mill, John, Stuart, 21, 77, 80, 96, 989, 102^, 109, 181, 184, 193, 2045, 208-10 Millar, John, 4-5, 14, 17, 2 3 ^ , 27, 42-3, 45, 63, 82, 108, 112, 156, 198, 112, 156, 188, 190, 194, 197, 206 Miller, N. C, 221 Miller, W. L., 205 Milton, Charles Fitzwilliams, Lord, 106 Milton-Smith, J., 220 Minerbi, Marco, 203 Minto, Elliott Gilbert, Earl of, 106 Mirabeau, Honore-Gabriel Riquetti, Count of, 29, 195 Mitchell, Austin, 211, 219 Mitchell, Leslie G., 188, 190, 192-3 Mitchison, Rosalind, 225 Monnier, Henry, 194 Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat, 19, 26 Montlosier, Robert de, 19, 192 Moore, David, 158, 218, 222 Morellet, Andre, 47, 197 Morgan, E. V., 211 Morning Chronicle, 105

Morrell,J. B., 192 Mounier, Jean-Joseph, 21, 193, 206 Muir, E., 224 Murray, David, 197 Murray, John Archibald, 119, 211 Namier, Sir Lewis, 220 Napier, Macvey, 4, 148, 161, 187, 170, 219, 225 Nares, Robert, 56 National Assembly (of France), 12, 21, 23, 26, 30-1, 143 Natural Theology, 170

Necker, Jacques, 14-15, 20, 29, 31, 195 Nesbitt, G. L., 187, 225 New, Chester W., 215, 220, 222 Newton, Isaac, 23, 81, 84, 89, 100, 208 Notes on my Progress in Studying the System of the Economists, 48-9, 56

O'Brien, C. Cruise, 190 O'Brien, D. P., 75, 188, 204-5, 209, 218 O'Connor, Arthur Condorcet, 213 O'Gorman, F., 189, 191 Olson, Richard, 209

254

Index

Omond, G. W. T., 219 Optics, 84

Orders in Council, 124, 127, 130-3 Ortiz, Jose Alonso, 47 Osborn, A. M., 192 Osborne, John W., 216, 221 Owen, Robert, 210 Paine, Thomas, 19, 213 Paley, William, 93, 170, 225 Palgrave, R. H. L, 203 Parel, A., 189 Pares, R., 196 Parker, C. S., 222 Parkes, Joseph, 221 Parnell, Henry, 144, 213 Pasquino, Pasquale, 220 Passmore, J. A., 192 Patterson, M. W., 221 Peacock, Thomas Love, 1, 109, 188, 210, 215 Peake, C. F., 200 Pearl, M. L., 216 Pearson, Hesketh, 187 Peel, Sir Robert, 6 Peltier, Jean Gabriel, 12 Peter's Letters to his Kinfolk, 169

Petty-Fitzmaurice, Lord Henry, Marquis Lansdown, 116, 127, 147 Phillipson, Nicholas T., 83, 157, 1879, 206, 222, 225 Philosophical Essays, 82

Physiocracy, 14, 19, 29, 46, 48-50, 53-4, 61-2, 64-5, 67, 73-4, 100, 107,129 Pinkney, David H., 196 Pinney, T., 225-6 Pitt, William, 7, 43, 54, 63, 67, 115, 118, 127, 144 Place, Francis, 135-6, 217 Plamenatz, J., 223 Plan of Parliamentary Reform, 150

Pocock, John, 25, 189, 192-3, 219 Political Register, 128

Ponsonby, John, Baron, 136 Poor Laws, 56, 142-4, 171, 218 Porritt, Anne, 220 Porritt, Edward, 220 Porter, Roy, 188 Priestley, Joseph, 19-20, 86-7 Principes d'e'conomie politique, 5 3 Principles of Legislation, 160 Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 72, 74^7, 80, 137, 161 Principles of Political Economy, and their Application to Social Philosophy, 104 Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the

Religions and Governments of Europe, 20 Property (Income) Tax, 124, 137 Quarterly Review, 4, 22, 120-1, 161, 169 Quesnay, Francois, 14, 29, 5 0 - 1 , 97, 108 Raleigh, J. H., 224 Ramsay, Allan, 3 Reddie, James, 47 Rees,J., 223 Reflections on the Revolution in France,

12, 26-8, 30, 32 Reid, Stuart, J., 187, 220 Reid, Thomas, 5, 82, 86, 88, 91-2, 94, 206-8 Reisman, D. A., 200 Reitzel, W., 216 Rendall, Jane L. 188 Robespierre, Maximilien, 12, 23 Ricardo, David, 2, 8, 60, 70, 72, 747, 80, 105, 122, 136-7, 144, 161, 187, 189, 200, 205, 212-14, 217, 223, 225 Ricardo Memorial Lectures, 105-6 Robbins, Caroline, 190 Robbins, Lionel, 204, 208 Roberts, Michael, 191, 211 Robertson, William, 24, 82 Robison, John, 20, 192 Robson, J. M., 204-5, 208-9 Roebuck, John Arthur, 151, 220, 222 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 158, 222 Roper, Derek, 186 Rose, George, 1 2 3 ^ , 130 Rosen, F., 200 Roseveare, Henry, 196 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 19-21, 85 Rubini, D., 190 de Ruggiero, Guido, 227 Russell, Lord John, 106, 150, 159, 195, 220 Russell, R., 220 Ryan, Alan, 192 Sabine, B. E. V., 217 Sack, James J., 191, 211 Sadler, Michael Thomas, 170, 225 St John-Stevas, Norman, 186 Saint-Simon, Henry, 19 Sambrook, James, 216 Sanders, L. C, 188, 192 SavilleJ., 222 Say, Jean Baptiste, 70, 80, 141, 203, 205

Index Schneider, Elisabeth, 186 Schumpeter, Joseph A., 186 Schuyler, R. L., 201 Scotsman, The, 72, 75

Scott, Sir Walter, 4, 15, 21-2, 160, 164-9, 191, 194, 206, 224-5 Scottish Faculty of Advocates, 4, 146 Secret Societies, 20-1 See, H., 192 Seely, R. B., 225 Select Society, Edinburgh, 3 Seligman, E. R. A., 217 Semmel, Bernard, 201 Senior, Nassau William, 205, 208-9 Sharp, Richard, 55 Shennan, J. H., 194 Sheperd, Christine, 209 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 63, 158 Shields, C. V., 223 Shklar, Judith N., 189 Shoup, C P., 204, 217 Siedentop, Larry, 192 Sieves, Joseph E., 220 Silberling, N. J., 211 Silberner, E., 215 Simond, Louis, 38-9, 196 de Sismondi, Jean-Charles Simond, 70, 80, 141, 161, 203, 205, 223 Skinner, A. S., 187-9, 191, 197, 209 Smart, William, 199, 212-13 Smiles, Samuel, 187 Smith, Adam, 2-4, 9, 13-14, 16-17, 23-4, 29, 41, 46-8, 50-5, 58-62, 64, 66-80, 94, 97, 103-4, 108, 1289, 132, 137, 140, 156, 168, 172, 181, 188, 191, 198-9, 201-4, 214 Smith Nowell C, 187, 200-1, 207-8, 218 Smith, Sydney, 3, 5, 7, 31, 56, 64, 87-9, 92, 94, 145, 148, 191, 194, 200,206-7 Smyth, R. L., 205 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 106 Society of the Friends of the People, 43, 150 Southey, C. C, 226 Southey, Robert, 176-8, 226-7 Southgate, Donald, 210, 218 Speculative Society, Edinburgh, 3, 48, 115 Spence, William, 128-30, 216 Spencer, John, Lord Althorp, 144 Sraffa, Piero, 187, 198, 205, 223 States General, 12, 17, 22, 30 Stedman Jones, Gareth, viii Stephen, Leslie, 223

255

Stewart, Dugald, 4, 7, 11, 14, 17, 21, 24, 26, 29-31, 42-5, 48-9, 51-2, 54, 56, 59-61, 63, 65, 67, 7 3 ^ , 76, 79-109, 112-13, 117, 125-7, 13941, 143-4, 154, 156-7, 162, 168, 176, 178, 181-2, 188-91, 194-5, 197, 199, 201, 204-10, 215, 21718, 221 Stone, Lawrence, 187-8, 222 Stourm, Rene, 194 Stuart, Sir James, 97 Sturges, R. P., 205 Sur les colonies, 63 System of Logic A, 102-3 Systemes d'economie politique, 72

Talleyrand-Periord, Charles Maurice de, 63, 201 Taylor, J. P., 196 Taylor, William B., vii Teich, M., 188 That Noble Science of Politics, 3 Theory of Moral Sentiments, 82

Thierry, Augustin, 19, 21, 192 Thiry,J., 194 Thomas, William, 162-3, 189, 190, 209-10, 215, 217, 223 Thompson, Charles Edward Poulett, Lord Sydenham, 144 Thompson, E. P. 189, 192 Thompson, T., 198 Thornton, Henry, 57-8, 118-19, 200 Thoughts on the Restriction of Payments, 57 Tierney, George, 136, 158 Todhunter, L, 205 Torrens, Robert, 8, 75, 128, 216 Traite d'economie politique, 70 Traite de legislation, 93

Trevelyan, George Macaulay, 220 Trevelyan, George Otto, 188, 219 Tribe, Keith, 80 Turgot, Anne Robert, 14^15, 19, 29, 32, 47, 61, 63, 104 University College, London, 106 Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, 181 Valynseele,J., 203 Vansittart, Nicholas, 120, 123-4, 137, 213 Veca, Salvatore, 189 Vendee, 19 Veitch, G. S., 220 Veitch, John, 96, 189, 206-7, 219 Viard, Paul, 196

256

Index

Vie de M. Turgot, 15, 47, 104 Villiers, Charles, 90-1, 207 Vindiciae Gallicae, 12, 18-19, 31 Viner, Jacob, 211 Visionary, The, 165 'Vitruvius Whigham', 165, 167 Vogel, Ursula, 189 Wade,J., 221 Wallace, Robert, 200 Walpole, Horace, 149, 219 Walpole, Spencer, 220 Warburton, Henry, 209 Wealth of Nations, 4, 46-7, 50-1, 59, 61-2, 64, 69-70, 73-7, 80, 108, 172, 181 Weatherall, David, 214 Webb Seymour, Lord, 116 Welch, Ceryl, 192 Welleck, Rene, 207 Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, vii Wellington, Duke of, 218

West, Sir Edward, 74, 198 Western, Squire, 136 Westminster Review, 4, 22, 108, 161, 169 Whateley, Richard, 205, 209 Whewell, William, 80, 205 Whig Party, 11, 15, 44-5, 87, 11218, 126-7, 135, 140, 144, 159 Wilberforce, William, 61, 63, 201 Willich, Anthony Florian, 90, 207 Wilson, John ('Christopher North'), 170, 219, 225 Wilson, Francis, 222 Wilson, T., 187-8 Winch, Donald, 3, 186, 197, 199, 201, 216, 223 Windham, William, 20 Wood, G. C, 218 Wright, Raymond, 188, 215 Zagorin, P., 190 Zapperi, Renato, 225

Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society: The Edinburgh Review 1802-1832

The Politics of Risk Society

The Politics of Mass Society

Rethinking Middle East Politics

Rethinking Governance: The Centrality of the State in Modern Society

The Edinburgh Dead

The Politics of Misinformation (Communication, Society and Politics)

The Politics of Misinformation (Communication, Society and Politics)

Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid: South Africa and World Politics (Rethinking the Twentieth Century)

Rethinking Contemporary Feminist Politics (Gender and Politics)

The Edinburgh Dead

British Romanticism and the Edinburgh Review: Bicentenary Essays

Revolution in Penology: Rethinking the Society of Captives

Communities Of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics

Revolution in Penology: Rethinking the Society of Captives

Pragmatism, Feminism, and Democracy: Rethinking the Politics of American History

The Edinburgh Dead

The Edinburgh Dead

The Edinburgh Dead

The Global Politics of Sport (Sport in the Global Society)

The Politics of AIDS: Globalization, The State and Civil Society

Rethinking the Roots of Terrorism

Rethinking the Power of Maps

Rethinking the Nature of War

Politics and Society in the Developing World

The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte

The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte

Rethinking the Western Understanding of the Self

Emotion, Politics and Society

Politics and Society,

Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society: The Edinburgh Review 1802-1832

The Politics of Risk Society

The Politics of Mass Society

Rethinking Middle East Politics

Rethinking Governance: The Centrality of the State in Modern Society

The Edinburgh Dead

The Politics of Misinformation (Communication, Society and Politics)

The Politics of Misinformation (Communication, Society and Politics)

Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid: South Africa and World Politics (Rethinking the Twentieth Century)

Rethinking Contemporary Feminist Politics (Gender and Politics)

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