The Long Eighteenth Century

by Frank O'Gorman

  During peacetime the number of men in the army and navy was usually under 100,000. Indeed, in 1791 Britain had only 17,000 men under arms, many of whom were poorly trained and poorly armed. These figures were partially offset by Britain’s naval superiority, her 195 ships of the line doubling France’s corresponding number. There was an obvious need to increase naval recruitment. After all, in 1783 Britain had 1,100,000 sailors. By 1793 that number had shrunk to 16,000. By 1812 the numbers of men serving in the army and navy had leapt to almost one million. In 1814 the army stood at a quarter of a million men, the navy at 150,000. On top of this, there were by 1804 about half a million part-time and volunteer units of various categories, public and private, defending the home front. With a population only half that of France, Britain was able to mobilize almost equivalent numbers. Indeed, if the militia is included, Britain had a bigger percentage (over 10 per cent of men in the 18–45 age group) of its population under arms than any other major power.

  The achievement of the navy in defending British security and protecting British trade was a remarkable one. Recruitment to the navy was still through the press gang; there is thus little to suggest that British sailors were superior to their French counterparts. It was the quality of the officer corps, and the competent, professional training that they underwent, that made the difference. Furthermore, the strategic deployment of the fleets was of an invariably high standard. In the end, the British navy was simply too big for the French. The size of the French navy declined by more than a half between 1793 and 1801 while the number of British naval personnel increased from 15,000 to 133,000 men, from 135 to 202 ships of the line and from 133 to 277 frigates.

  Such an increase in the power of the navy rested on strong economic foundations. In this crucial early period of the so-called ‘industrial revolution’ most industries expanded their production. The invention of the cotton gin in the USA in 1793 caused an explosion of cotton imports into Britain, from half a million pounds in that year to over 20 million in 1801. British looms clothed the soldiers on all sides in the European war. The iron trade boomed with the demand for metallurgical products while the coal mines could scarcely keep up with the demand from the iron foundries. Indeed, iron output doubled between 1796 and 1806. Shipbuilding also flourished, increasing production by perhaps one-half in the same period. Many dockyards were built, too, in these years, especially the huge complexes in London: the East India, the West India, the London and the Surrey docks. Industry, however, was badly hit by the Orders in Council between 1806 and 1811 and by the collapse of the American market. By 1810–11 a full-scale economic crisis threatened to undermine the war effort. An unprecedented campaign by the merchants and by the manufacturing towns succeeded in persuading the new government of Lord Liverpool to repeal the Orders in Council in 1812. During the last three years of the war, business and industry once more boomed. Meanwhile, agriculture was experiencing one of its golden ages. The Board of Agriculture, established by Pitt in 1793, had familiarized the farming community with new trends and techniques. Of more significance in expanding production, however, were the high prices received by farmers for their agricultural products in most years and the high rents which landlords could charge, as well as the low rates of interest which were required to fund improvements. Partly because of these factors, no fewer than 43 per cent of all English enclosure acts were passed between 1793 and 1815, affecting almost 3 million acres, roughly 9 per cent of the surface of the country. At the same time, landowners and farmers may have prospered but these were, on occasion, bitter decades for agricultural labourers, who experienced real distress on a national scale and in the immediate post-war years: in 1797, 1800–1

  Such a protracted war was frighteningly expensive. In 1793 government spending was 6 per cent of GDP. By 1815 it was over 25 per cent. It must be remembered that an integral part of Britain’s strategy was to pay European powers to do the bulk of the mainland fighting. Britain spent £66 million on this alone, half of it in the last five years of the war. But this was only a trivial portion of war expenditure, which totalled around £1,650 million, nearly four times as much as war expenditure under William III. In the early years of the war Pitt used loans to finance British campaigns: £11 million in 1794, shooting up to £32 million in 1797. Between 1793 and 1798 only 11 per cent of the extra revenue required to pay for the war was raised through increasing taxation. Because 80 per cent of total public revenue came from customs and excise duties, which fell disproportionately upon the poor, Pitt was forced to expand the tax base. This he did by introducing the income tax in 1799. Between 1806 and 1816, the date of its abolition, it yielded no less than £172 million, which was 28 per cent of all revenue derived from new taxes in the period. Additionally, after 1806, the yield of taxation was sufficient to pay the costs of the war but not the interest charges on the debt. By 1815 these charges amounted to more than half the government expenditure. Between 1793 and 1815 the national debt expanded from £228 million to £876 million.5

  Material resources made possible Britain’s outstanding contribution to the victory of the allies over the French. But this does not mean that victory had been inevitable. It owed much to the military dispositions of the last few years of the war, especially Napoleon’s suicidal march on Moscow. It also owed much to the diplomatic tactics of Castlereagh and the coordinated response of the allies. Yet money and resources do not win wars unless they are applied to clear strategic objectives. In the end British strategy was vindicated, but it has not been without its critics. Pitt’s reliance on extra-European naval strategy against France is understandable but, however successful this may have been, it did not bring about the defeat of Napoleon. The seizure of French sugar islands may have contributed to Britain’s long-term economic prosperity but, in the end, France would have to be – and was – defeated within Europe. Britain is often charged with wasting resources on subsidies to allies and, by adopting such a cautious approach to the war in Europe, may have helped to prolong it. Pitt can, in part at least, be defended from this accusation. Allies had to be sustained in the war if there were to be any prospect of defeating France. It was not entirely Pitt’s fault if successive coalitions proved to be unreliable and short-lived. The Prussian army in the west, for example, rarely exceeded 40,000 men, the king of Prussia preferring to help himself to territory in Poland. Similarly, the Austrians were also happy to compensate themselves for the loss of the Netherlands by joining in the Partitions of Poland in 1793 and 1795.6 Pitt and Grenville had to deal with the realities of their situation. In the end, victory against France may have come but, so far as military strategy is concerned, it perhaps owed more to the mistakes of Napoleon and the contingencies of the later stages of the war than it did to the inherent virtues of British strategy and to the persistence and sometimes the heroism of British army and naval personnel.

  RADICALISM AND PATRIOTISM, 1789–1820

  Historians have traditionally treated the reform movements of the 1790s as the product of the French Revolution and of its impact upon British society, placing them in a line of development which connects them with the great working-class reform movements of the nineteenth century. They are assumed to have attracted considerable popular support, thus apparently justifying their role as catalysts of mass protest and class formation. Such an interpretation was not new in the 1960s, when Edward Thompson’s justifiably influential Making of the English Working Class (1963) appeared. Such an interpretation is much older.7 Furthermore, many features of the reform movements of the 1790s had already appeared before the French Revolution, their class content was very limited and their social constituency very traditional. Far from being representative of public opinion, reform societies were heavily outnumbered by loyalist and patriotic groups all over the country and in all walks of life. Consequently, it was, rather, the unequal, yet continuing, competition between radical and loyalist societies which was to dominate popular politics for over thirty years after 1789.

  The r
evival of popular support for reform appears to date from the centenary celebrations of the Glorious Revolution of 1788. Although these festivities were seriously inhibited by the onset of the Regency Crisis, of 1788–9 Revolution Societies sprang up all over the country to mark the anniversary. There is no doubt that reforming groups, especially the Protestant Dissenters and even some elements within the Whig opposition, colonized these celebrations and used them for their own purposes. Indeed, it was in towns in which either the Whig opposition or the Protestant Dissenters, or both, were strong that the French Revolution found the most enthusiastic welcome in the spring and summer of 1789. Such towns included Birmingham, Derby, Newcastle upon Tyne, Norwich and Sheffield. But the revolution was warmly greeted everywhere. In 1789 the Revolution Societies sent a message to the French urging that the two countries should promote the cause of liberty, their correspondence receiving wide publicity. In such ways the French Revolution may be said to have quickened the existing recovery of the old, if moribund, reform societies. The Society for Constitutional Information (SCI) was reactivated in 1791 and began to hold regular meetings. Like the other reform societies, it held celebratory dinners, observed anniversaries, publicized reform events, and most important of all, developed an extensive correspondence network throughout Britain but also Paris and some provincial centres in France. Some of its branches enjoyed immediate success. The Sheffield SCI boasted over 2,000 members after little more than a year, and acquired a missionary enthusiasm which carried its message to neighbouring towns and villages. In September 1792 the society put over 5,000 people on to the streets of the town to celebrate the French military victory at Valmy. Norwich rivalled Sheffield as the Jacobin city of the 1790s, but its tradition of reform was longer established among a powerful Dissenting elite. By the end of 1792 there were over forty tavern clubs in the city with a collective membership of over 2,000. Their influence was felt over much of East Anglia. Sheffield and Norwich led the way but other towns were willing to follow. The French Revolution even revived the flagging enthusiasm for reform among the Whig opposition. The Society of the Friends of the People was founded in April 1792. The society was the creation of a section of the opposition Whigs, led by the young aristocrat, Charles Grey; its purpose was to guide the public clamour for reform into constitutional channels under the careful supervision of the Whig aristocracy.

  There is every indication that this revival of reforming activity had caught the public mood, but by the spring of 1792 the initial optimistic and popular phase of the reform movement was coming to an end. It was not just that the French Revolution seemed to be moving into a menacing and violent direction now that war had broken out in Europe. Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man gave to the reform movement an angry philosophical text which was to be of immense influence. The first part of the book had appeared in February 1791, affirming the right of every generation to renew its social and political order. The second part appeared in March 1792 and seemed shocking to many contemporaries in its attack on hereditary property and its sneering mockery of the principle of monarchy. Paine’s influence on the reform movement is seen in the establishment in January 1792 of the London Corresponding Society (LCS). This society, led by a humble shoemaker, Thomas Hardy, is usually taken to be the most innovative and, in its lower-class membership and audience, most popular of the reforming societies. In its Address to the People in August the LCS demanded lower taxes, cheaper food, better education, legal reform and provision for old age, much of which was derived from Paine. It believed that politics should be available to all, hence their rule that ‘the number of our members be unlimited’. But what type of members were they to be? Their supporters, far from being representatives of a proletarian working class, ranged from small independent retailers and publishers to fairly wealthy skilled craftsmen such as watchmakers and cabinet makers, and even included some doctors and lawyers. In spite of its popularity with historians,8 the LCS only had a limited appeal to contemporaries. At the height of its success it could boast little more than 2,000 members in London, perhaps 10,000 members nationally and, at its height in 1795, perhaps ninety ‘branches’. Their targets were privilege, unearned wealth and corruption. They wished to inspire others to improve and to educate, and to think for themselves. They had a cause and, in The Rights of Man, they had a bible. Indeed, nothing is more significant than the anxiety of many of the societies, not just the LCS, to publish and to sell cheap editions of Paine.

  They may have been naïve in their belief in the power of the printed word and they may have overestimated the extent to which others in the population did, or could, share their ideals. Nevertheless, to the relatively humble people attending its meetings and hearing the radical gospel according to Paine and other writers, the society was of vital importance. However important economic and occupational factors may have been in the progress of radical reform in the 1790s, it is essential to grasp that a comprehensive critique of existing political and social arrangements was being developed and circulated. It was this critique which was to form the intellectual core of a self-conscious, popular radical movement for the rest of the 1790s. Paine was not the only architect of this critique. Indeed, the drift of recent scholarship has been to downplay the influence of Paine and to emphasize the fact that there was no single model or language of radicalism but a variety of them. The message of Thomas Spence was to nationalize the land; that of William Frend was to question the status of the established church; that of Mary Wollstonecraft was to champion the equality of women; that of John Thelwall was to equalize the ownership of property; that of William Godwin was to weaken the power of the state and establish a democratic body politic; that of Daniel Eaton was to bring the poor man into the national community. These writers and their messages were taught, discussed, popularized, and then incorporated into the radical tradition. Not surprisingly there came a revival of contract theory and a further great change in radical thinking: ‘Less was heard about the merits of the Anglo-Saxon constitution and more about the living conditions of the poor.’9 At the same time, radical writers strove to find popular styles of argument and expression with which to appeal to a wide audience. It is the rich variety of popular radicalism rather than the dominance of Paine which deserves emphasis.

  This revival of reform was not confined to England. Scotland had experienced a reform movement of her own in the 1780s, that for the reform of the Scottish burghs. Led somewhat unenthusiastically by the Whig politician R. B. Sheridan, the cause of burgh reform in 1788 attracted no fewer than forty-six petitions, but it created little interest in Parliament. Further attempts to reform the Scottish burghs were made in 1789, 1791 and 1792. By then, however, the influence of the French Revolution had overtaken the cause of burgh reform. The Society of the Friends of the People spread rapidly in Scotland, although many of the Scottish societies calling themselves ‘Friends’ had more in common with the LCS than with the English ‘Friends’. Nevertheless, by the end of 1792 there were perhaps eighty reform societies of one kind or another in Scotland. It was no accident that the first great demonstrations of radical strength were the anti-government protests of June 1792, when Henry Dundas was burned in effigy not only in Edinburgh but also in a number of other cities as well. Nor was it accidental that the first radical convention was held in Scotland in December 1792. By the end of the year, ‘Trees of Liberty’ were planted in many towns and cities of Scotland to celebrate French military victories. As for Wales, although radical ideas penetrated even into some of the smaller towns organized radicalism was not common. In North Wales, however, branches of the SCI and the LCS were formed. The latter also had branches in the south, in Cardiff and in Brecon and possibly even in Bala. On the whole, however, meetings were few: Welsh radicalism was not to be a powerful force until the next century.

  Although the overwhelming majority of reformers were peaceful and constitutional men, the progress of the radical reformers was beginning to cause serious alarm by the end of 1792. Already in
November 1790 Edmund Burke, in Reflections on the Revolution in France, had articulated what later generations would come to recognize as the fundamentals of Conservative social theory: that society was a complex organism that steadily grows and matures over the centuries; that radical reformers wished to uproot traditions and institutions that had been found serviceable to successive generations and which had proved their capacity to adapt and change. Burke condemned the French Revolution for proceeding on the atheistical principles of the rights of man rather than on the historical principles of Christianity. If they were ever to be put into practice in Britain, as they had been in France, the principles of the rights of man would destroy the basis of a propertied political and social order and throw political power into the hands of the envious masses, guided by radical demagogues. In response to Burke’s book, which sold almost 20,000 copies in its first six months, generating around 100 rebuttals and perhaps 200 pamphlets broadly supporting Burke’s position., Tom Paine argued that in defending the ancient regime in France Burke was ignoring the suffering of the French population. In response to Burke’s warning that the French Revolution must not be regarded as a belated re-enactment of the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9, Paine argued that every generation had the right to change its constitution if it wished. Although Paine’s sales were enormous, reputedly 200,000 by 1795, Burke’s proved, in the short term, more persuasive. As the continental situation darkened in 1792, as the prospects of the French monarchy and aristocracy deteriorated and as the possibility of war against France approached, radicals who supported the French Revolution became tainted by its excesses. Indeed, the Dissenters’ campaign for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts had already begun to worry Anglicans, to sow the first seeds of disunion between different groups of reformers and to give rise to expressions of a nervous, reactionary loyalism. In Manchester, for example, a church and King Club appeared as early as 1790. In July 1791 the eminent Dissenting minister, scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestley was the victim of a mob attack on his home in Birmingham in the so-called ‘Priestley Riots’. The cry of ‘Church and King’ became increasingly common during the second half of 1792. In November, John Reeves, a lawyer with connections in governing circles, founded the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers. During the next six months, at least 2,000 local patriotic clubs sprang up, modelled on John Reeves’s parent body. As one observer reported, ‘The whole country is forming itself into an Association.’ The influence of these Loyal Associations in inoculating England against revolution cannot be overstated. With the local ruling elite providing the example, and not infrequently the money, with which to finance their activities, they distributed propaganda, particularly the homilistic stories of Hannah More,10 harassed and prosecuted radicals, suppressed seditious publications and mobilized public opinion through a variety of local agencies. While it may be an exaggeration to conclude that loyalist propaganda actually changed people’s minds, it may well have helped to undermine the reformers’ case by confirming many patriotic assumptions about Britain and her monarchy, about the perfection of her constitution and about the prosperity of her people and the fairness of her institutions. At the same time, loyalist propaganda did much to undermine radical arguments concerning the possibility, even the desirability, of achieving equality, and raised serious concerns about the likely consequences of intemperate and untimely reform. The propaganda of the Loyal Associations, combined with that of the government, in particular the circulation of the pro-government newspapers The Oracle, The Sun and The True Briton, and, later, influential periodicals such as The Anti-Jacobin, did much to marginalize radical ideas.