Contesting the State in 1790s Britain

Abstract

Entrenched perceptions about the role of intellectuals in the public and political life of Britain have continued to be shaped by contrasts with Continental approaches, especially French intellectual culture, accentuating the virtues of British exceptionalism and, indeed, anti-intellectualism in public life. As Stefan Collini has pointedly remarked, “the contrast, implicit where not explicit, has been, above all, with France” and has also been consolidated through progressivist nineteenth-century Whig interpretations of history.1 Despite the palpable wider effects of the cataclysmic demise of the ancien regime in France in 1789, however, the subsequent period in Britain entailed more than a series of divergent responses to or comparisons with events across the channel as suggested by the “debate on France” and revealed the vitality of British intellectual life and its intimate engagement with an increasingly fluid and ideologically inflected domestic public sphere. The wider significance of the period for the development of British political thought and history has been the subject of much historical reflection.2 Alfred Cobban has described it as “perhaps the last real discussion of fundamentals of politics in this country,” a recognition that something far from evanescent to the fabric of British political culture was taking place.3 Echoing this, Mark Philp has highlighted its seminal place in British popular politics, regarding it as “a watershed in the development of British liberal and conservative thought and & an important moment in the growth of the popular press and the evolution of a popular political style.”4