MICHAEL J. TURNER. Independent Radicalism in Early Victorian Britain. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. 2004. Pp. 315. $97.95

Abstract

Although the title might suggest a grander project, Michael J. Turner's book essentially provides a biographical and thematic account of the ideological trajectory of a self-defined “independent radical,” together with some insight into the causes celebres of mid-nineteenth-century radicalism and their relation to the broader political currents of the period. His subject is Thomas Peronnet Thompson, whose career as a radical spanned the era from the political turmoil of the immediate post-Napoleonic War period, to the campaign for the 1867 Reform Act—a time during which he was actively involved in the struggle for parliamentary reform, the Anti-Corn Law League, “sensible” Chartism, and agitation relating to the conduct, or misconduct, of British foreign policy. From 1829 to 1836 Thompson was joint owner and editor of the Westminster Review, and, at one time or another, he came into contact with most of the leading radicals of the mid-century period, most notably Jeremy Bentham, John Bowring, Richard Cobden, and John Bright. During his time at the Westminster Review he wrote more than a hundred articles on literature, music, religion, mathematics, military tactics, education, mechanics, parliamentary reform, jurisprudence, and, in particular, political economy. His idée fixe was free trade and Corn Law repeal, and it was his proselytizing zeal, directed to that end, and, the publication of his Cathecism on the Corn Laws (1827), that both brought him to national prominence and helped “shape the anti-Corn Law creed and its theoretical and tactical components” (p. 28).