The Left-Wing Whigs: Whitbread, The Mountain and Reform, 1809–1815

Abstract

In the decade after 1807, the Whig Opposition was divided between the conservatives and the progressives, the former consisting of the Grenvillites and most Foxite-Whigs, particularly their leaders, while many of the latter associated together in the Mountain. This was led by Samuel Whitbread until his death in 1815. It was distinguished from the rest of the Opposition primarily by its independent, aggressively activist support for economical and parliamentary reform and its willingness to associate on these issues with the followers of Sir Francis Burdett and the metropolitan radicals. The Opposition as a whole, and more recently the Grenvillites, have been carefully examined as part of the ongoing study of political groups in this era, but as yet there is no systematic analysis of the Mountain. This paper identifies twenty-one Mountaineers and marshalls the evidence for the nature of their activities together. It also analyzes the sources and nature of their reformist ideology, their independence, their tactics as a pressure group and their relationship to the Whigs and the radicals.ITwelve Mountaineers were by birth aristocrats and gentry. The Mountain's independent character was in part shaped by country gentlemen like Thomas William Coke and Charles Callis Western. Although committed to Whiggism and the Whig party, such men also inherited in some respects the eighteenth-century country party mentality which believed that the executive was corrupt and prided itself on acting independently as a check upon its excesses. Young Lord Folkestone, even more independent, was committed to Whiggism but not at all to the Whig party for he thought of himself as an independent, virtuous aristocrat guarding against and exposing government corruption.