Abstract
The present article deals with several vicissitudes of British intellectual life in the late Eighteenth Century. This time, of great political upheaval, saw the creation of many societies, pleading for important reforms such as the ones implemented in France after the Revolution. The paper reveals different aspects of the political and social life of such notable characters as Sheridan, Fox, Godwin, Burke, Priestley, Wollstonecraft or Alexander Jardine himself, whose relationship with them is used as the linking nexus of the whole paper. These political reforms needed to be accompanied by some social changes such as a new and more active role for women, and their right for independence, education and the vote.
Highlights
British radicalism started mainly in the 1760s, when a series of campaigns pretended to extend the franchise down the social scale, and to redraw the parliamentary elections by integrating the new populated áreas of the Midlands and the North of England -especially Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham
Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses theoretically balanced between monarchy, aristocracy and commons
To understand British intellectual life ofthe 1780s we need to consider the outstanding role played by the dissenters, a number of people related to a non-conformist movement which had originated initially as a reaction to some Anglican church doctrines and later extended into a reform approach to political and parliamentary life
Summary
To understand British intellectual life ofthe 1780s we need to consider the outstanding role played by the dissenters, a number of people related to a non-conformist movement which had originated initially as a reaction to some Anglican church doctrines and later extended into a reform approach to political and parliamentary life. Burke rejected the visión of English history offered by Price and affirmed that it was not the people who had elected William of Orange in 1688, as they did not have the right to do so, but the hated king James himself, who following the legally established procedure, had abdicated in iavour of King William and his descendants According to his view, when the citizens pay obedience to the sovereign they are not so much obeying the figure of the king as the wisdom transmitted to them by all the previous generations from an immemorial time. Revolutions, in a clear reference to the recent French experience, are always violent and enemies of tolerance
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