The sinews of power: ideological

Abstract

The riots of 1981 in Toxteth and Brixton, in Bristol and Manchester – to say nothing of the abiding difficulties in Northern Ireland – remind us how fragile is domestic tranquillity, how thin the veneer of civilisation, how little obedience to the law can be taken for granted. It was a thought never far from the minds of the propertied classes in the eighteenth century, for two reasons. First, because they looked back to a world – that of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers in the mid-seventeenth century – when the whole social order had seemed likely to collapse around their ears. By the time the ghost of Oliver and the Major-Generals had been well and truly laid, there were new, and even more fearful, spectres to terrify moderate men – Tom Paine and Jean-Paul Marat, Danton and Robespierre and Anacharsis Cloots. Second, because the inequalities in society were probably greater than at any time before or since. In the earlier seventeenth century, possessions – even for the well-to-do – were scarce and crude; but by the later eighteenth century, for the lucky few, luxuries and delicacies from all parts of the globe came flooding in: exotic trees for the park, strange birds and creatures to divert visitors, exquisite porcelain from Delft, Meissen and Sèvres, perfumes, fruits, wines, elegant tables and chairs, vases from China, statues from Italy (some of them genuine), paintings, tapestries–all the worldly goods that made a Robert Adam mansion so different from the plain, simple and empty rooms of the early Jacobean houses.