Abstract
Abstract The Ministry of All the Talents (1806–7) has been dismissed because it failed in most of its declared objectives. In a series of secondary matters, however – vaccination, medical reform, the improvement of the curriculum at Maynooth and the New Plan of Finance (1807) – a distinctive style of administrative liberalism was being practised. Here termed ‘scientific’, ‘technical’ and ‘empirical’ because of its concern with the management of knowledge or rational inquiry by public authority, this liberal style formed part of the background of politics, and connected Pittite management with mid century Liberal government. Despite their differences, two Whig statesmen, Lord Henry Petty (1780–1863) and Lord Grenville (1759–1834) cultivated this style in an atmosphere of caution and austerity. As chancellor of the exchequer and prime minister respectively, in 1806–7, Petty and Grenville brought the ‘pessimistic meliorism’ of their wider beliefs to the problems cited, articulating a kind of liberalism that was distinct from the Foxite canon.
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