British Liberalism Research Articles

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this issue. The Life and Times of Neo‐Cons THOMAS BENDER Neo‐conservatism: The Biography of a Movement, by Justin Vaïsse (translated by Arthur Goldhammer). The two faces of British Liberalism Robert Taylor The Political Thought of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats since 1945, edited by Kevin Hickson. Labour and Liberals: opportunities lost, opportunities taken Richard Briand Parties and People: England (1914–51), by Ross McKibbin. Do political personalities really matter? Gianfranco Pasquino The Personalization of Politics: A Study of Parliamentary Democracies, by Lauri Karvonen. The politics of economics John Grahl The Spectre at the Feast: Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of Recession, by Andrew Gamble. The successes of organised crime: the case of Naples Ombretta Ingrascì Storia della camorra, by Francesco Barbagallo. Dismal days are here again? Paul Auerbach Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance, by Nouriel Roubini with Stephen Mihm.

George Washington: Founding Philosopher?

George Washington:Founding Philosopher? Alan Gibson (bio) Jeffry H. Morrison . The Political Philosophy of George Washington. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 2009. xxi + 226. Appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. $40.00. In a brief biographical sketch that he wrote of George Washington, Mark Twain asserted that Washington had shown no early signs of greatness or sagacity. "Young George," Twain quipped, "was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie." Twain continued: "It is related of him that he once chopped down his father's favorite cherry-tree, and then didn't know enough to keep dark about it."1 Although Twain sarcastically summoned this Parson Weems image of Washington for entertainment, variations of the view that Washington was simple, limpid, and obtuse have had serious defenders since the earliest days of the republic. Thomas Jefferson credited Washington with a "great and powerful" mind and concluded that, "as far as he saw," no one's judgment was sounder. Nevertheless, Washington's mind was "slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination," according to Jefferson. "When called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed."2 John Adams was less generous. Washington, Adams concluded, was "not a scholar" and was "too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his Station and reputation."3 More recently, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor of the Library of Congress edition of the Washington Papers, maintained that it "is easy to understand George Washington. It is easy to understand any thoroughly sincere, honest, simple soul" (p. xiv). Such assessments—strengthened by Washington's admissions that he was "conscious of a defective education," had little time for reading, and was a man of action whose designs should be judged from his deeds—have raised a persistent barrier to serious consideration of Washington's political thought.4 To be sure, scholars have acknowledged the importance of Washington's role as president of the Constitutional Convention. They have also recognized that the letter he signed that accompanied the proposed Constitution as it was submitted to Congress and then the states gave the Constitution legitimacy and helped secure its ratification. Garry Wills and Paul K. Longmore have [End Page 629] shown how Washington shrewdly shaped his own image.5 It is also increasingly fashionable to suggest that Washington was more complex than previously thought, to seek out his Machiavellian side, and to speak of Washington's political genius. Nevertheless, few scholars have suggested that anything on the order of a "political philosophy" can be reconstructed from Washington's correspondence and state papers.6 In the Political Philosophy of George Washington, Jeffry Morrison, an associate professor of government at Regent's University and the author of John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic, argues that standard characterizations of Washington as unlearned, dense, and thus intellectually dependent on others are as "mythical as Parson Weem's tale of the cherry tree" and should not stand in the way of exploring Washington's "coherent theory of American constitutionalism" and his "fully formed political philosophy" (pp. xiv, 18). The core of Washington's political philosophy, Morrison maintains, "revolved around the central principles of union, liberty, and self-government under the Constitution, administered with virtue as an example to the world, all under the superintendence of a benevolent Providence" (p. 16). This conception of political philosophy was built by combining classical republicanism, British liberalism, and Protestant Christianity—the three ideologies that, according to Morrison, were "dominant at the Founding" (p. xiv). Indeed, Washington's "syncretism," combined with his unsurpassed popularity among his contemporaries, helps to explain how he came to embody American ideals and to be viewed as the "Father of His Country" (p. 2). Speaking the three political languages that were literally "in the air" in the early republic, Washington became "uniquely the incarnation of early American political thought" (p. xv). More specifically, Washington, according to Morrison, had by 1789 "become the most classically republican American of his generation" (p. 63). The Greeks taught Washington and other Founders that tyranny often sprang from anarchy, which, in turn, resulted from excessive democracy, and that balanced and mixed government was the necessary antidote for this problem. They also inspired Washington...

A Social Laboratory for Modern France. The Musée Social and the Rise of the Welfare State (review)

Reviewed by: A Social Laboratory for Modern France. The Musée Social and the Rise of the Welfare State Isabel DiVanna Horne, Janet R. A Social Laboratory for Modern France. The Musée Social and the Rise of the Welfare State. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. xiii + 353. ISBN 0-8223-2792-9 Janet Horne’s interesting book on the rise of the welfare state in France uses the case of the creation and internal structure of, and membership to, the Musée Social in Paris. Drawing a parallel with the rise of welfare states in the United States and Britain, Horne examines the Musée Social as a typically Third Republican French answer to the increasing concern with the social question. At a time when liberalism started showing signs of internal problems even in the most stable societies like Britain, the French response to the social question had to incorporate, Horne argues, a different sort of solution that relied heavily upon the “republican” mentality of the conservative and opportunistic new government. The origins of the Musée seem to be, Horne related to the 1889 Universal Exhibition. The Exhibition, being linked to the centennial commemoration of the French Revolution, attracted much criticism from those who believed that France was celebrating 1793, rather than 1789; the debate about the social, political and economic challenges faced by fin de siècle France was therefore heated, as competing versions of liberalism and republicanism were highlighted. The social economic exhibit in the 1889 Exhibition was the basis for the creation of the Musée Social in 1894. The Musée was designed, Horne argues, with the idea of collective responsibility in mind; in a republican state, citizenship needed to be an active concept, with all individuals committed to reform. Unlike the nearby form of British liberalism, in France what emerged was the notion of the state as having a central and centralizing function in French society. The État Providence of the post-French Revolutionary period was reconceptualised into one where individuals were taught to take responsibility [End Page 166] for themselves. One of its many parapolitical initiatives was the Musée Social. Placed somewhere between the invisible hand of political economists and the more visible hand of the state, the Musée encouraged beneficence and education through the new language of social rights which emerged in late nineteenth-century France. Horne’s book does much to illustrate the concern of the French state for the social question by using the Musée Social. Arguably, she could have offered further examples. In the realms of education and colonial policy, too, one could find the state’s attitude towards the penetrating social forces which both threatened and legitimized it. Likewise, Horne could have made better use of the comparative approach with Britain or the US, which she abandons after her introduction. That said, as a case study the book is rich and interesting, and it makes an excellent addition to reading lists and bibliographies on the French Third Republic, and late nineteenth-century social and political thought. Isabel DiVanna Clare College, Cambridge Copyright © 2010 University of Nebraska Press

Forecasting the Vote for a Third Party: The British Liberals, 1974–2005

While for multiparty systems the development of vote function forecast models for the incumbent party and the official opposition party is commonplace, only rarely do these models try to forecast the vote for a third party. Can third party vote shares be forecasted with reasonable accuracy? We explore this question within the context of British politics. Our model proposes that the British Liberal party vote is mostly driven by the extent to which the UK electorate approves or disapproves of the official opposition leader. Our results are consistent with the idea that once the decision has been made to punish the incumbent government, a voter must then decide whether to support the official opposition party or another smaller party.

Giuseppe Mazzini and the Globalisation of Democratic Nationalism 1830-1920

This collection has two main aims and this review will consider them separately. The first is to demonstrate that Giuseppe Mazzini's political thought was expressly internationalist or global in its intended consequences. As the editors make clear, they wish to see Mazzini's legacy wrested from right-wing Italian nationalists, and Nadia Urbinati's opening essay, which explains how Mazzini fits in a Kantian tradition in which the purpose of politics is ‘perpetual peace’, lays down a crucial ideological marker. Urbinati argues that Mazzini's thinking about nation should be distinguished from nationalism, for he advocated a system of government based on nationality, a creed of duty towards others, including the members of other nations, which could only be fulfilled through democratic political structures. As such, the true patriot must submit himself not merely to the interests of his nation but to an internationalist idea of nation itself. Maurizio Isabella argues that, although Mazzini believed that liberal interventionism was legitimate, he did not advocate the creation of international institutions or codes of law. Instead, as an ethical cosmopolitan, Mazzini believed that ‘peace and international stability would result from the virtue inherent in the domestic political life of the European nations once they were blessed with democratic and republican institutions’. To facilitate the emergence of a world of nations, Alberto Mario Banti and Simon Levis Sullam show in essays that usefully extract sizeable quotations from Mazzini's colossal œuvre, was to accelerate the fulfilment of God's intention. Mazzinianism, then, was a religious creed and not, as interpreted by Cardinal Cullen of the Irish Catholic Church—here scrutinised by Colin Barr—a secularising ideology. What Mazzini emphatically opposed, however, was papal despotism and the superstitious servitude that sustained it. At the same time, he rejected anticlericalism, regarding it as a dangerous fanaticism, urging instead that the priests become a part of ‘the people’, thereby restoring the church to its true self. God might rule in heaven, he argued, but only through the agency of ‘the people’—sacralised in Mazzinian discourse—could God's intentions be realised. In rich and complementary essays, Eugenio Biagini and Christopher Duggan explore the appeal of Mazzini's ‘Protestantism’ to English nonconformists—those men and women who, in Biagini's phrase, ‘regarded life as a pilgrimage of duty’. Radical Dissenters, Biagini argues, were better placed to develop a full understanding of Mazzini's ideas than were his Italian Catholic compatriots; equally striking is Duggan's observation that, to British enthusiasts, Mazzini ‘seemed almost the antithesis of the conventional Italian’, possessing ‘essentially Evangelical Protestant characteristics’: he was quiet, earnest, moralistic, austere in his habits, dutiful and charitable. Mazzinian ideas were made more attractive to British liberals by Mazzini the man.

The French Revolution and the Discourse of Change in Restoration France and Post-1815 England

The conception of revolution was changed drastically by the French Revolution of 1789 from its original use in astronomy to imply a return to a previous state of being. Henceforth, revolution came to signify a drastic rupture with past practices. For French and English liberals in post-Napoleonic Europe, the word revolution also became loaded with negative connotations associated with the French Revolution’s radical turn from 1792 to 1794, and the fear of popular violence. My paper examines and compares how the stigma associated with the French Revolution influenced the discourse of change in France and England, and how the fear of revolutionary violence influenced the actions of both governments.

'I am as strong a Liberal as you': H. C. Janes and Luton Politics, 1935–63

The decline of the British Liberal party after the end of the First World War posed crucial questions for those with Liberal beliefs and convictions. Should they, despite compelling evidence to the contrary, pin their hopes on the eventual revival of an apparently moribund party? Alternatively, was their best hope to build upon the liberal tendencies within other existing and more powerful parties? In the historical exploration of this dilemma the role of the Liberal National (later National Liberal) party has received comparatively little attention. Historians have tended to accept the verdict of mainstream Liberals that the Liberal Nationals were nothing but Conservatives in disguise. This article seeks to explore these issues through a detailed study of the career of Herbert Janes, active in the politics of Luton for more than two decades.

:The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity and Europe, 1830–1886

:The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity and Europe, 1830–1886

The Constitutional Revolution That Never Was: Democratic Radicalism and the Sinn Féin Movement

It has become conventional wisdom that the Irish rejection of British rule between 1916 and 1922 did not involve a rejection of the British system of government, known as the Westminster model. This article challenges that assumption by uncovering a tradition of radical thinking about representative democracy from the radical newspaper and pamphlet literature of the preindependence era. This literature suggests that the crisis of constitutionalism that emerged in Ireland during the First World War was preceded by a pervasive critique of the British system of government, with its roots in a wider crisis of British liberalism. This crisis became more profound in Ireland when the Asquith government accepted partition in principle. The 1922 constitution thus had a radical pedigree obscured by later constitutional scholarship. The final section of the essay discusses why this radical impulse failed.

The Comparative Dynamics of Party Support in Great Britain: Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats

Political leadership has long been established as a key determinant of party support. Yet the extent to which this may vary across parties in and out of government is less well understood. In fact, there are good reasons to expect leadership to matter less for “protest” parties. We demonstrate that the relationship between satisfaction with the Liberal Democratic leader and support for the British Liberal Democratic Party is fundamentally different from the relationships between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition and their respective parties. Using 28 years of monthly public opinion data, we develop models of the political and economic factors that determine support for each of the three major parties in Britain in each of the 1979–1997 and 1997–2006 periods. We find that vote intentions for the two major parties are closely related to the satisfaction levels of their respective leaders but that this relationship is substantially weaker for the Liberal Democrats. These findings are in contrast to individual‐level studies that have shown the importance of leadership approval to vote choice for all British parties. More generally, we show the need to refine theories about the relationships between parties and their leaders.

<i>Wordsworth and the Writing of the Nation</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Wordsworth and the Writing of the Nation Sally Bushell Wordsworth and the Writing of the Nation. By James M. Garrett. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Pp. 214. ISBN 978 0 7546 5783 5. £55. In the introduction to this study, James Garrett provides a helpful outline of his New Historical enquiry, situating himself well in terms of other related work and the Wordsworthian canon. Garrett's aims are multiple and complex, if rather familiar in their Foucauldian tendencies. He seeks to use early nineteenth-century structures for imposing systematic order upon the nation (through census, map and museum archive) to explore issues of national representation and self-identity as exemplified in 'the literary institution named Wordsworth'. Garrett does, however, reflect intelligently upon the dangers of drawing an over-simplistic analogy between larger cultural activities and literature, acknowledging that 'I appear to be treading dangerously close to what Alan Liu has called the "embarrassment of New Historicism"'. Instead, he seeks to explore the complex contradictions, which are intrinsic to such nation-building structures at a larger level, and to Wordsworthian poetics and national ambitions. A tension between 'English liberalism' and 'cultural nationalism' returns us to the Wordsworthian 'system' by means of Alison Hickey's account of a 'conflict between an incorporating or systematic impulse and the resistance to it' (quoted by Garrett). Garrett's aim then is to 'recenter Wordsworth's career not on a particular work or poetic project but on a particular goal, that of the writing of the nation'. This aim also has the secondary canonical effect of placing the book's emphasis on the later self-classifying Wordsworth ('active in the creation of his own self-image'), rather than on an earlier one. In Chapter 1 Garrett makes good use of the imposition of the census upon the populace from 1800 onwards, which exemplifies his argument by analogy – that the power of the census as a disciplinary structure at a nationwide level (one that also works to create a subclass of those who 'do not count') corresponds to the desired controls of the Wordsworthian imagination. Such ideas are explored through Wordsworth's articulation of the mind's 'abstracting' power in relation to the leech gatherer and (more historically) 'Gypsies'. In his second chapter, Garrett further develops his analogy between the creation and imposition of the census and Wordsworth's creation of a systematic classification for his poems. In both cases, it is argued, the structure works to create an abstract unified body that eradicates difference. Garrett gives an interesting account of Wordsworth's creation of a 'textual self' and there is more interesting work on the recontextualising of texts within the new schema, although I would have liked more detailed analysis of some of the changes of meaning produced. This chapter suffers slightly from a lack of engagement with Frances Ferguson's excellent work on Wordsworth's classification (in her 1977 book, Language as Counter Spirit) as well as being a point where both the strengths and the limits of the underlying methodology are made manifest – with repeated claims that the census is 'a similar attempt at absolute control' to that of Wordsworth. At times the analogy seems to stretch further than it should. Another example of this occurs with the discussion in Chapter 3 of Wordsworth's desire for a 'prospect view' alongside the development of the Ordnance Survey. Garrett claims that Wordsworth, like contemporaries involved in the national mapping project, 'sought to create a map of the nation that transcended local differences by subjecting the landscape to the "prospect view," the abstract imperial gaze available from the mountain summit'. Here, the idea of the 'prospect view' is approached from one direction only, with no reference to other significant contexts such as the preceding seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literary contexts of the prospect poem or the philosophical model of epicurean withdrawal from the world. [End Page 82] Chapter 4 addresses the tensions and difficulties inherent in Wordsworth's desire to represent the entire nation and traces a withdrawal from the larger view back to the local: 'the unending prospect of imperial Britain is only one possible vision of Britain, one that has proven too susceptible to...

The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity and Europe, 1830–1886 By Jonathan Parry

A review of the book:The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity and Europe, 1830-1886. By Jonathan Parry. Cambridge University Press. 2006. x + 424pp. £50.00/$90.00.

John Bowring and British Liberalism in the Czech National Awakening

The intervention of the scholar and diplomat, John Bowring (1792-1872), in the cultural and political affairs of Bohemia represented the highpoint of British influence during the Restoration era. His background in Benthamite utilitarianism harmonized with the liberal and cosmopolitan spirit of the Bohemian awakening. Moreover, British utilitarians had demonstrated their concern for the freedom of small nations already in the case of Greek independence. In addition, Bowring's intervention synergized with the contemporary liberal and liberating impact of the French July Revolution of 1830. Bowring's orientation toward cultural universalism and political individualism, serves as an effective counterpoint to the alleged influence of cultural particularism in the Bohemian awakening, usually associated with Herder.

Dictionary of Liberal Thought

The purpose of this Dictionary is, in the words of one of its editors, ‘to give readers a sense of the range, depth and diversity of liberal political thought’. It has been produced under the aegis of the Liberal Democrat History Group, by those committed to the cause. Most, though not all, of the contributors are academics, and there are some well-known names, such as Ralf Dahrendorf and Keith Robbins. The Dictionary is an unpretentious but useful volume, which meets the first requirement for a work of reference: a high standard of accuracy. Indeed, it is mercifully free of the numerous factual errors that so disfigure the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The Dictionary includes entries on ideas and schools of thought, such as classical liberalism, the new liberalism and environmentalism; organisations such as the Anti-Corn Law League and the Liberal International; and biographies of various liberal politicians as well as thinkers. The focus throughout is on Britain. ‘The main criterion for the inclusion of an entry’, the editors tell us, ‘was its relevance to the development of liberalism in Britain’. The entries are not, however, restricted to British liberals; there are, for example, entries on Woodrow Wilson, and on the American political philosophers, John Rawls and Robert Nozick. One can, as always with works of this kind, play the parlour game of arguing about why X is included while Y is not. Why, for example, is Franklin Roosevelt excluded when Woodrow Wilson is in; why are Asquith and Campbell Bannerman excluded when Joseph Chamberlain, Lloyd George, R.B. Haldane, Herbert Samuel, and the not notably distinguished Liberal backbencher of the 1950s and 1960s, Donald Wade, are in? Why is Bright excluded when Cobden is in? Why is H.L.A. Hart excluded when Dworkin is in? Why is Anthony Crosland included? Why is Hobbes included when, as Adrian Blau tells us in his excellent entry, he should certainly not be interpreted as a liberal? More explanation on the part of the editors would have been welcome. The entries, while perfectly reliable, are not particularly penetrating. Nevertheless, while this Dictionary will not tell historians much that they do not already know, and while few will wish to read the whole book through, it will prove useful for the undergraduate seeking to learn something of the variety of the British liberal tradition.

Critical Memories of Crafted Virtues

This article provides a critical legal analysis of the rhetoric surrounding the “modern slavery” problems associated with the Cadbury Brothers firm during the early 20th century. The Cadbury firm sued The Standard newspaper for libel, alleging that the firm's directors' reputations had been damaged. The author argues that critical analysis of this libel trial shows how the crafting of Victorian or Edwardian virtues often involved the defense of imperial reputations, and in this case British liberals and conservatives debated each other as they critiqued Portuguese colonial practices. The author concludes that the work of Henry Nevinson and other investigators continues to influence modern interrogations of contemporary cocoa business practices.

Liberal Nationalism and the Decline of the British Liberal Party: Three Case Studies

This article seeks to consider the impact of the Liberal National breakaway on the fortunes of the mainstream Liberal Party after 1931. It does so by looking at three case studies — the very different constituencies of Walsall in the West Midlands, Eddisbury in Cheshire, and Bradford South in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In each, events followed a subtly different course, but the long-term consequences were very similar. It is suggested that the impact upon Liberalism amounted to far more than the defection of a sitting MP. The party suffered the effective loss of its organizational infrastructure, while an existing pattern of voter allegiance was disrupted with lasting implications for its hopes of recovery.

Coalition-Formation and Centre—Periphery Relations in a National Political Party

The case of the British Liberal Democrats provides important evidence of the operations of national parties in devolved systems, the dynamics of sub-national coalition-formation and the impact of national parties on public policy in devolved systems. In their participation in coalition governments in Scotland and Wales, the Liberal Democrats have acted as a nationalized but not a centralized party, despite the devolved nature of their federal constitution. The Liberal Democrat elites at the national and sub-national levels have coordinated themselves informally through links between their three parliamentary parties rather than through the traditional mechanisms of party discipline. Thus, as a party, despite lacking the traditional discipline and party solidarity of a party like Labour, they have been able to ensure that their policies are implemented across the devolved, sub-national governments of Scotland and Wales.

Anglo-American Liberal Militarism and the Idea of the Citizen Soldier

The rise of Anglo-German antagonism in the decade prior to the Great War has been variously ascribed to imperial rivalries between an emergent great power and an established global empire; insecurities fuelled by a dangerously escalating naval arms race; and the traditional balance-of-power foreign policy whereby 300 years of English statesmen had sought to prevent a European rival from establishing hegemony over the continent. That ideology played an important role in fanning the flames of this rivalry is generally taken for granted; while difficult or impossible to quantify, contemporary references to the clash of democratic English liberalism and autocratic Prussian are too widespread for their influence to be dismissed. Michael Howard has even suggested that the of may deserve primacy in explaining the events of that year, for one does read Bernhardi or von der Goltz or Trietschke; or Frederic Harrison and Seeley...or if one explores further and reads the pre-war editorials and the speeches at prize-givings and the pamphlets; or soaks oneself in the military literature of the period; one learns far more about the causes of the First World War than in a lifetime of reading diplomatic documents.1To the modern observer, references to the incompatibility of English liberalism and German may seem ironic or even perverse given the size of the crowds that formed outside recruiting offices throughout Britain and the Dominions in August 1914. In the British Isles, more than 750,000 volunteered for service by the end of September and 2.5 million by the winter of 1916. Coupled with the fact that few saw anything even remotely militaristic about their countrymen clamouring for war, this is often attributed to the growth of an invasive strain of popular nationalism and jingoistic imperialism that had taken root in democracy's garden during the latter half of the igth century, crowding out the more pacific tendencies of traditional English liberalism.2It is due to Samuel Huntington's contribution that we are able to consider whether the mood of 1914 was a subversion of Cobden and Bright liberalism, or rather its wartime counterpart.3 In The Soldier and the State (1957), Huntington concluded that the wars of democracies are predisposed to developing into crusades, a sentiment that also lay at the heart of Eisenhower's warning on the eve of the Normandy invasion that hell hath no fury to compare with that of an aroused democracy. It is the purpose of this essay to discuss how igth-century liberalism helped condition the response of the Anglo-American nations to the First World War, including the tendency for faith in the capacity of free men to reason to become the foundation for its wartime counterpart-faith in the capacity of citizen soldiers. It will outline how selected historians have approached the 19th-century roots of liberal militarism as the moral foundation upon which the Anglo-American war efforts of the aoth century were built.In terms of its approach, Huntington's The Soldier and the State is remarkable in that it provides what is simultaneously a most illuminating-and condemnatory-explanation of militarism. Americans, who often seem to emerge as the subject of Huntington's ire, tend either to reject war in its entirety or embrace it with the enthusiasm that only freedom of choice can provide. This extremism, in turn, is conditioned by the nature of American liberalism, which originated as an essentially tolerant creed based upon the assertion of individual rights against those of the state. As the political philosophy of the English middle-class and a legacy of America's colonial heritage, liberalism is founded upon the belief that men are essentially good and able to resolve their differences without resort to arms; it is only the stupidity and wickedness of governments that leads people to go to war with each other with such disturbing frequency. …

Eminent Pearsonians: Britishness, Anti-Britishness, and Canadianism

Britishness in mid-Twentieth century Canada is usually treated as a fading overseas tie, a foreign allegiance, or a mark of dependency and colonial immaturity. There is a tendency to assume a kind of Manichean division between pro-British and anti-British: either in favour of Canadian independence, or beholden to the British connection, and to draw too sharp a distinction between what was “British” and what was genuinely “Canadian.” However, a study of the Eminent Pearsonians – three generations of Canadians whose anglophilia and Canadianness were intermingled – suggests that they were neither purely anglophile nor quite anglophobe but a tertium quid. Britishness and Canadianism were far more interpenetrated than is commonly thought. The nationalism and internationalism of Pearson and his contemporaries adumbrated their adoptive English liberalism and British liberal imperialism. Indeed, Britishness was interwoven into the Canadianness of the actors, bit-players, and stage-hands of all classes, ethnicities and genders in the Canadian pageant. In the positive sense of the term, Canadianism was an excrescence of Britishness.

An Irish Conservative Perspective on the Defence of the Church of Ireland, 1865–1868

This article provides an analysis of the range of arguments used by senior members of the Irish Conservative party to defend the Established Church of Ireland from 1865 to 1868. The position of the Anglican Church in Ireland came under increasing threat following the death of Lord Palmerston, the British Prime Minister and the leader of the British Liberal party, in October 1865. Throughout his career, Palmerston, who had close connections to Ireland, had been a staunch defender of the privileges of the Church of Ireland. The first section of this article looks at the historical context in which this attack on its privileged position in Ireland arose. The second part traces some of the key arguments which leading members of the Irish Conservative party used in their defence of the Established Church. The final part of the paper considers some of the divisions which existed within the Conservative party, both in Britain and in Ireland, on the question of the future status of the Church of Ireland and at the effects that these divisions had in weakening its case against it.