Book Notes
| Published date | 01 February 1959 |
| Date | 01 February 1959 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1959.tb00896.x |
| Subject Matter | Book Notes |
BOOK
NOTES
W.
R.
WARD’S book,
Georgian Oxford. University Politics in the Eighteenth Century
(Oxford University Press, pp.
296,
37s.
6d.),
is a study of the parliamentary constituency of
Oxford University in the eighteenth century (to
1780)
rather than of Georgian Oxford. It
examines the University’s attitude to the Hanoverians-dislike of George
I
and George
I1
and welcome of George
111,
which Mr. Ward thinks inconsistent; its choice of members of
parliament; the broaching of University reform in the
1720’s
and 1770’s-regarded
as
a
threat to vested interests. The examination is conducted in terms of connexion, party label,
and the University’s contribution to party fortunes. This leaves little room for a considera-
tion either of why men and colleges were Whig or Tory, and what their label meant to
them, or the University’s intellectual concerns, and what is commonly meant by ‘university
politics’.
The
End
of
North’s Ministry
1780-1782
by
I.
B. Christie (Macmillan, pp.
429, 40s.)
is
the second volume to be published in the series ‘England in the Age of the American Revo-
lution’, edited by Sir Lewis Namier.
It
deals with the structure of the House of Commons
and its relations with the government from the general election of September
1780
to
North’s resignation in March
1782.
The general election of
1780
was staged, prematurely, in
order to give the government a more friendly House of Commons. Mr. Christie’s contention
that it did not do
so,
and his parallel with the
1741
election, must be qualified. Judged by its
actions, the new House (unlike that of
1741)
was favourable to the government, which in
the spring of
1781
won sizeable majorities on the dangerous question of economical reform.
The Commons’s change of attitude, which did not come until the end of the year, after
Yorktown, came because, as Mr. Christie shows, an increasing number of independents,
hitherto supporting the government, began to vote against it. Mr. Christie asks the now
familiar question: how does the structure
of
the
1781
House of Commons compare with
that of
1761?
He sees differences-party was more important and there were more indepen-
dents-but their significance remains doubtful. The defeat and resignation
of
North were
not party triumphs, and, granting that in
1781
there were more independents than in
1761,
there were probably not more than in
1742.
The answer seems to be that the differences
between the two parliaments owe little to structural changes between
1761
and
1781.
The
hall-mark of
1761
is ‘absence of political issues’. Perhaps-at any time in the eighteenth
century-the existence of a political issue comparable with the American crisis would have
affected structure in much the same way as it did in
1782.
The late Professor
A.
S.
Turberville intended to complete a trilogy on the history of the
House of Lords with
a
volume covering the nineteenth century, but his work was unhappily
cut short by death. The chapters left by him deal mainly with the years
1784
to
1837
and
have been put into press by Mr.
R.
J.
White under the title
The House of Lords in the Age
of
Reform
(Faber, pp.
519,50s.).
Partly analysis of the structure and function of the House,
and partly narrative, the book covers a period in which British peers, while retaining much
of their influence as individuals, began a steady surrender of their corporate powers. An
Epilogue deals with the unexpected resilience of the House of Lords in face of mid-
Victorian democracy.
Justice cannot be done to Lucy Brown’s book,
The Board
of
Trade and the Free Trade
Movement
1830-42
(Oxford University Press, pp.
245,
~OS.), in a brief note. Although it is
primarily
a
study which will be of great interest to economic historians, it also makes a
considerable contribution to our knowledge of departmental administration in the first half
of the nineteenth century. We are all quite familiar with the terms of the Peelite budgets;
what we did not know
so
completely until Miss Brown wrote this book, was the scope of
the departmental reform in the Board of Trade which preceded the budgets-reform which
made it possible to provide the information on which
a
free trade policy could be justified.
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