The Principles of True Liberty: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain
| Date | 01 March 1979 |
| Author | M. M. Goldsmith |
| Published date | 01 March 1979 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1979.tb01196.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
THE PRINCIPLES
OF
TRUE LIBERTY:
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY IN EIGHTEENTH-
CENTURY BRITAIN
M.
M.
GOLDSMITH
ON
the relationship between political ideas and political activity, a number of
hypotheses are possible. Political ideas may be tools
or
weapons in politics; they may be
constitutive of political activity; they may be a reflection of political activity (inviting
but not foreclosing inquiry into how the image reflects reality).
For
the political
theorist, language reveals the politics
of
a society-there can be no end to ideology nor
can the political ideas of a period be ignored.
Yet the dogma that political ideas in eighteenth-century Britain counted
for
nothing
was
for
a considerable time orthodox doctrine on the authority of Sir Lewis Namier.
Nonetheless eighteenthcentury Britain oflers opportunities for the study of the
relations between political thought and politics. Despite the tendency after
1715
and
through the mid-century toward a narrower, ever more oligarchical politics, those in
power were never able to control political discussion and the dissemination of ideas.
Neither licensing nor taxation nor harassment ever completely inhibited the press once
it had exploded into activity in the Great Rebellion. Instead of suppression, govern-
ments chose to fight propaganda with counter-propaganda; at one time
or
another
Swift, Defoe, Steele, Addison and Fielding (among others)
were
in ministerial pay.
Political discussion was carried on in a variety
of
forms. In addition to the pamphlet
the periodical became a regular mode of publication: alter the
Ohsrrwtor
came the
Retien.,
Examiner, Crujtsmun, London Journul, Chumpion, Con-
Test,
and
North Brilon
among many others. Political ideology found its way into poems, plays, academic
treatises, commentaries on Polybius and Tacitus, into the arrangements of gardens and
into caricatures as well as being expounded in explicitly political writings. But
notwithstanding the many modes of expression available, the variety of purposes to
which these could be put and the range of talents to be found employing them, men
of
genius as well as hack scribblers, the language of eighteenthcentury politics re-
cognizably centred on a limited set of conceptions. Unified and harmonious enough to
provide common categories which informed parliamentary debate and public dis-
cussion, the language was flexible enough to encompass both an ideology
for
the
rulers
and the possibility
of
radical rejection of the
stutus quo.
Although a number of recent books have contributed to the understanding of
eighteenth-century Britain,
H.
T.
Dickinson's
Liberty und Property'
is the first attempt
at a general survey of its political ideas. Dickinson rejects the Namierite view of
ideology as a smokescreen of high sounding phrases cynically devised to hide selfish
manipulation. Instead he admits two other possibilities:
(1)
that some men are
sometimes motivated by ideas and ideals;
(2)
that political actors must legitimate their
actions by describing and evaluating them in terms acceptable
to
others. Consequently
one must take account of what men think and say as well as what they do.2
'
H.
T.
Dickinson,
Liberty and Property: Political Ideology
in
Eighteenth-Century Britain
(London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson,
1977).
ix
+
369
pp.,
f15.00.
Dickinson.
Liberly and Property,
pp.
2-7.
Political
Studies.
Vol.
XXVII.
No.
l(141-146)
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