Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

English Radicalism, 1762-1785 by S. Maccoby; English Radicalism, 1786-1832 by S. MaccobyReview by: Asa BriggsIrish Historical Studies, Vol. 11, No. 43 (Mar., 1959), pp. 245-247Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications LtdStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30005875 .

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Reviews 245 he gave about his negotiations, which involved Clarendon, William Penn and other prominent persons. This information is summarised at consider- able length and has a good deal of material on Jacobite affairs in the earlier stages of the war. The minutes of the cabinet council make frequent mention of Irish questions and form a useful supplement to the exchange of letters between Nottingham and the lords justices.

The volume ends with a collection of supplementary papers relating to years prior to 1691. Several of these throw light on Irish affairs. Among them is an account by Captain Kinaston--one of the officers of the Derry garrison in I689--of Lundy's intrigues. This evidence was hitherto available only in the Dopping manuscripts at Armagh, in a version recorded some years later and used in Milligan's Siege of Londonderry. There is also a long and interesting letter from an Irish correspondent of Tyrconnell's, written at the end of 1690 and intercepted.

The introduction deals at considerable length with the naval operations of I691, including those off the Irish coast. A section also deals, more briefly, with other Irish affairs. The editing is generally of a high standard, although there is some lack of uniformity in giving cross-references to correspondence calendared in the State Papers. The index is full and accurate. This volume and its immediate predecessor provide much additional evidence on the Jacobite war in Ireland, and those who are studying the period will be grateful to the Historical Manuscripts Commission for such an adequate presentation of the material.

J. G. SiMms

ENGLISH RADICALISM, 1762-1785. By S. Maccoby. Pp. 535. London : Allen & Unwin. I955. 45s.

ENGLISH RADICALISM, 1786-1832. By S. Maccoby. Pp. 559. London: Allen & Unwin. I955. 50s.

THESE two massive volumes complete Dr Maccoby's account of the development of English radicalism from what he takes to be its origins in the mid-eighteenth century down to 1914. A formidable amount of work has gone into this enterprise, and historians must express their gratitude to Dr Maccoby for unearthing an enormous amount of new information and ransacking secondary sources of all kinds and many primary sources as well. If, taking the work as a whole, he has not provided us with a definitive history of radicalism or what the blurb of his first volume calls 'the British Left', he has at least given us the raw material for such a study and has shown how difficult it is to write such a history which will do justice to its theme.

Unfortunately these two final volumes expose the limitations of Dr Maccoby's work far more clearly than the original volumes which he wrote on the nineteenth century. He finds it necessary to write not only a history of radicalism from I762 to I832, but a miniature history of England with radicalism placed in the centre of the picture: he piles

F

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246 Reviews

up quotations from easily accessible sources, like the Annual Register: he sticks to chronology despite all the difficulties of employing a strictly chronological framewoik, and in consequence has to introduce a series of chapters at the end which cover particular themes, such as industrial relations, religion, population and philanthropy. These chapters are clearly inadequate for specialists of the subject; at the same time, they do not make up for the analytical deficiencies of the main part of the text. An analytical summary or at least a detached chapter at the beginning and the end would have rounded off the work in a far more satisfactory way. Too often, the reader is left with the feeling that he cannot see the wood for the trees.

As it is, only Dr Maccoby's preface to the first of these two volumes gives any idea of the way in which he himself conceives his task. He rightly claims that anonymous paragraphs in newspapers, periodicals or pamphlets are more useful to the historian of radicalism than authenticated letters of 'statesmen-rr', but he is too much on the defensive about this, talking of 'the formal hierarchy of historical evidence'. In the text also, he seems too deferential to the views of what he calls 'History'. He writes, for example, that 'History has come to view the chapel- going of large masses of working folk as the greatest single factor which prevented revolution during the long French wars and the bad times immediately afterwards' (ii, 455). Surely, it must be the purpose of a historian of radicalism not to take such judgements for granted and to talk of a curious eternal 'History' but to analyse them and sort them out. There is, indeed, a certain lack of confidence in Dr Maccoby's approach, which not even his most impressive accumulation of source materials can hide.

Another general point in his introduction is the relevance of economic factors to the historian of radicalism, and he claims as one of the advantages of using newspapers the fact that they provide material about poor harvests, high food prices and unemployment. The relationship between economic 'distress' and the diffusion of radical ideas is clearly a critical relationship, and it is a pity that Dr Maccoby rests content with the material provided by newspapers on this subject and with a few particular statements scattered about the text. On this occasion, a more careful perusal of the work of his fellow historians, particularly in articles, would have been far more helpful to him than a score of the little-known political pamphlets which he has brought to light. Both economic fluctuations and differences in local social structures are neglected in the text, unless the author chooses somewhat casually to refer to them.

There are other weaknesses in the whole picture and in the detail. In the first volume (1785 is not a good date to end with) too little attention is devoted to the difference between 'oppositionism' in parliament and oppositionist movements outside it. There is scope for a history of the idea and practice of opposition in the house of commons, but Dr Maccoby cannot be expected to provide it. On outside

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Short notices 247 movements on which he rightly concentrates, he sometimes seems to discriminate rather arbitrarily in his choice of material to illustrate particular elections and even in his choice of elections. While avoiding metaphors to describe radical development- 'under-currents' and 'eruptions '-he does not pay sufficient attention to traditions and movements within the City before 1762 (of the type discussed recently by Miss Lucy Sutherland) or to county organisation before the Yorkshire agitation of the late I77os.

The second volume is curiously weak on some well-known organisations, including the Hampden Club, the foundation of which is not described. The 1807 Westminster election is inadequately treated and the complex of discontent in

I81I and I812z needs far

more systematic study. What may be called the A.B.C. of radical organisation is seldom touched upon-how to build and finance an efficient radical machine which will keep running in difficult times as well as good ones. Dr Maccoby spends far too little time discussing where schemes of organisation came from, and how eloquent talk of 'unity', 'co-operation' and 'solidarity' reflected grave practical problems. The economic background of Peterloo deserves to be sketched in more fully, as does that of the Birmingham Political Union. Alternative interpretations of the significance of the combination acts of 1799 and

18oo at least ought to be noted.

It would be churlish to add to this catalogue or to make the catalogue the last word. The weaknesses of Dr Maccoby's volumes are the result of the gigantic task he set himself---to explain as well as to describe, to discuss parliament as well as the platform. Other historians can build on his work both by re-thinking the whole problem of the rise of British radicalism and by writing detailed monographic studies of particular themes and places.

ASA BRIcGGS

Short notices

SOME COMPARATIVE ASPECTS OF IRISH LAW. By A. G. Donaldson. Pp. xvi, 293. Durham (N.C.): Duke Univ. Press; London: Cambridge Univ. Press. I957. 45s. (Duke University Commonwealth Studies Center Publications, no. 3.)

THE title of this book is so modest as to be highly misleading. Into a mere 270 pages, written with clarity and economy, Mr Donaldson has managed to compress an outline of the history of Irish law and Irish land tenure, a summary of Irish constitutional history up to 192o, and a much fuller treatment of the development of constitutional law and history on each side of the border from 1920o to the present date. He dedicates his book 'In majorem honorem Ulidiae Hiberniaeque', a juxta- position at which jurists might reasonably cavil, for Ulidia was a portion

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