George III

3. O’Brien, Great Melody (21 Feb 2021)

by kurto

3. O’Brien, Great Melody (21 Feb)
Shunning understandings of Burke as the father of conservatism or primarily an exponent of natural law, O’Brien contends the guiding theme of the Anglo-Irishman’s political career is opposing tyranny and the abuse of power:

American colonies, Ireland, France, and India
Harried, and Burke’s great melody against it
– WB Yeats, the Sevens Sages

He agrees Burke changed his stance but not his ground: ‘One should distinguish between inconstancy and variation under circumstance. Liberty must work in conjunction with order’, Burke says in a detailed statement of political views (p. 441). Whenever there is an ‘obvious’ silence it’s traceable to his Irish liabilities; identification with Catholics emerges only very late, in the published letter to Hercules Langrishe.

Whiggish views of the late Georgian era remain prevalent, even if the methodology is suspect. Burke’s role in British and international politics was more significant than usually held, notably his analysis of George III’s court being more accurate than Namierites allow. Indeed, he ‘founded’ the Whig school of history with Thoughts on Present Discontents; O’Brien’s view is consistent with Mansfield’s finding that Burke established political parties. Namier saw Burke as the lead representative of the Whig tradition, which is better represented by Macaulay, Morley, and Trevelyan. Morley thought no one surpassed Burke in bringing philosophy to bear on statesmanship, ironic given his reputation for hysteria, and Namier’s mistake is believing the historian who sees the most recent / the latest has the best perspective: this may be so but does not entail authority to refute contemporary statements and records. To find Burke guilty of authoritarianism, as does Namier, one must ignore everything he ever said.

O’Brien treats Burke thematically, rather than chronologically.

    Ireland

: Grattan represented the Protestant Ascendancy, Burke surreptitiously the underground Catholic gentry, displaying lifelong interest in its culture. ‘Will no one stop this madman Grattan?’ (p. 243) – Burke was alarmed by independence for the Ascendancy, the Volunteers seeming to Catholics to represent mob violence. His father’s conversion was a wound that never healed; to his mother he owed a debt of honor that was never expatiated. He accepted Rome as a legitimate Christian institution, and closely identified with Trinity College Dublin. The Ascendancy correctly perceived Burke as a threat but couldn’t produce a smoking gun to alienate British Whigs. He shaped the Catholic Relief Bill of 1778, though did not advocate it; he lost Bristol because of evident sympathies which characterized every other important field of pursuit.

    America

: conciliation meant extending liberty throughout the empire. Once the fighting broke out, he fully sided with the colonists. As with the other three themes, the enemy is abuse of power. He likely drove the Rockingham administration’s repeal of the Stamp Act. Burke was concerned with American affairs by 1767, contra Namier, but the fragile alliance between Rockingham and Grenville (whom Burke disliked) effectively silenced him; when Grenville died in 1770, Burke (the driving force behind repeal of the Stamp Act) was no longer hostage to its author. Subsequently Fox was won over to the Rockinghams by Burke, who was prepared to follow him in the Commons. His major pronouncements on the Colonies comprise speeches on the Declaratory Act (1766), American taxation (1774), Conciliation with America (1775), and the address to the sheriffs of Bristol (1777). Those who were most anti-Catholic in Ireland and America were also most opposed to George III’s America policy, paradoxically for Burke. Further, Irish Volunteers were pro-American but anti-French, a problem once France swung behind the colonists. Burke spoke to English Whig towns, but not to the Ascendancy since he was a closet Jacobite. The Irish ferment around free trade in 1779 demonstrated the gulf between Grattan, unconcerned with Catholics, and Burke. Between Saratoga and Yorktown, Westminster’s struggles were essentially George III versus Burke, via the struggle for economic reform and the push for a second Rockingham ministry. In the course of negotiating the possibility of a North-Rockingham coalition, George III saw Burke a real advantage, ergo Burke didn’t need to prove his bona fides; from 1782 (Yorktown), George moves toward the character of a Whiggish constitutional monarch (contra Roberts).

    India

: In 1773 Burke turned down an opportunity to lead an inquiry into general amnesty for the East India Company – to whitewash, which would have produced personal benefits. However, he soon after gave a speech seeming to absolve Hastings and others in furtherance of the Rockingham line. He could not yet set the party’s tone. His real interests emerge in 1781, his fury demonstrating the injury of prior restraint. O’Brien allows for some defense of Hastings’ administration, while concluding Burke’s opposition to be principled. In supporting Fox’s India bill, Burke reveals his mind: ‘obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory’; ‘It is by bribing, not so often being bribed, that wicked politicians bring ruin on mankind’ (p. 348). George III ultimately saw the validity of Burke’s view; Pitt trapped the Foxite Whigs of public identification w opposition to East India, Burke didn’t care. Cornwallis, succeeding Hastings, concluded the project Burke commenced in 1781.

    France

: Price’s Revolutionary Society, established to celebrate 1688, emphasized the anti-Catholic aspects of the Revolution. Price was further an acolyte of Lord Shelburne, whom Burke thought had fomented the Gordon riots. Fox precipitated and insisted on the Whigs’ public split over France; Burke was trying not to run too far ahead of Portland and Fitzwilliam. When Pitt coopted the latter, Burke became superfluous. Burke understood fear of Jacobinism spreading to Ireland was paradoxically helpful to Catholic emancipation. Pitt calculated he would continue to support the government despite Fitzwilliams’ recall from Dublin, to have no choice but to support continued repression.
The French Revolution and Russian Revolution preceded Hitler in recasting society on the basis of theory. The exact nature of ideas is unimportant – the possibility of the mob seizing power is the essence; victims of the Terror were victims of rationalism. In an appendix of correspondence with the author, Irving Berlin is wrong to suggest Burke attacked the Enlightenment, or was reactionary (in Crooked Timber). Opposing the French Revolution as utopiam is far from reactionary, which Berlin concedes in correspondence. Nor was Burke a theoretical advocate of aristocracy, but more a defending of actually existing society.

NB: ‘Too much immersion in one’s profession, not enough in learning, relegates concentration to forms of business – not substance – because forms deal with ordinary matters’.
‘I cannot go that way to work. I feel an insuperable reluctance in giving my hand to destroy any established institution of government, upon a theory, however plausible it may be’. (p. 321
‘Men must have a certain fund of natural moderation to qualify them for freedom, else it becomes noxious to themselves and a perfect nuisance to everybody else’. (p. 387)
‘To innovate is not to reform’ (p.537)

18. Roberts, Last King of America (10 September 2022)

by kurto

George III was a custodial not a tyrannical monarch, demonstrating a principled constitutionality and remaining above faction without undermining those in power. Initially unpopular and enduring a series of irresolute or unprepared prime ministers, during the French Revolutionary era he showed himself determined and muchly helpful to Pitt the Younger’s success. The recasting of the British monarchy as constitutional head of state commenced with him, not Victoria.
George’s education was superior to public schooling but reclusive. He learned to value the balanced constitution while developing lifelong hostility to Whig oligopoly. Self-denying for the sake of country, he was the first Hanover to see himself as primarily British. He was kindly and at ease among the populace; many less flattering characteristics aspects of his character are attributable to the salacious Horace Walpole, an entertaining but often misleading diarist.
Just prior to reaching his majority, Parliament entered the Seven Years War having sacked Pitt the Elder, its best strategist, in favor of the corrupt Henry Fox. (George II, though conscious of his rights, did so at the Duke of Cumberland’s urging; he merely agreed with the Old Whigs.) Bute’s tutelage of George was held against his ministry, and the king was at first seen as grasping both by contemporaries and historians, wrongly in Roberts’ view.
At the French war’s denouement, Bute ceded the sugar island Guadeloupe, after having instead considered Canada on grounds that French pressure would have kept the American colonies loyal to Britain. Once safe, economic matters were a pretext for the real issue of self-government. Bute and Blackstone’s Commentaries (1765) fashioned George’s opinion that American claims to self-government had no standing in English law. In addition to the strategic error of tethering the Americans to the Atlantic seaboard (the Proclamation of 1763), this conservative view propelled Britain toward losing the colonies.
George tended to appoint prime ministers and leave them to legislate and execute, notwithstanding the unwonted predominance of the Grenvilles (George and his brother Richard Temple) and the Pitts (the elder being married to Temple’s sister). The Stamp Act was Grenville’s responsibility, and having insisted on dismissing Stuart-Mackenzie as Lord Privy Seal of Scotland, forcing George to break a promise, Grenville alienated George to the family for making him subject to factional interests. Lasting but two months, Grenville was replaced by Rockingham, who had never sat in Commons nor anyone else’s cabinet. Contra Conor Cruise O’Brien, on his return Pitt the Elder (now Lord Chatham) was given more scope than Rockingham, one of several occasions on which Roberts disagrees with the Irish historian. Later the sons of Pitt and Grenville would become PMs, indicating George’s essential forbearance.
In the years following the Stamp Act’s repeal, George contended with keeping Grenville out as PM, Wilkes out of the Commons, Parliamentary review of royal finances and appointments, and France out of the West Indies. Historians who contend George tried to gather power ignore the politicians who wished to avoid responsibility – including Lord North, who had otherwise ended the merry go round. Relatedly, contemporary European governments often resorted to genuine tyranny (e.g., mass arrests, execution of civilians without trial) whereas there had been arrests at all following the Boston Tea Party. George behaved with constitutional propriety during the American unrest, going along with hawkish ministries (admittedly to his liking) rather than driving policy. Of the 28 charges laid against George in the Declaration of Independence, only 2, regarding taxation and parliamentary authority to legislate for the colonists, are logical.
In post facto war gaming, the UK wins the war 45 percent of the time. Even as the war deteriorated, George, stepping back from hopes of an outright win, was determined to hold Canada, Nova Scotia, and Florida. The stakes were more patriotic than economic: circa 1776, imports from the British Windies totaled £4.5 million, versus 1.5 million from India, while the Americans were far below.
1779 marked existential danger for Britain. A French fleet of 63 ships and 30,000 regulars gained control of the English Channel. George showed a decisiveness that North lacked, pressing for attack in the Windies, Gibraltar, and Minorca, recognizing that France and Spain’s joining the war converted the conflict from a domestic question of Parliament’s constitutional rights in the colonies to the UK’s survival as a great power. Colonial possessions had to be defended, even at the risk of the homeland’s invasion, because of the sugar islands’ revenue. However, he was less clear sighted about responsibilities for the American war’s military losses. (NB: ‘Hessians’ werer from several small principalities, representing one-third of the soldiery. Not mercenaries, they were paid by the German states. Though effective they made for poor propaganda, especially during the New Jersey winter of 1777-78.)
Though not ignoring the denouement, Roberts’ current thus turns toward domestic matters. Thinking George a moderate, he is generally unsympathetic to Burke, described as a ‘radical Whig’ (e.g., pp. 417, 445, 486, 490). Pitt on Burke: ‘much to admire, nothing to agree with’ (p. 526). Irish repeal of the Declaratory Act demonstrates Westminster had learned from America, rather panic in the Rockingham administration. Whig attempts to arrogate East India Company patronage to Parliament in 1778 seemed an oligarchical revival to George; parallels to the Whigs’ 1766’s repeal of the Stamp Act make them seem hypocritical.
1784’s dismissal of the Fox-North coalition stemmed from the East India Bill, and was quite constitutional of George. The subsequent election, a hotly contested affair which produced ‘Fox’s martyrs’, indicated that the Whig leader had overplayed his hand regarding East India, the loss of America, and near-republican critique of the monarch. Pitt’s rout result in George’s having a genuine ally for the first time, at time when the king could still have his choice of ministers. Had he died in 1783, he might have been lumped together with his Hanoverian predecessors; but instead he and Pitt saw off the French revolutionaries and Bonaparte. By 1792, Pitt as PM was no longer immediately responsible to the king, but to Parliament; he, Dundas, and Grenville were a united front in dealing with the monarch; Addington extended the trend. Pitt’s success was muchly due to George’s support.
As when recovering from illness, so with the initial period of the Revolutionary wars. Evident homeliness, piety, and commitment to national victory established his bona fides. Whereas during the American revolution George’s principled stance was unhelpful, in the French wars it was invaluable. Ironically, he traveled little, never visiting Scotland, Wales, or Ireland; nor Hanover; nor the American colonies or Windies. Indeed, did he travel north of Worcester or west of Plymouth. He never went to see the newly industrializing Manchester, Birmingham, or Leeds.
In Ireland, George supported toleration of the Catholic Church but not equality, for he was head of the Church of England (and of Ireland), and so was unhappy with the Earl of Fitzwilliam’s concessions. His successor, Earl of Camden, confiscated 50,000 muskets and 70,000 pikes – indicative of 1798. Neoclassical architecture, already underway, reached its apogee during his reign as he frequently paid interest in public projects.
(NB: amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.)
(NB: as an insult, a XXX husband, rather than not remarry, should as condign punishment marry the devil’s daughter. The riposte: the law prohibited marrying one’s deceased wife’s sister – p. 407)

19. Butterfield, George III and the Historians (24 September 2022)

by kurto

George III’s intentions at accession have been revealing of the historian’s partisanship and methodological preferences. Primarily narrating the historiographical turns of the succeeding two centuries, Butterfield points up the novelty of party in 18th-century England: the great minds of Bolingbroke, Hume, and Burke were innovating. Therefore to claim the king broke rules of constitutional monarchy which were not so well established in 1760 as in 1860 indicates anachronism. Further, both Whigs (Rockinghams) and court parties were necessary to conflict and resolution; one should not write history as if conflict should not have occurred. The role of independent MPs, not to mention the Wilkes saga, brings politics back into relief. Where Whiggish historians have seen partisan views (e.g., in parliamentary debates) as automatically leading to voting outcomes, Namierites have seen socioeconomic classification as determinative. (As an analogue, see historical treatment of assembly debates early in the early French Revolution.) Yet individuals acted on particular influences or preferences. No amount of scholarship can remedy insufficient imagination in interrogating and reconstructing the past. Equally, the historian who recovers structure and process is not obliged to defend it. The professional is to be diligent in search of evidence, responsible to it, and fair-minded in judgement and presentation. Narrative encompasses both analysis and structure most fully. Put more colloquially, the reader should not be able to guess the outcome.

12. Butterfield, George III and the Historians (26 Jun 2017)

by kurto

Assesses the historiography of George III’s early reign — how he intended to govern from 1760-63, and whether it constituted a significant break from his Hanover predecessors. The contest between neo-historicist Whig and more overtly partisan Tory interpretations culminated in Whig ascendancy, until the arrival the Namierite school of ‘structured analysis’, which asserted behavior is explicable according to classifiable political types (i.e., MPs). Burke, as a contemporary naturally belonged to the Whigs, although he was ‘satisfied’ with subsequent reform and so able to turn against the persecutors of the French monarchy. Butterfield asserts history is ‘both story and study’ (pp. 294-295): readers shouldn’t be able to guess the outcome. Meanwhile, an individual’s deeds are to be assessed in the context of the ideas then held, and primary sources are valuably supplemented by external evidence and evaluation. As to the historian, he is to be diligent in search of new or novel evidence, responsible in the use of evidence, and the best presenter of it. No amount of learning can surmount deficient imagination.