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“An Handful of Violent People”: The Nature of The Foxite Opposition, 1794-1801

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Richard E. Willis
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Extract

One of the largest remaining lacunae in the modern analysis of Great Britain's parliamentary opposition is located in the years between the breakup of the Whig Party in 1794 and the end of Henry Addington's ministry ten years later. From the fall of North's government to their fragmentation in 1794, the whigs have been systematically scrutinized by Professors Christie, Cannon, Mitchell and O'Gorman, while Professors Roberts and Mitchell have provided similar service for the years from the Ministry of All the Talents to the Reform Bill crisis. But the state of the opposition during the years immediately following 1794 has not been extensively considered; in particular, the question of how any opposition managed to survive the traumas of the 1790's has been a subject for suggestion rather than analysis. And yet the question is an important one, if only because the coalition of 1794 is frequently interpreted as having produced a political and ideological alignment which in its main outlines was to dominate British politics until the emergence of the Labour Party. If true—although the geneology of the two-party system remains a productive controversy—this lends an added dimension to the perpetually enlightening study of opposition during the stress of a great war, and to the particular question of how the Foxite rump managed to endure the overwhelming ministerial dominance of the 1790's.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , Fall 1976 , pp. 236 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1976

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References

1 Christie, Ian R., The End of North's Ministry 1780-1782 (London, 1958)Google Scholar; Cannon, John, The Fox-North Coalition: Crisis of the Constitution, 1782-4 (Cambridge, 1969)Google Scholar; Mitchell, L.G., Charles James Fox and the Disintegration of the Whig Party 1782-1794 (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar; O'Gorman, F., The Whig Party and the French Revolution (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Roberts, Michael, The Whig Party 1807-1812 (London, 1939)Google Scholar; Mitchell, Austin, The Whigs in Opposition 1815-1830 (Oxford, 1967).Google Scholar

2 Brooke, John, “Party in the Eighteenth Century,” in Natan, Alex, ed., Silver Renaissance (London, 1961), p. 35Google Scholar. The apostolic succession of Pitt, Liverpool, Peel and Disraeli is indeed matched by that of Fox, Grey, Russell and Gladstone, although the careers of men such as Palmerston and Aberdeen imply a certain mid-Victorian Babylonian Captivity.

3 Stanhope, Lord, Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt (London, 1861–1862), II: 374–375.Google Scholar

4 They are very well treated in Cannon, John, Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832 (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 116–164.Google Scholar

5 A similar argument has been used to justify their premature advocacy of party government itself: this laudable ideal was unattainable while the monarchy remained politically powerful, but was vindicated by later nineteenth century developments. See, for example, Cone, Carl B., Edmund Burke and the Nature of Politics (Lexington, Ky., 1957), I:175.Google Scholar

6 Ginter, Donald E., “The Financing of the Whig Party Organization, 1783-1793,” American Historical Review, LXXI (1965–1966):421–440Google Scholar; Whig Organization in the General Election of 1790; Selections from the Blair Adam Papers (Berkeley, 1967)Google Scholar, passim.

7 Ibid., pp. xliii-xliv; O'Gorman, , Whig Party and French Revolution, p. 236.Google Scholar

8 Adam to Samuel Parr, 5 May 1795; William Smith to Adam, 30 July (1795); James Erskine to Adam, 20 Sept. 1796; Kinross, Scotland, Blair Adam MSS.

9 Denis O'Bryen to Adam, endorsed July 1802; Robert Adair to Adam, 22 July 1802: ibid.

10 Roberts, , Whig Party 1807-1812, pp. 89, 337.Google Scholar

11 Mitchell, , Whigs in Opposition, pp. 25–27Google Scholar; Christie, Ian R., “James Perry of the Morning Chronicle, 1756-1821,” in his Myth and Reality in Late-Eighteenth-Century British Politics and Other Papers (Berkeley, 1970), pp. 351–355.Google Scholar

12 The club's absolute importance might have declined from the spring of 1793, but its relative importance was enhanced by its mere survival, especially as the Friends of the People lapsed into desuetude after 1794.

13 Walpole, B.C., Recollections of the Life of the late Right Honourable Charles James Fox (New York, 1807), p. 136.Google Scholar

14 Fox to Adam, endorsed 1796: Blair Adam MSS.

15 Bedford to Adam, endorsed Feb. 1795: ibid; Fox to duke of Devonshire, 28 Dec. 1795 (copy): British Museum, Add MSS 47569, fo. 70.

16 Russell, Lord John, The Life and Times of Charles fames Fox (London, 1866), III: 168–170.Google Scholar

17 John Gregory to Adam, 12 and 20 Dec. 1796: Blair Adam MSS; Lord Holland to O'Bryen, 1 Jan. 1800: B.M., Add MSS 51592, fo. 22: earl of Ilchester, ed., The Journal of Elizabeth Lady Holland (1791-1811) (London, 1908), I: 214.Google Scholar

18 Mitchell, , Fox and Disintegration, p. 268.Google Scholar

19 The regulars were Bedford, Bessborough, Derby, Egmont, Guildford, Holland, Lansdowne, Maynard, Norfolk, Suffolk, Tankerville and Thanet; the occasionals were Albermarle, Devonshire, King, Leeds, Moira, Ponsonby, Saye and Sele, Shaftesbury, Thurloe and Walpole.

20 Fox to Richard Fitzpatrick, (1799): B.M., Add MSS 47581, fox. 61-62.

21 Fox to Holland, 1796: B.M., Add MSS 47572, fos. 128-129.

22 Wyvill to Fox, 21 Dec. 1805; Fox to Wyvill, 23 Dec. 1805; Wyvill to Fox, 24 Dec. 1805: Northallerton Record Office, Wyvill MSS. I am indebted to Dr. John Dinwiddy for beinging this material to my attention.

23 Fox to Holland, 5 Jan. 1799: B.M., Add MSS 47573, fo. 87.

24 Lord Archibald Hamilton to Holland, 18 Dec. 1797: Add MSS 51570, fo. 65.

25 Roberts, , Whig Party, pp. 174–176Google Scholar; Mitchell, , Whigs in Opposition, pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

26 Willis, Richard E., “Fox, Grenville and the Recovery of Opposition, 1801-1804,” Journal of British Studies, XI (1972): 33–35.Google Scholar

27 Mitchell, , Fox and Disintegration, p. 248.Google Scholar

28 Rose's calculations must be used circumspectly; they are preserved in the papers of the second Earl Camden; Kent Record Office, Pratt MSS, U1590/749/12.

29 Mitchell, , Fox and Disintegration, pp. 292–298Google Scholar; O'Gorman, , Whig Party and French Revolution, pp. 250–254.Google Scholar

30 They are listed below in Appendix I. They amount to one-third of all the division lists available for this period, and include nearly all the important ones.

31 The figure of 25% was arrived at by the concrete-deductive approach: I found that those Foxites whose affiliation could be established without the aid of division lists almost never participated in less than one in four of the votes selected. On this basis, I eliminated twelve of the sixty-six Members whom O'Gorman lists as Foxites, six of whom were not re-elected in 1796, and another six who sat through 1802. They are David Howell, Lord Peter Ludlow, Maurice Robinson, Henry Speed, Benjamin Vaughn and Percy Wyndham, and William Baker, Sir Charles Davers, William Lambton, Richard Milnes, John Phillips and John Wharton. The 25% minimum was not, however, applied to men returned in 1796 or thereafter.

32 They are listed below in Appendix II.

33 The constituency data has been derived primarily from SirNamier, Lewis, Brooke, John, et al, History of Parliament: The Commons, 1754-1790 (New York, 1964), I: 205–458.Google Scholar

* By 1796 the party had lost its three Scottish members, none of whom were returned again before 1802.

34 The four venal seats lost were in Great Marlow, Sudbury, and both in Ilchester; the five popular seats gained were in Lincoln, London, Southwark, and both in Coventry, the latter a remarkable feat.

35 The patrons returning Foxite Members are listed below in Appendix III. Four of the additional Members gained for close boroughs in 1796 were the duke of Northumberland's, who returned only for a brief time to active opposition after the ministry's unsuccessful attack on his interests at Launceston and Newport in the general election.

36 The three men returned by the peerage were Sir Henry Fletcher (Cumberland), St. Andrew St. John (Bedfordshire), and Lord George Cavendish (Derbyshire); the two cases of influence were Lord William Russell (Surrey) and Robert Biddulph (Herefordshire); the eight were Filmer Honywood (Kent), George Byng (Middlesex), Thomas Coke (Norfolk), John Crewe (Cheshire), Charles Grey (Northumberland), Sir William Lemon (Cornwall), William Plumer (Hertfordshire), and Robert Vyner, Jr. (Lincolnshire).

37 Foord, Archibald S., His Majesty's Opposition, 1714-1830 (Oxford, 1964), pp. 402–403.Google Scholar

38 Willis, , “Fox, Grenville, and Recovery”, p. 41Google Scholar; list of Members polled in George Tierney's election as leader in the Commons, 1818: Hampshire Record Office, Tierney MSS.

39 The Foxites returned in 1796 averaged 39 years of age, while the average of all Members returned at the 1734-1831 general elections was, according to Judd, 43.3. Judd, Gerrit P., Members of Parliament 1734-1832 (New Haven, 1955), p. 21.Google Scholar