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Sir Lewis Namier Again Considered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Harvey C. Mansfield Jr.
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Extract

Walcott's critique raises three general issues: whether Sir Lewis Namier thought that the foremost task of an historian is the destruction of legends; whether he tried to write the whole truth about the eighteenth century; and whether anyone can properly be designated a professional historian or professional political scientist. Some of Walcott's particular criticisms can be answered in the discussion of these three issues.

The first issue is whether Namier thought that the foremost task of an historian is the destruction of legends. At the beginning of his critique, Walcott doubts it, but does not deny it. Yet at the end of his critique, he summarizes “what Namier did do” as the removal of certain misconceptions about eighteenth-century politics; these misconceptions Namier called “legends,” according to Walcott. The misconceptions consist in analyzing eighteenth century politics in nineteenth-century terms, but they are not confined to nineteenth-century historians. They are held by twentieth-century historians as well, in fact, by all historians of the ante-Namier period, as Walcott calls it. Namier shows how much contempt he has for these historians and their legends in a sentence which cannot be considered innocuous. Namier says: “… I hardly remember having come across any contemporary materials, or any book reproducing such materials, which did not contribute something to my information.” Since “contemporary” means “eighteenth-century” here, Namier says by implication that no later ante-Namier historian has contributed to his information, unless he has reproduced eighteenth-century materials.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , May 1964 , pp. 109 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1964

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References

1. Namier, L. B., The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd ed.; London, 1957), p. xivGoogle Scholar.

2. Ibid., pp. 9, 238; Namier, L. B., England in the Age of the American Revolution (London, 1930), p. 183Google Scholar. Romney Sedgwick traces one source for the legend of Bolingbroke's influence on George III to a spiteful lie told by Horace Walpole. As one of his spirited but cramped criticisms of other historians, Sedgwick fails to mention that this charge had been made in similar form by Croker, J. W. (Review of Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George II, Quarterly Review, XXVII (1822), 178–215Google Scholar; Review of Walpole, Horace, Memoirs of the Reign of George III, Quarterly Review, LXXVII (1845), 253–98Google Scholar), and that Croker subsequently and most reasonably retracted it: “… most of my former doubts as to Walpole's accuracy have been entirely removed.” (Prefatory Notice to John, , Hervey, Lord, Memoirs of the Reign of George II (London, 1848), I, p. lxviGoogle Scholar.) See Sedgwick, Romney (ed.), Letters from George III to Lord Bute, 1756–1766 (London, 1939), pp. xxxvii, xliiGoogle Scholar, note 1; and Namier, L. B., Avenues of History (London, 1952), p. 118Google Scholar.

3. In one context Danton apparently means that to put Marat on trial for his excesses is to put the Revolution on trial. One cannot condemn the Revolution merely because of its excesses, but one can and should judge the Revolution. In this place Danton refers not to “revolutions” but to “la Révolution.” See his speech of Jan. 20, 1792 in Danton, Georges Jacques, Discours de Danton, ed. Fribourg, André (Paris, 1910), pp. 128–30Google Scholar.

4. Watson, J. Steven, The Reign of George III (Oxford, 1960), p. 9Google Scholar; Cf. Namier, , England in the Age of the American Revolution, pp. 36, 46Google Scholar.

5. That is why Namier looks for evidence that members of the House of Commons had a private interest in America instead of judging their acquaintance with America by the results of their policies. A policy can succeed by chance; but the historian can usually distinguish mere chance from deserved success in the results of policies. A deservedly successful policy on America shows a better acquaintance with America than any number of private connections can produce; for “intimate knowledge” may be knowledge of details only, without perspective and common sense. But Namier is so sure that British policy on America was unsuccessful that he thinks nothing can be learned from investigating it. He dismisses the importance of public speeches as a matter of course, and correspondingly elevates the importance of private transactions. This is the premise, and not the consequence of his researches.

6. Walcott says that Namier's work demonstrates the truth of Bolingbroke's assertion that after 1688 there were no longer real differences between the Whigs and the Tories. But Burke agreed with Bolingbroke on this point: “… the great parties which formerly divided and agitated the kingdom are known to be in a manner entirely dissolved.” Burke, Edmund, “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” Works of Burke [Bohn Library] (London, 1854), I, 308Google Scholar. The issue between Bolingbroke and Burke, and between Bute and Newcastle, is not the danger of a Tory renaissance. Namier (as well as Sedgwick) mistakenly believed that, having proved there was no Tory renaissance in the 1760's, he had proved there was no danger of tyranny in the 1760's. But Bolingbroke and Burke both asserted that there was a new danger of tyranny, not a simple renewal of the seventeenth-century danger.

7. Cf. Namier, : “The function of the historian is akin to that of the painter … to discover and set forth, to single out and stress that which is of the nature of the thing.” Avenues of History, p. 8Google Scholar.

8. Ibid., pp. 8-9.