We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2021
William Rathbone Greg's name is well known to historians of nineteenth-century Britain, but the content of his political thought is not. This article, based on a comprehensive reading of Greg's prolific published output, has two aims. The first is to pin down his politics. The article positions Greg as a leading spokesman for the rationalistic, antidemocratic strand of mid-Victorian Liberalism. It argues that his thought centered on the idea that politics was a science, and that scientific statesmanship might solve many of the problems of the age. The article's second aim is to show that Greg was a sophisticated thinker on politics overseas. He developed distinctive arguments about the structures of European politics, and especially about France under the Second Empire (1852–70). Greg's writings cast important light on the connections between abstract, domestic, and European issues in less familiar reaches of Liberal thought, and on how Victorian political science grappled with Continental despotism.
1 Greg is rightly described as a “moralist” in Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), 624. But he does not feature in Collini, Stefan, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850–1930 (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar; in Noel Annan, “The Intellectual Aristocracy,” in J. H. Plumb, ed., Studies in Social History: A Tribute to G.M. Trevelyan (London, 1955), 241–87; or in Whyte, William, “The Intellectual Aristocracy Revisited,” Journal of Victorian Culture 10/1 (2005), 15–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Helmstadter, Richard J., “W. R. Greg: A Manchester Creed,” in Helmstadter, Richard J. and Lightman, Bernard, eds., Victorian Faith in Crisis: Essays on Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-Century Religious Belief (Stanford, 1990), 187–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 190.
3 Ibid., 188.
4 Conti, Gregory, Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 2019), 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Ibid., 29 n. 64, 141–6.
6 Ibid., 179. See also Selinger, William and Conti, Gregory, “Reappraising Walter Bagehot's Liberalism: Discussion, Public Opinion, and the Meaning of Parliamentary Government,” History of European Ideas 41/2 (2015), 264–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 See e.g. in each case: for utilitarianism, Taylor, M. W., Man versus the State: Herbert Spencer and Late Victorian Individualism (Oxford, 1992), 62Google Scholar; for the Manchester School, William D. Grampp, The Manchester School of Economics (Stanford, 1960), 107–10; for industrial paternalism, Bouche, Patrice, “Les ouvriers des filatures dans les années 1830: La vision paternaliste libérale des frères Greg,” in Millat, Gilbert, ed., La classe ouvrière britannique, XIXe–XXe siècles: Proscrits, patriotes, citoyens (Paris, 2005), 23–53Google Scholar; for political economy, Winch, Donald, Wealth and Life: Essays on the Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, 1848–1914 (Cambridge, 2009), 393–4Google Scholar; for social science, Lawrence Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Social Science Association, 1857–1886 (Cambridge, 2002), 315; for democracy, Robert Saunders, Democracy and the Vote in British Politics, 1848–1867 (Farnham, 2011), 91–4; and Dubrulle, Hugh, “‘We Are Threatened with … Anarchy and Ruin’: Fear of Americanization and the Emergence of an Anglo-Saxon Confederacy in England during the American Civil War,” Albion 33/4 (2001), 583–613CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the slave trade, G. R. Searle, Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1998), 59–60; for the women's movement, Susan Hamilton, Francis Power Cobbe and Victorian Feminism (Basingstoke, 2002), Ch. 2, which rather overrates Greg's significance; and Ellen Jordan, The Women's Movement and Women's Employment in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, 1999), 160–63; for statesmanship, David Craig, “Statesmanship,” in David Craig and James Thompson, eds., Languages of Politics in Nineteenth-century Britain (Basingstoke, 2013), 44–68; for biblical criticism, Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Impact of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford, 1988), 271; and for Darwinism, Peter Morton, The Vital Science: Biology and the Literary Imagination (London, 1984), 123–6; Stack, David, “The Death of John Stuart Mill,” Historical Journal 54/1 (2011), 167–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 173; and Richard Allen Soloway, Birth Control and the Population Question in England, 1877–1930 (Chapel Hill, 1982), 15. For every theme these references could be multiplied.
8 A. V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century (London, 1905), 164, 244; Alfred William Benn, A History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (London, 1906), 2: 64. Some historians maintain the industrial theme, calling Greg a “leading member of the industrial elite in Manchester,” an “industrialist and social critic,” and an “ideologue closely associated with the manufacturers.” Craig, “Statesmanship,” 48; Duncan Andrew Campbell, English Public Opinion and the American Civil War (Woodbridge, 2003), 48; Anthony Howe, The Cotton Masters, 1830–1860 (Oxford, 1984), 232.
9 Eric Rowley and Leonard Minkes, William Rathbone Greg: Industrialist, Essayist, and Pamphleteer (Manchester, 2009), 1; P. B. M. Blaas, Continuity and Anachronism: Parliamentary and Constitutional Development in Whig Historiography and in the Anti-Whig Reaction between 1890 and 1930 (The Hague, 1978), 181; Crook, D. P., “The British Whigs on America: 1820–1860,” Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies 3 (1961), 4–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 11.
10 Robert Saunders, “‘Let America Be the Test’: Democracy and Reform in Britain, 1832–1867,” in Ella Dzelzainis and Ruth Livesey, eds., The American Experiment and the Idea of Democracy in British Culture, 1776–1914 (Farnham, 2013), 79–92, at 84; David Brown, “The Press,” in David Brown, Robert Crowcroft, and Gordon Pentland, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History, 1800–2000 (Oxford, 2018), 154–72, at 161; Helmstadter, “W. R. Greg,” 211; William B. Thesing, Victorian Prose Writers before 1867 (Detroit, 1987), 114. For Greg as a “progressive journalist” see Caroline Shaw, Britannia's Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief (Oxford, 2015), 156.
11 J. P. Parry, Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 1867–1875 (Cambridge, 1986), 114, 76, and, for a very Gregian distillation of the “Whig–Liberal” agenda, 450–51; Jonathan Parry, The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity, and Europe, 1830–1886 (Cambridge, 2006), 81.
12 In fact citing only a single, very rich, Economist article: Georgios Varouxakis, Victorian Political Thought on France and the French (Basingstoke, 2002), 68–70. See also Varouxakis, “1848 and British Political Thought on the ‘Principle of Nationality’,” in Douglas Moggach and Gareth Stedman Jones, eds., The 1848 Revolutions and European Political Thought (Cambridge, 2018), 140–61, at 158; and Ruth Dudley Edwards, The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist, 1843–1993 (London, 1993), 154 and Ch. 13. There are further references to Greg's writing on foreign politics in Parry, Politics of Patriotism.
13 The Spectator, 19 Nov. 1881, 1462. See also The Times, 25 Aug. 1884, 3.
14 Most work on Liberal political thought about Europe in this period focuses on the more “progressive” thinkers John Stuart Mill and Richard Cobden. See esp. Georgios Varouxakis, Mill on Nationality (Abingdon, 2002); Varouxakis, Liberty Abroad: J. S. Mill on International Relations (Cambridge, 2013); Anthony Howe, “Re-forging Britons: Richard Cobden and France,” in Sylvie Aprile and Fabrice Bensimon, eds., La France et l'Angleterre au XIXe siècle: Échanges, représentations, comparaisons (Paris, 2006), 89–104; Howe, “Two Faces of British Power: Cobden versus Palmerston,” in David Brown and Miles Taylor, eds., Palmerston Studies II (Southampton, 2006), 166–92; Cain, Peter, “Capitalism, War, and Internationalism in the Thought of Richard Cobden,” British Journal of International Studies 5/3 (1979), 229–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Liberalism and “Caesarism” more generally see Helena Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton, 2018), Ch. 5.
15 W. R. Greg, Enigmas of Life, 18th edn (London, 1891), viii. The following details are drawn mainly from the anonymous but well-informed prefatory memoir attached to this edition, which was edited by Greg's second wife (vii–xliii), and from John Morley, “W. R. Greg: A Sketch,” in Morley, Critical Miscellanies, 4 vols. (London, 1886), 3: 213–59. For Greg's business career see Mary B. Rose, The Gregs of Quarry Bank Mill: The Rise and Decline of a Family Firm, 1750–1914 (Cambridge, 1986).
16 On the social context of Manchester Unitarianism see Seed, John, “Unitarianism, Political Economy and the Antinomies of Liberal Culture in Manchester, 1830–50,” Social History 7/1 (1982), 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dentith, Simon, “Political Economy, Fiction and the Language of Practical Ideology in Nineteenth-Century England,” Social History 8/2 (1983), 183–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 194–6. See also, on Manchester politics, Anthony Howe and Simon Morgan, eds., Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Liberalism: Richard Cobden Bicentenary Essays (Aldershot, 2006).
17 W. R. Greg, Observations on a Late Pamphlet by Mr Stone, on the Phrenological Development of Burke, Hare, &c. (Edinburgh, 1829).
18 [W. R. Greg], Sketches in Greece and Turkey: With the Present Condition and Prospects of the Turkish Empire (London, 1833).
19 See the prizewinning W. R. Greg, “Agriculture and the Corn Law: Showing the Injurious Effects of the Corn Law upon Tenant Farmers and Farm Labourers,” in The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law (Manchester, 1842). John Almack's Character, Motives, and Proceedings of the Anti-Corn Law Leaguers (London, 1843) was dedicated to Greg as “one of the most conspicuous members” of the League (ibid., 3). For Greg's correspondence with Cobden, with whom he had little in common politically after 1846, see John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden, 2 vols. (London, 1881), 2: 23; Anthony Howe, ed., The Letters of Richard Cobden: Volume Two, 1848–1853 (Oxford, 2010), xxv.
20 For Greg's Economist career see now Alexander Zevin, Liberalism at Large: The World according to the Economist (London, 2019), 34–6.
21 “W.R.G.,” Saturday Review 72/1864 (1891), 74. His pen policies attracted some criticism as an example of short-sighted governmental cheeseparing: Saturday Review 27/692 (1869), 140–41.
22 Most of these encountered in company with Bagehot: see Mrs Russell Barrington, Life of Walter Bagehot (London, 1914), passim; The Collected Works of Walter Bagehot, ed. Norman St John-Stevas, 15 vols. (London, 1965–86), vols. 14–15 passim; Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, 3 vols. (London, 1877), 3: 274; Herbert Spencer, An Autobiography, 2 vols. (London, 1904), 1: 367, 372.
23 See M. C. M. Simpson, ed., Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior, from 1834 to 1859, 2 vols (London, 1872), 1: 17, 2: 31; Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1861), 2: 444, 225. Greg's correspondence with Tocqueville was more than just social, involving developed exchanges on French history and on the mechanics of electoral and party systems.
24 J. S. Mill to Edwin Chadwick, 2 Jan. 1859, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson, 33 vols. (Toronto and London, 1963–91), 15: 587–8; J. S. Mill to Harriet Mill, 9 Jan. 1854, in ibid., 14: 126.
25 These have been traced mainly through Walter E. Houghton, ed., The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824–1900, 5 vols. (Toronto, 1966–89). Difficulties in attribution preclude the systematic use of Greg's writing in The Economist.
26 And otherwise from Economist articles, and pamphlets. W. R. Greg, Essays on Political and Social Science, Contributed Chiefly to the Edinburgh Review, 2 vols. (London, 1853); Greg, Literary and Social Judgments, 2 vols. (London, 1868); Greg, Political Problems for Our Age and Country (London, 1870); Greg, Mistaken Aims and Attainable Ideals of the Artizan Class (London, 1876); Greg, Miscellaneous Essays (London, 1882); Greg, Miscellaneous Essays: Second Series (London, 1884).
27 W. R. Greg, The Creed of Christendom; Its Foundations and Superstructure (London, 1851); Greg, Enigmas of Life (London, 1873); Greg, Rocks Ahead: Or, the Warnings of Cassandra (London, 1874). Rocks Ahead was previously serialized in the Contemporary Review.
28 Goldwin Smith, “Mr. Greg on Culpable Luxury,” Contemporary Review 22 (1873), 126–37; Morley, “W. R. Greg”; R. H. Hutton, “William Rathbone Greg,” in Hutton, Criticisms of Contemporary Thought and Thinkers, 2 vols. (London, 1894), 2: 137–44. Even Greg's potboiling articles were picked out for comment in the highbrow press: e.g. anon., “Life at High Pressure,” Saturday Review 39/1008 (1875), 242–4.
29 John Emerich Edward, First Baron Acton, “Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History,” in Lectures on Modern History, by the Late Right Hon. John Emerich Edward, First Baron Acton, ed. John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence (London, 1906), 1–30, endnote references at 331, 342.
30 Thomas Carlyle to John A. Carlyle, 15 April 1853, in The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (Durham, NC, 1970–), 28: 109–12, at 111.
31 Westminster Review, quoted in Greg, Enigmas (1873), [309]; The Academy 503 (24 Dec. 1881), 468.
32 “Greg's Essays on Social Science,” The Leader 4/149 (1853), 113–14, at 113; The Examiner, 2351 (19 Feb. 1853), 116–17. See also Francis Watt, “The Teaching of the Late Mr. W. R. Greg,” St James's Magazine 4/42 (1882), 35–44, at 35, 42; and “Mr. W. R. Greg,” The Examiner, 27 May 1876, 599–600, which described Greg as a “slovenly thinker, frequently inconsistent, and always incomplete.”
33 Percy Greg, “The Late Mr. W. R. Greg,” The Spectator, 16 Aug. 1884, 15.
34 Mountstuart E. Grant Duff, in Greg, Enigmas (1891), lxxiv, original emphasis. Engaging more combatively with Greg's writing elsewhere, Grant Duff noted that Greg had been “long known as one of the best political writers in England.” M. E. Grant Duff, “Must We Then Believe Cassandra?”, Fortnightly Review 16/95 (1874), 581–604, at 581.
35 Greg had a measured opinion of the vices and virtues of “Whiggism,” which he identified mainly with the parliamentary party and its leaders. The Whigs had lost their way because of their rigidity and dogmatism, but they deserved gratitude for having steadily championed constitutional freedom and religious liberty: [W. R. Greg], “Crisis of Political Parties: The Grand Desideratum,” North British Review 17/34 (1852), 559–82, at 571–2; Greg, “Prospects of British Statesmanship,” Essays on Political and Social Science, 2: 364–421, at 371, 421.
36 Cobden had lost his way in turning towards the “economical” school of foreign policy, Bright in converting himself into a democratic tribune. W.R.G. [W. R. Greg], “Statesmanship in Constitutional Countries,” National Review 19/1 (1864), 143–58, at 145; [Greg], “Mr. Bright, Painted by Himself,” National Review 10/20 (1860), 522–44, at 523–5. By 1855 the Manchester school were “few and discredited”: [Greg], “Cabinets and Statesmen,” North British Review 24/47 (1855), 183–96, at 186.
37 [W. R. Greg], “Louis Napoleon at Home and Abroad,” National Review 6/12 (1858), 472–95, at 487; [Greg], “Tests for the Public Service,” National Review 12/23 (1861), 129–44, at 129. See also, for a contemporary perspective on Greg's Liberalism, “W.R.G,” London Review 17/435 (1868), 502–3.
38 [Greg], “Statesmanship in Constitutional Countries,” 144–5; [W. R. Greg], “The Statesmen of the Day,” National Review 1/2 (1855), 411–38, at 436; [Greg], “Mr. Gladstone's Apologia,” Quarterly Review 126/251 (1869), 121–34.
39 Memoir in Greg, Enigmas (1891), xxxvii–xxxix.
40 [W. R. Greg], “Sir Robert Peel and His Policy,” Westminster Review 58/113 (1852), 205–46, at 208. In the same year, however, he wrote that it tended to be the outworks rather than the essential principles of conservative policy that were hard to defend. see [Greg], “Investments for the Working Classes,” Edinburgh Review 95/194 (1852), 405–53, at 424.
41 [W. R. Greg], ‘Past and Present Political Morality of British Statesmen,’ North British Review 21/42 (1854), 545–86, at 579; Memoir in Greg, Enigmas (1891), xxxviii–xxxix.
42 “Liberal Waverers,” London Review 17/433 (1868), 441–2, at 442. See also The Spectator, 19 Sept. 1868, 2, which charged Greg with “almost every species of Tory sympathy.”
43 The tone of pessimism which many noticed in Greg's work of the 1860s and 1870s stemmed not from any change of view, but from the advance of democracy, which he had always abhorred. See [W. R. Greg], “The Achievements and the Moral of 1867,” North British Review 47/93 (1867), 205–56; and cf. Dicey, Law and Public Opinion, 164.
44 At least until the last phase of his career, with Rocks Ahead (1873).
45 As noted in Parry, Democracy and Religion, 113.
46 Ruth Watts, Gender, Power and the Unitarians in England, 1760–1860 (London 1998); Paul Wood, ed., Science and Dissent in England, 1688–1945 (Aldershot, 2004); Jean Raymond and John Pickstone, “The Natural Sciences and the Learning of English Unitarians: An Exploration of the Roles of Manchester College,” in Barbara Smith, ed., Truth, Liberty, Religion: Essays Celebrating Two Hundred Years of Manchester College (Oxford, 1986), 127–64.
47 [W. R. Greg], “The Claims of Labour,” Westminster Review 43/2 (1845), 445–60, at 449; [Greg], “Unsound Social Philosophy,” Edinburgh Review 90/182 (1849), 496–524, at 502.
48 E.g. [W. R. Greg], “Principles of Indian Government,” National Review 6/11 (1858), 1–37, at 21.
49 [W. R. Greg], “Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold,” Westminster Review 42/2 (1844), 363–81, at 380.
50 On this theme see Stefan Collini, Donald Winch, and John Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History (Cambridge, 1983), which, however, passes over Greg.
51 [W. R. Greg], “Resources of an Increasing Population: Emigration or Manufactures,” Westminster Review 40/1 (1843), 101–22, at 101.
52 [W. R. Greg], “M. de Tocqueville,” National Review 12/24 (1861), 275–99, at 286. See also [Greg], “M. de Tocqueville's France before the Revolution,” Edinburgh Review 104/212 (1856), 531–61. James Mackintosh and Thomas Macaulay were also regularly used weapons from Greg's armoury of citation.
53 [Greg], “Past and Present Political Morality of British Statesmen,” 566. Greg ought to be seen as part of the group recovering and reconceiving “Burke” in the mid-Victorian era described in Emily Jones, Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism: An Intellectual History, 1830–1914 (Oxford, 2017), Ch. 4.
54 [Greg], “Mr. Gladstone's Apologia,” 131. For criticisms of Mill see e.g. [W. R. Greg], “Mary Barton,” Edinburgh Review 89/180 (1849), 402-35, at 430-2.
55 Unusually: see Angus Hawkins, Victorian Political Culture: “Habits of Heart and Mind” (Oxford, 2015).
56 [W. R. Greg], “The Relation between Employers and Employed,” Westminster Review, 57/11 (1852), 61–95, at 72–4.
57 [W. R. Greg], “Dr. Arnold,” Westminster Review 39 (1843), 1–33. Arnold's undogmatic Christianity increased his appeal. Greg similarly admired Barthold Niebuhr for applying political science to ancient institutions. [Greg], “Life and Letters of Niebuhr,” Edinburgh Review 96/195 (1852), 95–110, at 95.
58 [Greg], “Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold,” 379–80.
59 Morley, “Greg,” 244. For this reason, he greatly admired the intellectual-in-politics George Cornewall Lewis.
60 Greg, “Prospects of British Statesmanship,” 379; [Greg], “Repeal of the Corn Laws: Prospective Results,” Westminster Review 46/1 (1846), 119–31, at 120. Greg thus specified an attractive political role for those enlightened by theory, meeting a key condition required for such theories to gain purchase, as per Stefan Collini, “Political Theory and the ‘Science of Society’ in Victorian Britain,” Historical Journal 23/1 (1980), 203–31, at 211–12.
61 Morley, “Greg,” 253.
62 Ibid., 229. Others agreed that Greg “represented vigorously enough that distrust of democracy which most economists of his class and generation indulged.” The Spectator, 19 Nov. 1881, 1455.
63 Greg, Enigmas (1873), 44–5. Cf. Chris Barker, Educating Liberty: Democracy and Aristocracy in J. S. Mill's Political Thought (Rochester, 2018), Ch. 4.
64 W. R. Greg, “A Modern ‘Symposium’ (No. V): Is the Popular Judgment in Politics More Just Than That of the Higher Orders?”, Nineteenth Century 4/17 (1878), 174–92.
65 [W. R. Greg], “The Expected Reform Bill,” Edinburgh Review 95/193 (1852), 213–80, at 214–16. Greg identified drawbacks in the Act too: there is much more that could be said about his attitudes towards Parliament and reform, in addition the excellent reflections in Conti, Parliament the Mirror.
66 [W. R. Greg], “Representative Reform,” Edinburgh Review 96/196 (1852), 452–508; [Greg], “Parliamentary Purification,” Edinburgh Review 98/200 (1853), 566–624. For the context see Jonathan Parry, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain (New Haven, 1993), 207–17.
67 For the wider debates here see Christopher Kent, Brains and Numbers: Elitism, Comtism, and Democracy in Mid-Victorian England (Toronto, 1978).
68 Greg, “A Modern ‘Symposium’,” 179–81.
69 Greg, Enigmas (1873), Ch. 1, esp. 4–7; [Greg], “Resources of an Increasing Population,” 105–6.
70 Hilton, The Age of Atonement, passim. See also G. R. Searle, Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1998).
71 W. R. Greg, “England as It Is,” in Greg, Essays on Political and Social Science, 1: 297–343, at 322–3.
72 [Greg], “Principles of Indian Government,” 8, original emphasis.
73 W. R. Greg, “English Socialism,” in Greg, Essays on Political and Social Science, 1: 458–504, at 471; for Chalmers see ibid., 460.
74 [W. R. Greg], “The Great Social Problem,” Edinburgh Review 100/203 (1854), 163–92, at 168.
75 [Greg], “Mary Barton,” 419–21; [W. R. Greg], “The Proletariat on a False Scent,” Quarterly Review 132/263 (1872), 251–94.
76 [W. R. Greg], “Charity, Noxious and Beneficent,” Westminster Review 59/115 (1853), 62–88, at 62–3.
77 W. R. Greg, “The Fermentation of Europe,” in Greg, Essays on Political and Social Science, 2: 1–21, at 20.
78 [W. R. Greg], “Principles of Taxation,” North British Review 16/31 (1851), 49–88, at 82. For the broader trajectory of the discourse here see Jonathan Parry, “The Decline of Institutional Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” in David Feldman and Jon Lawrence, eds., Structures and Transformations in Modern British History (Cambridge, 2011), 164–86.
79 [W. R. Greg], “Scientific versus Amateur Administration,” Quarterly Review 127/253 (1869), 41–68, at 63.
80 For the centrality of this theme to Victorian Liberalism see Parry, Rise and Fall.
81 [W. R. Greg], “Corn Law Debate,” Westminster Review 37/2 (1842), 348–67, at 348; [Greg], “The Expected Reform Bill,” 250; [Greg], “Principles of Taxation,” 71.
82 [W. R. Greg with James P. Lacaita], “Italy; Its Prospects and Capacities,” National Review 9/17 (1859), 229–68, at 258.
83 [Greg], “Unsound Social Philosophy,” 501. See also [W. R. Greg], “The Reform Bill: Its Real Bearing and Ultimate Results,” National Review 10/20 (1860), 421–46, at 445. Greg's writing on the theme is drawn on selectively in Craig, “Statesmanship.”
84 Greg believed equally fervently in the desirability of factory owners exercising a benign despotism over the workingmen committed to their care. It has been suggested that Greg may have been the model for John Thornton in Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South; see the discussion and references in Chris R. Vanden Bossche, Reform Acts: Chartism, Social Agency, and the Victorian Novel, 1832–1867 (Baltimore, 2014), 229.
85 This meant that Greg set little value on party consistency. W. R. Greg, “Political Consistency,” in Greg, Political Problems for Our Age and Country, 172–86, at 172–4, 186.
86 [W. R. Greg], “Cost of Party Government,” Quarterly Review 126/252 (1869), 394–413; [Greg], “The Expected Reform Bill,” 249.
87 [W. R. Greg], “Juvenile and Female Labour,” Edinburgh Review 79/159 (1844), 130–56, at 150.
88 W.R.G. [W. R. Greg], “England's Future Attitude towards Europe and towards the World,” Fraser's Magazine 71/426 (1865), 719–35, at 734.
89 [Greg], “Principles of Indian Government,” 6. Greg thought that England's destiny might ultimately be as an Asiatic rather than a European power: see [Greg], “England's Future Attitude,” 732–4; and W. R. Greg, “Employment of Our Asiatic Forces in European Wars,” Fortnightly Review 29 (1878), 835–49.
90 The settler colonies were to be retained at least until they showed a clear desire to separate. [W. R. Greg], “Shall We Retain Our Colonies?”, Edinburgh Review 93/190 (1851), 475–98; [Greg], “Our Colonial Empire, and Our Colonial Policy,” North British Review 19/38 (1853), 345–98; [Greg], “Our Colonies,” North British Review 36/72 (1862), 535–60.
91 Cf., however, the reading of Manchester Liberalism and imperialism in John M. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760–2010 (Cambridge, 2012), Chs. 2–3.
92 [W. R. Greg], “The Foreign Policy of the English Ministry,” National Review 4/8 (1857), 441–74, at 473–4; [Greg], “Foreign Policy of the English Government and the English Nation,” National Review 17/34 (1863), 465–92, at 472–3; [Greg], “England's Future Attitude,” 729–30. He also remained convinced that British rule would be the best thing for the black population of Jamaica, though by the time of the Morant Bay rebellion it was clearly too late for effective direct rule. [Greg], “The Jamaica Problem,” Fraser's Magazine 73/435 (1866), 277–305. On Rajah Brooke in British politics see Alex Middleton, “Rajah Brooke and the Victorians,” Historical Journal 53/2 (2010), 381–400.
93 [Greg], “Foreign Policy of the English Government,” 481–3. Greg thought it a shame that Britain had not participated more vigorously in the enterprise.
94 [W. R. Greg], “The Civil War in America,” National Review 13/25 (1861), 150–69; [Greg], “The American Conflict,” North British Review 37/74 (1862), 468–504; [Greg], “The American Republic: Resurrection through Dissolution,” North British Review 36/71 (1862), 233–72. Greg seems to have ceased writing on American politics before 1865, so it is unclear how he reconciled himself to later developments.
95 [W. R. Greg], “Johnston's Notes on North America,” Edinburgh Review 94/191 (1851), 46–64, at 57–8; [Greg], “Highland Destitution and Irish Emigration,” Quarterly Review 90/179 (1851), 163–205, at 196–8; [Greg], “The Modern Exodus and Its Effects on the British Islands,” North British Review 18/35 (1852), 259–302, at 275; and, most emphatically, [Greg], “Ireland,” North British Review 4/95 (1868), 243–290, at 288; [Greg], “Ireland Once More,” Quarterly Review 125/249 (1868), 254–86.
96 Derek Beales, England and Italy, 1859–60 (London, 1961); Gregory Claeys, “Mazzini, Kossuth, and British Radicalism, 1848–1854,” Journal of British Studies 28/3 (1989), 225–61; Olive Anderson, A Liberal State at War: English Politics and Economics during the Crimean War (London, 1967); David Brown, Palmerston and the Politics of Foreign Policy, 1846–55 (Manchester, 2002); E. D. Steele, Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855–1865 (Cambridge, 1991); Miles Taylor, The Decline of British Radicalism, 1847–1860 (Oxford, 1995), Chs. 6–9. See also the synthesis by Geoffrey Hicks, “Britain and Europe,” in Brown, Crowcroft, and Pentland, The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History, 544–62.
97 See note 14 above.
98 Howe, Cotton Masters, 241.
99 On responses to the 1848 revolutions see Roland Quinault, “1848 and Parliamentary Reform,” Historical Journal 31/4 (1988), 831–51; Fabrice Bensimon, Les britanniques face à la révolution française de 1848 (2000); Leslie Mitchell, “Britain's Reaction to the Revolutions,” in R. J. W. Evans and Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, eds., The Revolutions in Europe, 1848–1849: from Reform to Reaction (Oxford, 2002), 83–99.
100 E.g. W. R. Greg, “Laing's German Catholic Schism,” in Greg, Essays on Political and Social Science, 1: 81–117.
101 [W. R. Greg], “The State of Parties,” National Review 7/13 (1858), 220–43, at 237; [Greg], “Principle and No-Principle in Foreign Policy,” National Review 13/26 (1861), 241–73, at 252.
102 Hawkins, Victorian Political Culture, 224.
103 [W. R. Greg], “Difficulties of Republican France,” Edinburgh Review 92/188 (1850), 504–33, at 504.
104 [W. R. Greg], “France in January 1852,” North British Review 16/32 (1852), 559–600, at 578.
105 [Greg], “Life and letters of Niebuhr,” 107; [W. R. Greg], “The True Difficulties of the Italian Question,” National Review 8/16 (1859), 488–502, at 494.
106 These points rested on similarly commonplace arguments about divisions of race, and about the relative capacities of “Celtics,” “Latins,” and “Anglo-Saxons” for self-government.
107 Greg, “England as It Is,” 341.
108 [Greg], “Difficulties of Republican France,” 530.
109 Greg, “England as It Is,” 341.
110 [W. R. Greg], “Alison's History of Europe,” Westminster Review 41/2 (1844), 388–416, at 399–404; [Greg], “The Duke of Wellington,” Westminster Review, 58/114 (1852), 531–49, at 534–5.
111 [W. R. Greg], “Net Results of 1848 in Germany and Italy,” North British Review 15/30 (1851), 359–88, at 375–6.
112 Cf. Richard Congreve, The Roman Empire of the West (London, 1855), 60–62.
113 [W. R. Greg], “The Truth about Ireland,” Quarterly Review 127/253 (1869), 270–92, at 284–5.
114 [Greg], “The True Difficulties of the Italian Question,” at 491–2.
115 [Greg], “M. de Tocqueville's France before the Revolution,” 560.
116 [Greg], “Principle and No-Principle,” 266.
117 [Greg], “Net Results of 1848,” 359.
118 Ibid., 360.
119 [W. R. Greg], “The War in the East and Its Political Contingencies,” North British Review 20/40 (1854), 523–68, at 551–2. Ottoman rule was hardly blue-chip, but it at least had the merit of governing very little, and rested on efficient municipal institutions (ibid.). On the wider purchase of these despotic stereotypes see Bernard Porter, “‘Bureau and Barrack’: Early Victorian Attitudes towards the Continent,” Victorian Studies 27/4 (1983–4), 407–33.
120 [W. R. Greg], “Progress and Prospects of the War,” North British Review 22/43 (1854), 255–88, at 263.
121 [Greg], “The Foreign Policy of the English Ministry,” 456.
122 [W. R. Greg], “The Kingdom of Italy,” Edinburgh Review 113/229 (1861), 253–82, at 262; [Greg], “Our International Relations,” North British Review 19/37 (1853), 45–84, at 63–6; [Greg], “Principle and No-Principle,” 256.
123 [W. R. Greg], “Italian Character and Italian Prospects,” North British Review 24/48 (1856), 537–68, at 564–5; [Greg], “Progress and Prospects of the War,” 285.
124 [Greg], “Principle and No-Principle,” 243.
125 [W. R. Greg], “The Diary of Varnhagen von Ense,” National Review 15/30 (1862), 370–88, at 387–8.
126 [Greg], “Net Results of 1848,” 375–7.
127 A position he maintained throughout his life. For an early formulation see [W. R. Greg], “The Outbreak of August in the Manufacturing Districts,” Westminster Review 38/2 (1842), 391–413, at 411–12.
128 [Greg], “Net Results of 1848,” 383. This was also true in Britain: [Greg], “The Expected Reform Bill,” 232–3.
129 [Greg], “France in January 1852,” 589–90.
130 [W. R. Greg], “Recent Italian Autobiographies,” Edinburgh Review 99/202 (1854), 557–73; [Greg], “Italian Character and Italian Prospects”; [Greg and Lacaita], “Italy; Its Prospects”; [Greg], “The Kingdom of Italy.”
131 [Greg], “Italian Character and Italian Prospects,” 564; [Greg], “Principle and No-Principle,” 263.
132 [W. R. Greg], “The Significance of the Struggle,” North British Review 24/47 (1855), 268–88, at 283.
133 [Greg], “Principle and No-Principle,” 263–5.
134 [Greg], “The Significance of the Struggle,” 284. Greg's concept of nationality was basically that of most mid-Victorian Liberals. See H. S. Jones, “The Idea of the National in Victorian Political Thought,” European Journal of Political Theory 5/1 (2006), 12–21; Georgios Varouxakis, “‘Patriotism,’ ‘Cosmopolitanism’ and ‘Humanity’ in Victorian Political Thought,” European Journal of Political Theory 5/1 (2006), 100–18. Certainly Greg did not indulge in the critiques outlined in Richard Smittenaar, “‘Feelings of Alarm’: Conservative Criticism of the Principle of Nationality in Mid-Victorian Britain,” Modern Intellectual History 14/2 (2017), 365–91.
135 [Greg], “Our International Relations,” 84.
136 W. R. Greg, “Popular versus Professional Armies,” Contemporary Review 16 (1871), 351–73, at 355.
137 Indeed there is a whole historiographical subfield which interrogates this relationship. See in general Robert Tombs and Isabelle Tombs, That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present (London, 2006); and Aprile and Bensimon, La France et l'Angleterre.
138 J. P. Parry, “The Impact of Napoleon III on British Politics, 1851–1880,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 11 (2001), 147–75. See also Matthew Kelly, “Languages of Radicalism, Race, and Religion in Irish Nationalism: The French Affinity, 1848–1871,” Journal of British Studies 49/4 (2010), 801–25; Hawkins, Victorian Political Culture, 224–6.
139 Varouxakis, Victorian Political Thought on France; see also Henry Reeve, Royal and Republican France, 2 vols. (London, 1872).
140 See Zevin, Liberalism at Large, 92–8.
141 [W. R. Greg], “The Fall of Sebastopol,” National Review 1/2 (1855), 478–87, at 485.
142 [Greg], “Progress and Prospects of the War,” 258–9. But England was the clear leader: [Greg], “M. de Tocqueville,” 296.
143 Alexis de Tocqueville to W. R. Greg, 23 May 1853, in Tocqueville, Memoir, Letters, and Remains, 2: 220.
144 See e.g. [W. R. Greg], “French Judgments of England,” Edinburgh Review 103/210 (1856), 558–90. Greg's study of French politics began early on: Morley, “Greg,” 255; and see e.g. [Greg], “Alison's History of Europe” (1844).
145 E.g. [Greg], “Mr. Bright, Painted by Himself,” 543.
146 [Greg], “Representative Reform,” 465–6.
147 W. R. G. [W. R. Greg], “Suum Cuique: The Moral of the Paris Catastrophe,” Fraser's Magazine 4/19 (1871), 115–34, at 115.
148 [W. R. Greg], “Priests, Parliaments, and Electors,” Quarterly Review 133/265 (1872), 276–92, at 279; [Greg], “Parliamentary Purification,” 611–13; Alexis de Tocqueville to W. R. Greg, 27 July 1853, in Tocqueville, Memoir, Letters, and Remains, 2: 225–6. See, however, e.g. [Greg], “Ireland,” 244. America was more straightforward to compare with Britain: [Greg], “Scientific versus Amateur Administration,” 62.
149 [Greg], “Alison's History of Europe,” 391.
150 Greg, “Fermentation,” 2.
151 Ibid.,13. See also W. R. Greg, “France since 1848,” in Greg, Essays on Political and Social Science, 2: 63–112, at 72.
152 [Greg], “France in January 1852,” 562.
153 Greg, “Fermentation,” 5; Greg, “France since 1848,” 102–8.
154 Greg, “France since 1848,” 108; [Greg], “Difficulties of Republican France,” 524.
155 Greg, “France since 1848,” 72.
156 Ibid., 111.
157 [Greg], “Difficulties of Republican France,” 512, 516, 518–19.
158 Greg, “France since 1848,” 109.
159 W. R. Greg, “The Great Duel: Its True Meaning and Issues,” Contemporary Review 16 (1870), 142–64, at 145.
160 Greg, “France since 1848,” 76–8.
161 Ibid., 83. See also [Greg], “France in January 1852,” 598–9.
162 [Greg], “Crisis of Political Parties,” 564.
163 [Greg, W. R.], “Modern French Literature,” Edinburgh Review 101/205 (1855), 92–120Google Scholar; [Greg], “French Fiction: The Lowest Deep,” National Review 11/22 (1860), 400–27. There were, however, glimmerings of light here: [W. R. Greg], “British and Continental Characteristics,” North British Review 21/41 (1854), 45–68, at 45–6. More broadly see Michael Ledger-Lomas, “French Novels in Mid-Victorian England,” in Rosalind Crone, David Gange, and Katy Jones, eds., New Perspectives in British Cultural History (Newcastle, 2007), 214–31
164 [Greg], “France in January 1852,” 580.
165 This does not seem to have generated any great friction with Tocqueville, who was bitterly hostile to the coup and the empire. Greg stayed with him for a few days in 1853.
166 Ibid., 573, 590.
167 Ibid., 588.
168 Ibid., 585–7.
169 Ibid., 591–8. Greg, like most Liberals, despised “priestcraft.” [Greg], “Dr. Arnold,” 11–12.
170 [Greg, W. R.], “The Prospects of France and the Dangers of England,” North British Review 18/36 (1853), 303–50Google Scholar, at 305.
171 Ibid., 306–11.
172 Ibid., 350.
173 [Greg, W. R.], “The Present State of France,” National Review 2/3 (1856), 123–56Google Scholar, at 131.
174 Ibid., 132–3.
175 He was included in Greg's modern pantheon of great French statesmen in [Greg], “Statesmanship in Constitutional Countries,” 146,
176 [Greg], “The Present State of France,” 133.
177 [Greg, W. R.], “Napoleonism,” National Review 15/30 (1862), 327–50Google Scholar, at 327–8.
178 [W. R. Greg], “The Cost of a Napoleon,” Fraser's Magazine 1/4 (1870), 474–88, at 487.
179 W. R. Greg, “The Great Twin Brethren,” in Greg, Miscellaneous Essays, 149–60; Greg, “A Modern ‘Symposium’,” 180; [Greg], “Representative Reform,” 466. Cf. Parry, “Napoleon III,” 171–3.
180 [Greg], “The Present State of France,” 136–42.
181 Ibid., 149–50.
182 Ibid., 151.
183 Ibid., 152–6.
184 [Greg], “Louis Napoleon at Home and Abroad,” 473–4.
185 Ibid., 474–7.
186 [Greg], “Napoleonism,” 343–7.
187 [Greg], “The Cost of a Napoleon,” 476–80, 483–4.
188 W. R. G. [Greg, W. R.], “The Condition of French Politics,” Fraser's Magazine 3/17 (1871), 541–54Google Scholar, at 553.
189 Greg, “The Great Duel,” 145. The proceeds from the version of this article republished as a pamphlet went to the “Victoria Institute for Providing for the Widows and Orphans of the German Soldiers.” W. R. Greg, The Great Duel: Its True Meaning and Uses (London, 1871).
190 Greg, “The Great Duel,” 146; [Greg], “The Condition of French Politics,” 544.
191 Greg, “The Great Duel,” 159–63.
192 [Greg], “The Condition of French Politics,” 542, 551.
193 Greg, “The Great Duel,” 162.
194 On this theme see Conti, Parliament the Mirror, 6; and the article Conti cites, Müller, Jan-Werner, “The Triumph of What (If Anything)? Rethinking Political Ideologies and Political Institutions in Twentieth-Century Europe,” Journal of Political Ideologies 14/2 (2009), 211–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is some work on members of this class in the early nineteenth century. See Fontana, Biancamaria, Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society: The Edinburgh Review, 1802–1832 (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cutmore, Jonathan, ed., Conservatism and the Quarterly Review: A Critical Analysis (London, 2007)Google Scholar; Turner, Michael J., Independent Radicalism in Early Victorian Britain (Westport, 2004)Google Scholar; Michie, Michael, An Enlightenment Tory in Victorian Scotland: The Career of Sir Archibald Alison (East Linton, 1998)Google Scholar.
195 John Morley, once again, grasped a version of this point from the outset. Morley, “Greg,” 214.
196 On the nature of the “intellectual” contexts required to understand practical politics see Parry, J. P., “The State of Victorian Political History,” Historical Journal 26/2 (1983), 469–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 470–71; and Middleton, Alex, “‘High Politics’ and its Intellectual Contexts,” Parliamentary History 40/1 (2021), 168–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
197 See esp. Duncan Bell, Reordering the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire (Princeton, 2016).
198 Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberalism; Selinger, William and Conti, Gregory, “The Lost History of Political Liberalism,” History of European Ideas 46/3 (2020), 341–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
199 Parry, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government, 3.
