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Reform or Ruin: English Moral Thought During the First French Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Richard A. Soloway
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Extract

During Pitt's 1785 campaign for moderate parliamentary reform, William Wilberforce supported the government primarily on a moral basis rather than on political grounds. He explained his reasons to a friend, Lord Muncaster, as follows:

It is not the confusion of parties, and their quarreling and battling in the House of Commons, which makes me despair of the republic … it is the universal corruption and profligacy of the times, which taking its rise amongst the rich and luxurious has now extended its baneful influence and spread its destructive poison through the whole body of the people.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , January 1963 , pp. 110 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1963

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References

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2 Ibid., 130.

3 Ibid., 134. The original Society was founded in 1692, but concentrated its efforts on the lower classes. It died in 1738, was briefly revived by the Methodists in 1757 and went bankrupt seven years later. For an account of the origins of the organization see Woodward, Josiah, An Account of the Society for the Reformation of Manners (London, 1699)Google Scholar. A more general discussion of the Society within a framework of moral and social reform is contained in Maurice Quinlan, J., Victorian Prelude, A History of English Manners 1700–1830 (New York, 1941)Google Scholar.

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