The purpose of this essay is to explore the possibility of a democratic revolution in England just prior to the Franco-British War of 1793. I hope to correct, in a minor way, one of the assumptions held by R. R. Palmer in his analysis of the progress of democratic revolution in England.

Palmer presented his thesis in The Age of the Democratic Revolution, which appeared in two volumes, in 1959 and 1964. Here Palmer proposed a new interpretation of the major political developments of Western Europe.

Palmer's synthesis of these objectives and principles can be summed up in his title: this was the Age of the Democratic Revolution, which “signified a new feeling for a kind of equality, or at least a discomfort with older forms of stratification and formal rank.” All western countries underwent this revolution, including England.

Palmer's treatment of Britain places a responsibility upon historians of that country to determine whether this new interpretation clarifies or obscures the development of events. If there was a single democratic revolution, how and when was it manifested in England, and what were the causes of its failure? Were the Wilkesite, County Association, and workingmen's association movements the background of the gradualist reform movements of the nineteenth century, or the background of a revolution that failed in the eighteenth? Answers to these questions will not be derived easily, and the purpose of this essay is not nearly so ambitious. I intend to explore only the possibility of a revolution in England in 1792.

Among the myths of the origins of World War I is that of the ability of obscure bureaucrats to influence the foreign policy of their country through intrigue and deceit. The foremost example in the volumious literature involved the unlimited capacity for evil attributed to Friedrich von Holstein of the German Foreign Office. One of his contemporaries left the. following portrait: “His life was devoted to poisoning human and international relationships. Holstein's diplomacy by intrigue, his vicious disloyalties, and the way he placed his own revengeful purposes before his country's good contributed largely towards the outbreak of the First World War.” Labeled the Grey Eminence of the Wilhelmstrasse in the aftermath of defeat, Holstein became the scapegoat for the disasters of German diplomacy in 1914.

Other bureaucrats of the pre-war era whose careers followed a similar pattern have received like treatment. On the British side, it was asserted, there operated a civil servant whose anti-German animus steered Britain into conflict with Germany. Allegedly possessing a fatal fascination for Sir Edward Grey, Sir Eyre Crowe was credited by historians with enormous surreptitious influence. The hostility toward Germany manifested by Great Britain in the decade prior to 1914, the argument runs, reflected Crowe's personal hatred and suspicion of German power. “The vast influence exercised by Sir Eyre Crowe upon British policy between 1908 and 1914,” wrote the distinguished Austrian historian A. F. Pribram in 1951, “only became generally known outside the Foreign Office, and especially abroad, in recent years.” Apologists for Germany cited Crowe as the prime mover of British policy, and one German historian termed him the ‘böse Geist’ [evil spirit] of the British Foreign Office.

A careful examination of the conduct of the Verney and Temple interests in the Buckinghamshire election of 1784 reveals that interest, not party, was the major determinant of political conduct in the eighteenth century English county constituency. The freeholder voted in deference to his head of interest, and he did so through an agent's performance of an unwritten but clearly understood code of electioneering conduct. By contrast, the more tangible relationship between tenant and landlord explains little about how individuals voted in the county.

The importance of parliamentary politics in the 1784 election cannot be denied. The attempt of William Pitt the Younger to wrest the majority in the House of Commons from the Fox-North coalition occasioned this election three years earlier than a general election would normally have occurred. Yet to assume that party determined the course of the election far exceeds the evidence available at the level of the county constituency. The political awareness and rising interest in issues, described by J. H. Plumb and others, certainly existed in this election. But this tells us very little about the acquistion and exercise of political power, which Plumb rightly identifies as the essence of politics, though a great deal may thus be learned about literacy, public opinion, interests, tastes, and electoral tactics.

Three aspects of the problem of party have dominated the studies of the period: the emergence of the modern political party in the sense of a group of electors consistently joined together because of a common devotion to a particular political philosophy; the emergence of the modern political party in the sense of a group of electors consistently joined together because of common attitudes toward government policies; and, the emergence of the modern political party in the sense of a group of electors consistently joined together in a structure suited to the winning of an opportunity to translate its desires and beliefs into government policies through success in elections. The 1784 Buckinghamshire election refutes the importance of party in any of these senses in the county constituency.

It is a commonplace to assume that in any given Government members of the civil service and other non-elected employees will be loyal to the elected officials of the Government and will carry out the policies determined by these officials. But what happens when a policy is at odds with a man's conscience? Recently we have seen one solution in the release of the Pentagon Papers. Other solutions include burial of one's personal beliefs in commitment to duty, quiet resignation from the Government, or dedication to serve the country's best interests according to one's conscience while remaining within the Government. An example of such dedication, which exceeded partisan considerations, was that displayed by Sir Edward Walter Hamilton, permanent financial secretary to the British Treasury, during the 1903-1905 campaign for tariff reform.

From his birth in 1847, Hamilton was destined to be a free trader. His father, Walter Kerr Hamilton, was the Bishop of Salisbury and a close friend of William E. Gladstone. In 1870, Hamilton entered the temple of free trade, the Treasury Department. (Britain had been a free trade nation since midcentury, and permanent members of the Treasury Department had come to consider the fiscal policies of Peel, Gladstone, and Sir Robert Lowe as their own.) He served as private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Robert Lowe, from 1872 to 1873, to Prime Minister Gladstone for the remaining months of his first administration (1873-1874), and again to the Prime Minister during Gladstone's second administration (1880-1885), becoming imbued with his mentor's ideas. Hamilton worked his way up the ranks of the Treasury Department and in 1902 became permanent financial secretary and joint permanent secretary with Sir George Murray. Although not brilliant, Hamilton was a capable civil servant, and in general, gained the confidence of the chancellors whom he served; this close association with the great men of the moment became important to his social ego.