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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
When they regained power at Westminster in November 1830, the Whigs were dedicated to reform without knowing exactly where to begin. For decades they had committed themselves to financial “retrenchment” and parliamentary reform and now they hoped to pacify an angry country by dealing with those two great issues. Indeed, their main objective was to restore public confidence in the constitution and to prevent a French-style revolution. But their approach to reform in 1830 was uncertain and unpromising. Their vague intentions can be partly explained by their lack of party organization and cohesion; in Parliament, Whigs served as individual opponents of Tory policies rather than as supporters of an alternative government. Factionalism among the Whigs had kept them out of office for more than a generation. Some Whigs were considered unpatriotic because they persisted in defending the ideals of the French Revolution. Still others were hostile to the notion of reform because they suspected that the Tories had already given the country as much reform as it could digest. For many Whigs, the extension of civil liberties to Dissenters (in 1828) and then to Roman Catholics (in 1829) was momentous enough. What the country now wanted was a sensible and flexible government which accommodated the spirit of the age by heeding public opinion. It is not surprising, therefore, that the new government in 1830 was really a coalition of liberals and moderates, and as Peter Mandler has remarked, it was a while before their potential was realized.
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6. Norman Gash refers to Whig attitudes toward Ireland during the reform bill struggle in Politics in the Age of Peel (London, 1953), pp. 61–63.Google Scholar See also McDowell, R. B., Public Opinion and Government Policy in Ireland, 1801–1845 (London, 1952), pp. 142–144, 147–150.Google Scholar
7. There are three major biographies of Whately. The first to appear was Fitzpatrick's, William JohnMemoirs of Richard Whately, 2 vols. (London, 1864).Google Scholar Whately's daughter Jane, Elizabeth published the Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, 2 vols. (London, 1866).Google Scholar The most recent biography is Donald Harman Akenson's A Protestant in Purgatory, Archbishop Whately of Dublin, The Conference on British Studies biography series (new series) 2 (Hamden, Conn., 1981). Most monographs dealing with nineteenth-century church history mention Whately; the most succinct account of his career is to be found in the Dictionary of National Biography 20:1334–1340.Google Scholar The article identifies Whately as “an independent liberal,” enthusiastic teacher, pioneer of social science, a reformer of tertiary education and seminary training, an anti-evangelical, and a strong supporter of civil rights for Dissenters and Jews.
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9. The Elements of Logic, Comprising the Substance of the Article in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana (London, 1826)Google Scholar saw a dozen more editions in Whately's lifetime; Elements of Rhetoric, 5th ed. (London, 1836)Google Scholar; 7th ed. (London, 1846).
10. Hamilton, T., “Richard Whately,” in Champions of Truth: Short Lives of Christian Leaders in Thought and Action, ed. Buckland, A. R. (London, 1904), p. 425;Google Scholar see also, “Le Marchant's Diary,” March 1831, in Three Early Nineteenth Century Diaries, ed. Aspinall, A. (London, 1952), p. 16.Google Scholar
11. Richard Whately to Mary Shepherd, 25 September 1831, quoted in E. J. Whately, Life and Correspondence, 1:110.
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17. The eighth edition was entitled, The Archbishop of Dublin's Charge, delivered to the Clergy of his Archdiocese, on the 24th of October, 1822…to which is added a Letter to His Grace, in consequence of unjust Animadversions against the Roman Catholic Religion…
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27. But Grey was unable to refuse his own brother a bishopric. Edward Grey badgered the prime minister long enough to win appointment to the see of Hereford in 1832. Earl Grey was very reluctant to accede to the demands of his ineffectual brother and was later distressed to see the new bishop vote frequently with the Tories in the Lords.
28. Bowen, Desmond, The Idea of the Victorian Church: A Study of the Church of England, 1833–1889 (Montreal, 1968), p. 15.Google Scholar
29. Whately, Richard, Introductory Lectures on Political Economy, Delivered at Oxford in Easter Term, 1831 (London and Dublin, 1831–1832).Google Scholar
30. Akenson, , Protestant in Purgatory, p. 70.Google Scholar
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32. Briggs, Asa, The Age of Improvement 1783–1867 (London, 1959), p. 237.Google Scholar
33. The Evidence of His Grace, the Archbishop of Dublin before the Select Committee of the House Lords, on the Stale of Ireland (Dublin, 1825), p. 31.Google Scholar
34. Thompson, Kenneth, Bureaucracy and Church Reform (Oxford, 1970), p. xvii.Google ScholarBrose, Olive comments that “utilitarianism, whether Bentham's or Paley's, was to be the basis of the Church's adaptation as an establishment to the Reform Era,” in Church and Parliament: The Reshaping of the Church of England, 1828–1860 (Stanford, 1959), p. 39.Google Scholar Whately's utilitarianism was essentially that of his admired Bishop Paley.
35. Whately, Richard, Charge to the Clergy (Dublin and London, 1834).Google Scholar
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41. Fitzpatrick, , Memoirs, 1:86Google Scholar, quoting from Brougham's letter of 2 November 1863.
42. Brougham thought the book was the edition of Whately's, Bampton Lectures on the Use and Abuse of Party Feeling in Matters of Religion (Oxford, 1822).Google Scholar Another account suggests that the book was the Errors of Romanism Traced to Their Origin in Human Nature (London, 1830).Google Scholar
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45. Whately to Grey, 16 September 1831, GPDUL.
46. Whately to Copleston, 28 September 1831. Quoted in Whately, E. J., Life and Correspondence, 1:112.Google Scholar
47. Whately to Hawkins, 25 July 1837. Quoted in Whately, E. J., Life and Correspondence, 1:378.Google Scholar
48. Grey to Whately, 17 September 1831, GPDUL.
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51. Mandler, , Aristocratic Government, p. 162.Google Scholar
52. Whately to Hawkins, 18 March 1832. Whately Papers, Box 2, p. 188, Oriel College Oxford [WPOCO].
53. Fitzpatrick, , Memoirs, 1:88.Google Scholar
54. Tuckwell, W., Pre-Tractarian Oxford: A Reminiscence of the Oriel “Noetics” (London, 1909), pp. 71–72.Google Scholar
55. Hansard, vol. 11 (3rd ser.), p. 607, 22 03 1832.Google Scholar
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57. Copleston to Hawkins, 7 October 1831, WPOCO, 4:386.
58. White, Blanco, repeating Whately's opinion in a letter to Hawkins, 22 September 1832, WPOCO, 4:564.Google Scholar
59. Copleston to Hawkins, 7 October 1831, WPOCO, 4:386.
60. Address of the Clergy of the Archdiocese of Dublin, to His Grace the Archbishop, on the Subject of Spiritual Education, with His Grace's Reply (Dublin, 1832), p. 8.Google Scholar
61. Ibid., p. 7.
62. Meacham, Standish, Lord Bishop: The Life of Samuel Wilberforce (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), p. 73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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65. Whately to Hawkins, 18 March 1832, WPOCO, 2:188.
66. Memorials of the Dean and Chapter of St. Patrick's, Dublin, and of the Clergy of the Diocese of Derry to His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, with His Grace's Replies… (London, 1832), p. 6.Google Scholar In the same message, Whately assured them that he would “never give in to Rome.”
67. Soloway, , Prelates, pp. 116–117.Google Scholar
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70. Mill, J. S. to Gustave d'Eichthal, 6 December 1831, in the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. Mineka, Francis E. (Toronto, Ont., 1963), 22:92.Google Scholar
71. Newman always claimed to respect Whately's influence in his education. But their friendship came to an end when Whately demonstrated his support of the government's plan to reduce the number of Anglican bishropics in Ireland as a timely reform.
72. Newbould, , Whiggery and Reform, p. 134.Google Scholar
73. Stephenson, Alan, The Rise and Decline of English Modernism (London, 1984), p. 41.Google Scholar
74. Letters on the Church by an Episcopalian (London, 1826), pp. 89–90, 190.Google Scholar
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