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6 - The British empire in Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Jonathan Scott
Jonathan Scott
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
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Summary

… the Face of Things so often alters, and the Situation of Affairs in the Great British Empire gives such new Turns, even to Nature itself, that there is Matter of new Observation every Day presented to the Traveller's Eye.

Daniel Defoe, A Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain

Lamenting the ‘Popular Discontents’ which ‘have ravaged and defaced the noblest Island of the World’, Sir William Temple remarked:

The Comparison between a State and a Ship, has been so illustrated by Poets and Orators, that 'tis hard to find any point in which they differ; and yet they seem to do it in this, That in great Storms and rough Seas, if all the Men and Lading roll to one side, the Ship will be in danger of oversetting by their Weight: But on the contrary in the Storms of a State, if the Body of the People, with the Bulk of Estates, roll all one Way, the Nation will be safe. For the rest, the Similitude holds.

Like Camden, Temple worried that England's internal instability would furnish the occasion for ‘some new Revolution, and perhaps final Ruine of the Government, in case a Foreign Invasion enters upon the Breaches of Civil Distractions. But such fatal Effects of popular Discontents, either past or to come, in this floating Island, will be a worthy Subject of some better History than has been yet written of England.

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Chapter
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When the Waves Ruled Britannia
Geography and Political Identities, 1500–1800
 , pp. 116 - 136
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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