Epilogue

Abstract

The growth of radical activity and the development of a critique of the English constitution in the reign of George III is well enough attested, but the historian must be wary of assuming that because in 1832 the Parliamentary Reform Act was passed and because a tradition of radicalism can be traced for 70 years before then, the decline of the ancien régime was inevitable and its critics men of importance in the first twenty years of George III’s reign. Indeed one might argue that the survival of the old regime, despite the blows it suffered between 1776 and 1783 is of a great deal more interest than its eventual collapse in quite different, and partly accidental, circumstances.