Introduction

Abstract

The chapters that follow have their origins in three different objectives. The first was to provide fellow historians and myself with an analysis of the principal features of British politics at one specific point in the early nineteenth century. My thinking was that in the list of distinguished analyses of similar kinds — Holmes on the early eighteenth century, Namier on the 1760s, Gash on the 1830s and Hanham on the 1860s and 1870s — a gap existed which deserved to be filled. Indeed, when reflecting on the scope of these particular analyses, there emerged a case for a study that is more comprehensive than they attempt — one that deals with all the key institutional aspects of politics, rather than a selection. The hope is that this will be of particular use to undergraduates, who, in my experience, lack a single volume that describes and analyses the functions of the key institutions of the state.