Abstract
The previous chapter has already mentioned ideology as a motive for appeasement. Ideology is a controversial subject; it is also a subtle and powerful wellspring of action. Under the circumstances a full discussion of the influence of ideology on British policy seems justified. This will be no easy matter: the connection between motive and policy is a tenuous one but the relationship between ideology and appeasement has frequently been denied altogether. As an element of British politics ideology has been mostly unpopular. It has been denounced as a foreign import whose “damnable principles” tended to corrupt “the lower ranks” and “the British constitution.” Such attitudes of course ignored the many English pamphleteers who proposed radical changes and among whom Thomas Paine was the most strident.
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Notes
The Francis Letters, ed. by B. Francis (New York, no date), II, p. 484 Harriet Francis to Mary Johnson, September 25, 1801.
Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, First Earl of Minto, (London, 1874), II, p. 385, note 1 William Windham to Sir Gilbert Elliot, January 27, 1795.
Baldwin as quoted in J. H. Grainger, Character and Style in English Politics (Cambridge, 1969), p. 167.
The Journals and Correspondence of William, Lord Auckland, III, p. 320 Mr. Pitt to Lord Auckland, November 8, [1795].
William Wilberforce, after reading Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason, could only exclaim “God defend us from such poison.” The Life of William Wilberforce, by his sons Robert Isaac and Samuel Wilberforce (London, 1838), II, p. 61.
Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin. A Biography (New York, 1970), pp. 947, 955.
Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London, 1946), p. 329; Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott, The Appeasers (Boston, 1963), p. 52.
For concern about the unions, see Keith Middlemas, Diplomacy of Illusion: The British Government and Germany, 1937–39 (London, 1972), p. 15; for middle class opposition to higher taxes for rearmament, see Feiling, op. cit., pp. 292–293.
This section owes a great deal to the excellent two-part article “Ideology” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David L. Sills (1968), VII, pp. 66–85.
See the fascinating exchange between the keelman of Shields and General Lambton in The Life of William Wilberforce, II, pp. 2, 3–4. Sales estimates for The Rights of Man fluctuate between 200,000 and 1,500,000, but even the lower figure compares favorably with Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France which sold no more than 30,000 copies. R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution, vol. II The Struggle (Princeton, 1964 paperback ed.), p. 476.
Palmer, op. cit., II, pp. 10–16, 50–65.
Steven T. Ross, European Diplomatie History 1789–1815: France Against Europe (Garden City: Anchor paperback, 1969), pp. 61, 63.
The Cambridge Modern History, vol. 8 The French Revolution (New York, 1907), p. 296. The question whether Pitt used secret service money to influence events in France surreptitiously is denied in a recent article by Howard V. Evans, “The Nootka Sound Controversy in Anglo-French Diplomacy-1790,” The Journal of Modern History, 46 (December, 1974), pp. 609–640.
Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793–1802 (London, 1961, Fontana paperback), p. 91. Lord Auckland as quoted in Carl B. Cone, Burke and the Nature of Politics, vol. 2 The Age of the French Revolution (Lexington, 1964), p. 378.
E. Keble Chatterton, England’s Greatest Statesman: A Life of William Pitt, 1759–1806 (Indianapolis, 1930), pp. 247–248.
Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, II, p. 71 Lady Malmesbury to Lady Elliot, [October-November], 1792.
Ibid., II, pp. 73–74 William Elliot of Wells to Sir Gilbert Elliot, November, 19, 1792, also pp. 36–37.
Christopher Wyvill, Political Papers (York, 1794–1802), IV (1802), p. 74 “The Case of the Reverend C. Wyvill,” April 16, 1796.
Feiling, op. cit., pp. 79–80.
Robert Rhodes James, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900–1939 (New York, 1970), pp. 134, 171. Winston S. Churchill, The Aftermath (New York, 1929), p. 61. Winston S. Churchill, The Unknown War (New York, 1932), p. 377.
W. H. Richardson, Economic Recovery in Britain, 1932–1939 (London, 1967), pp. 21–22.
John A. Garrary, “The New Deal, National Socialism and the Great Depression,” American Historical Review, 78 (October, 1973), pp. 936–938.
F. S. Northedge, The Troubled Giant: Britain among the Great Powers, 1916–1939 (New York, 1966), pp. 385–386; Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, p. 967; Grainger, op. cit., pp. 167–168.
For one illustration, see the interesting article by Donald Lammers, “Fascism, Communism and the Foreign Office, 1937–1939,” Journal of Contemporary History, VI (1971), pp. 66–86.
D. C. Watt, Personalities and Policies. Studies in the Formulation of British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (South Bend, 1965), pp. 117–135.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 328.
Bryant, The Years of Endurance, p. 74 footnote. The comment was made by John Wilkes.
The Life of William Wilberforce, II, pp. 10–11. A. W. Ward and G. P. Gooch, The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783–1919, vol. I, 1783–1815 (Cambridge, 1939), pp. 219, 256.
The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London, 1820), vol. 36, p. 750, May 13, 1802.
Lord Macaulay, Critical, Historical and Miscellaneous Essays (Boston, 1860), VI, p. 275.
J. Holland Rose, William Pitt and the Great War (London, 1911), pp. 278–279.
As quoted in Ward and Gooch, op. cit., I, p. 261.
Albert Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution française, 11th ed. (Paris, 1918), IV, p. 431.
J. Holland Rose, “Burke, Windham and Pitt,” English Historical Review, XXVIII (1913), p. 105.
These quotes are from Canning’s letter of November 19, 1799, to his friend Lord Boringdon, in Augustus G. Stapleton, George Canning and his times (London, 1859), pp. 43–44. For another Canning letter of the same date, see Lord Granville Leveson Gower, Private Correspondence, 1781’1821 (London, 1917), I, p. 273.
For Canning, loc. cit.; Select Speeches of the Rt. Honourable William Windham, ed. by Robert Walsh (Philadelphia, 1837), p. 67. The Windham Papers, with an introduction by the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Roseberry (Boston, 1913), II, pp. 143’144 W. Windham to W. Pitt, November 18, 1799.
English Historical Documents, vol. XI, 1783–1832, ed. by A. Aspinall and E. Anthony Smith (London, 1959), pp. 110–111, “Henry Dundas’s Memorandum on the State of the Cabinet,” September 22, 1800.
Pitt’s resignation remains a controversial subject. For a recent discussion and some new documentation, see Richard Willis, “William Pitt’s Resignation in 1801: Re-examination and Document,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 44 (November, 1971), pp. 239–257.
George Pellew, The Life and Correspondence of the Right Hon ble Henry Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth (London, 1847), I, pp. 357–358, 361.
The letters to Addington are in the “Addington MSS,” Box 1801, Devon Record Office, Exeter, and Pellew, op. cit., I, pp. 246–247, 362, 363, 448–452. There are more details about unrest in the dockyards in Letters of Admiral of the Fleet, the Earl of St. Vincent, ed. by David B. Smith (London, 1927), II, pp. 167–196, and Appendix, pp. 438ff. Sir John Macpherson reminds one of Baldwin’s confidant Thomas Jones. Henry Richard, Lord Holland, Memoirs of the Whig Party during my time (London, 1852), I, p. 185.
“…I own I see no adequate remedy” confessed Pitt in a letter of October 8, 1800, to Addington, in Pellew, op. cit., I, p. 263.
“Addington MSS,” Box 1801, Devon Record Office, Exeter, Lord Hawkesbury to Marquis de Lima, July 15, 1801. The Later Correspondence of George III, ed. by A. Aspinall, vol. III, January 1798–December 1801 (Cambridge, 1967), p. 511 “Cabinet Minute.”
“Addington MSS,” Box 1801, Devon Record Office, Henry Addington to Hiley Addington, August 29, 1801. Letters of Admiral … the Earl of St. Vincent, I, pp. 121–122.
For Chamberlain’s attitude towards Labor, see Iain Macleod, Neville Chamberlain (New York, 1962), pp. 119, 120, 203.
Macleod, op. cit., p. 108.
It should be emphasized that Churchill’s economic policies were the standard remedy of that time; it would be misleading to put forward any class or any other theory as explanation.
For the problem of the trade unions and the cabinet’s reluctance, see Middlemas, Diplomacy of Illusion, p. 15; Feiling, op. cit., pp. 315, 318. The financial strains of rearmament are mentioned in Chamberlain’s notes, Feiling, op. cit., p. 314. See also Ian Colvin, The Chamberlain Cabinet (New York, 1971), pp. 80–81, 117–118, 120–121, 220.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 467. The author does admit the presence of “political argument and political suspicion” in Chamberlain’s letters. Can these be so easily separated from ideological motive?
Loc. cit. The exception must be Baldwin’s speech of November 1932 in the House of Commons when he described in vivid terms the terror of warfare from the air. House of Commons Debate, Vol. 270, Fifth Series, c. 632.
See Macpherson’s letter to Addington, in Pellew, op. cit., I, p. 246 Sir John Macpherson to the Speaker, December 18, 1799. “The reign of jacobinism in France is over…”
“Addington MSS,” Box 1801, Devon Record Office, Exeter, Sir John Macpherson to Henry Addington, June 17, August 14, September 2, 1801.
Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, p. 918; Middlemas, Diplomacy of Illusion, pp. 261, 277.
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Presseisen, E.L. (1978). Ideological Angst . In: Amiens and Munich. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9718-9_4
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