2. OPPOSITION TO THE WAR AGAINST REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE

7. CHARLES JAMES FOX: Speech in the House of Commons, 1 February 1793

None of the professed causes were grounds for going to war. What, then, remained but the internal government of France, always disavowed, but ever kept in mind, and constantly mentioned? . . . Such would be the real cause of the war, if war we were to have—a war which he trusted he should soon see as generally execrated as it was now thought to be popular.

3. FOREIGN POLICY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM ABROAD

10. EARL GREY: Speech in the House of Lords, 19 February 1821

[Grey was speaking in the debate on Naples. After the revolution in Naples in July 1820 the protocol which affirmed the right of the European Alliance to interfere to crush dangerous internal revolutions had been issued at the Congress of Troppau, October 1820.]

4. PARLIAMENTARY REFORM

15. LORD JOHN RUSSELL: Speech in the House of Commons, 25 April 1822

[Lord John Russell’s speech introducing the motion ‘That the present state of the representation of the People in Parliament requires the most serious consideration of this House.’ The motion was lost by 269 votes to 164.]

PART II

THE BENTHAMITES AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMISTS, 1776-1830

1. INDIVIDUALISM AND LAISSEZ-FAIRE

18. ADAM SMITH: The Wealth of Nations (1776)

Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.

2. NATURAL LAWS AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF INTERFERENCE

21. THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS: Essay on Population (1798)

(A)

. . . There is one right, which man has generally been thought to possess, which I am confident he neither does, nor can, possess, a right to subsistence when his labour will not fairly purchase it. Our laws indeed say that he has this right, and bind the society to furnish employment and food to those who cannot get them in the regular market; but in so doing, they attempt to reverse the laws of nature. . . .

3. FREE TRADE

23. ADAM SMITH: The Wealth of Nations (1776)

(A)

If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry employed in a way in which we have some advantage. The general industry of the country, being always in proportion to the capital which employs it, will not thereby be diminished; but only left to find out the way in which it can be employed with the greatest advantage.

4. COLONIES

26. ADAM SMITH: The Wealth of Nations (1776)

The maintenance of this monopoly has hitherto been the principal, or more properly perhaps the sole end and purpose of the dominion which Great Britain assumes over her colonies. In the exclusive trade, it is supposed, consists the great advantage of provinces, which have never yet afforded either revenue or military force for the support of the civil government, or the defence of the mother country.

5. REFORM

27. JEREMY BENTHAM: Plan of Parliamentary Reform in the Form of a Catechism, with an Introduction showing the Necessity of Radical, and the Inadequacy of Moderate Reform

(1817)

Money, power, factitious dignity—these as it is the interest, so has it ever been the study—as it has been the study, so has it been the endeavour—of the monarch—as it has been so will it, and where the monarch is a human being, so must it be everywhere—to draw to himself in the greatest quantity possible.

PART III

THE AGE OF COBDEN AND BRIGHT