Character construction in the eighteenth-century house of commons: Evidence from the Cavendish diary (1768-74)

Rhetorica - Journal of the History of Rhetoric

Volumn 22, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 375-399

  Reid, Christopher ^a  

^a QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 40149106922     PISSN: 07348584     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/rh.2004.22.4.375     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. Research for this article was undertaken with the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Board. I am grateful to the anonymous referee for Rhetorica for detailed and constructive advice
2. Silvia Rodgers, "Women's Space in a Men's House: The British House of Commons," in Shirley Ardener, ed., Women and Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps, revised edition (Oxford and Providence, RI: Berg, 1993), 46-69 (p. 50)
3. The standard survey of the House in the period under review is P. D. G. Thomas, The House of Commons in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971)
4. On the development of the Chamber and its layout as a speaking space, see Maurice Hastings, Parliament House (London: Architectural Press, 1950)
5. and Clyve Jones and Sean Kelsey eds., Housing Parliament: Dublin, Edinburgh and Westminster (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002)
6. On the development and impact of parliamentary reporting, see A. Aspinall, "The Reporting and Publishing of the House of Commons' Debates, 1771-1834," in R. Pares and A. J. P. Taylor, eds., Essays Presented to Sir Lewis Namier (London: Macmillan, 1956), 227-57
7. P. D. G. Thomas, "The Beginning of Parliamentary Reporting in Newspapers, 1768-74," English Historical Review 74 (1959): 623-36
8. Dror Wahrman, "Virtual Representation: Parliamentary Reporting and Languages of Class in the 1790s," Past and Present 136 (1992): 83-113
9. Christopher Reid, "Whose Parliament? Political Oratory and Print Culture in the Later Eighteenth Century," Language and Literature 9 (2000): 22-34
10. This was the so-called "Printers' Case" of 1771, which sparked off a major confrontation between the House and the representatives of the City of London. On this episode, see P. D. G. Thomas, John Wilkes, A Friend to Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 125-40
11. British Library, Egerton MSS. (henceforth Eg.) 215-63, 263, 3711. P. D. G. Thomas provides an invaluable survey in Sources for Debates of the House of Commons, 1768-74, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Special Supplement, No. 4 (1959). It was Cavendish's intention to publish a verbatim record. Some of the early volumes have been corrected, clearly with this plan in mind, but many of the reports remain in a fragmentary state
12. Portions of the diary were published in the nineteenth century, with undeclared editorial interventions, as Debates of the House of Commons in the Year 1774, on the Bill for making more effectual provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec, ed. John Wright (London: Ridgeway 1839)
13. and Sir Henry Cavendish's Debates of the House of Commons during the Thirteenth Parliament of Great Britain, ed. John Wright, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, 1841-3)
14. Some of Cavendish's reports of debates in the Irish House of Commons, of which he was a member for almost thirty years, have been published as An Edition of the Cavendish Irish Parliamentary Diary 1776-1778, ed. Anthony R. Black, 3 vols. (Delavan, WI & Westport, CT: Hallberg, 1984)
15. For a discussion of some of these issues in relation to parliamentary reporting today, see Stef Slembrouck, "The parliamentary Hansard 'verbatim' report: the written construction of verbal discourse," Language and Literature 1 (1992): 101-19
16. See Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke, eds., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1754-90, revised edition, vol. I (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1985), p. 98
17. Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 1356a4. The critical literature on ethos is extensive
18. The following recent discussions may be noted: James C. Baumlin, "Ethos," in Thomas O. Sloane, ed., Encyclopedia of Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 263-77
19. James C. Baumlin and Tita French Baumlin, eds., Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1994)
20. William W. Fortenbaugh, "Aristotle on Persuasion through Character," Rhetorica 10 (1992): 207-44
21. James M. May, Trials of Character: The Eloquence of Ciceronian Ethos (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988)
22. Jakob Wisse, Ethos and Pathos from Aristotle to Cicero (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1989)
23. George Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, ed. Lloyd F. Bitzer (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963). Quotations in this and the following paragraph are from pp. 97-9
24. Campbell's wholly conventional loathing of faction is apparent in his published sermons. In Sermon I, "The Spirit of the Gospel a Spirit neither of Superstition nor of Enthusiasm" (1771), he contrasts "Christian zeal" with "the zeal of sectarianism," defining the latter as "a species of party-spirit" that may take root in systems of politics, philosophy, and religion. In Sermon II, "The Nature, Extent, and Importance of the Duty of Allegiance" (1776), he voices his alarm at "the ferment excited in the colonies, and the clamour raised by a faction amongst ourselves," the latter seemingly including Edmund Burke, of whose Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies (1775) he explicitly disapproves
25. See A Dissertation on Miracles ... with a correspondence on the subject by Mr. Hume, Dr. Campbell, and Dr. Blair ... To which are added Sermons and Tracts, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Bell and Bradfute; William Creech; London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1797), vol. I, pp. 403-5 and vol. II, p. 161
26. For a recent overview, see Stephen M. Lee, "Parliament, Parties and Elections (1760-1815)," in H. T. Dickinson, ed., A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 69-80
27. Relevant studies include Frank O'Gorman, The Emergence of the British Two-Party System 1760-1832 (London: Edward Arnold, 1982)
28. and B. W. Hill, British Parliamentary Parties 1742-1832 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985)
29. Especially helpful on arguments for and against party in the 1760s is John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976)
30. For a selection of contemporary views, see J. A. W. Gunn, ed., Factions No More: Attitudes to Party in Government and Opposition in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Frank Cass, 1972)
31. Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics, 48
32. Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, cited in n. 9 above, p. 102
33. For an assessment of this legislation, and the extent to which it was evaded in practice, see Paul Langford, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689-1798 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 288-95
34. Eg. 217, fol. 151 (3 February 1769, Motion for the Expulsion of Wilkes). The Cavendish Diary presents a number of problems of transcription. In general I have retained the spelling of the original (avoiding use of the term sic), but I have expanded abbreviations, added punctuation where the original is seriously deficient, and supplied capitals for the opening words of sentences
35. Eg. 223, fol. 152 (10 December 1770, Committee of Supply). This is perhaps as close as Cavendish ever comes to recording an example of prosopopoeia in parliamentary debate. For a suggestive discussion of the figure's significance in eighteenth-century culture, see Adam Potkay, The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994)
36. Eg. 223, fols. 218, 219 (13 December 1770, Motion for a Conference with the Lords)
37. Eg. 223, fol. 147 (10 December 1770)
38. For a survey of the occupations and social status of MPs, see Namier and Brooke, House of Commons, cited in n. 7 above, pp. 97-176
39. Eg. 221, fol. 152 (15 March 1770, Motion for an Address for a Copy of the London Remonstrance)
40. Sir Lewis Namier, "Country Gentlemen in Parliament, 1750-84," in his Personalities and Powers (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955), 59-77 (p. 59). "Who are the landed Gentlemen [?]," asked Lord North in the course of his Budget speech on 10 April 1771, and, answering his own question, replied: "The whole House of Parliament. They are all landed Gentlemen. The landed Gentlemen are the bulk of the House of Parliament upon whom this country is always dependant" (Eg. 228, fols 269-70)
41. For a discussion of literary constructions of the country gentleman in the context of the increasing specialization of occupations and interests in the period, see John Barrell, English Literature in History, 1730-80 (London: Hutchinson, 1983)
42. Eg. 220, fols. 56, 57-8 (12 February 1770, Committee on the State of the Nation)
43. Eg. 220, fol. 245 (28 February 1770, Motion for an Account of Civil List Expences)
44. Eg. 224, fols. 197-8 (13 February 1771, Motion for an Address of Thanks for the Convention with Spain)
45. Eg. 224, fol. 198
46. Eg. 224, fol. 199. Calvert was widely regarded as eccentric, but arguably that was what, as a country gentleman, also made him representative
47. Eg. 240, fol. 132 (9 April 1772, Motion for Second Reading of the Timber Bill)
48. Eg. 228, fol. 225 (10 April 1771, The Budget)
49. Eg. 223, fol. 168 (12 December 1770, Motion to Postpone Consideration of the Land Tax)
50. Eg. 227, fol. 86 (25 March 1771, Motion to Commit Oliver to the Tower)
51. His speeches on the issue of religious subscription and on measures to extend further relief to Protestant Dissenters are particularly notable in this respect. For an example much admired by contemporary observers, see Eg. 232, fols. 185-92 (6 February 1772, Motion to bring up a Petition for Relief from Subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles). On practices of self-persuasion, see Jean Nienkamp, Internal Rhetorics: Towards a History and Theory of Self-Persuasion (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001)
52. F. P. Lock, Edmund Burke: volume I, 1730-1784 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 284
53. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 92-5
54. The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, vol. II, ed. Lucy S. Sutherland (Cambridge and Chicago: Cambridge University Press and The University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 101
55. The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. II, ed. Paul Langford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 315
56. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 1378a5. For an informative discussion of phronesis and its meanings, see Steve Schwarze, "Performing Phronesis: The Case of Isocrates' Helen," Philosophy and Rhetoric 32 (1999): 79-96. Burke himself provides perhaps the best eighteenth-century illustration of the term when he asserts in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents that "It is the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of Government
57. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ them with effect" (Writings and Speeches, II, pp. 318-19)
58. Eg. 224, fol. 194 (13 February 1771, Motion for an Address of Thanks for the Convention with Spain). Dowdeswell was himself a country gentleman but he departed from the stereotype by gaining prominence as a party man and by accepting high office when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Rockingham administration of 1765-6
59. Eg. 218, fols. 221-2 (28 February 1769, Motions for Accounts of Crown Expenditure). Lock, Edmund Burke, cited in n. 31 above, p. 267 identifies an allusion here to Luke 7:38. See also John 13: 4-16
60. M. M. Bakhtin, "The Problem of Speech Genres," in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 60-102 (p. 69)
61. Bakhtin, "The Problem of Speech Genres," 94
62. Bakhtin, "The Problem of Speech Genres," 95
63. Bakhtin, "The Problem of Speech Genres," 93-4
64. For an extended discussion of these ideas, see Dick Leith and George Myerson, The Power of Address: Explorations in Rhetoric (London: Routledge, 1989)
65. Cicero, On the Ideal Orator, trans. James M. May and Jakob Wisse (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 2.182
66. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 1367a28-9
67. Eg. 215, fols. 292-4 (7 December 1768, Motion for an Address for American Papers)
68. Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, vol. I, ed. Derek Jarrett (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 72
69. Benjamin West's celebrated history painting, "The Death of General Wolfe" (1770), pictures Barré supporting the dying hero on the Plains of Abraham. In reality, Barré was too severely wounded to attend to such duties
70. Charles Robert Leslie and Tom Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, vol. I (London: John Murray, 1865), p. 258
71. Peter Brown, The Chathamites: A Study in the Relationship between Personalities and Ideas in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1967), 189
72. Brown, The Chathamites, 199
73. Eg. 217, fol. 43 (1 February 1769, Debate on Wilkes's Petition). Barré was sufficiently fond of this figure to use it again two years later when, having acknowledged that he did not have "the honour of being of the learned profession," he observed that "Those Elephants of the opposite army threw their own troops into more confusion" (Eg. 245, fol. 119; 23 March 1773, Committee on East India Affairs). Presumably he was chinking of Hannibal's defeat at Zama (Livy 30.33)
74. Walpole, Memoirs, cited in n. 48 above, II, p. 37
75. Eg. 217, fol. 96 (2 February 1769, Motion of Censure on Wilkes)
76. Eg. 219, fol. 211 (14 April 1769, Motion to declare the election of Wilkes null and void). Burke's later comment that "There are persons in the world whose whole soul is a previous question and whose whole life is the question of the adjournment" (Eg. 252, fol. 212; 25 February 1774, Motion for a Bill to perpetuate the Election Act) has been plausibly interpreted as another hit at Dyson, although he does not appear to have spoken in this debate (Namier and Brooke, House of Commons, cited in n. 7 above, II, p. 372)
77. Eg, 219, fols. 211-12
78. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 1356a4
79. Eg. 224, fol. 9 (25 January 1771, Motion for Papers relative to the Falkland Islands)
80. Eg. 224 fols. 9-10
81. Eg. 224, fol. 11
82. The anecdote is told in Walpole, Memoirs, cited in n. 48 above, I, p. 73
83. Cicero, On the Ideal Orator, 2.310, 2.184