Political theory and the ‘science of society’ in victorian britain

The Historical Journal

Volumn 23, Issue 1, 1980, Pages 203-231

  Collini, Stefan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84976178637     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X00024006     Document Type: Review

References (65)

1. The definition given in Maurice Mandelbaum's magisterial survey, History, man and reason: a study in nineteenth-century thought (Baltimore, 1971), p. 42.
2. Sheldon Wolin, Politics and vision: continuity and innovation in western political thought (Boston, 1960), esp. chs 9 and 10.
3. The standard account of Utilitarianism in these terms is still Élie Halévy, The growth of philosophical radicalism, trans. May Morris (London, 1928).
4. J. P. Plamenatz, The English Utilitarians (Oxford, 1949 [2nd edition, 1958]), p. 2.
5. As late as 1861, when his Utilitarianism was appearing in Fraser's Magazine, S. Mill wrote to a French correspondent: ' Comme beaucoup de Français, vous semblez ětre d'avis que l'idée de l'utile est en angleterre la philosophie dominante. Il n'en est rien. Je conçois qu'on puisse voir dans cette doctrine une certaine analogie avec l'esprit de la nation anglaise. Mais en fait elle y est, et elle y a presque toujours été, très impopulaire. La plupart des écrivains anglais ne la nient pas seulement, ils l'insultent: et l'école de Bentham a toujours été regardée (je le dis avec regret) comme une insignifiante minorité.'J. S. Mill to Charles Dupont-White, 10 Oct. 1861, in Francis E. Mineka and Dwight N. Lindley (eds.), The later letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873 (Toronto, 1972), p. 745.
6. See, particularly, Joseph Hamburger, Intellectuals in politics: John Stuart Mill and the philosophic radicals (New Haven, 1965). The comparative insigificance of Utilitarian principles in the general political argument of the day emerges from studies such as W. C. Lubenow, The politics of government growth : early Victorian attitudes toward state intervention 1833-1848 (Newton Abbot, 1971).
7. John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (London, 1873), ch. 5.
8. The quotations are taken from Herbert Spencer, An autobiography 2 vols (London, 1904), 11, p. 185
9. David Duncan, The life and letters of Herbert Spencer (London, 1908), p. 567
10. Autobiography, 11, pp. 352, 265. Spencer's attitude to history is well discussed in J. D. Y. Peel, Herbert Spencer: the evolution of a sociologist (London, 1971).
11. Spencer's letter to Mill of 24 Feb. 1863 is largely reproduced in Autobiography, 11, 88. The added note appeared in Utilitarianism (London, 1863), pp. 91-2.
12. Herbert Spencer, The study of sociology (London, 1873), P. 71; quoted in Peel, Herbert Spencer, p. 161.
13. Spencer to Edward Lott, 23 April 1852, in Duncan, Life and letters, p. 62.
14. Peel, Herbert Spencer, previously cited. There is perceptive characterization of Spencer's social evolutionism in J. W. Burrow, Evolution and society: a study in Victorian social theory (Cambridge, 1966 [2nd edn, 1970]), ch. 5. The importance of Spencer in the development
15. Dr Wiltshire's chapters, in order, are ' Spencer's theory of social evolution ', ' The “social organism”', and '“Militant” and “industrial” society'; this corresponds to the following sequence of chapters in Peel: 'Evolution', 'The organic analogy', and 'Militancy and industrialism'.
16. This also provides a minor example of his selective acquaintance with the relevant scholarship. In making this criticism, he deploys 'the now commonplace' distinction between negative and positive freedom, but it is surely arguable that the work of Macallum, Feinberg and others, challenging the tenability of this distinction, has rendered it far from ' commonplace'
17. John Morley, 'Young England and the political future', Fortnightly Review, I (1867), 491-6.
18. It was given a rather brief, though generally favourable, notice in this Journal, 21(1978), 199-200.
19. Both books bear the historical profession's assay-mark of original research, an extensive list of archive sources: Dr Kents 28 collections just beats Dr Harvie's 23; only 10 collections are common to both lists. For Dr Harvie, the Bryce correspondence is the switchboard of his group; for Dr Kent, the Harrison papers perform the same function.
20. Noel Annan, 'The intellectual aristocracy', in J. H. Plumb (ed.), Studies in social history: a tribute to G. M. Trevelyan (London, 1955).
21. Leslie Stephen, a representative figure if ever there was one, one day came upon his sister-in-law being kissed by a young man, whom she thereafter married, who was both her cousin and her godson; see Noel Annan, Leslie Stephen, his thought and character in relation to his time (London, 1951), p. 72.
22. The reading registered by that infallible social barometer, Henry James, after dining with Bryce, was that he belonged to 'the young doctrinaire radicals (they are all growing old in it) who don't take the “popular heart”, and seem booked to remain out of affairs. They are all tainted with priggishness.' After dining with the Diceys, he recorded: they 'are good, but
23. A. V. Dicey, Law and public opinion in England (London, 1905), esp. ch. 6.
24. W. M. Simon, European Positivism in the nineteenth century: an essay in intellectual history (Ithaca, N.Y. 1963)
25. Royden Harrison, Before the socialists: studies in labour and politics 1861-1881 (London, 1965), ch. 6.
26. Quoted in Simon, European Positivism, p. 55. What Mill singled out as the 'chief worth' of the Cours was its 'systematic and earnest inculcation of the purely subordinate role of the intellect, as the minister of the higher sentiments'; quoted in Simon, European Positivism, p. 190.
27. A subject which has now received detailed treatment in Ben Knights, The idea of the clerisy in the nineteenth century (Cambridge, 1978).
28. An edition of Order and progress, edited by Martha S. Vogeler, was published by Harvester Press (Hassocks, 1975).
29. These quotations are taken from Morley's essay on 'The Death of Mr Mill', as reprinted in his Critical miscellanies, 3rd series (London, 1886), p. 41.
30. Norman Mackenzie (ed.), The letters of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 3 vois (Cambridge, 1978), 11, 31. These volumes contain much fascinating material on the Webbs' affiliations with Comte and the early French Positivists. An important demonstration of Sidney Webb's own early Comtism was provided by Willard Wolfe, From radicalism to socialism: men and ideas in the formation of Fabian Socialist doctrines 1881-1889 (New Haven, 1975), esp. ch. 6.
31. The best study of such an episode is still R. T. Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian agitation 1876 (London, 1963).
32. Morley, 'The Death of Mr Mill', pp. 38-9.
33. John Stuart Mill, A system of logic (London, 1843), Book 6, ch. x.
34. Alexander Bain shrewdly remarked on Mills failure to write a book on 'ethology': 'I do not believe there was anything to be got in the direction he was looking. His failure with “Ethology” fatally interfered with the larger project, which I have no doubt he entertained, of executing a work on Sociology as a whole.' Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill: a criticism (London, 1882), pp. 78-9.
35. Quoted in A. and E. M. S[idgwick], Henry Sidgwick: a memoir (London, 1906), pp. 39-40.
36. From an autobiographical fragment prefixed to the 6th (and subsequent) edition of The methods of ethics (London, 1901), p. xx.
37. John Rawls, A theory of justice (Oxford, 1972), esp. p. 22.
38. The Monist, lviii, 3 (1974), contains articles on Sidgwick's moral philosophy by Brand Blanshard, J. B. Schneewind, D. D. Raphael, Marcus G. Singer, William K. Frankena, Gertrude Ezorsky, Stephen L. Darwall, Peter Singer. Professor Schneewind had already advanced Sidgwick's claims to philosophical attention in earlier articles and in P. Edwards (ed.), The encyclopaedia of philosophy (N.Y. 1967), vol. 7, 434-6. The methods of ethics was last reprinted, as a Macmillan paperback, in 1962, and has now gone out of print. However, it is shortly to be re-issued, with an introduction by Derek Parfit, by the Oxford University Press.
39. Professor Schneewind had already indicated the centrality of this conflict in Victorian moral thought generally in his ' Moral problems and moral philosophy in the Victorian period Victorian Studies, supp. to ix (1965), 29-46.
40. Alan Ryan, The philosophy of John Stuart Mill (London, 1970), provides the best demonstration of this.
41. Methods, p. xv.
42. Henry Sidgwick, Philosophy : its scope and relations (London, 1902), p. 49.
43. Methods, pp. 468-9, 475, 468, 495.
44. First published 1891, 3rd edn 1908; this remained the set-book for the politics paper at Cambridge until 1925.
45. D. G. Ritchie,'Review of Elements of politics', International Journal of Ethics, 11 (1891), 254-7.
46. The book is essentially an expansion of Professor Soffer's article, 'The revolution in English social thought 1880-1914', American Historical Review, lxxv (1970), 1938-64.
47. This last section incorporates much of her 'The new elitism; social psychology in pre-war England', Journal of British Studies, viii (1969), 111-40.
48. Beatrice Webb, Our partnership, ed. Barbara Drake and Margaret Cole (London, 1948), P. 37.
49. For a fuller account of these points, see Peter Clarke, Liberals and social democrats (Cambridge, 1978), and Stefan Collini, Liberalism and sociology: L. T. Hothouse and political argument in England 1880-1914 (Cambridge, 1979).
50. J. A. Hobson, The social problem (London, 1901), p. 67.
51. Michael Freeden, 'English liberal thought: problems of social reform 1886-1914' (Unpublished D.Phil. dissertation, Oxford, 1972).
52. The work of Peter Clarke has been the outstanding contribution to the literature on the New Liberalism: see his Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge, 1971)
53. 'The progressive movement in England ', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, xxiv (1974), 159-81
54. Liberals and social democrats, previously cited. See also, K. O. Morgan, The age of Lloyd George: the Liberal Party and British politics 1890-1929 (London, 1971)
55. H. V. Emy, Liberals, radicals and social politics 1892-1914 (Cambridge, 1973)
56. A. J. A. Morris (ed.), Edwardian radicalism 1900-1914: some aspects of British radicalism (London, 1974)
57. Edward David, 'The New Liberalism of C. F. G. Masterman', in K. D. Brown (ed.), Essays in anti-Labour history (London, 1974)
58. Peter Weiler, 'The New Liberalism of L. T. Hobhouse', Victorian Studies, xv (1972), 141-61
59. Stefan Collini, 'Hobhouse, Bosanquet and the state: philosophical Idealism and political argument in England 1880-1914', Past and Present, lxxii (1976), 86-111.
60. Several works by Hobhouse and Hobson have recently been reprinted by the Harvester Press, including Hobhouse's Democracy and reaction, ed. P. F. Clarke (Brighton, 1972)
61. The labour movement, ed. Philip P. Poirier (Brighton, 1974)
62. Hobson's The crisis of Liberalism, ed. P. F. Clarke (Brighton, 1974)
63. The confessions of an economic heretic, edited by Michael Freeden (Hassocks, 1976).
64. Dr Freeden has himself contributed 'J. A. Hobson as a New Liberal theorist: some aspects of his thought until 1914', Journal of the History of Ideas, xxxiv (1973), 421-43
65. Idealist character of Hobson's thought is emphasized, in contrast to his 'Biological and evolutionary roots of the New Liberalism in England', Political Theory, iv (1976), 471-90.