LECTURE II - ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Summary

It was in the eighteenth century that the expansion of England advanced most rapidly. If therefore we would understand the nature of that expansion, and measure how much it absorbed of the energy and vitality of the nation, we cannot do better than consult the records of the eighteenth century. Those records too, if I mistake not, will acquire new interest from being regarded from this point of view.

I constantly remark both in our popular histories and in occasional allusions to the eighteenth century what a faint and confused impression that period has left upon the national memory. In a great part of it we see nothing but stagnation. The wars seem to lead to nothing, and we do not perceive the working of any new political ideas. That time seems to have created little, so that we can only think of it as prosperous, but not as memorable. Those dim figures George I. and George II., the long tame administrations of Walpole and Pelham, the commercial war with Spain, the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy, the foolish Prime Minister Newcastle, the dull brawls of the Wilkes period, the miserable American war; everywhere alike we seem to remark a want of greatness, a distressing commonness and flatness in men and in affairs. But what we chiefly miss is unity. In France the corresponding period has just as little greatness, but it has unity; it is intelligible; we can describe it in one word as the age of the approach of the Revolution.