Chapter 1 - The End of Politics and the End of the World

Summary

A Leaf from the Future History of England, on the Subject of Reform in Parliament (1831) presented a prophecy of collapse with origins in the political present. “In the year of 1831,” the author stated, “now above a century ago, began that English Revolution, so fatal a disaster to that country, so useful a warning to others.” A “long period of peace and security” had made the people “almost insensible to blessings, which, by constant use, had grown as familiar to them as light and air”: “They were tranquil at home, they were respected abroad. Their constitution, above all, had long been to foreign nations the object of admiring envy.” But while “unshaken by hostile violence,” England’s constitution was “not proof against domestic faction”: “it was safe from murder, but it fell by suicide.” The anonymous pamphlet went on to describe a speculative future, in which heated public feeling converged with incendiary populism to issue in sweeping transformation.