Introduction

Summary

In response to the French Revolution, a wave of enthusiasm for and optimism about social and political change swept Britain. The Dissenting minister Richard Price famously provoked Edmund Burke’s ire in 1789 by preaching that, having shared in the benefits of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and seen two other revolutions (American and French) he could see ‘the ardour for liberty catching and spreading, a general amendment beginning in human affairs, the dominion of kings, changed for the dominion of laws, and the dominion of priests giving way to the dominion of reason and conscience.’ Other members of the middling and professional orders, especially those concentrated around the arts, literature and professions of London, also saw these events as heralding wider changes in the European order: from war to peace; from competition to harmonious and productive exchange; from force and fraud to a rational grounding of authority. Tom Paine felt sufficient confidence that the age of European wars was over that he designed a whole welfare system on the assumption that the taxation collected to fight wars could safely be repurposed to promote a better society.