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Political Theory and the ‘Science Of Society’ in Victorian Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Stefan Collini
Stefan Collini
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Type
Review Articles
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The Historical Journal , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1980 , pp. 203 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 The definition given in Maurice Mandelbaum’s magisterial survey, History, man and reason: a study in nineteenth-century thought (Baltimore, 1971), p. 42.Google Scholar

2 Sheldon, Wolin, Politics and vision: continuity and innovation in western political thought (Boston, 1960), esp. chs 9 and 10.Google Scholar

3 The standard account of Utilitarianism in these terms is still Élie Halévy, The growth of philosophical radicalism, trans. May, Morris (London, 1928).Google Scholar

4 Plamenatz, J. P., The English Utilitarians (Oxford, 1949 [2nd edition, 1958]), p. 2.Google Scholar

5 As late as 1861, when his Utilitarianism was appearing in Fraser's Magazine, J. S. Mill wrote to a French correspondent:' Comme beaucoup de Français, vous semblez être d’avis que fidée it Futile est en angleterre la philosophic dominante. II n’en est rien. Je concois qu’on puisse voir dans cette doctrine une certaine analogic avec l’esprit de la nation anglaise. Mais en fait elle y est, et elle y a presque toujours été, trés 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 Mineka, E. and Lindley, Dwight N. (eds.), The later letters of John Stuart Mill 1849–1873 (Toronto, 1972), p. 745.Google Scholar

6 See, particularly, Joseph, Hamburger, Intellectuals in politics: John Stuart Mill and the philosophic radicals (New Haven, 1965)Google Scholar. The comparative insigificance of Utilitarian principles in the general political argument of the day emerges from studies such as Lubenow, W. C., The politics of government growth: early Victorian attitudes toward state intervention 1833–1848 (Newton Abbot, 1971).Google Scholar

7 John, Stuart Mill, Autobiography (London, 1873), ch. 5.Google Scholar

8 The quotations are taken from Herbert, Spencer, An autobiography 2 vols (London, 1904)Google Scholar, II, p. 185; David, Duncan, The life and letters of Herbert Spencer (London, 1908), p. 567Google Scholar; Autobiography, 11, pp. 352, 265. Spencer's attitude to history is well discussed in Peel, J. D. Y., Herbert Spencer: the evolution of a sociologist (London, 1971).Google Scholar

9 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.

10 Herbert, Spencer, The study of sociology (London, 1873), p. 71; quoted in Peel, Herbert Spencer, p. 161.Google Scholar

11 Spencer to Edward Lott, 23 April 1852, in Duncan, Life and letters, p. 62.

12 Peel, Herbert Spencer, previously cited. There is perceptive characterization of Spencer’s The social evolutionism in Burrow, J. W., Evolution and society: a study in Victorian social theory (Cambridge, 1966Google Scholar [2nd edn, 1970]), ch. 5. The importance of Spencer in the development of sociology in Britain is emphasized in Philip, Abrams, The origins of British sociology 1834–1914: an essay with selected papers (Chicago, 1968)Google Scholar, and his wider significance in nineteenth-century social theory is well brought out in Geoffrey, Hawthorn, Enlightenment and despair: a history of sociology(Cambridge, 1976)Google Scholar, ch. 5. He has increasingly been given the scholarly accolade of reprinting: The study of sociology, with introduction by Talcott, Parsons (Ann Arbor, 1961)Google Scholar; two editions of the Principles of sociology, by Carneiro, R. L. (Chicago, 1967)Google Scholar and by Stanislav, Andreski (London, 1969)Google Scholar; The man versus the state and other essays, edited by MacRae, D. G. (Harmondsworth, 1969)Google Scholar; and two volumes of selections - Herbert Spencer: structure, function and evolution, ed.Stanislav, Andreski (London, 1971)Google Scholar; and Herbert Spencer on social evolution: selected writings, ed. Peel, J. D. Y. (Chicago, 1972).Google Scholar

13 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’.

14 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’ (Macallum, G. C.,‘Negative and positive freedom’, Philosophical Review, LXXVI (1967), 312–34, int. and subsequently reprintedCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joel, Feinberg, Social philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ., 1973)). en I do not mean to suggest that the intellectual historian must command such literature in:rg general; but since Dr Wiltshire draws upon one or two items of it to criticize Spencer by ‘commonplace’ views, there is some obligation to make representative choices.Google Scholar

15 John, Morley, ’Young England and the political future’, Fortnightly Review, 1 (1867), 491–6.Google Scholar

16 It was given a rather brief, though generally favourable, notice in this Journal, 21(1978), 199–200.Google Scholar

17 Both books bear the historical profession's assay-mark of original research, an extensive list of archive sources: Dr Kent's 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.

18 Noel, Annan, ‘The intellectual aristocracy’, in Plumb, J. H. (ed.), Studies in social history: a tribute to G. M. Trevelyan (London, 1955)Google Scholar. 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.Google Scholar

19 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 decidedly too ugly, useful-informationish, grotesque-Oxfordish, poor dinnerish, etc., too surrounded by emulous types of the same not to make one feel that one can do better’. Quoted in Leon, Edel, The life of Henry Janus (2 vol. edn, Harmondsworth, 1977), 1, 540, 542.Google Scholar

20 Dicey, A. V., Law and public opinion in England (London, 1905), esp. ch. 6.Google Scholar

21 Simon, W. M., European Positivism in the nineteenth century: an essay in intellectual history (Ithaca, N.Y., 1963)Google Scholar; Royden, Harrison, Before the socialists: studies in labour and politics 1861–1881 (London, 1965), ch. 6.Google Scholar

22 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.

23 A subject which has now received detailed treatment in Ben, Knights, The idea of the clerisy in the nineteenth century (Cambridge, 1978).Google Scholar

24 An edition of Order and progress, edited by Vogeler, Martha S., was published by Harvester Press (Hassocks, 1975).Google Scholar

25 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.

26 Norman, Mackenzie (ed.), The letters of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1978), II, 31Google Scholar. 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.Google Scholar

27 The best study of such an episode is still Shannon, R. T., Gladstone and the Bulgarian agitation(London, 1963).Google Scholar

28 Morley, ‘The Death of Mr Mill’, pp. 38–9.

29 John, Stuart Mill, A system of logic (London, 1843), Book 6, ch. x.Google Scholar

30 Alexander Bain shrewdly remarked on Mill's 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.Google Scholar

31 Quoted in , A. and S[idgwick], E. M., Henry Sidgwick: a memoir (London, 1906), pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

32 From an autobiographical fragment prefixed to the 6th (and subsequent) edition of The methods of ethics (London, 1901), p. xx.Google Scholar

33 John, Rawls, A theory of justice (Oxford, 1972), esp. p. 22.Google Scholar

34 The Monist, LVIII, 3 (1974)Google Scholar, contains articles on Sidgwick’s moral philosophy by Brand ‘s 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 Edwards, P. (ed.), The encyclopaedia of philosophy (N.Y., 1967), vol. 7, 434–6. The methods of ethics was last reprinted, I as a Macmillan paperback, in 1962, and has now gone out of print. However, it is shortly:h to be re-issued, with an introduction by Derek Parfit, by the Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

35 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 vol. ix (1965), 29–46.

36 Alan, Ryan, The philosophy of John Stuart Mill (London, 1970), provides the best demonstration of this.Google Scholar

37 Methods, p. xv.

38 Henry, Sidgwick, Philosophy: its scope and relations (London, 1902), p.49Google Scholar

39 Methods, pp. 468–9, 475, 468, 495.

40 First published 1891, 3rd edn 1908; this remained the set-book for the politics paper at Cambridge until 1925.

41 Ritchie, D. G., ‘Review of Elements polities’, International Journa lof Ethics, 11(1891), 254–7.Google Scholar

42 The book is essentially an expansion of Professor Soffer’s article, ‘The revolution in a t English social thought 1880–1914’, American Historical Review, LXXV (1970), 1938–64. This last section incorporates much of her ‘The new elitism; social psychology in pre-war England’, Journal of British Studies, viii (1969), 111–40.

43 Beatrice Webb, Our partnership, ed. Barbara Drake and Margaret Cole (London, 1948), P. 37.

44 For a fuller account of these points, see Peter, Clarke, Liberals and social democrats (Cambridge, 1978)Google Scholar, and Stefan, Collini, Liberalism and sociology: L. T. Hob house and political argument in England 1880–1914 (Cambridge, 1979).Google Scholar

45 Hobson, J. A., The social problem (London, 1901), p. 67.Google Scholar

46 Michael Freeden, ‘English liberal thought: problems of social reform 1886–1914’ (Unpublished D.Phil, dissertation, Oxford, 1972). 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);’ The progressive movement in England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, xxiv (1974), 159–81; and now Liberals and social democrats, previously cited. See also, Morgan, K. O., The age of Lloyd George: the Liberal Party and British politics 1890–1929 (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Emy, H. V., Liberals, radicals and social politics 1892–1914 (Cambridge, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morris, A. J. A. (ed.), Edwardian radicalism 1900–1914: some aspects of British radicalism (London, 1974)Google Scholar; Edward David, ‘The New Liberalism of C. F. G. Masterman’, in Brown, K. D. (ed.), Essays in anti-Labour history (London, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peter, Weiler, ‘The New Liberalism of L. T. Hobhouse’, Victorian Studies, xv (1972), 141–61Google Scholar; Stefan, Collini, ‘Hobhouse, Bosanquet and the state: philosophical Idealism and political argument in England 1880–1914’, Past and Present, LXXII (1976), 86–111Google Scholar. Several works by Hobhouse and Hobson have recently been reprinted by the Harvester Press, including Hobhouse's Democracy and reaction, ed. Clarke, P. F. (Brighton, 1972)Google Scholar, and The labour movement, ed. Poirier, Philip P. (Brighton, 1974)Google Scholar; and Hobson's, The crisis of Liberalism, ed. Clarke, P. F. (Brighton, 1974)Google Scholar, and The confessions of an economic heretic, edited by Michael, Freeden (Hassocks, 1976)Google Scholar. 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), 421–43Google Scholar, where the 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.Google Scholar