Radicalism The term may be defined as a disposition to subject existing arrangement s to critical questioning, and to advocate the reform

or abolition of those whic h cannot be given a principled justification. It is therefore a stance rather th an a fully-fledged political creed; its practical content will vary according to the political circumstances in which radicals find themselves. Most radicals ha ve been liberals or socialists, but it is possible to envisage a critical opposi tion to institutions that are already liberal or socialist in character, and thu s creeds such as fascism may be described as ideologies of the radical right. Th e true contrary of radicalism is CONSERVATISM, understood as the view that polit ical action can improve the human condition only in very minor respects. For maj or schools of political radicals, see LEVELLERS; PHILOSOPHIC RADICALISM; RADICAL S, BRITISH; RICARDIAN SOCIALISTS. DLM Radicals, British (1789 1815) In Britain in the last decade of the eighteenth century the principles o f politics were subjected to widespread popular debate in a stream of pamphlet l iterature demanding various forms of political reform. The debate was furthered through the meetings of a number of radical political associations which sprang up to organize the distribution of this literature and to campaign for parliamen tary and electoral reform. The movement drew on a number of strands of radical t hinking which had developed in the previous decades. The American Revolution had prompted a good deal of criticism of the administration, particularly from the Whig opposition, from Dissenters who sympathized with their fellow Puritans, and from those whose commercial and business interests were affected. Many also saw the revolution as heralding a new era by successfully abandoning the monarchica l system in favour of a republican and democratic order. The revolution and the earlier Wilkes controversy, in which the rights of the citizen against the power of parliament and the crown were successfully contested, also revived the older 'real Whig', 'Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman', and 'Country Party' traditio ns of political thought. These looked back to the writings of HARRINGTON, LOCKE, MILTON and Sidney, and argued that civil liberty required both a strong body of landed gentry who could remained independent from the patronage of the king, an d a mixed constitution which would maintain a delicate balance of monarchical, a ristocratic and democratic elements (see Robbins). These controversies stimulate d the formation of metropolitan and provincial political associations which peti tioned for parliamentary reform and arranged for the printing and circulation of their traditions' canonical texts. Although these associations foundered in the early 1780s, they provided a valuable model for their successors in the next de cade. They also attracted considerable support from Dissenters who increasingly came to see the cause of religious toleration as dependent upon political reform (see Lincoln; Goodwin). However, it was events in France in 1789 which revived these earlier tra ditions and provoked extensive controversy in both parliamentary and extra-parli amentary circles in Britain over the nature of the revolution (was it merely a French version of 168 8?), its legitimacy (by what right had the Estates acted?), and its lessons for Britain (should France be a lesson to Britain's ruling class, or an example to i ts people?). The 'Debate on France' was opened, unwittingly, by Dr Richard Price , an Arian Dissenting Minister, statistician, and moral and political philosophe r. In his sermon at the annual service organized by the London Revolution Societ y to commemorate the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Price welcomed events in Franc e and restated the principles of 1688, which he took to be: the right to liberty of conscience; the right to resist power when abused; and the right to choose o ur own governors, cashier them for misconduct, and to frame a government for our selves. Price's account of 1688 and his enthusiastic welcome for the revolution

provided the initial focus for Edmund BURKE's attack on the 'French experiment' and its British sympathizers in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (179 0). The Reflections provoked more than a hundred further pamphlets on 'French pr inciples' in the following two years in what has been described as 'perhaps the last real discussion of the fundamentals of politics in our country' (Cobban, p. 31). The debate deserves this description both because of the quality of many o f the contributions, and because it extended to such a wide extra-parliamentary audience. At times it became a struggle for the allegiance of those who were den ied representation and had hitherto stood outside the orbit of political debate and organization. The debate ranged over three main areas: writers disputed over Price's a nd Burke's competing interpretations of the events and principles of 1688; they argued over Burke's account of events in France in the summer of 1789; and they contested the principles on which their political system should be based. The mo st important single contribution was Thomas PAINE's Rights of Man (1791 and 1792 ), which espoused a radical republican ideology based on the American experience and which achieved sales in excess of 150,000 copies in the two years following its publication (Thompson, p. 117). However, for all Paine's popularity, especi ally amongst the radical associations which circulated his works, his political principles were not characteristic of the pamphlet debate. Radical contributions only rarely followed Paine's advocacy of natural rights, popular sovereignty, a nd universal suffrage; most invoked older traditions. Many contributors demanded the restoration of Britain's ANCIENT CONSTITUTION; see in particular Major John Cartwright's much reprinted Give us our Rights (1782) and David Williams's Lett ers to a Young Prince from an Old Statesman (1792). Others, including Price, sim ply referred back to Whig and Country Party traditions of the mixed constitution , claiming that reform was necessary to strengthen the democratic element agains t the overweening ambition and power of the crown. However, the debate was not r estricted to such concerns. Joseph Priestley, the theologian, chemist and philos opher, in his Letters to the Right Hon. Edmund Burke (1791), attacked Burke's di scussion of the proper relations between church and state, restated the case for complete religious toleration, and looked forward to a time when government wou ld conduct itself solely according to the public good, leaving all men the enjoy ment of as many of their natural rights as possible. Once such true principles o f government had been established, he prophesied the 'extinction of all national prejudice and enmity, and the establishment of universal peace and good will am ong all nations' (quoted in Butler, p. 88). The hope for improvement also found expression in James Mackintosh's Vin diciae Gallicae (1791), a philosophically sophisticated defence of 1688 and 1789 which provided a clearly argued rule-utilitarian justification for rights, ther eby combining Mackintosh's inheritance from the SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT with the newer 'French principles'. For Mackintosh 'all rights, civil or natural, arise f rom expediency. But the moment the moral edifice is reared, its basis is hidden from the eye for ever . . . It then becomes the perfection of virtue to consider not whether an act is useful, but whether it is right' (pp. 216 17). However, whereas Paine and Mackintosh, to some extent Priestley, and man y others, relied on appeals to the rights and interests of individuals, an alter native current ran through the debate stressing disinterested benevolence and man's rational duties. Mary WOLLSTONECRAFT in her Vindication of the Right s of Man (1790), William GODWIN in his Political Justice (1793), Thomas Holcroft in his political novel Anna St Ives, Price in his Discourse on the Love of our Country (1789), and others (e.g. George Rous, Thomas Christie, John Adams, and C atherine Macauley) all stressed the duties of the individual to moral and politi cal truth (a duty derived for many writers from our duties to God). They argued that the vision of a community of egoistic individuals pursuing their interests within a system of rules which allows each the maximum freedom (the view canvass

ed by Paine and Mackintosh) was too narrow. Catherine Macauley expressed her hop e 'that we shall not be so much blinded with the splendour of dazzling images, a s to confound those narrow affections which bind small bodies together by the ti es of interest, to that liberal benevolence, which, disdaining the consideration of every selfish good, cheerfully sacrifices a personal interest to the welfare of the community' (pp. 38 9). This division might also be seen as reflecting the distinction between t he Scottish and French heritages, which stressed the role of the passions and in terests (HUME and SMITH; HOLBACH, HELVTIUS and ROUSSEAU), and the more rationali st tradition of English Dissent which found its classic expositions in Price's R eview of the Principal Questions of Morals (1756, enlarged edition 1787) and in the first edition of Godwin's Political Justice. However, these two very differe nt traditions were frequently merged (if not altogether coherently) in the writi ngs of liberally-minded humanitarians from the middle ranks of society who were persuaded by the American and French revolutions, by the developing prosperity o f Georgian England, and by their own success and social advancement, that they w ere witnessing the dawn of a new era. These multiple influences show through in the later editions of Godwin's Political Justice (1795, 1797), in the novels of Godwin, Holcroft, Robert Bage, Wollstonecraft, and others, and in the brief flir tation with radicalism in the poetry of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor COL ERIDGE. (More millennial influences are evident in the work of William Blake.) J ust as the underlying political ideologies of writers differed, so too did their objectives. These ranged from expectations of a utopian future peopled by fully rational men and women, through demands for a people's convention to draw up a new constitution, and assertions of the people's right to universal suffrage and annual parliaments, to more modest proposals for an extension of the franchise to a wider class of property owners. After 1792 the debate increasingly became a more direct struggle to capt ure the allegiance of metropolitan and provincial artisans. This campaign was at first directed by the Society for Constitutional Information (SCI) but was take n over by the London Corresponding Society (LCS) a society composed of 'a class of Men who deserve better treatment than they generally meet with from those who a re fed and cloathed, and inriched by thier labour, industry or ingenuity' (quote d in Thale, p. 8). While these societies contained many moderates, their rhetori c was dominated by the language of natural rights and popular sovereignty. In 17 94 their zeal for reform led them to plan a convention with elected delegates fr om throughout Britain to draw up proposals for the reform of Parliament and to a ct as a mouthpiece for the people's demands. Such a convention tacitly threatene d parliamentary claims to sovereignty or so the government claimed as it arrested and tried the leaders of the societies for high treason. They were eventually ac quitted in December 1794, but their long imprisonment and the defection of their secretary broke the SCI, and the LCS only recovered slowly. The LCS did have a resurgence of support in 1795 as public unrest grew over the war with France, ri sing food prices, and the predation of the recruitment officers, but under the l eadership of John Thelwall, as under his predecessor Thomas Hardy, it never move d beyond a demand for political rights and an end of the war with France. Thelwa ll argued: 'Remember, I do not mean equality of property. This is totally imposs ible in the present state of human intellect and industry . . . The equality I m ean, is the equality of rights' (p. 14). Only outside the society, in the writin gs of Thomas Spence and William Godwin, and in Paine's rather belated Agrarian J ustice (1796), did the radicals move on to countenance an alternative theory of property to the traditional Lockeian view. Spence in particular, an isola ted and largely neglected figure in the 1790s, advanced a doctrine of rights to equal property to be managed collectively by the community which influenced nine teenth-century radicals. For Spence, a right in land was an essential prerequisi te for meaningful political rights and proper representation a view which linked t he republican tradition of the early part of the eighteenth century to the socia list traditions of the nineteenth.

The radical societies were increasingly harassed by government spies, pr opaganda, prosecutions, and arrests (facilitated by the repeated suspension of h abeas corpus throughout the decade). The more respectable elements of the LCS such as Thelwall and Francis Place retired from it and it became increasingly dominate d by men with more insurrectionary ambitions but little political ideology. In 1 799 the LCS was finally outlawed. Although popular radicalism and reforming activity revived in the early years of the nineteenth century under Sir Francis Burdett, Henry Hunt, and Willi am Cobbett (the last two sharing some of Paine's ability to communicate and arou se the working man), little of the activity was as vital, as threatening, or as innovative as it had been in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Although Paine's works were still circulated, and Spence continued to turn out demands f or common ownership, political debate was dominated by writers from the 1780s ra ther than the 1790s, and was consequently more moderate in its demands and expec tations. How far the radicals of the 1790s and their principles posed a threat to the prevailing aristocratic order of Georgian Britain remains much debated. The order certainly reacted as if the threat was serious, and in doing so it doubtl ess provoked some radicals to consider more violent methods of reform, but the m ovement is probably more significant for having developed a political theory of natural rights and popular sovereignty which underlay the democratic and sociali st demands of the nineteenth-century labour movement in Britain. It is also impo rtant because it brought the tradition of radical political inquiry to a new aud ience which had previously remained firmly outside the arena of political activi ty. In these ways the British radicals came to play a major part in the theory a nd practice of parliamentary democracy in Britain. MP Philosophic Radicalism A doctrine of British origin, associated with the disciples of Jeremy BE NTHAM and James MILL, most notably John Stuart MILL. It combined Bentham's UTILI TARIANISM; CLASSICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY as developed by Adam Smith, Malthus and R icardo; a jurisprudence, propounded by Bentham and John AUSTIN, that tried to ra tionalize the law; and a rationale for DEMOCRACY that was formulated by Bentham and James Mill. Although the doctrine originated in philosophical and economic t heories, philosophic radicalism was concerned with practice; it provided a justi fication for radical changes in the established regime that had survived into th e early nineteenth century and was associated with reform movements that were op posed to the landed aristocracy, economic monopolies, and the established church . Its main thrust was to accelerate the movement to transform the traditional ar istocratic regime into a modern, secular, democratic, market, liberal society. Utilitarianism was the most important component of philosophic radicalis m, for it was the philosophic foundation for all the rest. It was axiomatic for utilitarians that all individuals sought to maximize their own happiness and tha t the purpose of government was to promote the greatest happiness of the greates t number. Utilitarianism relied on an individualism and premises about psycholog y that can be traced back to HOBBES; it was opposed to tradition and to theories of natural law, and in addition it was implicitly critical of religion. Utilita rianism in its practical consequences served to undermine the legitimacy of the established regime, but it also provided the basic principles with which alterna tives were designed and justified. Philosophic radicalism also included Bentham's jurisprudence, which was severely critical of common law for being traditional, self-contradictory, arbit rary, and difficult to understand (see LAW). BLACKSTONE, in particular, was atta

cked as the most prominent defender of common law and the legal profession on wh ich the public was dependent for access to the law and the courts. Bentham's uti litarian jurisprudence included opposition to all use of the language of nature, including natural law and natural rights, for being intolerably ambiguous and f or providing an unwarranted justification for arbitrary decisions. As an alterna tive Bentham created a jurisprudence which boasted of rationality and clarity, q ualities which were to be achieved through codification. The third major component of philosophic radicalism was political econom y which, with its individualism and its emphasis on maximizing satisfactions, ha d affinities with utilitarianism. The principles of political economy were incom patible with monopoly and protectionism and were implicitly critical of the econ omic foundations of aristocratic power; this gave it affinities with other parts of philosophic radicalism. The philosophic radicals consistently supported agit ation against protectionist corn laws. The fourth and perhaps most visible component of philosophic radicalism was its rationale for democracy, which can be found in Bentham's Plan of Parliam entary Reform (1817) and James Mill's Essay on Government (1820), which was said by his son to have been a textbook for the philosophic radicals. The goal of po litics was to establish an identity of interests between rulers and ruled. The o bstacle to this was the existence of sinister interests, that is, interests sepa rate from those of all other persons or the community. It became necessary to pr event those with sinister interests from using positions of power to gain benefi ts by corrupt means. An aristocratic regime provided the best example of predato ry rulers using the powers of government to gain sinecures and places in the sta te bureaucracy, church, and army clearly interests not shared with the remainder o f the populace. The remedy was to frustrate those with sinister interests by est ablishing a representative system based on the universal or general interest of the entire people. This was to be achieved by placing democratic checks on ruler s and allowing the universal interest of the entire populace to prevail. To achi eve this, organic reform, i.e. fundamental constitutional change, was necessary and such reform was to include a greatly extended, preferably universal, suffrag e, frequent elections, and secret ballot in short, democracy. Belief in only some of these doctrines did not make a philosophic radica l. There were many who supported one or some of these constituent parts of philo sophic radicalism while rejecting others, and they cannot be regarded as belongi ng to the movement. Most political economists, for example McCulloch and Nassau Senior, were neither utilitarians nor radical democrats and so they were not phi losophic radicals. There were utilitarians who rejected democracy, and therefore placed themselves outside the boundaries of philosophic radicalism, for example William Paley, and John Austin at the time he wrote The Province of Jurispruden ce Determined (1832). There were law reformers, including critics of common law, who were neither democrats nor utilitarians and therefore not philosophic radic als, for example Mackintosh and Brougham. There were also radical democrats who rejected utilitarianism and the teachings of political economy and were anything but philosophic radicals, for example Hetherington and the Chartists. Among not able intellectual figures Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill were unusual for their commitm ent to all the constituent parts of philosophic radical doctrine. Although Bentham and James Mill were the intellectual architects of phil osophic radicalism it should be noted that they did not use the term itself, whi ch was an invention of historians eager to attribute to a particular group of in tellectual figures the ideas that fostered the growth of liberalism in politics and economic policy (see below). The term philosophic radicals, however, was the label adopted by John Stuart Mill and his like-minded associates for whom it ha d a specific meaning which did not encompass the several doctrines later attribu

ted to philosophic radicalism. It referred to a small group of radical journalis ts and politicians who, while they accepted utilitarianism, Benthamite jurisprud ence, the principles of political economy, Malthusianism, and the rationale for democracy, were distinguished by their commitment to the belief that a parliamen tary party ought to be and could be formed with the primary goal of seeking cons titutional reform along democratic lines. (In addition to John Stuart Mill, the most prominent persons in this enterprise were: George Grote, banker, MP, and la ter famous for his History of Greece; Harriet Grote, who conducted the philosoph ic radical salon; Sir William Molesworth, MP, financial supporter and contributo r to philosophic radical journals, and later the organizer and editor of The Wor ks of Thomas Hobbes; Francis Place, organizer and pamphleteer; and John Roebuck, MP, colonial reformer, and later prominent critic of Crimean policy.) As philosophic radicals Mill and his associates developed a rationale an d a strategy for a parliamentary party committed to democracy in opposition to a n aristocratic party. Democracy versus aristocracy was the fundamental issue; al l other issues were thought to be either derivative or comparatively insignifica nt. This issue was fundamental because it reflected the underlying social realit y that consisted of conflict between aristocracy and people. Therefore realignme nt of parties was proposed and expected. It would require a combination of the t wo established parties, since they were both dominated by aristocrats and promot ed aristocratic interests. This realignment would allow for the emergence of a r adical democratic party representing the people in opposition to a single aristo cratic party. Party conflict would ensue between those who defended aristocratic principles, termed philosophic Tories, and those who had a principled defence o f democracy, namely the philosophic radicals. This realignment would also allow parties to reflect both underlying reality and pure principles. In this view doc trinal parties representing extreme positions had the greatest claim to legitima cy and it is not surprising that philosophic radicals were called ultras and doc trinaires. During this time (1824 40), John Stuart Mill was hostile to centre part ies and criticized compromisers and trimmers as unprincipled. This understanding distinguished philosophic radicals from other types o f radicals from those, such as Thomas PAINE and his followers, whose radicalism re sted on a belief in natural rights; from those devoted to particular issues for whom democratization was only a means to their particular end; and from those su ch as Cartwright or Cobbett, who justified their belief in constitutional change by the argument that it would be a restoration of popular institutions as they existed in the ancient past (see RADICALS, BRITISH). The philosophic radicals formed a small faction in the House of Commons and mounted a vigorous campaign in the public journals during the 1830s; because of the balance of parties in the Commons they were able to entertain hopes for success. These hopes collapsed, however, when the rise of Chartism, the Anti-Cor n Law agitation and other political circumstances led to their disillusionment a nd the break-up of their tiny faction. The name survived the demise of the small self-styled philosophic radica l party. The term philosophic radicalism was adopted by much later historians, n otably Elie Halvy, whose Formation du radicalisme philosophique was published in 1904 and translated into English in 1928. By calling attention to his early poli tical activities in his Autobiography (1873), Mill probably contributed to this development. In contrast to Mill's fairly precise definition, Halvy's loose usage , which included Benthamism, utilitarianism, liberalism, laissez-faire doctrine and a generalized radicalism, became conventional. The most notable criticism of philosophic radicals was directed at their doctrinairism by centrists affiliated with the Whig party. Francis Jeffrey thou

ght they encouraged civil conflict and made reconciliation of classes and partie s difficult to achieve. MACAULAY had many complaints: they used deductive reason ing which was inappropriate in politics; they resembled seventeenth-century Puri tans and Jacobins; their support lent ridicule to good causes; they were arrogan t and intolerant; and they made the reform movement too revolutionary. In a less sophisticated formulation Stephen repeated some of these criticisms in his Engl ish Utilitarians (1900). From a different point of view CARLYLE directed his ire at philosophic radicalism for its individualism, its insensitivity to spiritual needs, and its support for a market economy. MARX regarded philosophic radicali sm as bourgeois ideology. JH