Whig Organization in the General Election of 1790: Selections from the Blair Adam Papers

<p><div>Nearly forty years ago, Sir Lewis Namier's studies showed that there were no organized national political parties in England during the middle of the eighteenth century, and historians have assumed that much the same statement could be made about het period from 1780's to the 1830's. Professor Ginter questions that assumption, and demonstrates that the origins of modern British electoral organization and political parties can be dated at about the end of the American War.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>The papers of William Adam at Blair Adam reveal that the tone and techniques of opposition politics began to undergo a fundamental change during the 1780's. In these years the Whig Opposition was unified under the leadership of the Duke of Portland and Chales James Fox, and it developed a surprisingly extensive political orientation. The party broke out of the restrictive parliamentary orientation that had heretofore characterize opposition politics and turned ot the country a large for support of its program and personnel. By 1790 British general elections were no longer contested exclusively by individuals and ad hoc committees, Adam, the party's political manager, in collaboration with the Duke of Portland, directed the general election campaign of 1790 from offices in Burlington House, and sent party agents and funds into those constituencies in which candidates had decided to stand a contest, but also expended funds in an effort to secure new seats for party members unable to find a likely constituency through their own efforts. The present volume, a selection from the family papers at Blair Adam, fully demonstrates the extent and quality fo the electoral organization of the Whig Opposition.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1967.</div></p>

History

Ginter, Donald E.

Europe

University of California Press

<p>Ginter focuses on the years 1780 to 1832, a period for which many land tax records survive and precisely when modern forms of political organization began to emerge and when industrialization and enclosure are thought to have altered the fabric of society and the economy. Through an examination of more than 5,000 parishes in fifteen historical counties -- approximately one-third of England -- he shows that inequalities in the burden of national taxation were far greater than anyone has estimated. Having researched both local and national taxation procedures, he reveals that, on the eve of the nineteenth-century "Revolution in Government," the tenantry and yeomanry were administratively far more independent of parliamentary statute and of their local gentry and magistracy than has previously been suggested. Drawing on evidence from the three ridings of Yorkshire, he discloses other problems associated with the land tax duplicates. While Ginter argues that the land tax duplicates are wholly inadequate for the study of the fortunes of the small yeoman and that the literature on this subject must be fundamentally reconsidered, he reveals a method which can reliably exploit the land tax duplicates as a systemic documentation. He contends that the full potential for studies based centrally on the land tax has scarcely begun to be explored.</p>

A Measure of Wealth: The English Land Tax in Historical Analysis

Americas

McGill-Queen's University Press

The land tax is the most important systematic documentation, both in its geographical and chronological coverage, which we have on British landed society between the Domesday of the Conqueror and the New Domesday of the late Victorian era. Its use has been central to many of the most important questions in modern British historiography. The decline of the small landowner, the impact of enclosure, the measurement of wealth inequalities, urban morphology, industrial development, and the economic classification of the unreformed electorate. This is the first comprehensive study of the reliability of the tax for pursuing such questions. Through an examination of more than 5,000 parishes and townships in fifteen historical counties (approximately one-third of England), the central chapters of the book show that inequalities in the burden of national taxation were far greater than anyone has anticipated. The book thus provides a highly innovative analysis of the mechanisms and operation of local and national administration in the countryside and of the limits of political authority on the eve of the nineteenth-century 'Revolution in Government'.

Measure of Wealth: The English Land Tax in Historical Analysis

Hambledon Pr

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