Page 28 - History 2020

Session 3: Macaulay and the Whig interpretation of history

What happened after Burke?
To recap. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was a Whig Revolution. It got rid of the last
Catholic king, James II, who represented the spectre that had haunted English politics
since Mary Tudor: a tyrannical Catholic monarch. 1688 also opened the way to the
guaranteeing there would be no further ones, in the process guaranteeing
parliamentary supremacy over the monarch. Politics ceased to be civil war by other
means. The Whigs’ underlying aim was to make the world safe for Whigs and their

values: hierarchy, order and property, governed by a parliamentary monarchy. From
1720, Walpole showed how this could operate; he managed parliament through his
skillful dispensation of royal patronage and gave the country 20 years of strong,
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stable government. In the 18 century the 17 century rage of party gave way to the
peaceful alternation of Whig and Tory ministries. Britain had become in effect a
political oligarchy, a ruling elite of the well-born and propertied classes, made up of
aristocratic merged with financial and commercial interests. Many think it still is.

In 1789 however the external threat of Revolutionary France spurred Edmund Burke,
the cleverest of the Whigs who later turned Tory, to give the British ruling oligarchy
its philosophy of conservativism. This, by explaining how societies changed in slow,
gradual and organic ways, both condemned the chaos of the French Revolution, and
justified Britain’s ruling oligarchy which provided stability. The 1688 Revolution
exemplified oligarchy and stability; it was precisely because, compared to other
revolutions, it brought so little change, that it deserved to be called “Glorious.”

But the story does not end with Burke. The greatest Whig event was still to come, the
passing of the Great Parliamentary Reform Act of 1832; and more was needed to
make the world truly safe for Whigs. Just as the French Revolution had spurred Burke
to develop his conservative philosophy justifying the ruling oligarchy, so the 1832
Reform Act spurred another clever Whig, Lord Macaulay, to provide the oligarchy

with another prop: the Whig Interpretation of History.

What was the Great Reform Act of 1832?
Like all acts of parliament, the “Great Reform Act of 1832” began life as the Reform
Bill, a proposed law to reform the way parliament was elected.

Why was it proposed in 1831?
It had a number of long-term causes. There was the criticism of Walpole’s
“Robinocracy” as corrupt and oligarchical (giving control to a self-serving elite) and