Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (review)

Mark Knights' ambitious monograph investigates the developing role of public opinion and judgement in political culture between the 1670s and 1720s. Under the last Stuart monarchs, he argues, 'the "public" came of age' (p.94), surmounting the patriarchal notions of thinkers such as Filmer and Leslie to become the 'collective, fictional entity' (p.67) to which politicians appealed. Politics was increasingly conceived in terms of the representation of the public, and contested interpretations of the public good. Knights distinguishes this representative model of politics from the participatory framework discussed by previous early modern historians. Although representative politics provided forms of participation (including voting and petitioning), Knights' representation is a broad concept, linking politics, economics and literature. Its growth shaped eighteenth-century public life.

Knights' use of the term 'representation' deliberately signifies both a formal, institutional process, carried out by elected officials, and an informal, verbal phenomenon. Parliamentarians and pamphleteers alike claimed to represent the public. Thus Knights' understanding of political culture links institutional trends – the period's frequent elections, the emerging fiscal-military state – the ideologies dividing the parties, and cultural developments including coffeehouses, pamphleteering and journal publication. Part I of the book explains the rising significance of means of representation, detailing the gradual establishment of the legitimacy of petitioning and the use of printed advice to electors. Part II turns to the concerns raised by the fiercely partisan representative culture. Many complained that they were misrepresented in petitions and print, others pointed to the mendacity of parties' appeals to the public. Language was abused, the meaning of words became unstable and 'truth' became increasingly difficult to identify.

As this summary suggests, Knights' book is timely in at least two respects. First, it interrogates questions raised by current debates over democratisation in political science, sociology and public discourse more generally. Is partisan journalism corrosive of public respect for political representation? How should the relationship between citizens and institutions be organised? Knights shows that the frequency of elections in England under William and Anne was thought to make public discussions of politics irrational, particularly in print. This cultural context encouraged the repeal of the Triennial Act in 1716 and the provision for elections only every seven years.

Knights' concern with language and epistemological uncertainty allows him to engage with a second group of issues. The phenomenon noted by Roger L'Estrange in 1687 – that 'Truth and falshood have chang'd places' (p.207) – is one that interests contemporary linguists and philosophers. In arguing that representative political culture was a linguistic battleground, Knights draws on the insights of recent historians of language. He suggests that the early enlightenment was more sceptical of truth than has previously been recognised, partly as a result of concerns over linguistic deception by politicians and political writers. The fictional content of political writing may have encouraged the emergence of the novel.

The book provides much evidence of means of communication in the late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century public sphere. Knights criticises Jürgen Habermas' influential interpretation of the public sphere, arguing that literary and political discussion was more closely linked than Habermas suggested. In contrast to Habermas' normative emphasis on the rationality of the eighteenth-century public sphere, Knights shows that contemporaries recognised and lamented its irrationality. Petitions were often acclamatory, politicians were accused of lying, mercenary voters were manipulated at the polls.

Although this book provides a stimulating account of English politics around the time of incorporating union, more could have been done to ask whether Scotland shared in the development of representative political culture. The different institutional context of pre-union Scotland affected the cultural features that Knights identifies. Alastair Mann's work on the Scottish book trade shows that the privy council continued active censorship after the revolution of 1688-90; the 1690s saw no sudden lapsing of licensing in Scotland. The council also constrained the process of petitioning, issuing a proclamation in December 1699...