The Rockingham Connection and the Second Founding of the Whig Party by W.M. Elofson (review)

HUMANITIES 217 Ross has given us a warm, and, one is tempted to write, although it would be a bit unfair, loving biography. Time and again Smith gets the benefit of the doubt. Smith's will did not provide for James Baird, the man who had long served as his personal servant. Ross explains that Smith probably asked his heir to look after the man. Perhaps so, but the Smithindustry has evidently not yet traced the man's fate. More seriously for some of Smith's fans, we have Smith's constant pursuit of the rich and famous, and his closely related pursuit of riches and fame. For someone looking for· heroes, Smith's perpetual concern about his professional reputation can seem damning. We can, however, also view Smith's behaviour in a more favourable light. As Deirdre McCloskey has explained recently, Smith was sceptical about heroic virtues; he thought them dangerous. Instead Smith preferred the prudential virtues of the marketplace. Smith was simply practising what he preached. The Life ofAdam Smith is a beautifully written book, and, to use one of Smith's favourite phrases, a beautifully 'arranged' book. It takes us slowly and clearly through Smith's career. Each episode is weighted correctly according to the episode's role in Smith's intellectual development, so the Wealth afNations occupies an important but surprisingly modest section of the book John Rae's Life ofAdam Smith has been the standard for a hundred years. Barring some breakthrough by the Smith industry, an event that seems unlikely, Ian Simpson Ross can count on a similar nUl. (HUGH ROCKOFF) W.M. Elofson. The Rockingham Connection and the Second Founding ofthe Whig Party McGill-Queen's University Press. XI 266. $49.95 The Rockingham Whigs, famous as British supporters of revolutionary America and Augustan forefathers of Victorian liberalism, are the most studied political faction in late eighteenth-century Britain. Once regarded .as a leading liberal group of the 17705, their reputation has suffered at the hands of historians unable to reconcile Rockingham Whig principles with the obsessivepursuit ofofficesupposed to havecharacterized all politicians during the first two decades of George Ill'S reign. This book clarifies much confusion about the ideas and objectives of the Rockingham Whigs during the crucial years between their dismissal from short-lived office in 1767 and their emergence as open supporters of the rebellious thirteen colonies in 1773. Elofson traces the evolution of the Rockinghams from their origins as the rerrmant ofthe Old Corps Whigs, the principal supporters of a near:"unbroken monopoly of Whig government between 1714 and 1760, to their self-identification as a leading opposition group to Lord North's rnirUstry. Thanks to a strong sense of party identity, 218 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 disinterested ideals of public duty, and repeated failures to make any headway against the ministries of the later 1760s, the Rockingham Whigs gradually grafted a set of moderate country party, or oppositional, aims and objectives onto a traditional Court Whig base of ideas. Here lay the foundations of 'economical reform,' the Rockingham Whig campaign against the influence of the crown that culminated in the passage of Edmund Burke's 1782 Civil Establishment Act. Liberal though the Rockinghams have often appeared in accounts ofeighteenth-centuryWhiggery, Elofson asserts that they never lost sight of their Court Whig roots, which explains their reluctance to attack the British constitution in church and state, to ally themselves too closely to London advocates of radical parliamentary reform, or to become the slavish servants of public opinion. This is a critical account of Whig fortunes which, despite a spirited defence of the party's intellectual consistency, unity, and lack of interest in office, also draws attention to the party's dearth of original ideas and the inadequacies of Rockingham as its leader. Not only was the Marquis of Rockingham an indolent aristocrat with a strong fear ofpublic speaking, he was slow to impose any intellectual unity or discipline over his followers. 'The Rockinghams tended tobe spasmodicin focusing on the problems that faced England and the empire in these years, and they showed no exceptional understanding of the major public issues they confronted,' The Rockingham Whigs were an assemblage of...