“Cultures of Whiggism”: New Essays on English Literature and Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century ed. by David Womersley (review)

62 ‘‘Cultures of Whiggism’’: New Essays on English Literature and Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. David Womersley; assisted by Paddy Bullard and Abigail Williams. Newark: Delaware, 2005. Pp. 370. $65. In the Introduction, Mr. Womersley notes that Whiggism’s ‘‘capacity for ruthless self-invention and brilliant self-renewal looks like a weakness only in the eyes of those who view politics sub specie aeternitatis. Such was never the Whig position.’’ Fourteen essays here reveal the extent to which eighteenth-century Whig culture in England was indeed an aggressive, politicized self-invention. Part I, with five essays on ‘‘Early Whiggism,’’ begins with ‘‘Andrew Marvell and the Prehistory of Whiggism,’’ where Nicholas von Maltzahn shows how the Account of the Growth of Popery deeply influenced Whig history from Kennett to Oldmixon and provided the ‘‘historical framework’’ for the Whig interpretation of Charles II’s reign. It was twice reprinted to instigate war against France. Curiously, a Whig legend arose about Marvell’s ‘‘perfect integrity’’ regarding money, despite his habitual ‘‘dependence’’ on patrons and sponsors at home and abroad in Holland. Steven Pincus ’s ‘‘Whigs, Political Economy, and the Revolution of 1688–89’’ contends that James II believed in a purely ‘‘land-based’’ Tory economy. Considering how Aylesbury and other friends of that king said his usual talk was about trade, I find this hard to accept. Mr. Pincus also claims that James II was planning a war against the Dutch, so William’s invasion of England was a ‘‘preemptive first strike.’’ The next two essays concern Whigs wresting moral authority from the Anglican Church and giving it to the Town’s coffeehouses. Justin Champion’s ‘‘‘Anglia Libera ’: Commonwealth Politics in the early Years of George I’’ examines two Whig leaders under George I—Sunderland and Stanhope—and their publicists Toland, Gordon, and Trenchard who ran the Freethinker. They argued that freethinking was the ‘‘Protestant principle’’ and that well-mannered atheists were preferable to slavish followers of a power-hungry clergy. Similarly, Lawrence Klein, in ‘‘Joseph Addison’s Whiggism,’’ shows that Addison too preferred politeness to religion, which in the Spectator is only social interaction. Addison was the ‘‘creature of Whig leaders,’’ his fortunes advanced by Halifax, Somers, and Wharton, so he expressed the ‘‘Whiggism that linked the establishment of liberty, the growth of commerce, and the refinement of manners in a comprehensive and progressive ideology of enlightenment.’’ In ‘‘Remarks on Cato’s Letters,’’ Ian Higgins tells how Trenchard and Gordon wrote these Letters to defend George I during the South Sea Bubble crisis. They used ‘‘violent invective,’’ proposing to hang a thousand stockjobbers and comparing stockjobbers and South-Sea directors to cannibals and highwaymen. Writing during the Atterbury Plot, they exclaimed against a ‘‘conspiracy’’ of ‘‘Jacobite and disaffected clergy’’ to enslave England. But there were two topics Cato avoided—the slave trade and the popular vote. Instead of deploring colonial slavery as Swift and Pope did, Cato spoke of English liberty as ‘‘exemplified in its productive American plantations,’’ and though he said that subjects could judge whether their governors were tyrants and that to think otherwise was ‘‘priestcraft,’’ he saw ‘‘no legitimacy in a popular majority vote.’’ Whigs feared that a popular vote would show support for the Stuarts. It was the Jacobites who called ‘‘for a free and popular vote,’’ as in 63 Gulliver’s Travels Part II and in Vox Populi, Vox Dei, whose printer, John Matthews, was hanged in 1719. Cato was also silent about the thirty-year ‘‘terror campaign’’ against Jacobite publicists. The four essays in Part II, entitled ‘‘Whig Poetics,’’ demonstrate how the Whigs invented their literary culture. Ms. Williams, in ‘‘Patronage and Whig Literary Culture in the Early Eighteenth Century,’’ shows how under William’s supervision, Montagu , Dorset, Somers and other Whigs channeled money through the civil list and secret service to give ‘‘very liberal’’ support to ‘‘useful writers’’ such as Shadwell, Locke, Bayle, Addison, and Steele. Many were given government posts in return for poems celebrating the 1688 revolution or battles in the Nine Years’ War. The patronclient relationship was the basis of the Kit-Cat Club, which actively shaped Whig culture, even building a theater where the right plays could be performed...