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Archibald Alison: Conservative Controversialist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Maurice Milne
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Extract

Archibald Alison is perhaps more widely remembered from a brief-and disguised—reference in Coningsby than from any direct usage of his own voluminous writings: “Finally, Mr. Rigby impressed on Coningsby to read the Quarterly Review with great attention; and to make himself master of Mr. Wordy's History of the late War, in twenty volumes, a capital work, which proves that Providence was on the side of the Tories.” The dubbing of Alison as “Mr. Wordy” was one of Disraeli's most unerring shafts. Alison's History of Europe, covering the period 1789-1815, would have earned him that sobriquet on its own, to say nothing of the other books, pamphlets, and articles that flowed from his inexhaustible pen. The various editions of his History, most commonly in sets of twelve volumes, made Alison a quite celebrated historian in his own day. Long neglected in the twentieth century, the History has recently received some critical attention. Without seeking unduly to resurrect a departed reputation, Hedva Ben-Israel does at least acknowledge the History's earlier success: “It was by far the best-selling history of the French Revolution in England and America almost to the end of the century, and was translated into most European and several oriental languages.” Some fruitful comparisons between Alison's work and the more enduring classic by Thomas Carlyle have been drawn by Clare Simmons.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , Fall 1995 , pp. 419 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1995

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References

1 Disraeli, Benjamin, Coningsby: or the New Generation (1844), bk. 3, ch. 2Google Scholar.

2 The main source for his life derives from a manuscript autobiography which he left behind, edited by his daughter-in-law and published by William Blackwood and Sons: Sir Archibald Alison, Bt DCL, Some Account of my Life and Writings: An Autobiography, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1883)Google Scholar, hereafter cited as Autobiography. Alison himself edited a three-volume set of his essays, mostly first published in Blackwood's, which appeared in 1850. Alison's correspondence in the Blackwood Papers is only occasionally illuminating, generally taking the form of brief notelets, acknowledging receipt of payments or returning thanks for approbation of his articles. Permission to quote from the Blackwood Papers, held in the National Library of Scotland (NLS), is gratefully acknowledged. For Alison's dealings with Sir Robert Peel, manuscript documentation is from the Peel Papers, held in the British Library.

3 Ben-Israel, Hedva, English Historians on the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1968) p. 152Google Scholar.

4 Simmons, Clare, “Disease and Dismemberment: two conservative metaphors for the French Revolution,” Prose Studies 15: 2 (August 1992): 208–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Brief reference to Alison's political work for Blackwood's can be found in McDowell, R. B., British Conservatism, 1832-1914 (London, 1959), p. 17Google Scholar, and Fetter, F. W., “The economic articles in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and their authors, 1817-53,” Scottish Journal of Political Economy 7 (1960): p. 92Google Scholar.

6 See Milne, Maurice, “The management of a nineteenth-century magazine: William Blackwood and Sons, 1827-47,” Journal of Newspaper and Periodical History 1, 3 (Summer 1985): 25Google Scholar.

7 Blackwood's, Oct. 1820, pp. 80–81Google Scholar.

8 Sack, James J., From Jacobite to Conservative: Reaction and Orthodoxy in Britain, c. 1760-1832 (Cambridge, 1993), p. 18Google Scholar.

9 The account is unchanged in the second edition, The Conservative Party from Peel to Thatcher (1985).

10 Simmons, , Prose Studies, p. 218Google Scholar.

11 Autobiography, 1: 21Google Scholar.

12 Ibid. 1: 46.

13 Ibid. 1: 56.

14 Quoted in Bell, Alan, Sydney Smith, A Biography (Oxford, 1980; paper ed., 1982), p. 45Google Scholar.

15 Autobiography, 1: 133Google Scholar.

16 Ibid. 1: 134.

17 NLS, MS 4027, f. 13, 19 Nov. 1830.

18 Autobiography, 1: 298Google Scholar.

19 Ben-Israel, , Historians, pp. 151–52Google Scholar.

20 Jennings, L. J., ed., The Croker Papers, 3 vols. (London, 1884), 3: 12Google Scholar.

21 Blackwood's, November 1830, p. 182Google Scholar. (Hereafter, page references from Blackwood's are provided at the end of quotations.)

22 NLS, MS 4031, f. 39, 20 Sept. 1831.

23 Autobiography, 1: 305Google Scholar.

24 Griggs, E. L., ed, Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1971) 6: 912Google Scholar.

25 Ben-Israel, , Historians, p. 100Google Scholar.

26 NLS, MS 4029, f. 26, 24 Dec. 1831.

27 For an early use of “Conservative” in Blackwood's see Alison's article in January 1832, p. 115, where he refers to “the fortresses of the Conservative Party.”

28 NLS, MS 4040, f. 260.

29 Alison was to claim in his obituary of Peel (Blackwood's, Sept. 1850) that Peel borrowed his capitalised message without attribution. Read, Donald (Peel and the Victorians [Oxford, 1987] p. 85)Google Scholar has traced the words in question to Peel's speech at Tamworth on his re-election in 1841, as reported in The Times for 30 July: “I said before, and I believe it has been proved to be true, that the battle of the constitution must be fought in the registration courts.” Similarity, however, as Read rightly observes, does not necessarily prove plagiarism.

30 Peel Papers, B.L., Add. MS 40407, f. 57, 22 Dec. 1834.

31 Peel Papers, B.L., Add. MS 40422, f. 190, 19 Nov. 1836.

32 Peel Papers, B.L., Add. MS 40500, f. 158, 20 Jan. 1842.

33 NLS, MS 4073, f. 11, 22 Jan. 1845.

34 Autobiography, 1: 551Google ScholarPubMed.

35 Blackwood's, Jan. 1831, p. 36Google ScholarPubMed.

36 See, for example, the passage in Oct. 1831, p. 611, beginning, “Revolutions are never formidable when they are conducted merely by the poorest class…” (Ben-Israel, , Historians, p. 100Google Scholar, gives an excellent summary of such lessons).

37 Fetter, , J.P.E., p. 94Google Scholar.

38 Autobiography, 1: 44Google ScholarPubMed.

39 Blackwood's, Jan. 1837, p. 77Google ScholarPubMed (see the well-known passage in Hume's Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding).

40 Writing to Blackwood about this forthcoming article, on 31 Jan. 1838, Alison observed: “I originally thought of writing it in your Journal with my name, but I think it needless to do that now, as I can quote from my speech at the close of the Circuit the facts material to the argument…” (NLS, MS 4046, f. 9).

41 Autobiography, 2: 362Google ScholarPubMed.

42 “Progress of Social Disorganization. No. I: The Schoolmaster,” Feb. 1834, pp. 228-48. See also Sept. 1835, p. 393; Jan. 1836, p. 100; Feb. 1839, pp. 275-76.

43 Graham Papers, 17 Sept. 1840, quoted in Hilton, Boyd, The Age of Atonement (Oxford, 1988), p. 63Google Scholar.

44 Kirk, Russell, The Conservative Mind (7th ed.; Chicago, 1986)Google Scholar.

45 See, for example, Scruton, Roger, Conservative Texts: An Anthology (London, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aughey, Arthur, et al.The Conservative Political Tradition in Britain and the United States (London, 1992)Google Scholar; Eccleshall, Robert, English Conservatism since the Restoration: An introduction and anthology (London, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Closer in spirit to this line of development are Sack, From Jacobite to Conservative, and Coleman, Bruce, Conservatism and the Conservative Party in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, 1988)Google Scholar. No book currently, however, achieves for nineteenth-century conservatism what Dickinson, H. T. did for the whole spectrum of eighteenth-century political ideology in Liberty and Property (London, 1977)Google Scholar.

47 Introduction to 1909 edition of Carlyle, Thomas, Past and Present, p. viGoogle Scholar.

48 Coleman, , Conservatism, p. 4Google Scholar.

49 Dickinson, , Liberty and Property, p. 272Google Scholar.