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Matteostok94
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• THE DINASTY OF HANOVER
When Queen Anne died in 1714, her nearest Protestant relative, George of Hanover, became king under the name of George I. Thus the dynasty of Hanover succeeded that of the Stuarts. The new King could speak no English and preferred Germany to England, which made him thoroughly unpopular. His kingdom had a population of 5.5 million, most of which was rural and lived in the South; the only large town was London. His accession has come to be considered the beginning of the Augustan Age.
Generally regarded as a golden age, the 18th century in England was called Augustan after the period of Roman history, which had achieved political stability and power, as well as a flourished of the arts. In fact, it was an age of wise traditionalism, of elegance and wit, but also a distinctive moment in the making of modern England.
• A GOLDEN AGE
It was a materialist society worldly, pragmatic, and responsive to economic pressure. Yet, its political institutions were hierarchical, hereditary, and privileged. The local landowners largely controlled elections since voting was not secret; politicians were not concerned about winning over the electorate but with bribing it either with money or with the promise of jobs. Eighteenth-century society championed individualism, seizing opportunities in the sectors of economy, which provided scope for initiative, enterprise, and enrichment. The state did not deal in abstractions such as social justice, equality or fraternity, though it was to protect legal rights. Respect for rights, however, would not tolerate interference in private property.
• AN ENLIHGHTENED AGE
It was in many ways an extraordinarily free and open age. Enlightened thinkers, from the philosopher John Locke to popularises such as Joseph Addison and Oliver Goldsmith, rejected the strict and pessimistic values of Puritanism, like the original sin and the depravity of man. Liberal thought affected the new view of the world and affirmed free will, salvation for all, the goodness of
mankind, and its capacity for progress.
More people claimed the right to personal fulfilment, gaiety, and fun; among the affluent, sexuality was liberated and gratification dissociated from sin and shame. However, sexual permissiveness was a man’s world.
Optimism encouraged faith in progress and human perfectibility, and made people eager to try new ways trusting their own powers: reason, which made them different from the beast, and, in case of doubt when making a choice or a decision, common sense.
• THE FEATURES OA AUGUSTAN LITERATURE
This vision of the world accounts for the essential qualities the Augustans looked for in literature. They were interested in real life, in the recognisable facts of their own existence rather than in substitutes for reality. Social behaviour was also recorded and corrected in the interests of common sense. Greater emphasis was laid upon sociability, politeness, and the art of conversation.
• TH VIEW OF NATURE
Finally, a desire for balance, symmetry and refinement could be observed in all arts, especially connected with the idea of the imitation of nature. This term covered the nature of woods, rivers and mountains, as well as human nature. Nature also extended to the universe beyond the earth. It was seen as the complex system or set of principles divinely ordained and manifested in the Creation. Man should conform to this system, whose interpreters were the moralist and the poet.
• A NEW EMPHASIS ON SENSIBILITY
Alongside manners and taste, morals required attention. In Augustan society virtue came to have two particular meanings. First, a disposition of benevolence towards oneself and other, leading to actions creating happiness.
Secondly, there was a growing emphasis on the culture of the hearth, on sensibility, and on private judgement. In this more liberal world, the seat of morality moved within the self, and many writers showed a new interest in man’s inner and emotional side foreshadowing one of the main trends of Romanticism.
The Whigs and the Tories
The Whigs and the Tories were the first political parties in Britain. The Tories had emerged in 1679-80 and descended from the Royalists; their name was taken from the 17th century Irish outlaws who killed English settlers. They supporter the divine right of monarchy and opposed religious toleration. The Church of England and the landowners sided with them. They enjoyed a period of power during the reign of Queen Anne, but went into decline after the Hanoverians succession. The title “Tory” has survived as a nickname for “conservative”.
Also the Whigs, a rude name for “cattle drivers”, emerged in 1679-80, as descendants of the Parliamentarians. They were in power continuously from 1714 to 1760 and pressed for industrial and commercial development, a vigorous foreign policy, and religious toleration. Their party was supported by many of the wealthy and commercial classes. Whig ministers used to meet without the King, and their meetings developed into the kind of government by Cabinet, which Britain still has today. At first, all Cabinet ministers were equal but, as time went by, certain ministers began to lead the others. The leading ministers in the Cabinet came to be known as the Prime Minister.
• The first Prime Minister
The first Prime Minister was Sir ROBERT WALPOLE. Though he was a Whig, he was the son of a Norfolk landowner and remained very much like a squire all his life. He was in power for over twenty years and, until almost the end of his period of office, managed to keep England out of foreign conflicts so that trade could flourish and taxes could be kept down. Trade was stimulated by the removal of customs duties on exports and on imports of raw materials, but in 1723 tea, coffee and chocolate became subject to taxation and this both checked smuggling and increased government revenue. Since 1726 Walpole had been attacked in the opposition newspaper “The Craftsman” and his government was accused of corruption. He had, however, survived a change of monarch, when George I had died and had been succeeded by his son, George II.
The new king relied more and more on Walpole and gave him the house in Westminster, 10 Downing St., which is still the official residence of Prime Minister.
In Walpole’s England there was already the signs of the forthcoming Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions. Division of labour made English cloth-making a national industry; coal was mined extensively in the early years of the century; an iron-smelting process had been invented.
• The Whig William Pitt
In 1735 the Whig William Pitt entered the Parliament as an opponent of Walpole. He started a mercantilist policy, to make England a strong and economically competitive country. This led to the establishment of a new set of values based on power, wealth and prestige. The new bourgeois man of Pitt’s age would be reflected in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. In this period England expanded its possessions in India, North America and the Caribbean.
• English society in the 18th century
The expansion of the middle classes, which had begun in the previous century, continued throughout the 18th century and strongly influenced the social life of the Augustan Age. The wealthy merchants, who controlled the most productive trades, owned the mines and manufacturing factories, and supported Sir Robert Walpole in politics, often bought large estates to gain prestige and enable their children to marry in the aristocracy.
The artisans and craftsmen filled the gap between the upper classes and the poor. They worked long hours, usually as apprentices, for a very low wage. Below them was the mass of the urban population who had no political rights and lived in terrible conditions. Diseases like smallpox, scurvy and typhus affected the poorest areas and it has been estimated that 51 per cent of the children in London died before they reached the age of five. Those who survived were hired as apprentices by the parishes, from the age of seven. Many of them became chimneysweepers. For adult people the parishes built the workhouses, where they were maintained at public expense and hired out to factory owners. It is not surprising that many took to drinking gin and that organised crime grew among the unemployed.
Life in the countryside was deeply affected by the enclosure system. On the one hand, it caused the misery of a great many labourers who, dispossessed of the communal open fields, were to become the urban proletariat. On the other hand, it led to the improvement of farming methods and to the transformation of a dreary landscape into a place of fertility and prosperity.
• The coffeehouses
One of the most significant traits of London’s social life were the coffeehouses. Under the Commonwealth a number of coffee-houses had been opened: they were associated with news and gossip and provided entertainment.
Thus their function was very similar to that of the theatre in the Elizabethan age. With the beginning of a postal system at the end of the 17th century they took on a new role as circulation centres. They served as a box number for advertisers in the newspapers, as meeting places for the most important companies. In the Augustan Age fashionable and artistic people began to attend the houses, which became gathering points where people exchanged opinions. It was mainly through the coffeehouses that public opinion and journalism began to evolve. Men almost exclusively attended the coffeehouses, though women were slowly showing signs of emancipation.
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