Liberty’s ‘Terror’
on the origin of civil government’, turning instead to the ideologies of Christian utilitarians like Hey, Cooper and William Paley. 68 Of these thinkers, historians such as Ehrman and Schofield have argued that the Prime Minister was most influenced by the latter; Pitt even recommended Paley for a bishopric. 69 In arguably his clearest moral treatise, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), the cleric contended that ‘w hatever is expedient, is right. It is the utility of any moral rule alone which constitutes the obligation of it. ’ 70 According to Paley, God willed human happiness (since, it was argued, nothing in nature was created deliberately to cause pain), 71 and civil society was conducive to this end. Man, safe from the violence of others, was freer to do that which maximized happiness; this could be achieved through intellectual and material self-betterment, but only under the supervision of stable government. 72 Subscription to such political thought thus compelled Pitt to act, in some ways brutally, in defence of the British constitution. Evidently, this was not just to maintain some arbitrary, authoritative hierarchy in which he was near the top; rather, he wished to uphold the ‘rule of law’ because it facilitated the continued pursuit of happiness and liberty. This is crucial in explaining why his legislation was enforced so sparingly: Pitt wished only to use illiberal methods when absolutely necessary to fundamentally liberal ends. Ultimately, Pitt was far more moderate than many contemporary, and indeed historical, accounts have admitted. Of course, the relative lack of prosecution during the 1790s cannot be solely attributed to the Prime Minister. In general, support for the establishment was considerable and opposition that did manifest was sedated effectively in the public sphere, by way of state-sanctioned propaganda, loyalist violence and exemplary punishment. Consequently, there was little need for extensive prosecution; that which was needed was further limited, to some degree, by bureaucratic challenges and the characteristics of the legal system, such as the right to trial by jury. Nevertheless, Pitt had no obligation to respect this notion of ‘necessity’, and no precedent to respond to the radical threat proportionally. Had there been the desire, flaws in the legal system (which had to a limited extent been abused already) could have been more forcefully exploited, enabling a more coercive ‘repression’ (as seen in France), and thereby ensuring greater security for the propertied classes. The fact that this did not occur is commendable, and attests to the restraint of the government, in particular William Pitt. Due principally to Christian utilitarian thought, the Prime Minister had no desire to use executive government to strip the rights of Englishmen unless the stability of the British state was genuinely threatened. Far from instituting ‘a system of Terror . . . infinitely more pernicious in its tendency than France ever knew’, 73 the Prime Minister was content with passively permitting a system of exemplary punishment, popular deterrence and loyalist propaganda to combat the radical threat, thus upholding the integrity of the English legal system, that bul wark of what he considered to be the ‘most liberal constitution’ in Europe. 74
68 Thomas Philip Schofield, ‘Conservative Political Thought in Britain in Response to the French Revolution’, The Historical Journal, 29.3 (September, 1986), 601-22: 610, 614. 69 Mori, 244. 70 Quoted from William Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785) . 71 Schofield, 605.
72 Mori, 244. 73 Hilton, 65. 74 Emsley, ‘Repression’, 824.
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