Politically, too, they had little in common; they were not to be found acting together during the first half of the eighteenth century. This is not to argue that they were politically inactive. In the early and middle decades of the eighteenth century, the middling orders organized their own clubs and societies and published their own newspapers and periodicals. In many ways the political world of the middling orders constituted a structure of politics in many respects distinct from, although still linked into, that of the aristocratic connections and the parliamentary parties which they serviced and supported. At the electoral level, for example, members of the middling orders acted as officers, committee men, writers and canvassers. Such cooperation and mutual identification between the political and social elite, on the one hand, and the middling orders, on the other, prevented conflict between them. After all, the middling orders were content to pursue their own political and occupational interests within the existing structure of politics. They thus tended to be strong supporters of the existing constitution. They were prepared to mobilize against the government when they thought the constitution was in danger, as some of them did during the 1730s when they believed that the regime of Walpole threatened their liberties. But when they believed that they were threatened from below, by colonial rebels after 1775 or by reformers and revolutionaries in the 1790s, they once again became bulwarks of the existing order.
The growing social and political influence of the middling orders was facilitated by the negligence of the aristocracy and gentry themselves, who erected few obstacles in its way. The middling orders found so much to busy themselves with simply because their landed counterparts left so much for them to do. They were often not inclined to take on the tedious and bureaucratic work involved in estate management, local government and electoral politics, preferring to devolve responsibility to their social inferiors. By the middle of the century, voices were being raised against the shortcomings of landowners who preferred the pleasures of the chase, the excitement of the capital city and the leisured routines of the spa and the seaside to the quiet execution of their paternal responsibilities. The duties of the bench, for example, were not always attended to with the dedication which they demanded. For instance, by 1758 only one-third of those appointed to the Commission of the Peace in Kent actually served as magistrates, compared with over one-half at the beginning of the century.16 This seems to have been fairly typical of the experience of other counties. The reasons for this were varied. Tory JPs did not feel at home among Whig magistrates. Furthermore, new burdens were constantly being heaped upon already harassed magistrates. No wonder that so many of the aristocracy and gentry preferred the pleasures of the social season. But by mid-century, the neglect of their paternal duties was being widely condemned.
The fact that the ‘middling orders’, especially in the towns, remained for so long willing to accept the continuing supremacy of a social and political system dominated by the aristocracy and gentry should occasion no surprise. After all, there was nothing in the Whiggism of the eighteenth century to inhibit the pursuit of wealth nor to diminish the value of commerce. Indeed, the Hanoverian regime was supremely well disposed towards finance, commerce and industry, recognizing their vital importance to the nation, to its security and to its ability to finance the wars in which Britain was from time to time forced to engage. The first half of the eighteenth century witnessed a dramatic expansion in commercial activity. Between 1714 and 1760, shipping increased in tonnage by around 30 per cent, the value of exports by 80 per cent, re-exports by around 50 per cent and imports by 40 per cent. Mercantile capital steadily increased its share of the national wealth of Britain during the first half of the century not only in London but also in and around the provincial towns. The expansion of both coastal and of overseas trade encouraged the growth of ports. The slave trade lay behind the dramatic expansion of Bristol and Liverpool, coal and salt behind that of Newcastle upon Tyne, and cloth and steel behind that of Hull.
The middling orders were immediate beneficiaries of these commercial developments. They stood in the vanguard of the economic progress of which contemporaries were so triumphantly aware. Observers commented on the vitality and the spirit of enterprise which was everywhere to be found, the rapid diversification and specialization of trades and retailing and the universal interest in science, innovation, and even in gadgets. Recent studies of particular towns, notably London, York and Liverpool, have demonstrated that the role of overseas trade and domestic markets in public life was already extensive, even on the national stage. The religious animosities, the dynastic uncertainty and the party conflicts of previous decades seemed to be dissolving amid the civilizing influences of an age of material prosperity. From the early decades of the eighteenth century, indeed, and urged on by successive governments, Britain became a commercial mecca, dedicated to the pursuit of wealth, consumed with the wish to make a profit and open to innovation and entrepreneurial skill. These economic changes had many cultural consequences, especially in lifestyle, fashion and manners.
Whether these developments were good or bad was a subject of endless debate, but everyone agreed that they could not be confined to the social elite. Britain may have been a hierarchical society, but it was also an open house for the pursuit of wealth and ambition and for satisfying the desire for social status. It was, above all, a free market for the purchase of consumer goods.17 The middling orders of the countryside as well as of the towns were heavily involved in their production, their sale and, not least, in their purchase. Growing incomes, rising expectations and the greater availability of a wider range of products combined to motivate consumer spending on an unprecedented scale. People were willing to purchase almost anything in order to dignify their lives and to add charm and fashion to their surroundings. By the 1730s, indeed, improvements in transport had lowered freight costs and stimulated domestic trade within and between regions. The press familiarized more people than ever before with fashion news and product information from the metropolis and from provincial centres alike. During the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century, in fact, most issues of most newspapers contained far more consumer advertising than political news. The dramatic improvement in the efficiency of retailing, the opening up of tens of thousands of shops (no fewer than 140,000 by 1759) and the perennial power of emulation and imitation all assisted in nothing less than a growing transformation in the material circumstances in the lives of the middling orders.
Some of these consumer items were everyday necessities such as food and drink but now with additional refinement, as coffee houses, inns and taverns sprang up to service the needs of an increasingly numerous, more wealthy and indeed, more mobile population. Other domestic consumer products included items of discrimination for even humble tradesmen and their families: cheap cotton clothing, tablecloths, china tea services, bowls and coffee pots and medicines of an almost endless variety. Many of these items, although by no means all, were intended for private use and convenience and can have had little to do with either family advancement or social status. Others, however, could have had little other purpose. For much of the century, indeed, the building and rebuilding of houses continued, enhanced by the quality and variety of domestic consumer goods, many of them new to the mass market. These included carpets, glassware, marble hearths, mirrors, mahogany furniture and leather goods together with countless novelties in different ethnic styles, French, Indian and Chinese. Many such items would not even have been found in aristocratic palaces half a century earlier.
For some members of the ‘middling orders’, status was conferred by a leisured style of life. By the middle of the eighteenth century, commercial leisure facilities had become common in many parts of the country. The emergence of spa towns, such as Bath, Scarborough and Tunbridge Wells, affected only a minority. However, civic buildings, theatres, hospitals and libraries sprang up all over the country, while bookshops, print-shops and reading-rooms marked the presence of a literate and increasin
gly cultured reading public – much of it female – hungry for information, entertainment and diversion. This commercialization of leisure, especially in towns large and small, was not confined to the ‘middling orders’, but they were its most enthusiastic patrons and its most zealous consumers.
What is the social meaning of the growth of mass consumerism? Cultural and psychological explanations for such a complex phenomenon involving millions of people need to be handled with great care. Two possibilities may, however, be considered. The first is that mass consumerism reflected a changing attitude towards the past, to tradition and thus to the present. In the sixteenth and for much of the seventeenth century, old belongings were prized because they identified an individual with continuity and tradition, with established routines and community values. In the eighteenth century, the rush to replace old possessions with fashionable new ones perhaps indicates a release of the individual from the past and its influence and a fresh, and arguably more optimistic and self-centred, approach to the present. The second, and more illuminating, explanation suggests that in their purchases and possessions, people in the eighteenth century were conveying messages concerning their ideals and their identity. This should not be dismissed merely as social emulation. It is best envisaged not only by purchases of patriotic ephemera, mugs, plaques and prints, but also by the ribbons and colours of political parties, trade societies and the like. More generally, expensive material articles, such as paintings, ceramics and jewellery, might reflect an individual’s prosperity, success and, hopefully, his or her social acceptance and status. In particular, the enormous care and consideration devoted to the home may reflect a massive investment of psychological as well as material resources in family life and domestic values. The care with which people exhibited their consumer goods in their homes in particularly visible areas of their houses strongly suggests a determination to present themselves to others in the most favourable light, a determination that was less strongly felt by the gentry than by the professionals and tradespersons of the towns. Furthermore, the rapid development of a second-hand market, particularly for items of clothing, enabled some at least of the poorer elements in society to present a more respectable face to the world.
We are now in a world of cultural improvement and, indeed, enhancement. Contemporaries anxiously observed the new phenomenon of consumerism and wondered where it was all leading.18 Many clergymen denounced the luxury, the vanity and the indebtedness which consumerism brought in its wake, to say nothing of the arrogance and godlessness. What sort of example, moralists wondered, was this to set before the mass of the population? Others sang to a very different tune, seeing in consumerism a source of economic energy and social utility. Bernard Mandeville saw consumerism as an engine of continuing economic growth, a constant stimulus to industry and trade and, not least, an incentive and an encouragement to the masses to work and to save.
Many observers, and many historians, too, have linked the social power of the middling orders with individualistic social values. Indeed, it is true that many of them were thrifty and industrious, looking to their own talents to improve their fortunes in this world. Yet, most members of the middling orders, far from professing an individualistic ideology, accepted a conventional, Anglican belief in a divinely ordained universe. Very few of them were of a wholly secular, still less of an irreligious, cast of mind. At the same time, it is clear that many of these people were moving away from a purely providentialist view of life, according to which their destiny was in the hands of their Creator. By their actions, it is clear that very many of them believed that civil society was moulded by human, not by divine, action. The improvement of civil society was possible, therefore, through human beings taking responsibility for their own lives and for their own fortunes in this world. Paradoxically, then, although their mentality was entirely compatible with that of the traditional social order, their actions emphasized change rather than tradition, initiative rather than authority and human resource rather than passive reliance upon divine providence.
At the most basic level, material wealth was beginning to transform the living conditions and social environments of the upper and middle classes and, in doing so, to enhance their taste and manners. Obsession with social etiquette was a sign of changing social habits. The contemporary rush to imitate the social routines of the upper classes was perhaps a powerful sign of acute status consciousness in a rapidly changing commercial society. So, arguably, was the wide circulation of one of the new art forms of the eighteenth century, the novel, with its concern for the fortunes of individual heroes and, not least, heroines in a Society of Orders. Although the fame of the great metropolitan pleasure gardens of Marylebone, Ranelagh and Vauxhall has stamped an impression of aristocratic exclusiveness upon our perceptions of eighteenth-century high society, they were in fact patronized by a very wide social clientele. Provincial assemblies, indeed, often welcomed members of the trading as well as gentry classes. Similarly, the growth of spa and seaside towns provided further opportunities for the mixing of the upper and middle classes in a common culture of etiquette, courtesy and fashion.
What were the consequences of the growth of the middling orders in the first half of the eighteenth century? Their existence certainly cushioned the impact of aristocratic oligarchy and of political inferiority. Although it would be a huge mistake to imagine that the middling orders conceived of themselves as a self-conscious class, their sheer economic power challenged any possibility of aristocratic domination of the economy. Although political power remained with the aristocracy, the exercise of that power was to a great degree dependent upon and shared with the rapidly growing middling orders. The press, for example, never came under aristocratic power. Furthermore, Parliament may have been aristocratic in its personnel, but it had to respond to the powerfully and publicly expressed needs of the middling orders. Finally, social values may have been strongly influenced by aristocratic patronage, but it was middling order veneration of the family and their commitment to thrift and hard work that set the tone for eighteenth-century life. Their involvement in civic affairs was no less remarkable. Many of them were ready to play a part, even if it was sometimes a junior part, in helping to organize public affairs in parish, town and county. They were to be found in a wide variety of activities such as sponsoring and organizing charity schools, founding hospitals, schools and academies, supporting the establishment of cultural societies and encouraging humanitarian causes. It may be tempting to view the middling orders as reformist and even radical, but it is unlikely that they regarded themselves in this manner. Indeed, their readiness to wrap themselves in patriotic flags, to rally round the throne and the church and to leap to the defence of property whenever it was threatened, should give cause for hesitation. In the end, British society was dominated by an aristocratic elite and its ideals, yet it found a substantial, growing place for the aspirations and the activities of the middling orders.
URBAN SOCIETY: CULTURE AND ELITES
The progress of the middling orders is closely linked to one of the most characteristic features of the period, the development of towns. As we noticed in Chapter 1, the lives of country people and townspeople were closely intertwined. Town and country were mutually supporting economic and social systems. Only in the early nineteenth century, when towns became economically self-supporting, can sharp, qualitative distinctions be made between them. The growth of towns was one of the most characteristic and most remarkable features of the long eighteenth century.
Towns may be grouped in a variety of ways. There were, in 1700, up to 500 small market towns with populations of under 2,500. In addition, there were about 30 regional centres with populations of 2,500–5,000, many of them county towns, big enough to attract the local gentry. Finally, we may identify 25–30 provincial centres with populations of over 5,000, about one-half of which were primarily regional centres servicing agricultural hinterlands. The rest, however, included eight industrial towns (among them Manchester,
Birmingham and Leeds), three ports (Liverpool, Hull and Sunderland) and three naval dockyard towns (Chatham, Plymouth and Portsmouth).
The towns of Britain had been growing in size, wealth and population since the Restoration. This growth depended upon a combination of local circumstances which collectively generated a demand for urban services. These were usually, but not exclusively, of an economic character. Local specialization of production and sale created an appetite for goods and services. The geographical position of towns on rivers, roads and canals fostered development. Other general factors promoting the growth of towns were population increase, often due to local patterns of migration out of rural areas, and general levels of economic development. In some of the larger towns, the catalyst for growth was industry, and the growth of some of them was spectacular, particularly Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield. Most towns, however, grew more slowly. Just as important as the industrial giants were the smaller industrial towns like Barnsley, Dudley, Rotherham and Walsall. Similarly, while the great ports such as Bristol, Glasgow and Liverpool grew spectacularly, the small ones, places like Dover, Poole and Whitby, also prospered. Furthermore, county towns and cathedral cities also advanced in the settled decades of the Whig supremacy as bureaucracy developed and the amount of civil and ecclesiastical business increased.
Towns may be defined by their functions. These could be economic, socio-cultural and political. First, all towns had important economic functions. Towns were the focus of the economic life of their hinterlands. They were important centres of communication and transport, news and information. Towns acted as marketing centres for agricultural goods produced locally. Increasingly, too, they acted as sources of other economic services like banking and credit. Second, towns were also defined by their lifestyles. Many were ecclesiastical, medical and educational centres (even quite small towns had libraries, clubs and theatres). Urban elites were active in their patronage of the arts, their sponsorship of new architectural styles and their role as consumers of fashionable clothing and household products. Through their endeavours, towns became centres of fashion and social emulation. But historians should avoid the temptation to glamorize the lifestyle of people in towns. Concentrations of people also ensured that towns became centres of poverty, disease and crime. For many people, urban life must have been bleak and depressing. Third, towns were important political and administrative centres. They housed the major professions, the law courts and assizes, and acted as the local agencies of the central government in maintaining law and order and collecting taxes. The 200 corporate towns were independent self-governing entities, with their own councils and their own administration and jurisdiction. Non-corporate towns were governed by whatever was left over from the old manorial system, an unlikely collection of Courts Leet, Lords of the Manor and parish vestries. Both corporate and non-corporate systems shared two features: they were oligarchic and they were corrupt. Their traditional franchises were very narrow, their electorates rarely more than a score or two. In practice they were self-perpetuating oligarchies which enjoyed the spoils and show of office without reference to merit and efficiency. Their budgets – rarely more than a couple of thousand pounds per annum – were remarkably small. Opposition, dissent and criticism could come to the surface, and occasionally did so, especially in the 1730s, but this capacity for opposition should not imply systematic and continuous hostility to the Hanoverian regime.
The Long Eighteenth Century Page 23
