The Powder Keg of Late 18th-Century Europe

As the centenary of England’s Glorious Revolution approached in 1788, Britain stood at an ideological crossroads. The political atmosphere crackled with tension between defenders of the status quo and radical reformers. Across the Channel, France simmered with discontent, while in Britain, young Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger’s failed attempts at parliamentary reform (first at age 22 in 1782, then again at 25 in 1785) exposed the system’s resistance to change. Meanwhile, Pitt’s vigorous opposition to repealing the Test Acts (1788-1789) further highlighted Britain’s political and religious conservatism.

This period saw the dramatic transatlantic influence of revolutionary thought. Thomas Paine’s incendiary pamphlet Common Sense (1775) had already shattered complacent assumptions about governance by arguing that Americans had not just the right but the duty to revolt against tyranny to protect natural rights—ideas that resonated powerfully back in Britain. Reform societies like the Society for the Promotion of Constitutional Information and the Westminster Association became hubs for radical discourse, attracting Whig aristocrats, professionals, and intellectuals who gathered at Holland House under the leadership of the charismatic Charles James Fox.

The Radical Resurgence: Old Ideas for a New Age

The late 1780s witnessed a remarkable revival of 17th-century republican thought, blended with American revolutionary ideals and Rousseau’s philosophy. Writers like James Burgh, Richard Price, and Major John Cartwright argued that all legitimate governments originated from a voluntary contract between the people and their rulers—a contract that could be revoked if rulers violated their obligations. This was no fringe theory: Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty (1776) sold 60,000 copies, surpassed only by Paine’s works.

Historical nostalgia fueled this intellectual movement. The Gothic revival’s fascination with medieval England led radicals to idealize figures like Alfred the Great and institutions like the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot as models of participatory governance. The Magna Carta was reinterpreted not as ancient history but as living precedent for holding power accountable. Even the legendary Robin Hood was reinvented by antiquarian Joseph Ritson as a romantic champion of the people.

1789: The Revolutionary Tipping Point

The year 1789 became a seismic moment in European history. In Britain, King George III’s temporary madness sparked constitutional crises and accusations of Stuart-style absolutism. Meanwhile, France’s revolution erupted with the storming of the Bastille—an event celebrated by British radicals who saw it as completing the work begun by England’s own 1688 revolution.

The contrasting fates of Europe’s monarchs that year could not have been more dramatic. While Louis XVI became a prisoner of the National Assembly, forced to parade under the revolutionary tricolor, George III convalesced in the West Country to choruses of God Save the King. Yet these displays of loyalty couldn’t silence radicals like Joseph Priestley, who famously compared their movement to laying “gunpowder under the old building of error and superstition.”

The Ideological Clash: Burke vs. the Radicals

The revolutionary fervor ignited a war of words that would shape political thought for generations. Richard Price’s November 1789 sermon The Love of Our Country—delivered on the 101st anniversary of William III’s landing—provoked Edmund Burke’s furious Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Where Price saw the French Revolution as Britain’s glorious legacy, Burke viewed it as dangerous anarchy that betrayed England’s true constitutional tradition.

Burke’s Reflections became a publishing phenomenon, selling 17,000 copies in three months. His scathing attack on Price and defense of England’s “ancient constitution” as an organic growth rather than abstract theory struck a chord. Yet the radical response was swift and formidable. Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) cleverly turned Burke’s rhetoric against him, while Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791-92)—written in deliberately plain language—became the century’s bestselling radical text, with sales possibly reaching 500,000 copies.

The Lasting Legacy of Revolutionary Thought

The 1790s saw Britain’s government crack down on reform societies amid fears of French-style revolution. Yet the ideas unleashed in this decade proved indelible. Paine’s vision of welfare policies funded by progressive taxation, Wollstonecraft’s arguments for gender equality, and the broader democratic principles debated during this period would resurface in later reform movements.

The revolutionary decade also revealed the power of popular political writing. Paine’s mastery of accessible language demonstrated that political philosophy need not be confined to elite circles—a lesson that would influence democratic movements worldwide. Meanwhile, the Burke-Paine debate established enduring frameworks for discussing social change versus tradition.

As Britain entered the 19th century, the revolutionary fires of the 1780s-90s were banked but not extinguished. The radical ideas that once seemed so dangerous would gradually transform British politics through the Reform Acts, the Chartist movement, and eventually modern democracy—proving that while revolutions might be contained, revolutionary ideas cannot.