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Revolution and Constitutionalism
in Britain and the U.S.

In Revolution and Constitutionalism in Britain and the U.S.: Burke and Madison
and Their Contemporary Legacies, David A. J. Richards offers an investigative
comparison of two central figures in late eighteenth-​century constitutionalism,
Edmund Burke and James Madison, at a time when two great constitutional
experiments were in play: the Constitution of the Glorious Revolution of 1688
and the U.S. Constitution of 1787.
Richards assesses how much, as liberal Lockean constitutionalists, Burke
and Madison shared and yet differed regarding violent revolution, offering three
pathbreaking and original contributions about Burke’s importance. First, the
book defends Burke as a central figure in the development and understanding of
liberal constitutionalism; second, it explores the psychology that led to his lib-
eral voice, including Burke’s own long-​term loving relationship to another man;
and third, it shows how Burke’s understanding of the political psychology of the
violence of “political religions” is an enduring contribution to understanding
fascist threats to political liberalism from the eighteenth-​century onwards,
including the contemporary constitutional crises in the U.S. and U.K. deriving
from populist movements.
Mixing thorough research with personal experiences, this book will be an
invaluable resource to scholars of political science and theory, constitutional
law, history, political psychology, and LGBTQ+​issues.

David A. J. Richards is Edwin D. Webb Professor of Law at the New York

University School of Law and is the author of numerous articles and over
20 books, including A Theory of Reasons for Action (Oxford: Oxford at
the Clarendon Press, 1971); Sex, Drugs, Death and the Law: An Essay on
Human Rights and Decriminalization (Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 1982);
Toleration and the Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986);
Foundations of American Constitutionalism (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989); Conscience and the Constitution: History, Theory, and Law of
the Reconstruction Amendments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993);
Women, Gays, and the Constitution: The Grounds for Feminism and Gay Rights
in Culture and Law (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Italian
American: The Racializing of an Ethnic Identity (New York: New York University
Press, 1999); Resisting Injustice and the Feminist Ethics of Care in the Age of
Obama: “Suddenly, All the Truth Was Coming Out” (New York: Routledge,
2013); Free Speech and the Politics of Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999); Disarming Manhood: Roots of Ethical Resistance (Athens: Swallow
Press, 2003); The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance, and Democracy’s
Future (with Carol Gilligan) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009);
Darkness Now Visible: Patriarchy’s Resurgence and Feminist Resistance (with
Carol Gilligan) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Patriarchal
Religion, Sexuality, and Gender: A Critique of New Natural Law (with Nicholas
Bamforth) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Fundamentalism
in American Religion and Law: Obama’s Challenge to Patriarchy Threat to
Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Why Love Leads
to Justice: Love across the Boundaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2016); The Rise of Gay Rights and the Fall of the British Empire: Liberal
Resistance and the Bloomsbury Group (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2013); Identity and the Case for Gay Rights: Race, Gender, Religion
as Analogies (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Boys’ Secrets
and Men’s Loves: A Memoir (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2019); and the recent
Holding a Mirror Up to Nature: Shame, Guilt, and Violence in Shakespeare
(with James Gilligan) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought

174 Making Citizenship Work

Culture and Community
Edited by Rodolfo Rosales

175 Towards a Sociology of the Open Society

Critical Rationalism and the Open Society Volume II
Masoud Mohammadi Alamuti

176 Radical Civility

A Study in Utopia and Democracy
Jason Caro

177 Science Meets Philosophy

What Makes Science Divided but Still Significant
Hans Christian Garmann Johnsen

178 Civilization, Modernity, and Critique

Engaging Johann P. Arnason’s Macro-​Social Theory
Ľubomír Dunaj, Jeremy C.A. Smith and Kurt C.M. Mertel

179 Liberty, Governance and Resistance

Competing Discourses in John Locke’s Political Philosophy
John Tate

180 Revolution and Constitutionalism in Britain and the U.S.

Burke and Madison and Their Contemporary Legacies
David A. J. Richards

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routle​dge.com/​ser​ies/​RSSPT

Revolution and
Constitutionalism in
Britain and the U.S.
Burke and Madison and Their
Contemporary Legacies

David A. J. Richards
First published 2024
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2024 David A. J. Richards
The right of David A. J. Richards to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data
Names: Richards, David A. J., author.
Title: Revolution and constitutionalism in Britain and the U.S. :
Burke and Madison and their contemporary legacies / David A. J. Richards.
Other titles: Revolution and constitutionalism in Britain and the United States
Identifiers: LCCN 2023019065 (print) | LCCN 2023019066 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032530062 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032532226 (pbk) |
ISBN 9781003410966 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Constitutional history–Great Britain. |
Constitutional history–United states. | Constitutional law–Great Britain. |
Constitutional law–United States. | Great Britain–History–Revolution of 1688 . |
Revolutions–United States–History–18th century. |
Great Britian–Politics and government–History. |
United States–Politics and government–History. |
Burke, Edmund, 1729–1797. | Madison, James, 1751–1836.
Classification: LCC K3161 .R53 2023 (print) |
LCC K3161 (ebook) | DDC 342.4102/9–dc23/eng/20230609
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023019065
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023019066
ISBN: 9781032530062 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032532226 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003410966 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/​9781003410966
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Newgen Publishing UK
For Donald Levy.
The Reason why Men enter into Society, is the preservation of their Property;
and the end why they chuse and authorize a Legislative, is, that there may be
Laws made, and Rules set as Guards and Fences to the Properties of all the
Members of the Society, to limit the Power, and moderate the Dominion of every
Part and Member of the Society. For since it can never be supposed to be the
Will of the Society, that the Legislative should have a Power to destroy that,
which every one designs to secure, by entering into Society, and for which the
People submitted themselves to the Legislators of their own making: whenever
the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People,
or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into
a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any further
Obedience, and are left to the Common Refuge, which God hath provided for
all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall
transgress this fundamental Rule of Society; and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly
or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves or put into the hands of any other
an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this
breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for
quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume
their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as
they think fit) provide for their Safety and Security, which is the end for which
they are in Society.
John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government
(Peter Laslett ed.), pp. 412–​13

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vul-
garly, held in dread chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authority.
But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant—​society
collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—​its means of tyran-
nizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political
functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues
wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it
ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many
kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually held by such extreme
penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating more deeply into the
details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty”, in John Stuart Mill, On Liberty,
Utilitarianism and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 8.

American colonies, Ireland, France, and India

Harried, and Burke’s great melody against it.
W.B. Yeats, “The Seven Sages,” in W.B. Yeats, The Poems
(New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 245.
Contents

Preface: Reasons for Writing This Book xi

Acknowledgments xxv

1 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism 1

1.1 Real v. Unreal Human Rights 23
1.2 Appeal to Experience 32
1.3 Political Psychology 36
1.4 Burke’s Political Psychology Today: Hannah Arendt
and James Gilligan 66

2 The Liberal Constitutionalism of James Madison 69

2.1 Locke’s Political Liberalism 69
2.2 Madison’s Liberal Constitutionalism 75
2.3 Madison on the U.S. Constitution in History 85

3 Burke on Violent Revolution and Its Legacy for Madisonian

Constitutionalism 101

4 Burke on the Political Psychology of Violence in the British

Empire: Ireland and India 112

5 A Constitution for the Ages? Constitutionalism in the

U.S. and Britain 123
5.1 Written vs. Unwritten Constitutionalisms 124
5.2 Social Democracy in the U.K. and the U.S. 129
5.3 Beyond Locke on “Property” 132
5.4 Culture vs. Institutions 138
5.5 The English Civil War and the American Civil War 140
5.6 U.K. Referenda and Brexit 142
x Contents

5.7 Representation and Parties in the U.K. and the U.S. 144
5.8 The Democratic Objection to Judicial Review in the U.K.
and the U.S. 147

6 The Common Challenge to the Political Liberalism of

British and American Constitutionalism in World War II:
Institutional Change and New Challenges, Domestic and
International 156

7 Patriarchal Religion in U.S. and U.K. Constitutional Law:

Originalism as “Political Religion” (Burke) Unmasked 166
7.1 New Natural Law in the U.S. Supreme Court 167
7.2 New Natural Law in U.K. Politics 185
7.3 Populism in the U.S. and the U.K.: How Should Liberal
Constitutionalists Respond? 189

8 Concluding Reflections on Burke on Liberalism and the

Political Psychology of Anti-​liberal Violence 192

Bibliography 202
Index 220
Preface
Reasons for Writing This Book

American and British constitutionalism share a history, and this work is meant
to address that history both in the late eighteenth century when they separated
after the American revolution and thereafter, including their rediscovery of one
another, their common values, and the need for new transnational and inter-
national institutions during and after World War II. What did they share, and
what do they share since? Dicey addressed the latter point in an 1897 article, as
the title put it, “A Common Citizenship for the English Race”1 between England
and the U.S. Is there anything to it but late Victorian racism? That is my question,
or one of my questions.
The prism of the investigation of this work is a comparison of two cen-
tral figures in late eighteenth-​century British and American constitution-
alism: Edmund Burke in Britain, and James Madison in America, when the
two great constitutional experiments were in play—​the British Constitution of
the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the U.S. Constitution of 1787. My focus
is on how much, as liberal Lockean constitutionalists, they shared (including
their Lockean belief in the right to revolution and their interests in history as
a guide to constitutional construction and interpretation), and yet their quite
different relationships to violent revolution. Madison, like Jefferson and
Adams, never questioned the legitimacy of the American revolution. Rather,
the premise of his role, as a leading founder both at the 1787 Convention and
defending the convention’s work in The Federalist, was that the constitution
would give the world a more legitimate constitutionalism than the British
Constitution against which the colonists revolted. In contrast, no one was more
skeptical of the relationship of violent revolution to liberal constitutionalism
than Burke, condemning, for example, Britain’s unjust and unwise treatment
of the Americans precisely because, in his view, George III and Lord North
were provoking a violent revolution by the colonists, which was and would

1 Dylan Lino, “The Rule of Law and the Rule of Empire: A.V. Dicey in Imperial Contest,” Modern
Law Review, 81: 5 (2018): 739–​64 at 749.
xii Preface

be disastrous for Britain and—​as he suggested to the Americans in calling for

reconciliation—​for them. This was, of course, long before his skepticism about
the French revolution, in particular in his classic Reflections on the Revolution
in France, written and published in 1790–​91 before the revolution took its more
grisly forms (the terror of 1793 and the Napoleonic despotism that followed).
What is it that he saw, and what legacy has he left us in understanding the
threats, still very much with us, to liberal constitutionalism? How and why
did he come to see what he saw? That is very much my reason or among my
reasons for writing this book.
There are many excellent studies of Burke, from which I have learned
much,2 but none of them, in my judgment, focuses on his central contribution
to liberal constitutionalism and its future, namely, his exercise and defense
of the priority of liberal voice (distinctive of political liberalism) resisting
illiberal injustices inflicted by Britain and others, as well as his emphasis on
the importance of evidence-​based interpretive history in understanding and
defending liberal constitutionalism and his remarkable political psychology
of the sources of the fear, terror, and violence that threatens the project of
such constitutionalism in Britain, America, and France whenever it effectively
betrays and wars on its deepest values, respect for universal human rights. Nor
do they address how and why he came so personally both to find his liberal
resisting voice and to understand the political psychology that violence wars
on such voice, a central and very personal reason for my own interest in his
life and work as a gay man.
My work, as both a political philosopher and a constitutional lawyer, has long
been among the leading works arguing for the human rights of LGBTQ people

2 See, among others, Richard Bourke, Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); F. P. Lock, Edmund Burke, Volume I: 1730–​
1784 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); F.P. Lock, Edmund Burke, Volume II: 1784–​1797
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Stanley Ayling, Edmund Burke: His Life and Opinions
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988); Isaac Kramnick, The Rage of Edmund Burke: Portrait
of an Ambivalent Conservative (New York: Basic Books, 1977); Conor Cruise O’Brien, The
Great Melody: A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1992); David Bromwich, The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime
and Beautiful to American Independence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014);
Jesse Norman, Edmund Burke (New York: Basic Books, 2013); Carl B. Cone, Burke and the
Nature of Politics: The Age of the American Revolution (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky
Press, 1957); Carl B. Cone, Burke and the Nature of Politics: The Age of the French Revolution
(Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1964); David Dwan and Christopher J. Insole, The
Cambridge Companion to Edmund Burke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Justin
Du Rivage, Revolution against Empire: Taxes, Politics, and the Origins of American Independence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017); Martti Koskenniemi, To the Uppermost Parts
of the Earth: Legal Imagination and International Power 1300–​1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2021); Daniel O’Neill, Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016).
 Preface xiii

as constitutional rights3 and was prominently cited by the Indian Supreme Court
in its recent opinion decriminalizing gay sex on the basis of a free-​standing con-
stitutional right to privacy.4 In Chapter 1 of this book, I bring my own experi-
ence as a gay man and compelling historical evidence to bear on arguing that
Edmund Burke’s remarkable political liberalism in a range of domains (resisting
the injustice of the British treatment of Irish Catholics, the Americans, and the
Indians—​the Hastings impeachment) can be plausibly understood not only in
terms of his being Irish but also in terms of Burke’s own long-​term loving rela-
tionship to another man, Will Burke. Starting from the pathbreaking work of
Isaac Kramnick on the relationship of Edmund and Will5 and the extraordinary
homophobia of eighteenth-​century Britain (which I document), I make this case
in two ways. First, there is Burke’s astonishing 1780s speech in the House of
Commons condemning the use of the pillory (proposing a law forbidding this
punishment) against two convicted homosexuals, leading to one of them being
murdered by a homophobic London mob (a speech eliciting homophobic insults
to Burke in London newspapers because he questions a violence that any true
man or woman would endorse and praise). And second, there is Burke’s remark-
able defense not only of political liberalism but also his analysis of the political
psychology of anti-​liberal violence, which culminates in the prophetic depth
and insight of Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke’s insights into this
political psychology are his central contribution to political liberalism, arising
in part from his understanding of and resistance to the homophobic violence of
the London mobs and that he later saw in the sometimes homophobic violence
of Parisian mobs (targeting Marie Antoinette, regarded as, among other things,

3 Sex, Drugs, Death and the Law: An Essay on Human Rights and Decriminalization (Totowa,
NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1982); Toleration and the Constitution (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986); Foundations of American Constitutionalism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989); Conscience and the Constitution: History, Theory, and Law of the
Reconstruction Amendments (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Women, Gays,
and the Constitution: The Grounds for Feminism and Gay Rights in Culture and Law (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Identity and the Case for Gay Rights: Race, Gender,
Religion as Analogies (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Free Speech and the
Politics of Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Patriarchal Religion, Gender, and
Sexuality: A Critique of New Natural Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008);
Fundamentalism in American Religion and Law: Obama’s Challenge to Patriarchy’s Threat to
Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); The Rise of Gay Rights and the
Fall of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Why Love Leads to
Justice: Love across the Boundaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
4 The Indian Supreme Court inferred a free-​standing right of constitutional privacy in its 2017 deci-
sion in Justice KS Puttaswamy v. Union of India, Writ Petition (Civil) No 494 of 2012, 24 August
2017; and its 2018 opinion in Navtej Singh Johar & Ors. v. Union of India, Writ Petition (Civil)
No. 572 of 2016, 6 September 2018, the latter of which decriminalized gay sex on the basis of the
value of equal dignity, citing my work, among others.
5 Isaac Kramnick, The Rage of Edmund Burke: Portrait of an Ambivalent Conservative
(New York: Basic Books, 1977).
xiv Preface

an adulteress and a lesbian), and a political psychology of illimitable violence

that destroyed any hopes liberals had for the French revolution as a contribution
to political liberalism in Europe. In both cases, the political psychology turns on
violence, including terror, unleashed on any threat to patriarchal gender roles, an
argument Carol Gilligan and I make in our first book, The Deepening Darkness,6
and which James Gilligan and I explore in our recent book, Holding a Mirror Up
to Nature: Shame, Guilt, and Violence in Shakespeare7 as in terms of the transi-
tion from the hierarchies of violent shame cultures to the equality of democratic
guilt cultures. However, in this book I show the explanatory power of this pol-
itical psychology in understanding political violence in some contextual detail
both in the eighteenth century and over the following centuries, including our
contemporary situation of constitutional crisis in the U.S. over the anachron-
istic ideology of originalism of a majority of the current U.S. Supreme Court
(three of whom were appointed by Trump), and a comparable constitutional
crisis in the politics of the U.K. Burke’s argument, with its focus on his intimate
personal understanding of the psychological impact of terror, prefigures the later
arguments of both Hannah Arendt and the psychiatrist James Gilligan on the pol-
itical psychology of twentieth-​century totalitarianisms and twenty-​first-​century
resurgent violent fundamentalisms (Islamic terrorism), imperialist ethnic nation-
alism (the Russian incursion into Ukraine), and the anti-​liberal populist politics
of Trump in the U.S. and a similar politics in Britain (Brexit).
It is another feature of the originality of my account that I question the now
conventional reading of Burke as the founder of political conservatism,8 a trad-
ition much of which Burke would have rejected (e.g., its defense of absolutism
in politics and religion and its racism).9 It is certainly true that Burke shared the
view of Adam Smith that government interference into the free market did more
harm than good10 (only Thomas Paine in this period argued for state policies
directed at relieving poverty11), but later liberal views on such issues would rea-
sonably change in response to new circumstances on this (as in Rawls’ endorse-
ment of the difference principle12) and many other issues. It is also true that

6 Carol Gilligan and David A. J. Richards, The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance, and
Democracy’s Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); see also Carol Gilligan
and David A. J. Richards, Darkness Now Visible: Patriarchy’s Resurgence and Feminist
Resistance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
7 James Gilligan and David A. J. Richards, Holding a Mirror Up to Nature: Shame, Guilt, and
Violence in Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
8 See, e.g., Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of
Right and Left (New York: Basic Books, 2014); C. B. Macpherson, Burke (New York: Hill &
Wang, 1980).
9 For a fuller discussion, see Edmund Fawcett, Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).
10 See Bourke, Empire and Revolution, pp. 889–​91
11 See Levin, The Great Debate, pp. 205–​22.
12 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 75–​83.
 Preface xv

Burke valued the independence of the British-​landed hereditary aristocracy, a

limited franchise, and an establishment church, but so regarded them, in his
historical context, as the vehicles of liberal resistance to an increasingly authori-
tarian monarchy and mob rule (as in France); the aristocracy, for example, was
open to natural aristocrats like Burke who defended such liberal resistance.
“Was Burke a conservative or a liberal? Of the historical Burke, the question is
anachronistic.”13 My own view, defended at length below, is that Burke was a
liberal, calling for the defense and further development of liberal constitution-
alism against its enemies (including European absolute monarchy, the authori-
tarian monarchy of George III, and the French mobs). The center of Burke’s life
and work was the evidence-​based construction of a liberal British constitution-
alism, and his appeals to history and tradition were in service of the work in
progress of the development and defense of liberal constitutionalism whether in
Britain or in the U.S. His critique of the French constitutionalisms was that they
were not only not evidence-​based but also disastrously failed to understand the
political psychology of violence they unleashed. Burke’s ultimate ends were, in
my view, always liberal, using whatever reliable evidence showed would lead
to a more liberal constitutionalism, including his own liberal voice in criticism
of Britain’s and France’s failures to implement and preserve liberal values of
free conscience, thought, and speech. In this respect, Burke is as central to the
liberal tradition as Locke, Jefferson, Madison, De Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill,
and John Rawls. Not all Burke’s appeals to tradition, in fact, advance liberal
values,14 but he believed that they did, which is my point about the road to lib-
eral constitutionalism he meant to defend. It is, for Burke, always incomplete,
requiring a liberal resisting voice to criticize its betrayals of liberal values, and
openness to evidence-​based experience to construct better forms of constitution-
alism at home and abroad—​a universalist humanistic project, as it was for his
contemporary, Kant.15
Burke has been thus misread even by those like the great Anglo-​Irish poet
W. B. Yeats, who memorably included Burke among “The Seven Sages,” an
epigraph of this book:

American colonies, Ireland, France, and India

Harried, and Burke’s great melody against it.16

13 Fawcett, Conservatism, p. 17.

14 For example, Burke’s defense of the patriarchal family at threat from French liberalizing reforms
cannot be justified on liberal grounds. For his arguments to this effect, see Edmund Burke,
“The First Letter on a Regicide Speech,” in Iain Hampsher-​Monk (ed.), Burke: Revolutionary
Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 251–​334 at 310–​14 (attacking
French laws allowing divorce).
15 See Hans Reiss (ed.), Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
16 “The Seven Sages,” in Richard J. Finneran (ed.), The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume
I: The Poems (New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 245.
xvi Preface

And then Yeats went on, incoherently, to concede Burke was a Whig, but not
guilty of “Whiggery,” “a levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind /​That never
looked out of the eye of a saint/​Or out of drunkard’s eye.”17 For Yeats, however,
“Anglo-​Ireland was associated with uncompromising intellectual achievement
(Swift and Goldsmith), conservative and anti-​egalitarian politics (Burke), and
Neoplatonic philosophy (Berkeley, with some special pleading)—​all core
values held” by Yeats himself.18 During an inter-​war period when democracy
seemed inadequate to the challenge of fascism and the poet was concerned
with controlling violence in Ireland, Yeats reads Burke incoherently because
he cannot connect Burke’s astonishingly expressive and courageous liberal
voice (his “great melody”) to the priority of liberal values of voice over other
values, exactly the values of voice at threat by the fascism to which Yeats and
his friend Ezra Pound were attracted.19 On the one hand, Yeats came to appre-
ciate the humane ethical imagination of Burke that embraced the injustices
inflicted on the dehumanized (thus “the eyes of a saint /​ Or out of drunkard’s
eye”)—​his “great melody”—​but could not understand the egalitarian liberalism
that such voice rested on and developed as a model for future generations of
liberals resisting injustices that refuse to extend liberal equality to all persons,
a dehumanization that provokes violence. Yet, Yeats himself, as a senator in the
Irish parliament, spoke, invoking Burke’s liberal voice (“We are the people of
Burke”), against Catholic-​intolerant censorship of literature by minorities, a vio-
lation of liberal equality.20
In contrast to these views, I argue that the enduring value of Burke’s life
and work rests on the central values of political liberalism that he advanced
and defended in criticizing profound injustices others could and would not
acknowledge, the central values of political liberalism that both Britain and the
U.S. shared and further developed over time. In his recent compelling treatment
of the history of liberalism, Edmund Fawcett focuses on three normative ideas
that he traces in the history and development of political liberalism as an idea
and practice: first, non-​intrusion in privacy; second, non-​obstruction of eco-
nomic and social aspiration, or not getting “in the way of social progress and
personal flourishing;” and third, “non-​exclusion [which] was at root moral,”21

17 Ibid.
18 R. F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life II, The Arch-​Poet 1915–​1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003), p. 346; Richard J. Finneran (ed.), The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume I: The
Poems (New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 346.
19 On this point, see Foster, W. B. Yeats, pp. 466–​95. I am indebted for understanding the complex-
ities of Yeats’ views to the advice of Alexander Bubb. See Alexander Bubb, Meetings without
Knowing It: Kipling and Yeats at the Fin de Siecle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
20 See Foster, W. B. Yeats, pp. 297–​98.
21 Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2018), pp. 125–​29; see also Edmund Fawcett, Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).
 Preface xvii

condemning exclusions on irrationalist grounds of race/​ethnicity, religion, class,

gender, sexual orientation, and the like. Two works of liberal political theory, one
British, the other American, offer views of political liberalism along Fawcett’s
lines that I find compelling: John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and The Subjection of
Women and John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice; in a later work, Rawls, who dis-
agrees with Mill’s utilitarianism as a basis for the principles Mill defends, none-
theless acknowledges that the principles of Mill’s liberalism are “quite similar
to those of the well-​ordered society of justice as fairness”22 (Rawls’ version
of political liberalism). In both Mill and Rawls, political liberalism gives pri-
ority to the values of freedom of conscience and speech, the central values of
Burke’s resisting voice. The interest of Fawcett’s argument is that he clearly
sees and explores the tension between democracy and the liberalism of Mill and
Rawls (ancient Athens may have been democratic, but, in regarding Socrates’
teaching of philosophy as not a legitimate form of conscience, it wrongly
intruded into a sphere of private life and thought; in excluding from citizenship
those, like Aristotle, not ethnically born to an Athenian, it obstructed ambition
and progress; and, in exiling women and slaves from public life, it violated
non-​exclusion supporting a caste system on irrationalist grounds, gender and
slave status, often linked to ethnic difference and defeat in one of Athens’ unjust
imperialistic wars). Fawcett clearly sees some leading politicians (Gladstone
in the U.K.; Lincoln in the U.S.) as rightly honored for striving to align British
and American politics with liberal values, but there is nothing inevitable in the
alignment. Quite the contrary. Yet both British and American constitutionalisms
appeal at crucial moments in their development to a distinguished philosoph-
ical political liberal and advocate of human rights and the right to revolution,
John Locke, yet their constitutionalisms took a different form, with different
outcomes.
Burke’s political liberalism, derived from John Locke and his defense of
the inalienable right to conscience, had been the justification of the Glorious
Revolution of 1688 led by aristocratic Whigs and was the inspiration of the
role the Whigs played as what Justin Du Rivage calls the establishment Whigs
who were the central players in British politics under the first two Hanoverian
monarchs until 1760 when George III becomes king and introduced the authori-
tarian reforms in the British treatment of the American colonies that would
provoke the American revolution. Burke served in the House of Commons
for 28 years (1766–​94) and played an important role as spokesperson for a
group of establishment Whigs, the Rockingham Whigs, led by the Marquess of

22 See John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, edited by Samuel Freeman
(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 297. For a recent
British defense of Rawls as offering the best normative theory of British progressive liberalism,
see Daniel Chandler, Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like? (London: Allen
Lane, 2023).
xviii Preface

Rockingham, one of the wealthiest men in England, until his death in 1782 and
who was prime minister for two brief periods (the first of which repealed the
Stamp Act, and the second of which led to the peace treaty with the U.S.). The
Rockingham Whigs resisted the authoritarian reformers centered in the king, but
did not support the radical Whigs, like Richard Price in England and Thomas
Paine in America, who called for a more extensive franchise than the narrow
property-​owning franchise of late eighteenth-​century Britain (expanded by
reform acts in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to include all adults,
including women). It had been precisely the independent wealth of the establish-
ment Whigs that had been the basis for their independence from the crown and
its authoritarian claims at least until they lost power under George III, as well
as their independence from what they regarded as the often prejudiced views of
ordinary people (e.g., the anti-​Catholic prejudice of the violent Gordon riot mobs,
reacting to the parliamentary attempt to emancipate Catholics, attacking Burke’s
home because of his sympathies for Catholics, including Irish Catholics).23
In the sense of those terms I have developed earlier, Britain was not in this
period remotely as democratic as it was later to be, but its institutions allowed
liberals, resisting monarchical absolutism, to take power and, even when they
lost power, to resist George III’s authoritarian reform in the British Empire (tax-
ation without representation), and Burke’s resistance exemplifies this develop-
ment in resistance to British imperialist authoritarianism in Ireland, America,
and India. To this extent, though Burke himself defended the ambitions of the
British Empire, his liberal critique anticipates the long period of criticism of
the British Empire, including, in the late twentieth century, the reasons for its
collapse.24 My interest in Burke is the view he developed and defended of the
form of constitutionalism that sustains the political liberalism that places a cen-
tral normative value on the equal liberties of conscience and speech, as both Mill
and Rawls do, as prior to other values, and demands that a realm be preserved
for the exercise of such rights based in a generalization of the argument for tol-
eration.25 The exercise of such core liberal rights takes the form, as it does in
the life and work of Burke, of the criticism of deviations from these rights, not
recognized in Ireland, America, India, or in France. Burke not only exemplifies
the exercise of these rights but also offers a political psychology that the refusal
to respect these equal liberties of the Irish, Americans, Indians, and French by

23 For the distinction among these various political groups in Britain and America during this
period, I am indebted to the discussion of Du Rivage, Revolution against Empire.
24 On this point, see David A. J. Richards, The Rise of Gay Rights and the Fall of the British
Empire: Liberal Resistance and the Bloomsbury Group (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2013).
25 See David A. J. Richards, Toleration and the Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press,
1986); Foundations of American Constitutionalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989);
Conscience and the Constitution: History, Theory, and Law of the Reconstruction Amendments
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
 Preface xix

the use of unjust repression and violence itself elicits violence. Burke is a foun-
dational liberal voice in the understanding and development of constitutional
liberalism because he argues for an evidence-​based account of how to develop
and preserve a constitutionalism that respects such rights, including the role
interpretive history must play in understanding and supporting such constitu-
tionalism, and how he came to develop and articulate a political psychology of
the real threats to such liberal constitutionalism, his enduring legacy to liber-
alism everywhere.
Madison shares Burke’s Lockean political liberalism, both justifying the
right to revolution when human rights are at threat and regarding the freedom of
thought and the inalienable right to conscience as central to such liberal rights.
There is also a comparable interest in political psychology, the theory of faction
that Madison prominently uses in The Federalist No. 10, to defend the fed-
eral system, as well as an interest in interpretive history in constitutional con-
structivism. What is of compelling interest in comparing Burke and Madison is
that, like Burke, Madison develops an argument for the importance of history
in the interpretation of liberal constitutionalism, which leads in later chapters
to a discussion of the appropriate role of appeals to history in both British and
American constitutionalism, including criticism of the interpretive originalism
that a majority of the current U.S. Supreme Court used in Dobbs v. Jackson and
other recent cases. What Madison does not see is the threat to liberal constitu-
tionalism that the constitution’s treatment of slavery would unleash, culmin-
ating in the civil war and America’s continuing struggle with its cultural racism
and cognate irrational prejudices that abridge universal human rights. Was this
a price worth paying? Burke thought not. Addressing that question is another
reason for writing this book.
Burke endorsed the 1787 U.S. Constitution as consistent with the kind of
deliberative reflection on evidence-​based historical experience, including that of
the British Constitution and its defense by Montesquieu and others, and I show
in Chapter 2 exactly what it was in Madison’s liberal constructivism that Burke
came to admire, including its appeal to the political philosophy of John Locke
and the right to revolution that had been so important in the development of
British liberal constitutionalism in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. But Burke,
like Benjamin Franklin, had wanted to reconcile the Americans with the British
government and had warned the Americans prophetically that their separation
from Britain might lead to internecine disaster in its politics.
Burke’s argument, centering on both liberal principles and the anti-​liberal
psychology of violence, clarifies, so I argue (Chapter 3), both the failure of
American constitutionalism to deal constitutionally with the gravest of liberal
evils, slavery, non-​violently as the British did abolishing slavery in 1833 (which
Lincoln pointed to in indicting pro-​slavery constitutionalism as betraying pol-
itical liberalism and the legitimacy of the 1787 Constitution). And it clarifies
as well (Chapter 4) the consequences of the British betrayal of liberalism in its
xx Preface

unjust treatment of both the Irish and the Indians, leading to unjust violence
against these peoples, and terrorism as among their responses, as Burke predicted.
Only outsiders to both British and American constitutionalism, Gandhi in India
and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the U.S., innovate non-​violent forms of civil dis-
obedience that advance justice by exposing contradictions between their liberal
constitutionalism and Christian religion and the violence (including lynchings)
directed at liberal dissent.
During the nineteenth century and later, the parliamentary system in Britain
changed. Burke’s late eighteenth century

ideal was a party organization resembling a political “club” rather than a

modern “machine” … whose members were not beaten by the hammer of
party leadership upon the anvil of constituency opinion. Burke saw the need
for more effective party machinery within parliament when few others did,
and earlier than his contemporaries he was to deprive the crown of the powers
that interfered with control of the government by party leaders in parliament.
It is not presentism to say that the tendency of Burke’s idea was toward the
cabinet government of the midnineteenth century, which did not know, any
more than did Burke, an independent civil service, a democratic suffrage, or
mass parties.26

During this later period, the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty was doc-
trinally defended by A. V. Dicey, and the historical role of the judiciary in
protecting rights less so. Rather, parliament became the central engine in the
advance of political liberalism in Britain through the expansion of the franchise
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries culminating in extending the fran-
chise to women, as well as the emancipation of Catholics and Jews, as well as
enacting welfare state liberalism and socialist ownership of major industries,
in particular, when the Labour Party takes power in 1945–​51. How can that
development during this period reasonably be squared with the British Empire,
in which the colonies (both settler and non-​settler colonies) are not represented
in the British parliament? Dicey, for example, had problems making sense of
parliamentary supremacy since the premise of his argument, representation by
the affected people, was not satisfied.27 Democracy and liberalism here are in
tension, if not contradiction, as many liberal critiques of British imperialism and
its legacy argue.28 And, I argue, Burke was among these critics, as his political

26 Cone, Burke and the Nature of Politics: The Age of the French Revolution, pp. 36–​37.
27 See Dylan Lino, “Albert Venn Dicey and the Constitutional Theory of the Empire,” Oxford
Journal of Legal Studies, 36:4 (2016): 751–​80, and “The Rule of Law and the Rule of
Empire: A.V. Dicey in Imperial Contest.”
28 For liberal critiques of British imperialism and its consequences, see Priya Satia Time’s
Monster: How History Makes History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020);
Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-​ Determination
 Preface xxi

psychology of violence explains how Britain’s betrayal of its own liberal values
gave rise, as it had done in America and in Ireland, to the violence and atrocity
in its colonies by both Britain and colonists. And, may not the empire itself, in
particular the increasingly authoritarian and militaristic rule of India defended
by James Fitzjames Stephen on crudely utilitarian grounds, have legitimated a
comparable reactionary argument in the U.K. that tragically undermined and
defeated Gladstone’s last great liberal project, home rule for Ireland (against
which Stephen inveighed), a worry that preoccupied Burke and others earlier?29
My interest in this question is another of my reasons for writing this book.
My approach to these issues in this book thus combines political theory (the
political liberalism both nations share and, indeed, progressively develop into
forms of economic and social liberalism) with the close study of the different
constitutional institutions each nation develops to advance its liberal ends, both
unsuccessfully and successfully, including the important role of political psych-
ology in their respective failures, drawing on the important work of the psych-
iatrist Dr. James Gilligan with whom I have cotaught for several years at the
New York University School of Law and collaborated on a recently published
book on what Shakespeare’s plays show us about the psychology of violence,
personal and political.30 Why does American Marbury judicial review fail to
meet its liberal ends of protecting human rights at least until World War II, while
British common law and parliamentary sovereignty are for long periods much
more successful? And how should we understand the increasing post-​World War
II importance of the British judiciary in monitoring the administrative law of
parliament enforced by the executive, and the development, still controversial
in the U.K., of the role accorded the British judiciary in giving effect to the
Human Rights Act of 1998 (HRA), and the weight accorded by that legislation
to the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights under the European
Convention of Human Rights, in whose design the U.K. played an important
role in 1953. And why the institutional changes, including the European

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019); Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler Nor
Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2020); Padraic X. Scanlan, Slave Empire: How Slavery Built Modern Britain
(London: Robinson, 2020); Roderick Matthews, Peace, Poverty, and Betrayal: A New History
of British India (London: Hurst, 2021); Sathnam Sanghera, Empireland: How Imperialism
Has Shaped Modern Britain (London: Penguin, 2021); Lisa Ford, The King’s Peace: Law and
Order in the British Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021); Mark Knights,
Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and Its Empire 1600–​1850 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2021); Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s
Gulag in Kenya (New York: Owl Books, 2005); Caroline Elkins, Legacy of Violence: A History
of the British Empire (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022).
29 On this point, see Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford at the
Clarendon Press, 1959), pp. 273–​311.
30 See Gilligan and Richards, Holding a Mirror Up to Nature.
xxii Preface

Convention and HRA, domestic and international, after World War II? And why
are these changes now contested in Britain under the current Conservative gov-
ernment, and on what grounds? How and why do the U.K. and the U.S., after
their long separation, rediscover their common grounds in political liberalism
in the Atlantic Charter of 1941 and later institutional innovations both nations
forged? Both nations discover that they had made a catastrophic mistake in not
taking seriously the aggressive anti-​liberal violence of fascism, and that the pro-
tection of human rights at home could not be isolated from threats abroad. Have
we learned from our mistakes, or rather sometimes repeated them (Iraq)?
As I earlier suggested, liberalism and democracy are not the same (the
Athenian democracy was highly democratic in ways neither British nor
American representative democracies are). Liberalism rests on the political
conviction that legitimate government must protect universal human rights,
which includes, of course, the rights of minorities. It is a conviction, in my view,
that both British and American liberalism share, which is shown by the ways
in which John Stuart Mill’s arguments in both On Liberty and The Subjection
of Women have had such political and constitutional resonance in both the
U.K. and the U.S. and elsewhere. The great historical constitutional difference
between the constitutionalism of these nations has been, since the late eight-
eenth century when Britain and the U.S. separated, importantly over the inter-
pretation of the British Constitution that, until that point, both peoples believed
they shared. This is shown by the different institutional embodiment each
nation gave to Montesquieu’s normative argument for the separation of powers,
which he argued the British Constitution with its balance of powers between
monarchy, a democratic House of Commons and aristocratic House of Lords
(both enjoying parliamentary supremacy), and independent judiciary admirably
embodied.31 Montesquieu certainly argued that judicial independence was an
important aspect of the British conception of its balanced constitution, but he
did not defend a role for the judiciary in checking other branches of govern-
ment,32 which would have undermined parliamentary supremacy as the ultimate
check on the excesses of the monarch and his ministers, and on even the people
when they violated human rights, including the right to property (a conception
of British constitutionalism that was, as we shall see, central to the liberalism of
Edmund Burke). In contrast, the American constitutional conception of the sep-
aration of powers, defined by the first three Articles of the Constitution of 1787,
not only repudiates parliamentary supremacy but also defines separate branches
of the national government (an executive presidency, a bicameral democratic-
ally elected legislature with different terms and constituencies, and a judiciary
that under Marbury v. Madison calls for judicial review of the constitutionality

31 See M. J. C. Vile, Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis,
IN: Liberty Fund, 1998).
32 On this point, see ibid., p. 102.
 Preface xxiii

of the other branches of the national government and also state government),
precisely the checking function that the British conception of an independent
judiciary lacks.
It is not only the British and the Americans that take a different view of the
proper role of the judiciary in a liberal constitutionalism. In the wake of World
War II, forms of constitutionalism, influenced by the examples of both the
U.K. and the U.S., have taken different views, based on their own experience, of
the proper role of the judiciary in a constitutional democracy. Several of Britain’s
former settler colonies (Australia and New Zealand) reject the American in
favor of the British model;33 another (Canada) has adopted American-​style judi-
cial review subject to parliamentary override both by the national and provin-
cial parliaments;34 and two others (South Africa and India) have adopted either
strong forms of American-​style judicial review (South Africa35) or weaker but
still significant conceptions of judicial review because of the ease of parliamen-
tary amendment, not parliamentary supremacy (India36). Other constitutional
democracies in the nations of Western Europe, in the European Union, and
elsewhere have gravitated to American-​style judicial review, which at least one
comparative constitutional lawyer has questioned as to whether such judicial
review serves defensible normative aims in Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and
South Africa,37 and others query whether it has been effective or the extent of its
effectiveness in the U.S.38 and India,39 arguing less so in the U.S. but more so in
India. And the political theorist Jeremy Waldron, based on British constitutional
experience, both prominently defends universal human rights and argues that
the British parliament has better defended such human rights, including the right
of abortion, than the U.S. Supreme Court, whose opinion in Roe v. Wade has
now been overruled whereas the right of abortion remains broadly acceptable in

33 On these points, see Cheryl Saunders, The Constitution of Australia: A Contextual Analysis
(Oxford: Hart, 2011); Matthew S. R. Palmer and Dean R. Knight, The Constitution of New
Zealand: A Contextual Analysis (Oxford: Hart, 2022).
34 Jeremy Webber, The Constitution of Canada: A Contextual Analysis (Oxford: Hart, 2021).
35 Heinz Klug, The Constitution of South Africa: A Contextual Analysis (Oxford: Hart, 2021).
36 Arun K. Thiruvengadam, The Constitution of India: A Contextual Analysis (Oxford: Hart,
2017). However, in line with the eternity clauses of the German Basic Law, the Indian Supreme
Court has appealed to a basic structure jurisprudence that limits the amendment powers and
undermines the basic structure of Indian democratic constitutionalism. On this point, see Samuel
Issacharoff, Democracy Unmoored: Populism and the Corruption of Popular Sovereignty
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 124–​29, 155, 173.
37 See, e.g., Ran Hirschl, Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New
Constitutionalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
38 See Gerald Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring about Social Change? 2nd ed.
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
39 Gerald N. Rosenberg, Sudhir Krishnaswamy, and Shishir Bail, A Qualified Hope: The Indian
Supreme Court and Progressive Social Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
xxiv Preface

the U.K. precisely because, on Waldron’s view, the parliament both reasonably
debated and democratically resolved the issue.40
It is for this reason that my comparative investigation of British and U.S. con-
stitutionalism will explore what have been the strengths and weaknesses of both
the British and American positions, and why there is now in the U.S. perhaps
more skepticism by liberals about judicial review than there has ever been at
least since World War II, undoubtedly heightened by the Supreme Court’s recent
radically illiberal turn that I criticize at some length, and why, in contrast, in the
U.K. the judiciary has been increasingly looked to right the imbalance of power
in the executive no longer balanced by the kind of parliamentary independence
that Edmund Burke developed, endorsed, and defended.
Both British and American constitutionalism claim to speak to future
generations, and my argument (Chapter 5) compares their success at doing so
along a range of dimensions of written vs. unwritten constitutionalism, social
democracy, transformations of Lockean thought, culture vs. institutions, the
English Civil War and the American Civil War, U.K. referenda and Brexit,
representation, and the democratic objection to judicial review.
It is the alliance of Britain and the U.S. as liberal democracies at threat in World
War II from aggressive fascism that gives rise in both countries to arguments for
new forms of national, transnational, and international institutions that would
address the European political violence leading to World War I and culminating
in World War II (Chapter 6). Such constitutional constructivism in both nations
illustrates a Burkean wisdom in deliberating and implementing new constitutional
institutions that take seriously the role of liberal institutions in addressing the polit-
ical psychology of illimitable violence that, as Burke argued, warred on liberalism.
The recent development of populist forms of political illiberalism in the U.S.,
Britain, and elsewhere is the subject (Chapter 7) of a critique of the role patri-
archal religion has played both in recent appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court
and their originalist ideology, and in the politics of the U.K. urging watering
down the Human Rights Act of 1998 that gave greater weight to opinions of
the European Court of Human Rights interpreting the European Convention
on Human Rights in the interpretive opinions of the British judiciary. The
originalist approach of the new conservative majority of the Supreme Court in
Dobbs v. Jackson, reversing Roe v. Wade, critically undermines the legitimacy
of the U.S. Constitution in speaking to future generations and, on examination,
rests on the anti-​liberal psychology that Burke argued was the major threat to
any defensible liberal constitutionalism. New natural law, the vehicle of this
originalism, exemplifies what Burke meant by a “political religion.”
The argument ends with a concluding discussion of the importance of these
issues to liberal constitutionalism.

40 Jeremy Waldron, “The Core of the Case against Judicial Review,” Yale LJ 115 (2006): 1346–​406.
Acknowledgments

This work arose from collaborative work over the years with three remarkable
and generous friends to each of whom I am indebted and with each of whom
I have coauthored books, namely, Nicholas C. Bamforth (Queens College,
Oxford),1 James Gilligan,2 and Carol Gilligan.3
The idea of a comparative historical study of the U.K. and U.S. constitu-
tional law arose from ongoing weekly conversations on Zoom each week
between Nicholas in London and myself in New York City during the years of
the pandemic. I could not have written this book without these conversations
and Nick’s extraordinary generosity, intelligence, humor, patience, and support.
Conversations with my colleague Jeremy Waldron about his seminar on enlight-
enment constitutionalism (including sharing his syllabus) were also invaluable.
James Gilligan and I have cotaught a seminar at the New York University
School of Law for several years on retributivism, and we recently coauthored
a book on Shakespeare’s insights into personal and political violence, based on
Jim’s pathbreaking psychological insights into the causes and prevention of both
personal and political violence. It was conversations with Jim that first suggested
to me that Burke had made an important contribution to understanding political
violence, and this book is built on the collaborative framework arising from our
work together.
Carol Gilligan and I have cotaught a seminar, “Resisting Injustice,” at the
New York School of Law for the past 20 years, leading to our coauthoring
two books on patriarchy’s threat to democracy. Her insights into the develop-
mental psychology of girls into women, and boys into men, have illuminated
my understanding of the role of the initiation into patriarchy in the development
of both women and men, and the crucial importance of resistance to patriarchy
both to human happiness and to justice, as Burke’s life and work illustrate.

1 Nicholas Bamforth and David A. J. Richards, Patriarchal Religion, Gender, and Sexuality: A
Critique of New Natural Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
2 Gilligan and Richards, Holding a Mirror Up to Nature.
3 Gilligan and Richards, The Deepening Darkness and Darkness Now Visible.
xxvi Acknowledgments

Conversations with Phillip Blumberg have also guided and illuminated my

work on this book, as they have all my creative work; and I am indebted to both
Tarun Khaitan and Alexander Bubb for insights into both British colonialism
in general and in particular in Ireland and India, and the relevant thought and
poetry of William Butler Yeats on these issues.
My work on this book profited as well from a discussion of it with Charles
B. Strozier’s Bloomsbury Book Club, and I am grateful to all the participants
in that discussion, including Charles Strozier, James Gilligan, John Alderdice,
David Lotto, Michael Vincent Miller, John Riker, Harriet Wolfe, David Terman,
James Block, Marcia Dobson, James Jones, Deborah Cher, and Jeffrey Stern.
I am grateful as well to Charlie Baker and Natalja Mortensen, my editors
at Routledge, for their enthusiastic support to this book project, including a
reader’s report that was quite helpful.
This book was researched and written during summers supported by gen-
erous research grants from the New York University School of Law Filomen
D’Agostino and Max E. Greenberg Faculty Research Fund, and I am grateful
to the research committee for its support, as well as the support of Dean Trevor
Morrison and his successor, Dean Troy McKenzie.
A work of this sort, so rooted in my personal life, arose in loving relationship
with the person closest to me, Donald Levy, to whom I have dedicated this book.

Figure 0.1 Portrait of Edmund Burke: studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds © National Portrait
Gallery, London.
newgenprepdf

Acknowledgments xxvii

Figure 0.2 Portrait of James Madison by Gilbert Stuart. Courtesy National Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C.
1 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism

My investigation starts by looking closely at Burke’s liberal constitutionalism

developed in his four great expressions of liberal resistance, including to the
injustice of the British treatment of Ireland, to the British policies against which
the American colonies successfully revolted, to British colonial policies in India
(the Hastings impeachment), and finally to the failure of British and American
radical Whigs (Richard Price and Thomas Paine) to understand the clear and
present danger of the threat to all forms of liberal constitutionalism of the dis-
astrous constitutional experiments following the French Revolution, culmin-
ating in the Terror and Napoleon’s aggressive imperialistic wars, prefiguring the
political violence of twentieth-​ and twenty-​first-​century totalitarianism.1 I have
come to think that Burke had a brilliant understanding, at least for his time and
perhaps for all time, not only of political liberalism and its connection to demo-
cratic constitutionalism, but what has not been seen by many historians of his
thought, namely, his astonishing insights into the dark side of illiberal democ-
racy, namely, the role of the humiliations inflicted by irrational prejudices rooted
in deep liberal injustices on men and women, but largely men, that express them-
selves both in violent revolution and the violence of lynch mobs and genocidal
and imperialistic violence.
Burke’s passionate liberalism arose, I have come to think, from his moral
indignation at the two humiliations that he had come to experience quite per-
sonally, the first of which touches my own experience as a gay man and the
liberals, like myself and many others, who have played a role in the U.K. and the
U.S. in arguing for gay rights as constitutional rights; and the second such indig-
nation arises from ethnicity and religion—​his being Irish (Burke spoke with a
conspicuous Irish accent) and Protestant (like his father), yet his mother and
wife being suspiciously Catholic in a period of long-​standing British prejudice
against Catholics. Because the issue of Burke’s homosexuality will be the more

1 For a fuller discussion in some depth, see Richard Bourke, Empire and Revolution: The Political
Life of Edmund Burke (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003410966-1
2 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism

controversial of my claims, I will need not only to draw on the best work on this
issue, but also situate the whole issue in the larger framework of the codes of
silence and concealment regarding homosexuality in eighteenth-​century Britain
through which gay men would both find one another and shield themselves from
the virulent and quite violent homophobia of the period, including one of its
poets (Pope) and another of its greatest musicians, Handel,2 and perhaps Burke
himself.
The first humiliation is the subject of Isaac Kramnick’s important book, The
Rage of Edmund Burke: Portrait of an Ambivalent Conservative.3 Kramnick
focuses on Burke’s missing years (1750–​56) when he flees from his tyrannical
father in Ireland to study law in the inns of court in London and undergoes a
personal crisis, clearly expressed in his letters and poems written during this
period, centering both on his vocation (his rejection of law, his father’s profes-
sion, for becoming a public intellectual publishing two important books and
later becoming a politician and member of the House of Commons) and his
sexuality and love life. He meets Will Burke, not a relation, a life-​long intimate
friend who not only lives with Burke and his family, but collaborates closely
with Burke on important writings, including one about America that explains
Burke’s quite realistic understanding of the American situation, and plays a gen-
erous role in giving up his own proposed seat in parliament for Burke. The rela-
tionship is, in Kramnick’s view, clearly homoerotic, shown by the poems Burke
wrote to Will replete with expressions of sexual desire:

The strong and weak consumes in the same fire,

The force unequaled, equal the desire.4

And also there is the expression of overcoming shame to be intimately oneself:

Can we, my friend, with any conscience bear

To Shew our minds sheer naked as they are,
Remove each veil of custom, pride or Art,
Nor stretch a hand to hide one shameful part?5

Burke later writes of his relationship to Will as “tenderly loved, highly valued,
and continually lived with, in a union not to be expressed, quite since our boyish
years.”6 Stanley Ayling, another Burke biographer, comments on Burke’s

2 For a brilliant and compelling investigation of this question, see Ellen T. Harris, Handel as
Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2001).
3 New York: Basic Books, 1977.
4 Ibid., p. 76.
5 Ibid., p. 77.
6 Ibid., p. 72.
 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism 3

“blinkered attachment” to Will, despite his improvidence, “there it is: loves other
than sexual may be as blind.”7 No serious biographer doubts this was one of the
central loves of Burke’s life, which may, as Kramnick argues, have at some
point been sexual. The ethical centrality of such personal relationships to Burke
is shown by the way in which he connects state abridgments of such intimate
relationships to what for him defines the inhumanity of the British actions in India
involving “the forced sale of children”8 or, later on in the French Revolution,
“five or six hundred drunken women, calling at the bar of the Assembly for the
blood of their own children, as being royalists or constitutionalists” or “fathers
to demand the blood of their sons, toasting that Rome had but one Brutus, but
that they could shew five hundred.”9 In Reflections on the Revolution in France,
these are

the worst of these politics of revolution … : they temper and burden the
breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes
used in extreme occasion … . Plots, massacres, assassination, seem … a
trivial price for obtaining a revolution.10

The personal crisis Burke undoubtedly experienced was resolved by the

care of a doctor whose daughter Burke later quite happily married. Burke not
only includes Will in his intimate personal circle with his wife and children and
brother, living with him in a relationship that lasts throughout their lives, as Will
seeks opportunities in the West Indies and in India, all while he and Edmund
stay in a close personal and mutually advantageous relationship. Kramnick
makes quite clear that the relationship, and perhaps others, did not go unnoticed
in late eighteenth-​century Britain in one of its leading politicians and member of
the House of Commons. Kramnick observes:

That Burke might have been a homosexual or showed homosexual tenden-

cies was not an idea foreign to his contemporaries. Rumours to this effect
circulated in opposition circles for years, often as part of the campaign
depicting Burke as a Jesuit. Contemporary cartoons, for example, shows him
a particularly effeminate Jesuit. The ever-​persistent rumors were given add-
itional fuel by events in 1780, when Burke rose in the House of Commons
to protest the treatment of two homosexuals, Theodosius Read and William

7 See Stanley Ayling, Edmund Burke: His Life and Opinions (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988),
p. 134.
8 Bourke, Empire and Revolution, p. 845.
9 Edmund Burke, “The First Letter on a Regicide Speech,” in Iain Hampsher-​Monk (ed.),
Revolutionary Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 253–​334 at 311.
10 Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” in Hampsher-​Monk, Revolutionary
Writings, pp. 3–​250 at 65.
4 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism

Smith, who were sentenced, as part of their punishment for sodomy, to stand
in the pillory for an hour. Smith dies a victim of mob brutality. Burke spoke
eloquently in the House against this barbarity and secured a pension for
Smith’s widow. While sodomy was, he insisted, in his speech, “a crime of
all others the most detestable, because it tended to vitiate the morals of the
whole community, and to defeat the first and chief end of society,” the pun-
ishment of it should be tempered with mercy, inasmuch as it was a crime “of
the most equivocal nature and the more difficult to prove.” Better than cruelty
and fury, he suggested, were “reproach and shame.” The Morning Post of 13
April responded to Burke.
Every man applauds the spirit of the spectators, and every woman thinks
their conduct right. It remained only for the patriotic Mr. Burke to insinuate that
the crime these men committed should not be held in the highest detestation.
Burke brought suit for defamation of character against the newspaper, and
he won his case.11

Earlier, in 1774, Burke successfully called for exercise of the prerogative of

mercy for a lieutenant of the Royal Artillery who had been sentenced to death
for sodomy.12
We must situate all this in the larger cultural framework of eighteenth cen-
tury, as it bears on our understanding of how remarkable Burke’s liberal resist-
ance may have been, which even Kramnick does not fully appreciate.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century in Britain, condemnation of
homosexuality became an increasingly public matter. In the seventeenth cen-
tury, a prevalent attitude in England associated the notion that homosexuality
was imported from Italy with the danger of Catholicism and popery, and the
execution in 1631 of the Catholic Earl of Castlehaven for sodomy and other
sexual crimes must be read in the context of virulent contemporary anti-​Catholic
sentiment.13
In the first decades of the eighteenth century, however, the issue of homo-
sexuality itself drew public attention because of

the simultaneous development of a network of molly houses and the

Societies for the Reformation of Manners. The molly houses, although

11 Kramnick, The Rage of Edmund Burke, p. 84.

12 See Stanley Ayling, Edmund Burke: His Life and Opinions (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988),
pp. 53–​54.
13 Harris, Handel as Orpheus, p. 18. For an illuminating background on both seventeenth-​ and
eighteenth-​century British attitudes to homosexuality, including on the molly houses, see
Matt Cook (ed.), A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex between Men since the Middle
Ages (Oxford: Greenwood World, 2007), pp. 77–​144. See also Alan Bray, Homosexuality in
Renaissance England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism 5

many who frequented them had wives and children at home, represent a
landmark in the development of a separate identity for men who engaged in
same-​sex acts. At the same time, the political instability of the late seven-
teenth century and early eighteenth centuries, including the fear of external
attack and internal revolution, of popery and absolutism, led to a rise of
zealous reformers … . The identification of certain establishments as molly
houses made them particularly vulnerable to attack, the more so because
the customers were typically members of the merchant and lower classes
and the reforming societies “dared not attack the aristocracy, at least not
directly.” The Society for the Reformation of Manners was founded in
1690; by 1699 there were nine societies and by 1701 there was twenty in
London alone.
The Societies quickly began their work of rounding up sodomites for pros-
ecution, and by 1698 a few individuals had been targeted for entrapment;
1699 saw the first successful group arrest … . In 1701 a larger raid netted …
between forty and one hundred arrests. At least three of these men committed
suicide.
After months of preparation and infiltration, in February 1716 Mother
Clap’s molly house was surrounded and forty men taken in arrest. Within
months about twenty other houses were raided as well. Although many of
those arrested were released for want of evidence, in fifteen cases of sodomy
brought to trial from the same period between 1726 and 1730 four men were
hanged; eight were fined and sentenced to prison and the pillory (from which
one died); and three were acquitted. These numbers can be compared to
twelve heterosexual rape cases from the same period, where one was hanged,
one punished, and ten acquitted.14

Prosecutions in the Netherlands were even worse:

In 1730 and 1731 the Netherlands initiated a far more horrific purge in which
hundreds of men were arrested for sodomy and at least sixty were pub-
licly executed by ghastly means, such as strangling and burning, drowning
in a barrel, or strangling and drowning tied to a 100-​pound weight. These
executions were widely publicized in London … .
In 1738, with the initial blast of reformers’ zeal expended and public con-
cern over paid informers rising, the Societies for the Reformation of Manners
disbanded, giving themselves the credit in their final report for “instigating
the prosecution of numbers of sodomites and sodomitical houses.”15

14 Harris, Handel as Orpheus, pp. 241–​42.

15 Ibid., p. 241.
6 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism

It is worth noting that “throughout the eighteenth century [including during

Burke’s life time] the assailants of convicted sodomites in London consisted
largely of women who were encouraged thus to revenge the supposed insult
inflicted on them by men who loved other men,”16 precisely the mobs Burke
condemned in his 1780 speech to parliament.
This level of public opprobrium in the eighteenth century affected even those
not prosecuted:

As the cases of the dramatists Isaac Bickerstaff and Samuel Foote later in
the century would show, an accusation of sodomy was sufficient to ruin a
career. Even the aristocratic class, traditionally less affected by an accus-
ation or acknowledgement of same-​sex desire than were artists, merchants,
or laborers, was slowly retreating behind a wall of silence. Although at the
end of the seventeenth century Lord Rochester could banter publicly in his
writings about his same-​sex loves, Lord Hervey in the eighteenth century
not only avoided any public commentary about himself but when accused
in 1731 of being a “pathick” (the passive partner in a sodomitical rela-
tionship) fought a duel to protect his honor before retreating into silence.
When Lord Bateman separated from his wife in 1738 on account of his
“male seraglio,” he seems to have been spared legal action partly because
he maintained a façade of silence. His wife’s grandmother, the Duchess
of Marlborough, wrote of him at this time: “They say Lord Bateman has
consented to do great things in this separation, which, if true, shows he is
very much frightened.”17

Why such silence in the first half of the eighteenth century?—​“No written record
… expresses antipathy to or outrage against such extreme punishments.”18
The repressive psychology is clearly fear, whether the fear of Lord Bateman,
or that of Bentham himself, clearly admitted in the unpublished papers of the
English legal philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–​1842) who had published his
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1789 defending his
utilitarian theory that the object of law should be the greatest happiness of the
great number. These unpublished papers contain for the first time in a major
political and legal philosopher a cogent criticism not only of the criminalization
of homosexuality, but also of homophobia itself.19 But, in writing about this
unpublished work and probably his reasons for not publishing, Bentham writes:

16 Ibid., p. 234.
17 Ibid., p. 240.
18 Ibid., p. 230.
19 See Jeremy Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities, and Other Writings on Sexual Morality, edited
by Philip Schofield, Catherine Pease-​Watkin, and Michael Quinn (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2014).
 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism 7

A hundred times have I shuddered at the view of the perils I was exposing myself
to in encountering the opinions of men’s minds on [this] subject. As often have
I resolved to turn aside from a road so full of precipices, I have trembled at the
thoughts of the indignation that must be raised against the Apologist of a crime
that has been looked upon by many, and these excellent men, as one among the
blackest under Heaven. But the dye is now cast, & having thus far adhered with
the undeviating fidelity [to] the principles of general utility I at first adopted,
I will not at least abandon them for considerations of personal danger. I will
not have to reproach myself with the thought that those principles which my
judgment has approved, my fears have compelled me to abandon.20

We know with certainly who were “these excellent men” whom Bentham
so feared, in particular, Blackstone, whom Bentham had heard as a law stu-
dent at Oxford and was the critical object of much of Bentham’s utilitarian/​
positivist legal philosophy. It is important to remind ourselves that for a
quite long period the traditional cultural status of homosexuals in America
and Britain was not, unlike people of color or women, a servile social status
unjustly rationalized on racist or sexist grounds, but no space at all. It was, in
Blackstone’s words, “a crime not fit to be named; peccatum illud horribile,
inter christianos non nominandum” in his Commentaries, vol. 4, *215—​not
mentionable, let alone discussed or assessed. Blackstone’s Commentaries,
published in 1765, framed the American understanding of British common
law, adopted in the colonies and later in the states of the American republic,
as American common law, long before it was contested in Great Britain by
the Bloomsbury Group and others, linked by them to the critique of the vio-
lence of British imperial patriarchy, as I show in The Rise and Fall of the
British Empire21 (Britain would decriminalize consensual homosexuality in
1967). Such total silencing of any reasonable discussion rendered homosexu-
ality in America and Britain, a kind of cultural death, naturally thus under-
stood and indeed condemned as a kind of ultimate heresy or treason against
essential moral values. The English legal scholar Tony Honoré captured
this point exactly in Sex Law by his observation about the contemporary
status of the homosexual: “It is not primarily a matter of breaking rules but
of dissenting attitudes. It resembles political or religious dissent, being an
atheist in Catholic Ireland or a dissident in Soviet Russia.”22
It is against this background that we can see just how remarkable Burke’s par-
liamentary speeches of 1780 on sodomy prosecutions were. Ellen Harris, in her

20 Quoted in Harris, Handel as Orpheus, p. 231.

21 See David A. J. Richards, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire: Liberal Resistance and the
Bloomsbury Group (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
22 Tony Honoré, Sex Law (London: Duckworth, 1978) p. 89.
8 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism

path-​breaking study of Handel as, probably like Pope, a closeted homosexual,23

observes, after having described Bentham’s fear of going public with his indict-
ment of British homophobia:

On 11 April 1780, following another horrible death of a convicted sodomite

in the pillory (and the permanent injury of another), Edmund Burke, in what
was perhaps the first public statement on this issue in the House of Commons,
proposed a bill that would have abolished this form of punishment.24

A London newspaper reports the events Burke condemns:

A description of the “vast Concourse of People [that] had assembled upon the
Occasion … who had collected dead Dogs, Cats, … [etc.] in great Abundance,
which were plentifully thrown at them,” and of the death of one of the men
convicted for attempted sodomy and the horrible injuries of the other appears
in The Daily Advertiser, 11 April 1780, p. 1, col. 2.25

Burke’s great speech of 1780 begins with a quite precise description of these
newspaper reports:

He said, the matter which had induced him to make these reflections was
the perusal of a melancholy circumstances stated in the newspapers of this
morning … . The relation he alluded to, was that unhappy and horrid murder
of a poor wretch, condemned to stand in the pillory the preceding day. The
account stated that two men (Reed and Smith) had been doomed to this pun-
ishment; that one of them being short of stature, and remarkably shortnecked,
he could not reach the hole made for the admission of his head, in the awk-
ward and ugly instrument used in this mode of punishment; that the officers
of justice, nevertheless, forced his head through the hole, and the poor wretch
hung rather than walked as the pillory turned round: that previous to his being
put in, he had deprecated the vengeance of the mob, and begged that mercy,
which from their exasperation at his crime, and their want of considering the
consequences of their cruelty, they seemed very little to bestow. That he soon
grew black in the face and the blood forced itself out of his nostrils, his eyes

23 Harris’ case for this, based on both a close study of Handel’s life and works, is reasonable and
persuasive. See Richard Taruskin in his Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: The
Oxford History of Western Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), vol. 2, p. 340: “Many
scholars now agree, Handel, a lifelong bachelor, was probably what we now call a closeted
gay man.”
24 Harris, Handel as Orpheus, p. 231. Burke’s speech is given in The Parliamentary History of
England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London: Printed by T. C. Hansard, 1814),
vol. 21, cols. 388–​89.
25 Quoted in Harris, Handel as Orpheus, p. 409, n. 53.
 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism 9

and his ears. That the mob, nevertheless attacked him and fellow criminal
with great fury. That the officers seeing his situation, opened the pillory, and
the poor wretch fell down dead on the stand of the instrument. The other man,
he understood was so maimed and hurt by what had been thrown at him, that
he now lay without hope of recovery.26

After mentioning, as earlier noted in Kramnick’s quotation of the speech, what

would have been in this period a “mandatory depreciation”27 of a crime that
“could scarcely be mentioned, much less defended or extenuated,” Burke goes
on in the speech to deal with matters not mentioned by Kramnick, but dealing
with the law itself, namely, the use of the pillory “as much more severe than
execution at Tyburn, as to die in torment, was more dreadful than momentary
death.”28 As Louis Crompton makes clear in his more extensive discussion of
these events:

Burke then seized the occasion to propose that a bill be introduced to abolish
the pillory since it was open to such abuse. Burke’s brave and unprecedented
raising of the issue prompted others to voice their own misgivings. Another
member told how a man he had known at Bury, condemned for the same
crime, has swallowed poison fearing “the populace would be so exasperated
against him that they would take his life.” He was exposed the next day and
was “so severely treated by the populace that he dies that night in goal, and
whether he died from the poison, or in consequence of his ill treatment from
the mob had never been ascertained.”
Burke had the satisfaction of seeing the undersheriff for Surrey tried for
murder; not surprisingly, the jury acquitted him. Burke himself, though
complemented in the House on his humanity, suffering much abuse in the
press for his stand. The Morning Post complained: “Every man applauds
the spirit of the spectators, and every woman thinks their conduct right. It
remained only for the patriotic Mr. Burke to insinuate that the crime these
men committed should not be held in the highest detestation than igno-
minious death.” Four years later, the Public Advertiser also attacked Burke
maliciously for showing sympathy for homosexuals. In both cases Burke sued
for libel and won. He was able to obtain a pension for the dead coachman’s
widow, a circumstance that suggests that not all levels of British officialdom
were as passionately homophobic as the press.29

26 Quoted in Louis Crompton, Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in 19th-​Century England
(Berkley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 32.
27 Ibid.
28 Quoted in ibid.
29 Crompton, Byron and Greek Love, pp. 32–​33.
10 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism

In contrast to Crompton (publishing in 1985), Kramnick (publishing in

1977) deals with the issue of Burke’s homosexuality in the then current terms
among American psychiatrists and psychoanalysts (not, notably, Freud himself)
of neurosis,30 supposedly clarifying the sometimes extravagant invocations of
sexual abuse in his speeches, condemning, for example, the horrors of the British
treatment of Indian women (Kramnick’s book was published only four years
after the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 con-
troversially affirmed the ruling that homosexuality should be deleted from the
list of mental disorders, a view Freud himself had earlier advocated31). There is,
in my and Crompton’s view, nothing neurotic either in those speeches or in the
way Burke speaks in public, even as a public man in the House of Commons,
of unjust mob violence against a despised sexual minority, a mob violence, as
we shall shortly see, he himself also directly experienced as an alleged Catholic
sympathizer during the Gordon riots. If Kramnick and I are right about Burke’s
understandably repressed homosexuality, what is remarkable is that, even in
such a homophobic period, he expressed his liberal indignation in public cer-
tainly against forms of irrational mob violence and was condemned for it. That is
not neurosis, but a remarkable exercise of courageous liberal voice, an intimate
understanding of and feeling for unjustly despised minorities that was at the
psychological heart of Burke’s liberal constitutionalism and his astonishing
insights, as we shall see, into political violence. It also clarifies why, as we shall
see, Burke distinguished liberal constitutionalism from democracy.
It is astonishing to me that although all the biographies of Burke acknow-
ledge the love between Edmund and Will and many of them knew of Kramnick’s
remarkable book, none of them, except Kramnick and then through a glass
darkly, connects his remarkable record of sometimes politically effective lib-
eral indignation to the degree to which one of the great loves of his life was
for another man, to whom Burke stayed in relationship throughout their lives
(helping and supporting one another, including Edmund Burke’s understanding
of both America and India, in the latter of which Will was to spend some time
seeking employment); Will never marries.
Burke was to move in some of the most distinguished literary and political
circles of British London, a member of “the Club” including close friendships
with Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, Johnson’s biographer, as well as the

30 For criticism of this approach, see Kenneth Lewes, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male
Homosexuality (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988). For more recent discussions along these
lines, see R. W. Isay, Becoming Gay: The Journey to Self-​Acceptance (New York: Vintage,
1966); R. W. Isay, Being Homosexual: Gay Men and Their Development (New York: Vintage,
1989); R. W. Isay, Commitment and Healing: Gay Men and the Need for Romantic Love
(New York: Wiley, 2006); K. Corbett, Boyhoods: Rethinking Masculinities (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2009).
31 See, on this point, Lewes, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality, pp. 213–​41.
 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism 11

painter Joshua Reynolds, and other luminaries of the period. His intellectual
and expressive gifts were recognized and rewarded by the Rockingham Whigs,
and his long service as their spokesperson in the House of Commons placed
him at the center of British public life. He was also a committed Protestant
Anglican Christian. In a cultural world framed by Blackstone’s Christian homo-
phobia, whatever homoerotic feelings Burke had for Will and Will for him could
never be publicly acknowledged, but the depth of their long loving relationship,
as love, is, if anything, confirmed by how, as we earlier saw, his biographer
Stanley Ayling puzzles over what many regarded during Burke’s lifetime as his
“blinkered attachment” to Will, despite his improvidence, concluding: “There it
is: loves other than sexual may be as blind.”32 And why not sexual at some point
as well, as Kramnick documents? Why cannot we see and appreciate the power
of love, gay or straight, in a well-​lived human life in all its complexity?
It should be an important feature of our coming to honest terms with the
unreasonable treatment of sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular
by historical forms of Christianity33 that we can now better understand remark-
able people like Burke who had to accept such unreasonable treatment as nor-
mative, and yet still remain vitally alive in the homosexual love Burke held
onto throughout his life. Having myself lived through an earlier period of my
life quite like Burke’s, I understand this psychology intimately and how finding
and holding on to the love of another man becomes central to one’s sense of
a range of injustices inflicted on stigmatized minorities (afflicted by what
I called a culture of moral slavery directed at people of color, Jews, women,
and others34) even when that indignation cannot be directly expressed, as queer
people, like myself, may and do express it today.35 But, even under the repres-
sive circumstances of the cultural homophobia under which Burke lived, Burke
like other such creative men could and did. The psychiatrist Hans Loewald
offers a psychoanalytic view of sublimation not as a neurotic defense against
unacceptable impulses, but as a development of intellectual and emotionally
mature competence and ego strength36 that fits my own developmental experi-
ence and may fit Burke’s. On this view, which questions the distinction between

32 See Stanley Ayling, Edmund Burke: His Life and Opinions (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988),
p. 134.
33 For a fuller discussion, see Nicholas C. Bamforth and David A. J. Richards, Patriarchal Religion,
Sexuality, and Gender: A Critique of New Natural Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008).
34 For a fuller discussion, see Carol Gilligan and David A. J. Richards, The Deepening
Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance, and Democracy’s Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009), pp. 10, 18–​20, 72, 133–​34, 197, 215.
35 On my personal history, see David A. J. Richards, Boys’ Secrets and Men’s Loves: A Memoir
(Bloomington, IN.: Xlibris, 2019).
36 For Loewald on sublimation, see Hans W. Loewald, The Essential Loewald: Collected Papers
and Monographs (Hagerstown, MD: University Publishing Group, 2000), pp. 439–​520.
12 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism

primary and secondary processes,37 the experience of culturally forbidden desire

is developmentally transformed from quite early on into larger cultural patterns
of resisting injustice in other related areas, finding and speaking in a universalist
resisting voice that, in resisting injustices to the Irish, Americans, Indians, and
the French, was inspired, so I have to think, by the injustice inflicted on his
own personal and political life, finding and constructing culturally confirmed
interpersonal meaning through resistance. Burke’s remarkably contemporary,
almost anthropological focus on culture and cultural evolution, supports this
interpretation. What drew me to the closer study of Burke was my sense of what
his struggles were and how admirably he stood his ground, liberal resistance
becoming the core of his being and his larger political and constitutional sig-
nificance in the ongoing project of political liberalism. And political liberalism,
for Burke and for me, has a cultural evolution and an enduring human value in
any reasonable understanding of a humanism that can save us from war and vio-
lence, a point Kant saw roughly at the time Burke was writing.38
I believe I also understand why it was, in light of the unjust humiliations
Burke experienced as a repressed homosexual (the insults directed even at his
criticism of mob violence against a gay man), and as Irish and sympathetic to
Catholicism (again subject to mob violence), Burke understood so well the
psychology of terror, the central psychological insight of his Reflections, earlier
discussed in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful. It is what
Bentham acknowledges with such honesty when he explains his fear of even
writing about the issue: “A hundred times have I shuddered at the view of the
perils I was exposing myself to in encountering the opinions of men’s minds
on [this] subject.” Bentham was independently wealthy, and yet acknowledges
fear leading to silence: great wealth, as in the case of William Beckford (whom
Bentham had met), fled and never returned to Britain after newspapers disclosed
a sexual relationship with a 16-​year-​old.39 The only protection for gay men was
silence, or hypocrisy (James I, an active homosexual with aristocratic lovers,
“nevertheless, in his Basilikon Doron, ostentatiously listed sodomy as one of
the of the half-​dozen capital crimes that a king should never on any account
pardon”40). Burke, in contrast, was a member of the House of Commons, and yet
nonetheless publicly condemns homophobic violence facilitated by the pillory
as a punishment, which brings on him homophobic insult and contempt, which
no other man of this period was prepared to endure in order not to be silenced.
Speaking in this way and in this context appears to have been for Burke a

37 See Hans Loeward, “Primary Process, Secondary Process, and Language,” in The Essential
Loewald: Collected Papers and Monographs, pp. 178–​206.
38 See Hans Kant (ed.), “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” in Kant’s Political Writings
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 93–​130.
39 See Crompton, Byron and Greek Love, pp. 118–​20.
40 Ibid., p. 42. On Byron’s similar hypocrisy, see pp. 120–​21.
 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism 13

matter of his sense of public liberal responsibility as a member of the House of

Commons, not a private matter.41 Kramnick’s description of the speech is worth
at this point repeating:

Burke spoke eloquently in the House against this barbarity and secured a
pension for Smith’s widow. While sodomy was, he insisted, in his speech, “a
crime of all others the most detestable, because it tended to vitiate the morals
of the whole community, and to defeat the first and chief end of society,” the
punishment of it should be tempered with mercy, inasmuch as it was a crime
“of the most equivocal nature and the more difficult to prove.”42

Burke’s focus is on insensate mob violence, triggered, as we earlier learned,

by humiliated patriarchal womanhood: “throughout the eighteenth century the
assailants of convicted sodomites in London consisted largely of women who
were encouraged thus to revenge the supposed insult inflicted on them by men
who loved other men.”43 It is the same psychology of humiliation Burke was to
anatomize in the violent Parisian mobs, including the women, as we shall see,
attacking Marie Antoinette at Versailles. Such violent London mobs directed
at convicted homosexuals in the pillory were to continue in Britain well into
the nineteenth century; foreign visitors were reminded, when they saw street
women tormenting the prisoners, of the women of the French Revolution;44 and
newspapers, as in Burke’s time, urged on such populist vengeance, advocating
even the death penalty.45 The issue of such populist violence, elicited by the
supposed humiliation from unconventional or unusual “unnatural” gender roles
(Marie had certainly been so regarded in anti-​royalist propaganda of the period,46
including alleged adultery and lesbianism47), appears to be the heart of the matter,
as we can see in the very terms in which the Morning Post condemned Burke’s
defense of homosexuals: “Every man applauds the spirit of the spectators, and
every woman thinks their conduct right. It remained only for the patriotic Mr.

41 When the famed “Ladies of Llangollen,” who lived as a same-​sex couple privately in Wales,
were exposed by a newspaper, they asked Burke whether to sue for libel to protect their private
lives. He advised them not to sue. See Crompton, Byron and Greek Love, pp. 103–​04.
42 Kramnick, The Rage of Edmund Burke, p. 84.
43 Ibid., p. 234.
44 Crampton, Byron and Greek Love, pp. 165–​66.
45 Ibid., p. 167.
46 See Lynn Hunt, “The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette: Political Pornography and the Problem
of the Feminine in the French Revolution,” in Lynn Hunt (ed.), Eroticism and the Body Politic
(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 108–​31.
47 As an example of this widespread view not only in France, Samuel Johnson’s friend Hester
Thrale wrote a few months before the French revolution: “The Queen of France is at the Head
of a Set of Monsters call’d by each other Sapphists, who boast her Example; and deserve to be
thrown with the He Demons that haunt each other likewise, into Mount Vesuvius.” Quoted in
Crompton, Byron and Greek Love, pp. 35–​36.
14 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism

Burke to insinuate that the crime these men committed should not be held in
the highest detestation than ignominious death.” The newspaper approves the
violence and claims no one could be a true man or a true woman who did not
approve the violence. Even Bentham takes seriously and rationally exposes
the irrationality of the widespread homophobic view (found, for example, in
the Orpheus myth as told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses,48 Orpheus murdered
by the Thracian women—​dismembering him—​because of his preference for
men49) that homosexuality humiliates women, a view that rationalizes the vio-
lent homicidal rage of women and others in defense of patriarchal gender roles
now in doubt and thus at threat.50 The issue of enforcing patriarchal gender roles
is quite clear here, indeed by illimitable violence if anyone like the “sodomites”
flouts such roles or like Burke implicitly criticizes the violence enforcing such
gender roles. The violence of patriarchy could not be more salient, and Burke’s
resistance to it more telling about the depth of his liberalism and his psycho-
logical understanding of the roots of mob violence, the subject of “Reflections
on the Revolution in France.”
In his path-​breaking study of male violence based on his work with violent
criminals in American prisons, Dr. James Gilligan observes the central role
homophobia plays in the violence of such criminals inflicted on other criminals
with whom they are often having sex, consensually and non-​consensually.51
Indeed, Gilligan has come to think that homophobia, expressing violence
against men who love other men because they violate the norms of patriarchal
manhood, is implicit in male violence generally, inflicted on anyone (male or
female) who flouts patriarchal gender roles (personal communication from
James Gilligan). But, women are much less prone to homicidal violence than
men, so how should we understand the homophobic violence of the London and
Parisian mobs, including women prominently?
When women are homicidally violent, like Medea killing her children
when her lover abandons her for another woman, it arises from very extreme
humiliations, a shaming, as in Euripides’ play, in which, as Medea explains:

Yes, I can endure guilt, however horrible;

The laughter of my enemies I will not endure.52

48 See Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by David Raeburn (New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 385–​
86, 422–​25.
49 On this point, see Harris, Handel as Orpheus, pp. 32–​35, 43–​45, 155, 238–​39.
50 On this point, see Crompton, Byron and Greek Love, pp. 49–​52. On the shifts in gender
conceptions during this period, see Randolph Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution. Volume
One: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1998).
51 See Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution, pp. 76, 81, 83–​84, 156–​57, 164, 171, 189.
52 Euripides, “Medea,” in Medea and Other Plays, translated by Philip Vellacott (London: Penguin,
1963), pp. 17–​61 at 41.
 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism 15

As in many other such myths, there is a psychological reality behind them.

James Gilligan, for example, has seen this pattern in contemporary Medeas53
and suggested to me the same pattern in the London mobs (personal communica-
tion from Gilligan). In Medea’s case, the humiliation was of her extraordinarily
self-​sacrificial love for Jason (helping him secure the Golden Fleece and then
killing and dismembering her brother to distract her father following the fleeing
couple54); and she certainly sees women’s experience (giving birth) as not only
on a par with but worse than men in war.55 As she explains in the Euripides play
(see above quote), such shaming of her womanhood extinguishes any inhibiting
guilt she might otherwise feel. The homophobic mobs of women in London and
Paris assume the gender roles patriarchy rigidly prescribes for men and women,
namely that men must support women, and women’s economic and personal
well-​being (given the limited roles otherwise available to women) requires that
men must do so. But, many of the men, convicted as “sodomites,” were them-
selves married with children, and women, as required by patriarchy as reflected
in the illimitable violence of the Thracian women, violently enforce the gender
roles these men are assumed to have flouted and that they believe so threaten
them not only economically, but in their psyches so intimately (abandon-
ment shaming them). It is a familiar enough feature of patriarchy reflected in
Shakespeare’s penetrating psychological studies of women like Lady Macbeth
and Volumnia, the mother of Coriolanus, that wives like Lady Macbeth and
mothers like Volumnia enforce on their husbands or sons the codes of manhood
patriarchy requires, shaming them, as Lady Macbeth and Volumnia do, to ful-
fill their patriarchal roles, even unto their deaths.56 Indeed, the jealousy that
drives a Medea to violence when her husband betrays her with another woman
may be exacerbated under patriarchy when women are, by patriarchal law and
cultural convention, deemed to be threatened by men unspeakably loving other
men, but less so by the heterosexual dalliances of men under patriarchy. Men’s
heterosexuality under patriarchy is much freer than that of women, including
the eighteenth-​century male libertinism in Britain and rampant prostitution in
London.57 Patriarchy may limit women’s power under patriarchy to control het-
erosexual men; but homosexuals were an unspeakable caste apart and homo-
phobia was culturally encouraged, indeed mandated by law (including not only
the pillory, but sometimes hangings). For women in these mobs, gay men loving

53 See James Gilligan, Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic (New York: Vintage Books,
1997), pp. 20, 58.
54 See htttps://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Medea.
55 “I’d rather stand three times in the front line than bear/​One child:” Euripides, “Medea,” p. 25.
56 For a further discussion of both Lady Macbeth and Volumnia along these lines, see James
Gilligan and David A. J. Richards, Holding a Mirror Up to Nature: Shame, Guilt, and Violence
in Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. 67–​77, 89–​93.
57 Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution, pp. 69–​228.
16 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism

men would in such a homophobic culture be experienced as men abandoning

not only the indispensable support but the love women expected from men, an
abandonment of devoted love that would, like Medea’s abandonment by Jason,
be experienced an irreparable loss and thus a shaming of patriarchal woman-
hood that could be and was expressed in homicidal violence against persons
upon whom the legal culture itself unleashed violence. What is remarkable
is that, in a culture that terrorized even Bentham not to speak his mind about
the injustice of such mindless violence inflicted by law and the public, Burke
spoke in a public voice (in the House of Commons no less) condemning a
legal culture that encouraged such violence, and indeed connecting it, as he
did, to a larger understanding of the roots of anti-​liberal violence in France and
elsewhere.
As I argue at greater length below, Burke’s psychological argument is about
the strains and vulnerabilities in a culture in transition from a shame to a guilt
culture in which the emerging guilt culture, which I associate with democratic
liberalism, must deal with the still powerful shame culture that it is resisting.
Such shame cultures rest, as I have argued at length elsewhere,58 on a patriarchal
psychology, so clear in the Roman Republic, that violently wars on any perceived
threat to its entrenched patriarchal manhood, including Rome’s endless wars.
When patriarchy is at threat, as it is from the emergence of a guilt culture, it
reacts with irrational violence directed at the very convictions, often liberal, that
challenge it. Any liberal like Burke, who in fact was brought up in such a period
in transition, would experience intrapsychically such violence directed against
his liberal convictions, and this is, I believe, the background of how Burke came
to understand terror and its role in the repression of such convictions, including
doubts about the shame culture beliefs he still shared ambivalently at least to
some degree (e.g., doubts about its violent homophobia). Indeed, his parliamen-
tary speech appeals to shame not state-​enforced violence as the way to deal with
sodomy, which is consistent with his ambivalence, struggling with doubt arising
from internalized shame and guilt.
My reason for thinking this is precisely that even in a period when he would
stand absolutely nothing to gain and much to lose from exposing in parlia-
ment his liberal horror at the London mobs tearing a gay men limb from limb,
he chose to do so; and then there is as well his horror at the anti-​Catholic
London mobs during the Gordon riots directed at Burke largely because Burke,
though Protestant, was known to be critical of Britain’s illiberal policies
against the Catholic Irish. Burke knew the psychology of terror intimately, and
nothing was more terrifying in eighteenth-​century Britain than accusations of
homosexuality:

58 See Gilligan and Richards, The Deepening Darkness, pp. 9–​120.

 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism 17

So potent an instrument of terror were they that judges of the King’s Bench
ruled in 1779 that their use in extortion cases made the crime equivalent to
highway robbery at pistol point.59

Burke’s greatest achievement was to bring to the public mind of a culture in

transition from patriarchy to liberalism the reactionary threat of violent homo-
phobia, and the like, to political liberalism, which he apparently was the first to
see and take seriously understandably in light of the culturally important tran-
sition from a shame to a guilt culture he both observed and advanced in late
eighteenth-​century Europe and America. It is a political tragedy that his critique
was thought by many in Europe to align him with a reactionary authoritarian and
absolutist monarchist culture he in fact despised.
Why the difference between Bentham and Burke? Burke was not, of course,
prepared to go as far as Bentham in his critique of British homophobia, but in
focusing on mob violence he is in fact publicly highlighting and exposing crit-
ically irrational homophobic violence, about which Bentham never publishes in
his life time though he was the first political theorist who condemned it as well
as the criminalization of homosexually so unequivocally and with such great
and clarifying rational force. There is to me a salient point of the psychology
that moves to resistance to injustice that explains and clarifies Burke’s speech,
namely, his continuing love for Will Burke that nourished and supported both
of them throughout their lives both personally and politically. Only an enduring
love that strong sustains, in my experience, the kind of resisting voice Burke
found in himself and was moved to give voice to in the most political and
public of places, the House of Commons. If liberalism means anything, it means
the value and importance of that kind of voice based on the human rights of
despised and outcast minorities; and if constitutional government means any-
thing, it means a space for that voice must be constitutionally protected. On
this point, Ellen Harris’ comment on Handel’s probable same-​sex loves in a still
homophobic and sexist culture is illuminating:

Within the context of the eighteenth century, it would have been normal for
Handel to share his creative and intellectual interests with men. Generally
speaking, women were still not given the benefit of a serious education,
so that the “marriage of true minds” could only occur between men—​
suggesting at least one possible reason the biblical David could say of his
deceased friend Jonathan. “The love to me was wonderful, passing the love
of women.”60

59 Crompton, Byron and Greek Love, p. 125.

60 Harris, Handel as Orpheus, p. 22.
18 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism

Burke was apparently quite happily married and devoted to his children, but his
enduring love for Will gave him something unique, “tenderly loved, highly valued,
and continually lived with, in an union not to be expressed, quite since our boyish
years,”61 a love that lasted and played a significant role in Burke’s understanding of
both America and India, on which he drew in two of his great acts of liberal resist-
ance (America and India). Such a gender-​bending love itself gives rise to resistance
to protect not only the love itself, but, as in Burke’s case, a wider resistance to other
forms of injustice.62
The other humiliation Burke endured has been explored by Conor Cruise
O’Brien’s The Great Melody,63 namely, the humiliation of being of Irish eth-
nicity with a Catholic mother and wife, combining the peculiarly British toxic
brew of ethnic and religious prejudice. In contrast to his homosexuality, on this
issue Burke spoke and wrote quite explicitly not only about the long-​standing
British injustice of ethnic and religious prejudice against the Irish,64 but, quite
prophetically, that the failure to extend the toleration required by political liber-
alism would lead to the Anglophobia of Irish revolutionary violence, including
terrorism.65 Burke had written of the treatment of Catholics in Ireland “no good
Constitution of Governm[en]t can find it necessary for its security to form any
part of its subject to permanent slavery.”66 Both because of his Irish ethnicity
and Catholic family connections (in fact, Burke was a committed Anglican),
Burke had experienced throughout his life in Britain the populist irrational
prejudices arising from the long history of intolerance of Catholics both in
England and Ireland, including, notably, both him and his London home being
targeted by the violent mobs of the Gordon riots, triggered by the demagogy of
Lord George Gordon protesting the measure of parliamentary emancipation of
Catholics in the Catholic Relief Act of 1778.67 Important studies by Tim Clayton
of the general pattern of political caricature of this period (including some not-
able attacks on Burke)68 and the study of Nicholas Robinson on caricatures of

61 Ayling, Edmund Burke, p. 72.

62 On this point, see David A. J. Richards, Why Love Leads to Justice: Love across the Boundaries
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
63 See Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
64 On the historical roots of Irish Anglophobia, see R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600–​1972
(London: Penguin, 1989).
65 On this point, see Bourke, Empire and Revolution, pp. 783–​800.
66 Quoted in ibid., p. 409.
67 On this matter, see F. P. Lock, Edmund Burke, Volume I: 1730–​1784 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1998), pp. 467–​66. On both Scottish and English anti-​Catholic riots, see Bourke, Empire and
Revolution, pp. 406–​19.
68 Tim Clayton, James Gillray: A Revolution in Caricature (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2022).
 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism 19

Burke in particular69 prominently feature his representation as an aggressive

rather feminized Catholic Jesuit, identified by his spectacles and pointed nose.
One even depicts Burke, at the time of his opposition to the French Revolution,
as “a Contest between two old Ladies,”70 touching on issues of deviant gender
as well as deviant religion.
Burke, as a political liberal, clearly accepted Locke’s argument for a right to
revolution when the state violated the human rights respect for which is a condi-
tion for the legitimacy of government.71 What led to his publication of his most
important book, Reflections on the Revolution in France, namely, the defense
by Richard Price of the French Revolution on such grounds, was that “British
defenders [like Price and others] of 1789, in interpreting the French Revolution
as a reprise of [the Glorious Revolution] of 1688, had confused the glorious
deliverance accomplished by William III with the tragedy of the 1640s,” the
English Civil War.72 Understanding the difference between the revolution of the
1640s and of 1688 is the key to understanding Burke’s constitutional liberalism.
The English Civil War was for Burke and other British liberals a tragedy, not
because it was not founded on the right to revolution against Charles I’s assertion
of absolute monarchy, but because its leaders, Cromwell and others, success-
fully formed and led the New Model Army, based on a religiously informed
egalitarian solidarity among its soldiers, that decisively defeated Charles’ forces,
but then rejected both the appeal of its soldiers for a written constitution at the
Putney Debates and democratic legitimation by the still existing institutions, the
Commons and Lords, left after Charles’ execution.73
The closest the New Model Army came to reasonable deliberation on a new
constitution was the Putney Debates:

Several days were given over to debating a new, more radical document,
the Agreement of the People. Embodying the truly novel and revolutionary
concepts of the sovereignty of the people over Parliament, and a written con-
stitution enacted by the signatures of all the freeborn men of England, it also
delineated a set of key points that were to be reserved to the people alone and
that no government could exercise. Without monarch or House of Lords, it
envisioned a single-​chamber representative model of a free state—​in short a
republic. Although its authority was anonymous, the Agreement was at one
level simply the New Model’s “fulfilling of our Declaration of June the 14,”

69 Nicholas K. Robinson, Edmund Burke: A Life in Caricature (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1996).
70 See ibid., p. 136.
71 On this point, see Bourke, Empire and Revolution, pp. 498–​506.
72 Ibid., p. 685.
73 For a fuller discussion, see Ian Gentles, The New Model Army: Agent of Revolution (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2022).
20 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism

as its authors affirmed in their postscript. Printed on the army’s own press,
it was essentially an army, not a Leveller document. There was obviously
Leveller input—​from William Walwyn, John Wildman, Maximilian Petty
and Henry Marten. But in the end if came from a “thoroughly politicised
army that was capable of thinking for itself.”74

The Agreement enjoyed support within the army, but was resisted by the army’s
leaders, Cromwell and Ireton. After the Agreement was read out, Ireton objected to
universal manhood suffrage:

Rainborowe, confident in his audience, took up Ireton’s challenge in words that

still ring in our ears after nearly four centuries: “Really I think that the poorest
he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, Sir,
it’s clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own
consent to put himself under the government.”
Ireton countered with a doctrine of political rights for the propertied alone,
meaning landowners and merchants: “No person hath a right … in choosing
those that shall determine what laws we shall be ruled by here … that has not a
permanent fixed interest in its kingdom.” … .
Seemingly unaware that almost the whole room was against him, Ireton
stubbornly stuck to his position … . The debate dragged on until finally John
Wildman exploded with anger. Contemptuous of Ireton’s reverence for his-
tory, precedent and law, he demands to know what principle they have fought
for if not that “all government is in the free consent of the people.” Colonel
Rainborowe’s brother William pithily observed that human rights were more
important than property rights: “my person … is more dear than my estate.”
Sexby, the only accredited agitator to speak that day, passionately defended the
interests of the private soldiers who had borne the heat and burden of the day: “it
seems now except a man hath a fixed estate in this kingdom, he hath no right in
this kingdom. I wonder we were so much deceived.”75

If there was to be no accountability to the soldiers of the New Model Army, there
was little accountability either to the parliamentary institutions that continued
to exist, as Cromwell essentially used military force to exclude members of
parliament with whom he disagreed and insisted on the execution of Charles
that few wanted and most came to regret.76 Cromwell’s militarism, in Ireland,
for example, took the form of mindless retributivism against Catholics for their
1641–​42 massacre of Protestants, leading to his own massacres of Catholics

74 Ibid., p. 94.
75 Ibid., p. 57.
76 Ibid., pp. 128–​57.
 Burke’s Liberal Constitutionalism 21

(some 300,000)77 and his refusal to allow the practice of Catholicism.78 And
he established the plantations in Ireland to reward his Protestant soldiers and
others, setting the stage for the colonial system in Ireland at the expense of
majority Catholics.79 After the death of Cromwell, the last gasp of revolu-
tionary militarism was the announcement by the last military junto that all pre-
vious parliamentary laws were invalid. “This was the first time in England’s
history that an army or any other body had even presumed to cancel an Act
of Parliament.”80 Some British people may happily have welcomed back the
monarchy, resenting the suppression of traditional festive culture—​“Morris dan-
cing, Christmas celebrations, Sabbath sports, bear-​baiting, cockfighting, horse-​
racing, the theatre and alehouses,” as well as, more seriously, “the ballooning
expense of an increasingly bloated army … . In later centuries the New Model
Army would be admired for having tamed absolute monarchy, advanced the
cause of democracy and begun the long process of law reform. The other aspect
of its legacy would be the enduring popular suspicion of standing armies, and an
aversion to Puritanism.”81
As we earlier saw, Burke’s argument in Reflections was prompted by the
defense of the French Revolution by a British radical Whig, Richard Price, and
at the very beginning expressly connects Price’s defense, both in spirit and con-
tent, to a sermon during the English Civil War of Hugh Peter,82 “the Independent
chaplain who had fortified the army before its marched on London for Pride’s
purge in 1648. Like Price, in preaching love to mankind, Peter is alleged to have
spread hatred among fellow citizens … . It was no accident that Burke chose to
juxtapose Price’s sermon with the exhortations of a seventeenth-​century regi-
cide preacher.”83 How was Peter connected to the tragedy of the 1640s?

Peter had played a notorious role in the climax of the decade, conspiring
with Ireton and Cromwell to secure the execution of the king. On the eve
of Charles I’s death, he delivered a gruesome sermon based on Isiah 14:19–​
20: “thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch.” An address at
St. James’s Chapel on 28 January 1648 beseeching the saintly to “bind their
kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron” enjoyed notoriety even
after the restoration. In the fifth volume of his History of England, Hume
cited as a favourite “among the enthusiasts of that age.” It was most probably

77 Ibid., pp. 181–​82, 196.

78 Ibid., p. 190.
79 Ibid., pp. 194–​208.
80 Ibid., p. 301.
81 Ibid., p. 320–​21.
82 See Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” in Hampsher-​Monk,
Revolutionary Writings, pp. 3–​250 at 12–​13.
83 Bourke, Empire and Revolution, p. 685.
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a view to his exercising a general supervision over the Battalions [of
Guards] in England, including those at Aldershot; all communications
having reference to the Brigade of Guards will be addressed to him
in future, instead of the Field-Officer in Brigade Waiting as
heretofore.

It may be well to explain that, previous to this appointment,

orders to the Brigade had been issued by the Field-Officer in Brigade
Waiting—a Commanding Officer of a Guards Regiment or Battalion,
taken by roster—who is always an Officer of the Sovereign’s
Household. The effect of the order just quoted, was to place a
General Officer in actual command of the Brigade, while the Field
Officer in Brigade Waiting was still retained to fulfil the Court duties,
he being, as formerly, the direct medium of communication between
the Court and the Household Infantry.[364]

344. Brigade Order , Nov. 23, 1854.

345. See Appendix, No. XI.

346. Brigade Order , April 1, 1854.

347. The following order was published upon this occasion, Aug. 27th: “The
Major-General Commanding, [at Aldershot] desires to express to the
Commanding Officer his sense of the general good conduct of the Battalion
and the attention they have paid to their drill during the time they have been
under his command, and to request them to accept his thanks accordingly.”

348. For stations occupied by the Coldstream, see Appendix No. XV.

349. It will be remembered that the north side of Sevastopol commands the
south side. The capture of the former would have jeopardized the latter; but
the fall of the south side left the other intact.

350. Hamley, War in the Crimea , p. 296. These forces continued to

increase, and by Christmas, 1855, the British army in the Crimea was still
more numerous than is stated in the text, and there were 120 guns; besides,
a reserve force was collected at Aldershot, and amounted to over 18,000 men
in April, 1856; at which time it appears we had in the East about 60,000 men
(excluding transport, etc.).
 351. While this important event was taking place, the bulk of the British
army was engaged in improving the communications of the Chersonese—a
work which cost us much labour and was of little use to us, though shortly
afterwards, when the peace was signed, it was of great value to the Russians.

352. The duties in the Karabelnaya district were composed of seven guards,
amounting all told to 2 Captains, 4 Subalterns, 12 sergeants, 2 drummers, 12
corporals, and 249 privates.
At first the Brigade supplied 500 men daily for road-making; but later in the
year these parties were frequently double that strength. It also furnished
large fatigue-parties of several hundred men to bring up huts from Balaklava,
wherein to lodge the troops.
Musketry was carried out with considerable energy during the winter
months, and special orders on the subject were issued by the Commander of
the Forces.

353. Pliny describes the great eruption of Vesuvius which overwhelmed

Pompeii, as having at first the appearance of a gigantic pine tree emerging
from the volcano.

354. Nolan, ii. 638. Assistant-Surgeons Wyatt and Trotter of the Coldstream
gained the special thanks of the French authorities for the assistance they
afforded to the wounded upon that occasion.
It appears that our troops had cause to be somewhat accustomed to this
class of misadventure. Under date Nov. 14th, Colonel Tower writes, “On guard
in the Redan; as I was walking about inside the works, I met two of my men
who were off duty, with pipes in their mouths, wandering about. I cautioned
them, and told them there had been many accidents. A short time afterwards
my sergeant came rushing up to me with all his eyebrows singed off, to tell
me Goodram and Bates (the two men) were buried alive in a Russian
magazine. I got Engineers, and we dug for a long time in smoking ruins; at
last we came upon them, burnt to cinders, and hardly a bone in either of their
bodies that was not broken.... They died soon after we got them out.
Goodram was a most gallant fellow, and would have got the V.C. for going
into the Redan with the assaulting party on the 8th of September. They had
trodden on a fougasse left, probably on purpose, by the enemy when he
evacuated.”
Private Goodram, it appears, slipped out of camp at night, September 7th-
8th, crept close to the Redan in the dark, and joined the leading files of the
storming party. He greatly distinguished himself during the assault, and is said
to have been the first man to reach the parapet of the work.
 355. Wyatt, 91. Written in 1858, before the small barracks in Portman
Street and St. George’s ceased each to contain the head-quarters and the
main portion of a Guards Battalion.

356. Ibid. , p. 91.

357. Wyatt, 92, 93.

358. “A ball will be given to-morrow, in honour of the birth of the Imperial
Prince, by the Officers of the 1st Division of the Corps of Reserve French
army, in their camp on the Woronzoff road, near the Sardinian army, to which
all the English ladies and the Officers of the English army are invited. Officers
attending the ball will appear in full dress uniform, but without swords and
spurs” (Head-Quarter Memo. , March 31, 1856).

359. Wyatt, 97; see Appendix No. XII. 3.

360. Five more were transferred to the Regiment (during the war); after
they had left the Crimea, viz. Majors Hon. W. Boyle, Conolly, V.C., and Maxse
(the two last wounded), Captain Hedworth Jolliffe, and Lieutenant W. Stirling.
The latter fought against the Russians in the Navy, as did also Lieutenant W.
F. Seymour (who, however, joined the Coldstream in the Crimea). Naval-Cadet
J. B. Sterling, moreover, served in the war, but he was not gazetted to the
Regiment till 1861.

361. The difference made in the Regiment by the war will be seen by
comparing the above with the following, giving the list in February, 1854:—
Lieut.-Colonel.—Colonel H. Bentinck.
Majors.—Colonels C. Hay; Hon. A. Upton.
Captains.—Colonels W. Codrington; Hon. G. Upton; J. Clitherow; G.
Drummond; (Mounted). Lieut.-Colonels Lord F. Paulet; H. Daniell; Hon. R.
Boyle; W. Newton: Colonel W. Trevelyan: Lieut.-Colonels S. Perceval; M.
Tierney; T. Crombie; Hon. T. V. Dawson; T. Steele; H. Cumming; W. M. Wood.
Lieutenants.—Captains C. Cocks; P. Somerset; J. C. Cowell; J. Halkett; D.
Carleton; Lord A. C. FitzRoy; C. Burdett; F. Newdigate (Adjutant); L.
MacKinnon; Sir G. Walker, Bart.; W. Dawkins; H. Jolliffe; C. Strong; Lord
Dunkellin; C. Wilson; Hon. A. Hardinge; F. Burton; Hon. P. Feilding (Adjutant);
W. Reeve; Hon. G. Eliot; C. Baring; J. H. Le Couteur; H. Bouverie; H.
Armytage.
Ensigns.—Lieutenants Hon. H. Byng; A. Thellusson; H. Cust; P. Crawley; Sir
J. Dunlop, Bart.; G. Goodlake; F. Ramsden; Lord Bingham; H. Tower; Hon. W.
Wellesley; Hon. R. Drummond; P. Wyndham; E. Disbrowe; A. Fremantle; C.
Greville; M. Heneage.
Quartermasters.—A. Hurle; A. Falconer.
 Surgeon-Major.—J. Munro, M.D. Battalion Surgeon.—J. Skelton, M.D.
Assistant-Surgeons.—F. Wildbore; J. Wyatt.

362. See Appendix, No. XIII.

363. Appendix XII. It will be observed that the losses mentioned in the text
do not take into account those of the Navy incurred on board ship. On the 8th
of May, 1856, Lord Panmure made a statement in the House of Lords, to the
effect that from the 19th of September, 1854 (that is, the day before the
battle of the Alma), 270 Officers and 19,314 men were killed, or died of
wounds or of disease, and that 2873 men were discharged the service as
incapacitated for further service by war; total, 22,457 casualties,—excluding,
apparently, soldiers who died on board ship, sailors and marines serving on
shore, and departmental troops. It seems strange that this imperfect
statement should be sometimes quoted, instead of the return above
mentioned, even though the latter is far from being satisfactory, and does not
complete the tale of the losses to the Naval and Military Forces of the Crown
during the war with Russia.

364. For some years, after 1856, it appears that the Field-Officer in Brigade
Waiting continued to exercise considerable control over the military affairs of
the Guards. The Major-General Commanding issued general orders, the
details of which were carried out by the Field-Officer. Between 1856 and 1868
the Foot Guards were called a Division; but April 27th of the latter year, the
old term Brigade was again restored, and it was directed that the General’s
orders should be called “Brigade Orders,” while those emanating from the
Field-Officer should be termed “Sub-brigade Orders.” The “Sub-brigade Office”
was abolished February 28, 1873. The Home District, created in 1870, was
placed under the command of the Major-General Commanding the Brigade of
Guards, and this arrangement still prevails.
 CHAPTER XIII.
A PERIOD OF WAR, 1856-1871.

Reductions after the war—Comparison between the situations in Europe, in 1815 and
in 1856—Fresh troubles and complications imminent—Many wars and
disturbances—Scientific instruction introduced into the army—Practical training of
the troops carried out—The material comfort of the soldier attended to—Military
activity in England in 1859—The Earl of Strafford succeeded by General Lord
Clyde—Death of H.R.H. the Prince Consort—Misunderstanding with the United
States of America—Chelsea barracks completed—Marriage of H.R.H. the Prince of
Wales—Death of Lord Clyde; succeeded by General Sir W. Gomm—The Brigade of
Guards Recruit Establishment—Public duties in London—Fenian troubles in
Ireland; the 1st and 2nd Battalions succeed each other there; the Clerkenwell
outrage—Reforms in the armament of the British infantry.

The termination of the Crimean war, though it entailed considerable

reductions in the army, was not accompanied by the acute distress that
marked the close of the great struggle with France in 1815. In the latter
case, the country had been seriously engaged with a formidable enemy
for twenty years, and was constrained to devote all its resources to
crush him. For nearly a generation, Great Britain had been a nation
standing in arms, and thriving, so to speak, upon the success of her
operations by sea and by land. The sudden cessation of hostilities, and
the no less abrupt and violent change from a strong war footing to a
small peace establishment, caused a temporary dislocation in trade,
and this contributed in no small degree to create an unfortunate effect
upon the economic conditions under which the people were then living.
Whereas, in the more recent case, we were engaged for a relatively
short space of time, and were not involved in efforts which could bear
comparison with those we had been obliged to make earlier in the
century. Hence we were able to diminish our armaments without
incurring the same difficulties that had previously oppressed the
industry of the country; and arrangements could be safely made to
reduce the regular army by 50,000 men, and to disband all those other
forces that were brought together for the purposes of the Russian war.
On the 1st of November, 1856, the establishment of the Regiment was
diminished by some 600 men, and was fixed on the following scale:—
Colonel. 1
Lt.-Colonel. 1
Majors. 2
Captains. 20
Lieutenants. 24
Ensigns. 16
Adjutants. 2
Qr.-Masters. 2
Surgn.-Major. 1
Surgeon. 1
Assist.-Surgns. 5
Solicitor. 1
Sergeants. 92
Drummers. 34
Rank and File. 1600
2 Battalions, 10 Cos.
each.
Another difference between the peace of 1815 and that of 1856 is
also of sufficient importance to require a notice. The final defeat of
Napoleon at Waterloo found Europe exhausted by the long wars of the
French Revolution; and the Congress of Vienna effected such a
settlement among the civilized nations, of apparently so stable a
character, that all Governments believed in the certainty of a protracted
period of international tranquillity. Nor was this expectation
disappointed, and for forty years there were no complications to disturb
the political order that had then been established. But the assurance of
peace led many to suppose that the era of war had come to an end,
and we in this country were inclined to adopt that view—to such an
extent, at least, that we deprived the army of some of the departments
which are necessary to its existence in the field. So to say, we hid the
remnant of the standing army away from the sight of the nation, as an
institution almost out of harmony with the spirit of the age, and as an
instrument of offence which would scarcely be again required for
practical use. The warlike traditions of the past, however, remained in
full vigour among the British troops, between 1815 and 1854; nor was
there any relaxation of the strict principles of soldierlike bearing and
conduct which had been inaugurated and enforced by the Duke of York
and by the Duke of Wellington. No troops were more highly disciplined
than those that belonged to the British army; among none had the
military spirit and tone been so carefully fostered and so fully
developed: and it was due to the splendid qualities which had been
instilled into them, that the achievements of our men in the Crimea
commanded the respect and the admiration of the world. But the
knowledge of even elementary military sciences failed us; no instruction
beyond drill was given; we had little organization, no warlike grouping
or cohesion of units, no transport, no real power to take the field or to
utilize there the magnificent troops which their Officers had formed.
The struggle with Russia had revealed these defects; and, taught in the
bitter school of adversity, we were naturally slow, when the peace was
signed, to destroy entirely those auxiliary services which had been so
painfully created in the midst of war.
Now, the year 1856 was not like its predecessor, the end of a
disturbed period; it marked the very commencement of a new era of
European complications. The statesmen of the day were filled with no
illusions, and were well aware of the unsettled state of affairs which the
peace of 1856 had inaugurated. The Italian question was directly
raised; Austria lost credit by her weak and vacillating action, and had
become despised and isolated; steps to secure the aggrandisement of
Prussia were already prepared; the policy of Napoleon III. was obscure
and uncertain. Changes in the old landmarks of the Continent and
serious trouble loomed in the near future. The threatening aspect of
the coming storm, in short, was easy to be discerned: it was only too
manifest that England might have to defend her rights, and could not
afford, at such a moment, to neglect the affairs of her army and navy.
As events turned out, the war-cloud hovered over the whole world,
and oppressed humanity with more or less intensity until 1871. Great
Britain had to contend against many difficulties; but they were not of
serious importance, except the Indian Mutiny,—which, breaking out
unexpectedly in 1857, was not crushed finally until 1859,—and except
the rapid advance of Russia across the barren steppes of Central Asia
towards the frontiers of our Empire of India. Of our minor troubles, we
may note: the Persian war, in 1856-57; the expedition to China, in
1857-61; the subjugation of the Maori natives in New Zealand, 1864;
the invasion of Abyssinia, 1867-68; and the threatened dispute with the
United States, 1861. In none of these, except the last, was the Brigade
of Guards concerned. On the borders of Europe, the Caucasian
Switzerland of Circassia was finally overpowered and assimilated with
Russia, and the one barrier to her progress in the East was at last
swept away, 1859. Nor was America free from disturbance. The United
States, torn by dissensions, fought a fratricidal war of secession, 1861-
64, that ended in re-establishing the authority of the Northern States
over the revolted South; while that political stormy petrel, Napoleon
III., took part in a policy of adventure, by attempting, though
unsuccessfully, to establish French influence, under cover of an Austrian
prince, in Mexico. But in Europe itself the trouble was greater: France
and Sardinia attacked Austria in Lombardy in 1859, and forced her to
relinquish her possession of that province; Italy also rose in rebellion
against the Princes that then ruled her States, and was consolidated
into one kingdom under Victor Emanuel, our late ally in the Crimea. In
1859, also, Napoleon III. showed considerable animosity against
England, and it was thought by many that there would be war with
France. In 1864, Austria and Prussia joined to wrest the Duchies of
Schleswig Holstein from Denmark: and two years later, having
quarrelled over the booty, they came to blows, when Prussia defeated
her rival hopelessly in the short and sharp campaign of a few weeks'
duration in Bohemia, and acquired a complete ascendency over
Germany. Italy, at the same time also, was enabled by foreign aid, to
compel Austria to surrender her hold on Venetia. Then came the great
war of 1870-71, when France and Prussia, regarding each with mutual
jealousy and international hatred, engaged in deathly strife, that
resulted in the fall of Napoleon, in the signal defeat of France, and in
the refounding of the German Empire under the autocracy of Prussia.
 The results of these constant contests upon our own army were not,
of course, immediately apparent, nor could they produce a decided
effect all at once upon the course of our military administration. But
sufficient has been said to show that there were obvious reasons why
the lethargy which affected the vital concerns of the forces of the
Crown in 1815, was not reproduced in 1856, and how it came about
that the nation began to take an increased interest in these most
important affairs.
The Officers of the British army formed at that time a competent
body. Taken from a class where the best leaders of men might be
expected to be found, trained in the manly school of field sports and of
outdoor exercises, brought up to early habits of obedience and of
discipline, and endowed with the faculty of commanding the respect
and the confidence of their subordinates, they were as well qualified to
manage the rank and file placed under them in peace time, as they
were conspicuous for their bravery and for the good example they set
when danger pressed, or when difficulties were to be overcome in war
time. One thing only did they lack—they had little scientific knowledge
of their profession. To remedy this grave deficiency, a Council of Military
Education was appointed in May, 1857, to superintend the system of
education introduced among the Officers, and the examinations of
candidates for admission to the service. It cannot be stated that this
subject had been entirely ignored in the past, but it had been little
regarded. After 1857, however, considerable attention was given to it,
and the new system eventually expanded to its present dimensions—
adding, in fact, to the army, as part of itself, a military University, where
degrees are bestowed upon graduates, in their various ranks, who pass
its examinations. These degrees attesting the scientific and theoretical
proficiency of the candidates then became a necessary qualification for
promotion in the service, at first to the rank of Captain only, but
subsequently to a higher grade. In this respect, the policy has rather
been to form an examining Board, for the purpose of testing the
acquirements of Officers, than to institute something more akin to a
teaching University, with the result that what is called “cramming” (or
hasty learning of special subjects) has been largely increased, to the
detriment perhaps of a more solid system of instruction. At any rate,
whilst the old leaven of manhood and of common sense which has ever
characterized the body of British Officers has not been weakened, a
form of education calculated to teach technical and scientific duties in
the field has been accepted with gratitude and satisfaction.
This important reform was supplemented by H.R.H. the Duke of
Cambridge, the new Commander-in-Chief, who carried on the work,
initiated by his predecessor, Lord Hardinge, which had been strongly
urged by H.R.H. the Prince Consort. The camp of instruction established
at Chobham in 1853 was moved to Aldershot, in the midst of a wide
extent of heather country; the Crimean huts were erected there, and
the head-quarters of a new military district were formed, where
manœuvres could be undertaken by large bodies of troops, and where
the men could be taught practically their numerous duties in the field.
As will be seen, Guards Battalions were often sent there for this
purpose. Nor was musketry neglected. Officers were told off as
instructors in the art of correct shooting with the rifle that had been
introduced into the service; every soldier was trained individually in its
use, in a systematic way and in accordance with the regulations laid
down at the School of Instruction established at Hythe; parties,
moreover, of Officers, Non-commissioned officers, and men were
constantly sent there to undergo a course of musketry, and receive a
certificate of efficiency in that very necessary branch of their military
training.[365]
It has been noted that General Sir W. Codrington utilized the time
when warlike operations practically ceased in the Crimea, by directing
that all British soldiers should be put through an efficient course of
musketry. After the war, the Guards continued to shoot on the range at
Kilburn, but in 1859 a camp was formed for them at Ash, where rifle
practice was carried out by companies, sent there in succession from
the Battalions in England during the spring and summer months. Next
year a Mounted Officer with a regular staff took command of the camp.
Though Ash and Aldershot were the usual places selected for the
Guards' musketry, companies were also sometimes sent to Eastbourne
and to Gravesend for this purpose.
In the winter months marching was practised, and great gun drill was
taught.[366] In 1861, gymnastic training was introduced, and in
September of that year, sergeants from the Brigade were sent through
a course, so as to qualify as instructors. A gymnasium was about this
time first constructed at St. John’s Wood barracks, and companies were
required to go there for a few weeks at a time. The gymnasium at
Chelsea barracks was ready in 1865, and another at Windsor in 1870.
The physical development of their men had before this been a special
interest to the Officers of the Brigade, who endeavoured to introduce a
system of outdoor gymnastics in the Guards, as far back as 1843. The
practice, however, on being objected to by the Duke of Wellington, was
given up.[367]
It should be mentioned here that signalling courses were not
introduced into the army until 1869. Much attention was then
immediately given to this subject in the Brigade, and the Battalions of
Foot Guards were frequently complimented upon the efficiency they
displayed as signallers.
While military training in many of its various important aspects was
eagerly attended to, and was put upon a basis from which it could
receive its proper development, the material comforts and welfare of
the men were not neglected.[368] The cooking arrangements of the men
in the Crimea had been signally defective, as much on account of the
conditions under which they were placed, as by reason of the very little
knowledge which they had of the subject. This, no doubt, was a serious
want, and it militated against the health of the soldier. A school of
cookery was established at Aldershot in 1862, and Non-commissioned
officers were sent there to be trained in the new system then adopted.
Considerable interest was taken in this matter in the Brigade, reports
were frequently called for, and experimental stoves set up to secure the
best results combined with economy. Sergeant Cooks were appointed in
the Coldstream—in the 1st Battalion, December, 1863, and in the 2nd
Battalion, in the following March; but it was not until May, 1868, that
the establishment of the Regiment was increased by two sergeants for
this purpose, nor was it until May of the year before, that the assistant
cooks were struck off other duties. As part of the same subject, it may
be noted that the Commissariat Store at Chelsea barracks for the bread
and meat to be issued to the troops in London, was established
December 1, 1865, and an inspecting board of three Officers met daily
to examine and to report upon the supplies furnished by the
contractors.
 Reforms in the canteen system were introduced shortly after the
Crimean war. In conformity with instructions contained in the
Quartermaster-General’s letter of the 30th of November, 1857, boards
of Regimental Field-Officers were assembled quarterly to revise the
prices of articles sold, and to report upon the canteens inspected by
them. The accounts were examined more frequently, and suggestions
were invited as to the management of these institutions. In 1864,
groceries began to be supplied to the messes, so that the men might
only pay wholesale instead of retail prices, and married soldiers were
encouraged to take advantage of the low cost of articles sold there. As
the management became more efficient, the profits rose, and with this
fund at the disposal of Commanding Officers, a great deal was done for
the benefit of the men,—books and newspapers supplied at the various
metropolitan Guards, extra food provided on long field days, being
some of the items of expenditure that first appear to have received the
sanction of the authorities.
Nor should we omit to draw attention to the encouragement given to
outdoor games and amusements. Officers have always been inclined,
naturally, to introduce among their men the healthy exercises which
they themselves were taught at school, and which they continued to
indulge in after joining the service. Thus cricket was well known, and
we have seen that during the Russian war it was not neglected.
Football, however, was not as common then as it is now, nor had some
other forms of athletic sports taken a firm root in the public schools
forty years ago. But as they became better known there, so did they
grow in popularity among the troops—as also did boating at Windsor,—
until at last they have become well recognized institutions, to the great
benefit of the men, and to the immense advantage of the army.
Hunting has always been a favourite pastime among Officers, and
where it is not sufficiently available they often establish a drag hunt of
their own. This was done at Windsor, in the winter of 1856-57, mainly
by the Coldstream, whose 2nd Battalion was then quartered there. This
institution flourishes to the present day. When the Brigade had the out-
quarter at Shorncliffe, as will be seen further on, another drag hunt was
also established there, but on leaving that station it had to come to an
end.
 On the 17th of July, 1856, at the suggestion of the Major-General
Commanding the Brigade of Guards (Lord Rokeby), the Battalions who
had just returned from the Crimea applied for new Colours, and, on the
27th of February following, the old Colours which had seen service in
Russia were deposited, escorted by Guards of Honour of the usual
strength, in the Royal Military Chapel at Wellington barracks.
Owing to the death of Colonel Gordon Drummond, Colonel Newton
was promoted Major, and took command of the 2nd Battalion,
November 18, 1856.
On the 3rd of March, 1857, the 1st Coldstream relieved the 2nd Scots
Fusilier Guards at Aldershot (the 1st Grenadiers having been removed
to Town from that camp in December), and returned to London at the
autumn change of quarters (September 1st), when the 2nd Coldstream
proceeded to Dublin, and the 1st Scots Fusilier Guards to Portsmouth.
On the return of the latter (November 20th) the Brigade was again
quartered in their usual stations, viz. four Battalions in the West-end
and the other three in the Tower, Windsor, and the out-quarter (Dublin).
[369] After this time, Battalions were frequently sent to Aldershot for the
purpose of receiving practical instruction, but not to be stationed there
for merely general duty.[370] About this time also—that is, between the
1st of September and the 7th of December, 1857—the Brigade
furnished a detachment of about 200 Officers and men at Deptford,
where occasional duty had been done by it, as we have seen, between
1815 and 1854.
 SERGEANT 1775. OFFICER 1795.

N.R. Wilkinson del. Mintern Bros. Chromo.

While the Indian Mutiny obliged Government to strengthen the army

in India, drafts were collected at Colchester and Canterbury to be sent
out to the East as they were required. In April, 1858, fourteen Ensigns
of the Brigade (three from the 1st Coldstream) were sent to these
places to look after the men that were assembled there. The following
letter, dated July 3rd, from the Adjutant-General to Lord Rokeby, was
published and ordered by the latter to be entered in the Regimental
records:—

The Inspector-General of Infantry having reported to His Royal

Highness, that, in consequence of the embarkation of numerous drafts
for India, there is no necessity for retaining the services of the Officers
of the Guards at Colchester and Canterbury, orders will consequently be
sent to those stations directing the Officers of the Guards to return to
their respective Battalions. In communicating this decision to your
Lordship, I am commanded to acquaint you that His Royal Highness has
much gratification in stating that he has received from all quarters
assurances of the excellent manner in which these Officers have
conducted the duties assigned to them, reflecting as it does great credit
on themselves and on the Regiments in which they have been
instructed.

The 2nd Coldstream, returning from Dublin to London, September 1,

1858, brought a record of services performed in Ireland which was
embodied in a Garrison Order, dated Dublin, August 30, 1858:—

The Major-General Commanding the District, in directing the

departure of the 2nd Battalion Coldstream Guards, is unwilling to allow
them to pass from his command without acknowledging his unqualified
approbation of their conduct during the twelve months of their being in
Dublin, and his sincere regret at losing them. Possessed of all the
attributes which constitute excellence in a regiment, whether as
regards the zealous and strict attention to their duty on the part of the
Officers, the activity, intelligence, and trustworthiness of the Non-
commissioned officers, the obedient conduct, soldier-like appearance,
and respectful demeanour of the men, or the order and regularity of
the parade, the general cleanliness of the barracks, the comfort of the
hospital, the large attendance of the adults at school, the comparative
absence of crime, and the pervading system of the corps, the Battalion
has stood forth in the garrison as a model of regimental discipline, to
excite the emulation and stimulate a generous rivalry. The Major-
General, therefore, begs to offer his thanks to Colonel Newton and his
Officers for the support they have at all times afforded, and to assure
the Battalion that he will always retain a lively recollection of the
satisfaction he derived in having it as a part of his garrison.

Colonel Hon. G. Upton, C.B., appointed Major-General, October 26,

1858, was succeeded by Colonel Lord Frederick Paulet, C.B., as
Lieutenant-Colonel of the Regiment; thereupon Colonel Newton
assumed the command of the 1st Battalion, and Colonel Spencer
Perceval, promoted to the rank of Major, was posted to command the
2nd Battalion.
As previously mentioned, events in the year 1859 produced the
impression that Napoleon III. was about to declare war against us, and
visions of invasion began to haunt us. Considerable military activity was
displayed at this time. Second battalions to twenty-five regiments of the
Line, and third and fourth battalions to the two Rifle regiments, the
60th and Rifle Brigade, were raised and incorporated into the army: we
find also that, early in the year, the Brigade was called upon to furnish
Non-commissioned officers that could be spared, as drill instructors to
train the men of some of these new corps. Of these, the Coldstream
supplied four to the 2nd Battalion, 21st Regiment, at Newport,
February, 1859. Nor was the condition of the Militia neglected, and
Field-Officers of the Guards, who had been sent to inspect the
regiments when embodied, were more frequently employed on this
duty about this time. Now, in 1803, when Napoleon I. threatened to
make a descent upon our coasts from his great camp at Boulogne,
bodies of Volunteers were raised to watch our shores. The same thing
happened in 1859, and, although our danger was scarcely real, yet so
strongly impressed were the people with the facilities of transit across
the narrow channel, which steam would give an invader, and so
convinced were they of the power and of the evil designs of the French
Emperor, that they began spontaneously to form rifle corps for the
defence of the country. This was the commencement of the Volunteer
movement which has now developed into an important auxiliary branch
of the forces of the Crown intended for service at home. Its usefulness
in the field has not yet been practically tested, and we may well pray
that the day when it must meet an enemy on our own soil, may never
come. But the influence it commands, by strengthening the ties that
bind the military and the civil elements, by rendering the regular army
popular, and by therefore facilitating the recruitment of a good class of
man, is well known; while the self-sacrifice of many who devote their
leisure to martial exercises, without prospect of reward, is creditable to
the British character, and tends to spread a wider interest in military
affairs than was formerly the case.
In the summer of 1859, many of the Officers of the Brigade were
employed in reporting upon the numerous ranges which had been
proposed as suitable sites for rifle practice. This duty did not cease until
the beginning of 1862, when facilities for musketry existed in almost
every district, and when the exercise became a popular pastime
throughout the country. A National Rifle Association was formed, and a
Volunteer camp established at Wimbledon (1860), where shooting
competitions took place. The meetings continued year after year with
ever-growing popularity, and detachments of Guardsmen were sent
from London to perform the military duties in camp and on the ranges.
Colonel Tower (Coldstream Guards) was the first Field-Officer selected
to command these detachments, in 1865, and since then the Brigade
has regularly furnished an Officer of that rank for this purpose, to
attend the Rifle meetings, and, later (from 1874), to command the
camp.
As far back as 1860, the drill of Officers of the Militia and Volunteers
was often superintended by Officers of the Brigade of Guards. In
October, 1870, moreover, schools of instruction were established at the
Tower and at Wellington barracks, which were eventually consolidated
into one, where Officers of the auxiliary forces, having passed a
practical course in drill, can obtain a certificate to that effect. Colonel
Hon. R. Monck (Coldstream Guards) was the first Commandant of the
school at Wellington barracks.[371]
The Coldstream, having lost their Colonel by the death of Field
Marshal Earl of Strafford, the chief command of the Regiment was
bestowed upon General Lord Clyde, G.C.B., June 22, 1860, better
known by the men in the Crimea, as Sir Colin Campbell. After the war
with Russia, this very distinguished Officer was employed in India,
where, appointed Commander-in-chief, he took a conspicuous part in
the suppression of the Mutiny. Several other changes occurred in the
Regiment about this time. On the promotion of Colonel Lord F. Paulet,
C.B., to the rank of Major-General, Colonel Newton became Lieutenant-
Colonel, whereupon Colonel S. Perceval assumed the command of the
1st Battalion, and Colonel Steele, C.B., appointed Major, of the 2nd
(December 13, 1860). In a few months, however, there was another
change; Colonel Perceval was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel, when
Colonel Steele was posted to the 1st Battalion, and was succeeded by
Colonel Wood in the 2nd (July 2, 1861).
 On the 1st of April, 1861, Major-General Lord Rokeby retired, and the
command of the Brigade devolved upon Major-General Craufurd.
Shortly afterwards (June 27th) a Major of Brigade was appointed in the
Foot Guards, and the new post was given to the senior Adjutant,
Captain and Adjutant Gordon, Scots Fusilier Guards.
In December, 1861, the whole country was plunged into deep
mourning by the premature death of the Prince Consort. It is less than
the truth to say that all hearts were moved with profound grief for the
Queen in this, the greatest of domestic afflictions; and at the decease
of a patriot Prince, whose sage counsels had so often ably directed Her
Majesty in many important matters, and who had done so much for the
intellectual elevation and the material advancement of her people. The
sorrow of the nation was felt nowhere more strongly than among the
Guards, who thereby lost their Senior Colonel, and whose inalienable
privilege it is to share, as part of the Sovereign’s Household, the trials
as well as the joys that visit the Royal Family.
This most sad misfortune happened at a moment of a
misunderstanding with the United States of America, when it was
apprehended that war might break out between the two countries, and
when an expedition was being fitted out to defend Canada should the
crisis assume an acute stage. It is scarcely necessary to go into the
details of the dispute, well known as the “Trent affair,” for the
Coldstream took no part in the operations which followed. Suffice it to
say that two Battalions of the Brigade (1st Grenadiers and 2nd Scots
Fusilier Guards, under Major-General Lord F. Paulet) were shipped to
British North America, December 19th, and remained there until the
autumn of 1864. Fortunately peace was preserved, and the expedition,
while watching proceedings during the civil war that was then raging in
the States, assumed the character of a movement of troops from one
part of the British Empire to another, for ordinary purposes.[372]
The 1st Battalion Coldstream, having gone to Dublin in October,
1861, did not return to London until the next change of quarters in
April following, and so, for the first few months of 1862, there were but
three Battalions in the West-end, while the Tower was occupied by a
Line Regiment (the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Buffs). To lighten the duties,
the latter furnished a detachment at Wellington barracks, which
occasionally supplied the guards at Kensington Palace, the Magazine,
and at the British Museum. In April, 1862, the full complement of four
Battalions did duty in the West-end, and Dublin was given up as a
Guards station. On the return of the Canadian expedition the Tower
was again occupied by Guards, and the out-quarter was transferred to
Shorncliffe. Chelsea barracks, designed as we have seen in 1855, were
ready for occupation in the autumn of 1863, and an entire Battalion
and a few companies of another were stationed there. Subsequently,
the head-quarters of the latter, transferred from St. George’s, were also
placed in these barracks; while Portman Street had been given up in
September, 1863. The new wing of Wellington barracks had been
occupied prior to this date, and was opened shortly after the Crimean
war, as we have seen.[373] Thus considerably more space was obtained
for the Brigade in London, which was distributed almost as is the case
in the present day.[374] It is only necessary to add that the small
barracks at the Magazine were vacated, and handed over to the police
authorities on the 21st of December, 1866; that those at St. John’s
Wood ceased to be occupied by the Foot Guards about the year 1876;
and that Windsor barracks, which was a crowded and unsuitable
building for a whole Battalion, were greatly improved and enlarged, and
were ready for occupation in 1868.
On the 9th of November, 1862, Colonel Steele, was promoted
Lieutenant-Colonel of the Regiment, vice Colonel S. Perceval, appointed
Major-General; the command of the 1st Battalion then devolved upon
Colonel Mark Wood, and that of the 2nd Battalion upon Colonel Dudley
Carleton.
Many remember the marriage of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales to the
Princess Alexandra of Denmark, March 10, 1863, and the enthusiasm
and joy evoked throughout the length and breadth of the land at the
auspicious and popular event. Her Royal Highness arrived in London on
the 7th, and proceeded to Windsor, where the ceremony was
performed, and the following military arrangements were made for her
reception in the Metropolis. The 3rd Grenadiers furnished a Guard of
Honour at Bricklayers Arms Railway Station, the remainder of the
Battalion being in column of wings in front of St. James’s Palace; the
1st Battalion 60th Rifles, then at the Tower, were formed outside the
station; the 2nd Coldstream Guards in Waterloo Place lining the streets,
with a Guard of Honour (the Queen’s Guard strengthened to the usual
complement) near the Palace, and at right angles to the Grenadiers.
The 1st Scots Fusilier Guards were in line near Hyde Park Corner; the
Park was occupied by some 17,000 Volunteers; and the 2nd Grenadiers
were stationed at the Marble Arch, and had a Guard of Honour at
Paddington Station. The 1st Coldstream, then quartered at Windsor,
sent a Guard of Honour to Slough. At the Royal wedding on the 10th,
the Brigade was fully represented; the 2nd Grenadier Guards (in which
Regiment His Royal Highness had served) found a Guard of Honour at
St. George’s Chapel; the 1st Scots Fusilier Guards furnished another at
the railway station on departure; and the 1st Coldstream, besides
providing two Guards of Honour, one at the State Entrance of the
Castle, and the other at the Chapel, were also present. The Berkshire
Volunteers, moreover, had a Guard of Honour outside the gates of the
Castle. The Guards Battalions quartered in London celebrated the
occasion by parading in Hyde Park, where the 2nd and 3rd Grenadiers
and the 2nd Coldstream fired a feu de joie, while the 1st Scots Fusilier
Guards kept the ground. The day was observed as a general holiday
throughout the country, and all classes joined to express their heart-felt
congratulations on the happy alliance which had been made by the Heir
Apparent of the Throne.[375]
Nor ought we to forget to mention that a ball was given by the
Brigade in the Exhibition buildings, June 26th,[376] to the Prince and
Princess of Wales, in honour of the Royal marriage that had just taken
place; the Guard of Honour to receive Their Royal Highnesses was
furnished by the 1st Scots Fusilier Guards.
Several changes occurred in the command of the Brigade and
Regiment during this same year (1863). On the 25th of June, Lord F.
Paulet, having returned from Canada, was appointed Major-General of
the Brigade of Guards vice Lieut.-General Craufurd.
At the death of General Lord Clyde, General Sir William Gomm,
G.C.B., succeeded him as Colonel (August 15, 1863), and was thus
again posted to the Coldstream Guards, which he had joined as a
Captain and Lieutenant-Colonel just before the battle of Waterloo, and
with which he had served up to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel of the
Regiment, until January, 1837, when he was promoted Major-General.
Colonel Steele, moreover, relinquishing the command of the Coldstream
(November 24th), the Lieutenant-Colonelcy devolved upon Colonel
Wood, when Colonel Carleton was posted to the command of the 1st
Battalion, and Colonel Stepney, C.B., to that of the 2nd Battalion.
Just at this moment, also, the Regiment lost their Bandmaster. Mr.
Charles Godfrey, who died much regretted in December, having joined
the Coldstream fifty years before (in 1813). This excellent musician had
efficiently conducted the Band ever since 1825.[377]
We have seen that hitherto, when promotion took place, and when
the Senior Major either left the Regiment or was appointed Lieutenant-
Colonel, the Junior Major was invariably transferred to command the
1st Battalion, and the Captain and Lieutenant-Colonel, promoted Major
to fill up the vacancy created, was posted to that of the 2nd Battalion.
The same rule prevailed as regards the Acting-Majors (Mounted
Officers), so that the senior and the third senior always belonged to the
1st Battalion, and the second and fourth seniors to the 2nd. It had also
prevailed among the Adjutants up to the first Canadian expedition in
1838, but then it seemed to lapse as far as they were concerned, in the
Coldstream at least. This custom was abolished on the 19th of January,
1864, when the following Order was issued:—

In compliance with instructions from H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge,

no alteration in future is to be made in the posting of Majors
Commanding Battalions; these Officers are to remain in the Battalions
in which they were originally promoted, the Senior Major to receive the
difference in allowance which may be attached to the command of the
1st Battalion. By the same rule, Acting Majors will not change Battalion
except for promotion or on appointment to be Senior Acting Major.

The following list shows the Officers belonging to the Regiment in

January, 1865:—
Colonel.—General Sir William Gomm, G.C.B.
Lieut.-Colonel.—Colonel Mark Wood.
Majors.—Colonel Dudley Carleton; Colonel A. Herbert-Stepney, C.B.
Captains.—Colonels J. Airey, C.B.; W. G. Dawkins; C. W. Strong; Hon.
H. Hardinge, C.B. (Mounted).
Lieut.-Colonels Hon. P. Feilding; W. Reeve; C. Baring; J. H. Le Couteur;
H. Armytage; G. Goodlake, V.C.; H. Tower; A. Fremantle; Colonel
 Hon. W. Feilding; P. Crawley; M. Heneage; C. Blackett; G. FitzRoy;
J. Conolly, V.C.; Hon. R. Monck; Hon. W. Boyle.
Lieutenants.—Captains C. Greenhill; H. C. Jervoise; Hon. H. Campbell;
Julian Hall; G. Wigram; A. Lambton; Hon. W. Edwardes; H. Lane;
W. F. Seymour; Hon. E. Legge (Adjutant); E. S. Burnell; Hon. G.
Windsor-Clive; R. Thursby; N. Burnand; FitzRoy Fremantle; F.
Buller; E. Reeve; H. Bonham-Carter; Hugh Fortescue (Adjutant); J.
F. Hathorn (I. of M.); H. Herbert (I. of M.); H. Brand; Denzil Baring;
Hon. F. Howard; R. Cathcart; C. Lee-Mainwaring.
Ensigns.—Lieutenants Hon. V. Dawson; E. Chaplin; Sir E. Hamilton,
Bart.; G. FitzRoy Smyth; Lord Wallscourt; H. R. Eyre; J. B. Sterling;
G. G. Macpherson; C. Thomas; Hon. J. Vesey; Hon. F. Wellesley;
Hon. H. Legge; R. Hall; A. Farquhar; C. Alexander; W. Ramsden.
Quartermasters.—A. Hurle; and A. Falconer.
Surgeon-Major.—J. Wyatt. Battalion Surgeon.—C. V. Cay. Assistant-
Surgeons.—J. W. Trotter; R. Farquharson; A. B. R. Myers.
Solicitor.—R. Broughton, Esq.

To persons living in the present day it may perhaps seem strange to

hear of the rigid social laws which were current in our fathers' time
against smoking. This indulgence was regarded, only a few decades
ago, as a more or less uncivilized habit, which might be enjoyed on
occasions in the privacy of a man’s own apartments or in some far-
away room of a country house, out of sight of all general society, but
never to be countenanced in public. Hence, Officers on any sort of duty
were not allowed the use of tobacco even during hours of relaxation,
and there were stringent rules against the practice on the Queen’s
Guard. In 1838, for instance, attention is drawn to orders on that
subject there, and again in 1844:—

“The Lieutenant-Colonels of the three Regiments of Guards have

observed with great regret that the regulations for the Guard table at
St. James’s Palace are not attended to, particularly as to smoking....
The Captain of the Guard in St. James’s Palace will have the goodness
to add to his report that there has been no smoking in the Officers'
apartments in St. James’s Palace, during the twenty-four hours he has
been on Guard.”[378]
 Nearly six years later the rule was modified, in that the prohibition
only applied to the mess room in the Palace, and the Captain’s
certificate was altered accordingly.[379] The Crimean War, no doubt, did
a great deal to destroy the old prejudice which existed on the subject;
for British Officers learnt the advantages of the weed in the trenches,
and were in close quarters with habitual smokers, the Turks and the
French. Still tobacco was not permitted in the barrack rooms, and, early
in 1859, the Medical Officers were seriously called upon to report
whether smoking there would be likely to prove deleterious to the
health of the men. It was not until October 28, 1864, that leave was
given to soldiers to smoke in the barrack rooms from the dinner hour to
tattoo.
It has already been mentioned that the recruit establishment of the
Brigade had been transferred to Croydon in 1833, and there it remained
for thirty years, except only that the Grenadier section was moved to
St. John’s Wood barracks during the war with Russia, from March,
1854, to the 18th of June, 1856. On the 1st of April, 1863, the recruits
of the three Regiments were taken to St. John’s Wood, for the purpose
of receiving gymnastic training, until the 2nd of August, 1865, when
they proceeded to Warley.[380] During all this time the establishment
was under the command of a resident Officer (Lieutenant and Captain),
who took the duty there for a fortnight (at St. John’s Wood for a week).
Considerable responsibility rested upon the Regimental Drill-Sergeant
for the training of the men, and several orders attest the fact that these
Non-commissioned officers did their work faithfully and efficiently. In
1870, a permanent Commandant was appointed, when Lieut.-Colonel
Moncrieff, Scots Fusilier Guards, assumed the new post (November
28th), and, soon after, another Officer was told off to perform the
duties of Adjutant, the resident Subaltern still remaining for a fortnight
as Piquet Officer. Besides the Medical Officer, and a Quartermaster who
was added later (in 1885), this staff of Officers was all that looked after
the Depôt until 1893, when it was again enlarged. On the 12th of April,
1875, a board was assembled at Caterham to view and report upon a
site for the Guards Depôt, and this new quarter was occupied on the
23rd of October, 1877. The Senior Drill-Sergeant,[381] appointed Acting
Sergeant-Major, May 5, 1881, was promoted Sergeant-Major on July 1st
following. The Depôt then contained a Sergeant-Major, a
Quartermaster-Sergeant, an Orderly Room Clerk, four Colour-
Sergeants, four Sergeants, twelve Corporals, and two Drummers; and
these men remained “on the rolls of their respective Battalions for
promotion and married leave.”
In 1866 the public duties in London were reduced, and in July they
stood as follows:—
Capts. Subaltns. Sergts. Corpls. Drums. Prvts.
Queen’s 1 2 2 2 3 36
Guard
Buckingham 0 1 2 2 1 27
Palace
Guard
Tylt Guard 0 1 2 2 1 18
Kensington 0 0 1 1 0 15
Guard
Magazine 0 0 1 1 0 9
Guard
Total 1 4 8 8 5 105[382]
The years 1866 and 1867 are chiefly marked in the domestic history
of the country by the troubles in Ireland, and by the efforts of a secret
society, called the Fenians, to stir up rebellion and serious disturbances,
not only in that island but in England also. The Fenian body, born and
nurtured in the United States, had for some years been endeavouring
to infect the mass of Irishmen distributed throughout the whole of the
United Kingdom with their pernicious doctrines; and in a sense they
accomplished their object by intensifying a feeling that had existed for
many a generation between the Celtic and Saxon populations, into one
of extreme bitterness and animosity. Beyond this, however, they
achieved no immediate success; the illegal and violent measures they
advocated, while they caused a momentary panic among the peaceably
disposed, soon recoiled upon those who perpetrated them. Hence, the
movement speedily dwindled into insignificance, though it left behind a
residue of secret organization, which at no distant date was to support
another agitation, that again was destined to disturb the country.
In the beginning of 1866, the usual spring change of quarters in the
Brigade had been ordered to take place on the 1st of March; the 1st
Coldstream was to move from Chelsea to another station in the West-
end, and the 2nd Battalion from the Tower to Shorncliffe. But the
troubles in Ireland were then giving cause for much anxiety, and the
order was not executed. It was known that some few men belonging to
Line Regiments had secretly joined the Fenians; it was feared that an
armed rising might take place; an attempt to seize Chester Castle had
just been frustrated (February 13th), and a Battalion of the Scots
Fusilier Guards had been hurriedly despatched there to protect the
place. A Guards Battalion was thus urgently required in Dublin, and on
the 20th of February the 1st Coldstream were sent there at twenty-four
hours' notice, “the sick, boys, and men unfit for active service” being
attached to the 2nd Battalion. Shorncliffe was therefore given up as the
Guards' out-quarter.
The stay of the 1st Battalion in Ireland during the year, cannot be
termed a pleasant one. Preserving the public peace against the
machinations of a secret band of conspirators who succeeded
temporarily in deluding a portion of the people, and in partially
alienating them from their legitimate rulers, is a duty too nearly allied
to the police service to be a favourite one with soldiers. The work,
however, was well performed by the Battalion, and this is attested by
the following order, which was issued by the Major-General
Commanding the Brigade, on the 6th of March, 1867, when their tour
of duty was completed in Dublin, and when they returned to London:—

“The Major-General has much pleasure in publishing a Memorandum

issued by General Lord Strathnairn upon the 1st Battalion Coldstream
Guards leaving Dublin. It reflects the utmost credit on all ranks for
having earned so distinguished a compliment. The Major-General
notices the favourable mention of Captain Hon. E. Legge, his close
attention to his duty as Adjutant proves his zeal in the interest of his
Battalion. The Major-General directs that Lord Strathnairn’s
Memorandum with this Order be read to each Battalion of the Brigade.
In a corps constituted as the Brigade of Guards the character of any
one Battalion reflects upon the whole.”

Lord Strathnairn’s Memorandum ran thus:[383]—

 “Memo. —The Commander of the Forces has every reason to be
pleased with the excellent discipline of the 1st Battalion Coldstream
Guards during the twelve months they have been under his Lordship’s
command. The requisitions of the Government have often during this
time necessitated extra duties for the preservation of the public peace,
all of which the Coldstream Guards have performed with strictness and
cheerfulness. The promptitude with which Lieut.-Colonel Le Couteur, the
Officers, the Non-commissioned officers and men of the Battalion gave
effect to the wishes of Lord Strathnairn for a thorough organization of
the Reading, Recreation, and Refreshment rooms which tend so much
to promote discipline, was very creditable to them. Lord Strathnairn
cannot record this favourable opinion of the 1st Battalion Coldstream
Guards without mentioning his high sense of the unvarying zeal and
ability displayed by the Adjutant, Captain Hon. E. Legge, who during
the twelve months has never been absent from his post.”

The 2nd Coldstream relieved the 1st Battalion early in 1867, and also
remained in Ireland for twelve months under conditions nearly similar
to those that existed in 1866. At the end of this period, the Lieutenant-
Colonel was able to express to the Regiment the high opinion
entertained by the General Commanding the Forces of the 2nd
Battalion, and his own gratification at this good opinion “during trying
times, and when the men were exposed to mischievous
temptations.”[384]
Nor had the Battalions of the Brigade stationed in London an easy
time during these two years (1866-1867), for they too were harassed
by popular effervescence. A reform bill was before the country, and
many demagogues, attended by their followers, found it easy to disturb
the public peace. Towards the end of July, 1866, the troops were
confined to their quarters; a wing of the 2nd Coldstream occupied
Knightsbridge barracks during the day; the Major-General took post at
the Magazine, to receive reports should anything extraordinary happen;
the piquets were increased; a magistrate was placed in every London
barrack, and for a few days all Officers on leave were recalled. Next
year, the fear of riots still haunted the authorities, and on several
occasions the public duties were doubled. But this was little when
compared with the excitement produced by the explosion at the
Clerkenwell House of Detention on the 13th of December—an outrage
of a vile type, perpetrated by the Fenians for the purpose of terrorizing
the Government. Immediate steps were taken to defend the Metropolis
from a repetition of another such dastardly attempt upon the lives of
innocent persons, and for nearly a month the troops were busily
engaged, while the ordinary military exercises, marches, gun drill, and
gymnastic courses were suspended. A guard was immediately sent to
Clerkenwell, of 100 rank and file, under three Officers; sentries carried
their rifles loaded; strong piquets, of 100 men under a Captain and
Lieutenant-Colonel, were mounted daily in the principal barracks; half
the Officers doing duty were held available for any sudden emergency,
from five in the afternoon till eleven o’clock at night; the Captain of the
Queen’s Guard was made responsible for calling upon the nearest
piquet to turn out in case of disturbance; a guard was furnished at
Millbank prison, and over the small-arm factories in London; signal
communication by rockets was established between the barracks and
where an attack might be expected; a party of the 2nd Scots Fusilier
Guards was despatched to Cowes and to Osborne; the Bank piquet
remained on duty for twenty-four hours on Sundays and on Christmas
day, and all leave and furloughs were suspended. At the Tower,
moreover, where the 1st Coldstream were quartered, the Officer of the
main guard patrolled round the ditches and wharves during the night.
These arrangements were not relaxed till the 11th of January, 1868,
and things did not resume their normal course until somewhat later. But
as a net result of the Clerkenwell outrage, it may be mentioned that the
metropolitan barracks were put in telegraphic communication with the
Horse Guards, and the work was completed in March, 1868. By an
order of the 31st of December, 1867, also, two Non-commissioned
officers per Battalion were told off to be instructed in the duties of
telegraphist.
In 1867, the Sultan of Turkey came to England, and in 1869 his
nominal vassal, the Khedive (the Viceroy of Egypt), did the same thing.
There were reviews upon these occasions in their honour, and other
martial displays; but these visits, though of political importance, need
not further be alluded to here, since, in a military sense, they entailed
only the ordinary duties performed by the Brigade when a foreign
Sovereign is received in State by Her Majesty the Queen.
 Between 1866 and 1871 the following changes took place in the
command of the Regiment. In May, 1866, Colonel Wood having retired,
Colonel Dudley Carleton became Lieutenant-Colonel, and thereupon
Colonel Airey, promoted Major, assumed the command of the 1st
Battalion, under the rule of the 19th of January, 1864, already quoted;
while Colonel Stepney remained with the 2nd Battalion, until the 14th
of August, when, retiring on half-pay, he was succeeded by Colonel
Strong. The latter also shortly afterwards (March 15, 1867) went on
half-pay, and the command of this Battalion devolved upon Colonel
Hon. A. Hardinge; on the 23rd of October following, Colonel Hon. Percy
Feilding was promoted Major, commanding the 1st Battalion, Colonel
Airey having left the Regiment. Colonel Hardinge succeeded Colonel
Carleton as Lieutenant-Colonel, September 2, 1868, when Colonel C.
Baring was posted to the command of the 2nd Battalion. Shortly
afterwards the establishment of the Regiment was reduced by one
Major, and the following Brigade Order was issued on the 29th of May,
1869, to direct how this reduction should be brought about—

In conformity with a letter from the Military Secretary under date,

May 28, 1869, the Major-General notifies to the Brigade that Her
Majesty has been pleased to approve of the proposal of the Secretary
of State for War, that one Major in each Regiment of the Brigade of
Guards be gradually reduced, retaining the Lieutenant-Colonel, who will
take command of a Battalion in addition to that of the Regiment. In
accordance with the above arrangement, the vacancy in the Grenadier
Guards, caused by the promotion of H.S.H. Prince Edward of Saxe-
Weimar to be Major-General, on the 23rd of February last, will not be
filled up; and the command of the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards,
vacated by such promotion, will devolve upon the Lieutenant-Colonel of
the Regiment, Colonel Bruce, from the above date.

The opportunity to give effect to this order did not come in the
Coldstream until January 4, 1871, when, on the retirement of Colonel
Hardinge, Colonel Hon. P. Feilding, C.B., was promoted Lieutenant-
Colonel, and still retained the command of the 1st Battalion. Colonel C.
Baring remained in command of the 2nd Battalion until the 13th of
August, 1872, when, retiring on half-pay, he was succeeded by Colonel
Goodlake, V.C.
In the Brigade, Lord Frederick Paulet, C.B., was succeeded by Major-
General Hon. J. Lindsay (January 29, 1867), and during the period of
his command the Guards Institute, near Vauxhall Bridge Road, was
opened by H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, July 11, 1867, as “a
convenient place of refreshment, resort, amusement, and occupation
for Non-commissioned officers and men stationed in London.” This club
only flourished a few years, and was closed in 1872, when the building
was bought by Cardinal Manning, and was converted by him into the
present residence of the Archbishop of Westminster. General Lindsay
also promoted a military industrial exhibition, which took place in
Chelsea barracks on the 9th of July, 1868; but on that date Major-
General Hamilton, C.B., had already succeeded him in the command of
the Brigade, having assumed it on the 1st of April. The latter, promoted
Lieutenant-General, left, April 1, 1870, and Major-General, H.S.H. Prince
Edward of Saxe-Weimar, C.B., was then appointed in his place.
Of changes in the uniform of the Regiment, the following may be
noted: On the 6th of December, 1859, it was ordered that the chin-
straps of the bearskins were to be worn under and not on the chin; but
this method, apparently, was not long maintained in force. A mess
dress was authorized for the Officers of the Brigade, January 30, 1864.
Silver stars on the forage cap, and sling belts were to be worn by the
Sergeant-Major, Quartermaster-Sergeant, Bandmaster, Sergeant-
Instructor of Musketry, Drum-Major, Band-Sergeant, Drill Sergeants,
Regimental Orderly Room Clerk, Assistant Regimental Clerk, Battalion
Orderly Room Clerk, Hospital-Sergeant, Armourer-Sergeant, Master-
Tailor, and the Sergeant of Cooks, April 25, 1870. Lastly, on the 28th of
June, 1872, gold cords on the shoulders of the Officers' tunics were
substituted for the red silk cord which was worn on one side to secure
the sash.
A Regimental Order, dated April 18, 1871, possesses an interest to
the Coldstream, which requires a place in this account of their services:
—

“A communication having been received by Field-Marshal Sir William

Gomm, G.C.B., from the Secretary of the Royal Cambridge Asylum for
Soldiers' Widows, to the effect that, at a meeting of the General
Committee held March 9, 1871, a resolution was agreed to, according a
presentation in perpetuity to the above asylum to the Colonel of the
Coldstream Guards, the Regiment of H.R.H. the late Duke of
Cambridge, the fact is here noted as a Regimental record.”

In October, 1871, the names of the Officers posted to the two

Battalions were:—

Colonel.—Field-Marshal Sir William Gomm, G.C.B.

Lieut.-Colonel.—Colonel Hon. Percy Feilding, C.B.
1st Battalion.
Majors.—Vacant.[385]
Captains.—Colonels G. Goodlake,
V.C.; Hon. W. Feilding
(Mounted).
Lieut.-Colonels G. FitzRoy; G.
Wigram; Lord William Seymour;
Hon. E. Legge; E. Burnell; N.
Burnand; F. C. Manningham-
Buller; J. Hathorn.
2nd Battalion.
Colonel C. Baring.
Lieut.-Colonels A. Fremantle C.
Blackett (Mounted).
Colonel Hon. R. Monck; Lieut.-
Cols. H. Jervoise; Julian Hall; A.
Lambton; FitzRoy Fremantle;
Lord Cremorne; E. Chaplin; G.
FitzRoy Smyth.
 1st Battalion.
Lieutenants.—Captains H.
Bonham-Carter; H. R. Eyre (I. of
M.); Hon. F. Wellesley; Hon.
Heneage Legge; H. Aldenburg-
Bentinck; Hon. H. Corry; Hon. E.
Boscawen; R. Goff; Waller
Hughes; H. Bruce; E. Boyle;
Hon. Ronald Campbell
(Adjutant).
Ensigns.—Lieutenants F. Graves-
Sawle; Hon. M. Stapleton; R.
Pole-Carew; Cyril Fortescue;
Hon. C. Cavendish; A. Clark-
Kennedy; F. Arkwright.
Quartermasters.—A. Falconer.
Surgeon-Major.—J. Wyatt.
Battalion Surgeon.—
Assistant-Surgeons.—A. Myers;
Whipple, M.D.
 2nd Battalion.
Captains J. B. Sterling; C. D.
Thomas; Hon. J. Vesey
(Adjutant); R. S. Hall; C.
Alexander; W. Ramsden; Hon. E.
Acheson; Hon. L. Dawnay; Hon.
E. Digby (I. of M.); W. Turquand;
R. Follett; Amelius Wood; Hon.
R. Greville-Nugent; Hon. G.
Bertie.
Lieutenants A. Moreton; J. G.
Montgomery; F. Manley; Hon.
Alfred Charteris; Lord Ossulston;
L. MacKinnon.

J. Birch.
Surgeon-Major C. V. Cay.
J. Trotter

This chapter should not conclude without making some mention of

the new armament introduced into the British infantry during the period
under review. The Danish war, 1864, and more especially the Austro-
Prussian struggle of 1866, revealed the immense superiority possessed
by troops in the field who were supplied with the breech-loading rifle,
over those that still retained the muzzle-loader. In the campaigns which
have taken place between the two Germanic Powers, it has been
remarked that Prussia has more than once been provided with better
war matériel than her antagonist. In the Seven Years' War, Frederick
the Great had an iron ramrod, the Austrians a wooden one, and the
advantages he gained thereby were not inconsiderable. So in the
Bohemian campaign of 1866, the Prussians were armed with a breech-
loader, and the mass of fire they were able to develop on the battle-
field was much greater and far more effective than their enemy could
return against them. The great importance of this military question had
not been neglected in England, and the object-lesson caused by the
struggle in Central Europe stimulated the authorities to greater
exertions. While, therefore, we were considering what pattern of
breech-loading rifle we should finally adopt, immediate steps were
taken to hurry on the conversion of the Enfield into the Snider breech-
loader, so that by the end of 1866 Commanding Officers of Guards
Regiments were directed to send in requisitions for the new converted
weapon (December 19th). The rifle eventually adopted was the Henry-
Martini, which was served out to the Coldstream in October, 1874. In
time, the latter was discarded for the small-bore magazine breech-
loader (the Lee-Metford .303 Rifle), and this was issued to the
Regiment early in 1890. Immediately afterwards, the ordinary black
powder, which had been in use for many centuries, was replaced by the
present cordite, a smokeless nitro-explosive.

OFFICER 1839. OFFICER 1849.

N. R. Wilkinson del. A.D. Innes & Co. London. Mintern Bros. Chromo.

365. Brigade Order , August 20, 1856: “H.R.H. the General Commanding-in-
Chief appoints Captain Instructors of Musketry, Brevet-Major Thesiger, 3rd
Grenadier Guards; Major Le Couteur, 1st Coldstream; and Capt. Hon. R. Mostyn,
2nd Scots Fusilier Guards.” But it was not until the 30th of April, 1857, that
regular Instructors of Musketry appeared in the Army-list in the Coldstream, when
Captain Blackett and Major Conolly, V.C., were appointed in that capacity, in the
1st and 2nd Battalions respectively.
February 7, 1857. “The Major-General has much pleasure in promulgating the
following, received from the Adjutant-General, dated Horse Guards, February 4,
1857: 'The General Commanding-in-Chief, having received a most satisfactory
report of the result of the various practices in shooting and judging distances by
the parties lately attached to the school of musketry, by which it appears that
they have, in the aggregate, attained a higher figure (38·98) than any batch of
parties hitherto under instruction at Hythe, I have it in command to request your
Lordship will make known to the Division of Foot Guards the satisfaction with
which the said report has been received by His Royal Highness.'”

366. The reader may perhaps be interested in knowing that one of the first
orders given by the Duke of Cambridge on succeeding to the supreme command
of the army related to marches. Brigade Order , November 17, 1856: “In
compliance with instructions received from His Royal Highness, Commanding
Officers will march out their Battalions at least once a week, in complete
marching order, not less than eight to ten miles; the system prescribed in General
Craufurd’s regulations for conducting a march to be adhered to.” His Royal
Highness had at Scutari, in 1854, when in command of the First Division, drawn
the attention of the latter to these regulations. It must not, however, be supposed
that marching in peace time was unknown before 1856. For instance, by
Regimental Order, dated September 12, 1838, it was laid down, “Whenever
weather permits, the Battalion” (i.e. the 1st Battalion; the 2nd was then in
Canada) “is to be marched once in four days.”

367. See Hamilton, History of the Grenadier Guards, iii. 145.

368. It may be of interest to observe here that a Committee of Officers (nearly

all belonging to the Brigade), under the presidency of Colonel Ridley, Scots
Fusilier Guards, assembled in London early in 1862 to consider the question of
the employment of men in trades.

369. The new wing of Wellington barracks was ready for occupation about this
time; and it appears the present Kensington barracks replaced the old buildings
there, April, 1858.

370. The periods when the Coldstream were stationed in Aldershot are to be
seen in Appendix No. XV. “In compliance with the directions of H.R.H. the Senior
Colonel of the Brigade, the roster for casual home service, and for the regular
training of Battalions at Aldershot in the summer, will in future be kept separately.
The Major-General accordingly desires that the three Lieutenant-Colonels will be
so good as to confer together with a view to preparing another roster as soon as
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