‘MODERATION’ and ‘RADICALISM’: CHRISTOPHER WYVILL AND THE LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY REFORM MOVEMENT

This paper focuses on a methodological issue plaguing our understanding of eighteenth-century politics and political theory. It demonstrates the power of academic history to lend intellectual coherence to ideas which did not exist or were only partially formed within particular historical moments. The concept of “radicalism” is an example of this issue. It is a catch-all term applied to diverse movements including the Association Movement of the 1780s and the urban reform societies of the 1790s. This has been motivated by a desire to trace a tradition of nineteenth-century “radicalism” back to the eighteenth century. Yet, any attempt to impose on the politics of the eighteenth century a term charged with normative meaning specific to the nineteenth century is anachronistic. The paper shows that unsympathetic uses of the terms “radical” and “radicalism” in the literature has distorted our understanding. This is undertaken with reference to Christopher Wyvill, the leader of the Yorkshire Association and an advocate for ‘moderate’ parliamentary reform. Misrepresented as a “radical” throughout the literature, Wyvill’s unswerving articulation of the need for “moderation” puts him at odds with his description by biographers. The self-consciously “moderate” Wyvill marks an important figure through whom this methodological issue can be critiqued.