The argument presented here rests on three assumptions. The first is that, at least in commercial terms, a capitalist system was in operation in Europe by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its features included a well-developed structure of international exchange, complex trade patterns, sophisticated methods of organization and finance, a realization of the importance of ‘putting money out to work’, and a versatility of mercantile activity that was a product of the most spectacular boom, expansion of trade, and growth of the merchant community that Europe had ever seen.

Although it is not free from errors in detail, one of the considerable merits of Macaulay's History of England is the attention it gives to the newspaper Press and to the effects of the Licensing Act and of its expiry in 1695. More recently Dr de Beer has provided an admirable but brief account of the period from 1695 to 1702, but these explorations have served to open up rather than to exhaust the subject. In the present article also some interesting and important topics will have to be neglected, such as the advertisements in newspapers, the publication of literary and trade journals, and the politics behind die discontinuance of the Licensing Act in 1695.

In the years following the conclusion of the Peace of Paris in 1763, George Grenville possessed a reputation for his consistent demands that Britain's war-proven naval superiority should be used to strengthen British diplomacy and prevent the Family Compact reacquiring die means of endangering Britain. In a typical statement to the Commons in 1768, referring to the Grafton Government's mishandling of the Corsican crisis, he said: ‘for fear of going to war, you will make war unavoidable’. It is interesting, therefore, to examine how and for what reasons the Grenville Government used its naval resources in conjunction with diplomacy to defend British interests when they were threatened consecutively in Honduras, Turks Island, and the Gambia in 1764–5.

The triumph of Pitt's ministry in 1784 over the Fox-North Coalition is a familiar event in British political history. But the consolidation of the ministry after 1784 has yet to be analyzed in detail. Though the general election of 1784, accompanied by spectacular demonstrations of public opinion in support of the government, clinched Pitt's victory, there was no immediate return to tranquillity. Within two years, Pitt was defeated on four major issues: the Westminster scrutiny, the Irish Resolutions, parliamentary reform, and the duke of Richmond's scheme for the fortification of the dockyards.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent and character of the early legitimist opposition to the Orleanist regime. It seeks to demonstrate the secondary importance of their political loyalties for most of those with a significant material stake and status in the existing society. The basic theme is thus one of the effective formation of a conservative alliance pursuing the politics of selfinterest and prepared to sacrifice its ideals to do so. The cause of the legitimate monarch after 1830 could only have succeeded, and only came close to succeeding, if and when it promised to serve as the most efficient guarantor of social order. It failed because it appeared too concerned with ideology and ideals and not sufficiently with compromise, conservative unity and material progress. Its weakness was evident in 1830 in the manner in which its potential supporters reacted to the change of government.

Although for most country girls in Victorian England the choice of work outside the home was limited to domestic service, there were certain areas to which this did not apply. In some cases the reason lay in the existence of competing employment in local factories or workshops - so that in Lancashire (taking rural and urban districts together) about one in four girls aged between ten and fifteen were employed in cotton manufacture at the time of the 1871 Census of Population. But in other places, the cause was the continued survival of a cottage industry in which child labour played a significant role and where ‘a wellordered family [could] obtain as much or more than the husband who [was] at work on [a] neighbouring farm’ This latter circumstance applied to the counties of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, where particularly during the first half of Queen Victoria's reign the pillow lace and straw plait trades were of considerable importance - the latter being organized primarily to meet the needs of the hat industry of Luton and Dunstable. Table 1 shows the size of the work force as recorded in the Census Reports of 1851,1861 and 1871. Nevertheless, these figures are probably an under-estimate of the true position, since many of the women and children working only on a part-time basis did not bother to declare their occupation to the Census enumerator.

Any account of religious controversy in nineteenth-century Britain must mention Essays and Reviews, the collection of essays published in i860 by a group of distinguished and liberal Anglicans.1 The volume was a deliberate challenge to the great body of Anglican opinion in the name of reason, science, and Biblical Criticism. The challenge was taken up eagerly, and the essayists suffered a mild persecution. Frederick Temple's position as Headmaster at Rugby was threatened, Benjamin Jowett, Professor of Greek at Oxford, had the increase in his professorial stipend withheld. Rowland Williams and H. B. Wilson were tried for heresy.

The debate over the reasons for the establishment of the Coalition Government in May 1915 continues to resist a conclusion despite the use of new collections of private papers. Unless the papers not so far available to researchers happen to contain an unusually convincing letter in the hand of one of the three mens responsible for the decision, this question seems well placed to defy solution indefinitely. It is the purpose of this article, therefore, to attempt a clarification of the immediate causes by taking a slightly wider perspective than is normally done. In this way one can recognize the Coalition of 1915 for what in essence it was, an attempt to avoid a ‘ Khaki Election ’ on the pattern of 1900.