Eighteenth-century party political history has gone out of fashion, much to the relief of some, in favor of work on the political cultures of Hanoverian Britain, despite the fact that a good deal remains unknown about the ways in which conservatism functioned as a set of principles and political practices in the opening decades of the nineteenth century. Intellectually stagnant though Tories were after the French Revolution, the fact remains that a new conservative consciousness, forged in part from their years of factional infighting and governance, was to command considerable public support during the reign of Victoria. That Liberal Toryism was vital to this process has long been recognized. What Stephen Lee contributes to its scholarship is an analysis of its rhetorical devices, electoral strategies, and core principles through a study of George Canning.

Since Canning was a rogue Tory whose disagreements with his colleagues kept him out of office between 1812 and 1822, he is usually regarded as an egotist whose failings as a politician were overcome by his successes as a foreign secretary. Canning's career as a diplomat and statesman forms no part of this narrative. Lee argues instead for Canning's rehabilitation as a politician who played to—and was rewarded by—the middle-class vote in his electoral battles from 1812 onward. As such, he emerges as a forward-looking figure who recognized the importance of public opinion and the middle classes to the future of conservatism as a social and political creed. This Lee traces in part through Canning's dealings with the press, and he sheds considerable light on Canningite motives for founding the Quarterly Review in 1809. Lee argues that Canning, in tandem with his followers, most notably William Huskisson, played a leading part in the definition of what that opinion constituted, whether in the press or in electoral debate. While this has been suggested by more than one scholar, never has it been demonstrated through an examination of the rhetoric employed by a Tory politician in his speeches.

Lee employs what could be described as a form of discourse analysis to deconstruct Canning's speeches and explore the sociopolitical contexts of their contents. This is no new approach to the history of political ideas, and Lee pays his intellectual debts to Quentin Skinner and the Cambridge school of analytical philosophy for the formulation of this methodology. Its use has been controversial among political historians, many of whom (this reviewer included) have been reluctant to accept that “an agent's professed principles invariably need to be treated as causal conditions of his actions, even if the agent professes those principles in a wholly disingenuous way” (Quentin Skinner, “The Principles and Practices of Opposition: The Case of Bolingbroke vs. Walpole,” in Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought and Society, ed. Neil McKendrick [London, 1974], 128). That ideas have a life and power of their own cannot be denied; what is less clear is the impact that often contradictory or inconsistent beliefs have upon the course of events and the views or actions of those who profess them. Lee attempts to restore complete agency to the individual by asserting that Canning manipulated the normative vocabulary of politics to justify his views and actions as legitimate, in some respects pushing the envelope in new directions.

How much ideological and tactical responsibility did Canning bear for the development of the nineteenth-century Tory Party? Lee does a good job of illustrating how the concept of balance shaped Canning's beliefs on the central political, social, and economic issues of his day. This is done to reassert Canning's identity as a Tory rather than a proto-Liberal. What is striking about his constitutional thought, however, is not its Toryism but, rather, its resemblance to the ideas of the post-Foxite Whigs. Both groups saw themselves as mediators between the forces of despotism and anarchy after the French Revolution. This leaves one wondering what, apart from a hatred of parliamentary reform, an ostensible commitment to the interests of the middle classes, and a veneration for the memory of the Younger Pitt, there was to distinguish Liberal Tories from the Whigs. This is, nonetheless, a question that more than one historian has failed to answer convincingly. Lee is more successful in making a case for Canning as a central figure in the process by which a fourth stage of long-eighteenth-century party development culminated in the emergence of a stable government versus opposition alignment in 1812. This modification of Jonathan Clark's three-stage party development thesis restores the importance of the early nineteenth century as a watershed in a repeated pattern of party formation from a state of factional instability. What is interesting about this, and here some comparative analysis would be instructive, is the role that maverick politicians play in the process. Canning was nowhere near as colorful or as rebellious a figure as John Wilkes, the Elder Pitt, or Charles James Fox, yet his career demonstrates how breaking the mold can help redefine the mainstream.