Book Reviews
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He argues against the "harsh" judgment that they were "a small group lacking
in influence," remarking that while they were few in number and none held
political office, they did make "important contributions." He recalls their
obligations to the "bitter conflicts" of seventeenth-century England and their
c o m m i t m e n t to their Anglo-Saxon constitutional model. He describes anew
their relationship to their American counterparts and their changing attitude
toward the American Revolution itself: radicals on both sides of the Atlantic
saw American independence as a logical consequence of the political and
moral corruption they saw in contemporary England. America came to be
portrayed as an example to be admired and selectively emulated.
What Bonwick does not do is demonstrate the reality of the Real Whigs'
"important contributions" beyond what has been very obvious for some time:
they did contribute to and reinforce the ideology of the American
revolutionaries; they did constitute a significant link in the radical chain that
connected the Glorious Revolution to the Chartists a century and a half later.
But this reviewer's persistent sense of d~jd vu precludes agreement with the
contention by Bonwick's publisher that he has given "fresh meaning and
clarity" to our sense of English radicalism in the revolutionary era.
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
TREVOR COLBOURN
The Uncontrolled Chancellor: Charles Townshend and His American Policy.
By Cornelius P. Forster. (Providence: Rhode Island Bicentennial Foundation,
1978. xv + 155 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $9.95.)
This brief book was written to focus attention on the development of Charles
Townshend's American policy, which Cornelius P. Forster describes as an attempt to alter the status quo in the relationship between England and her colonies. The author accomplishes his task largely within the interpretive frame
set forth by Lewis B. Namier and John Brooke (Charles Townshend, 1964),
depicting Townshend as the talented but untrustworthy ally of every major political figure from Bute to Chatham, faithful only to self-advancement and his
own vision of a reordered empire.
Townshend conceived his plan for America shortly after his appointment to
the Board of Trade by his uncle the Duke of Newcastle in 1749 and it remained
virtually unchanged until 1767. Forster believes that the persistence of his vision even accounted for some of Townshend's political vacillation such as his
support both for the enactment and for the repeal of George Grenville's Stamp
Act, retaining the office of Paymaster-General all the while.
Still, Forster fails to answer important questions. Why did Chatham appoint
Townshend chancellor of the exchequer when their views on American
taxation were incompatible? Did Townshend sabotage Chatham's plan for
reform of the East India Company in order to profit personally from the sale of
the company's stocks? How did Townshend ever gain the cabinet's approval
for his American duties? Perhaps the record will not reveal the answers, but
this reviewer, at least, would have apprecaited the author's opinions.
Forster's scholarship is sound and his lucid style will be a relief to readers. If
this work adds little to the basic information or interpretation of Townshend's
career, the fact that it focuses on the development of his American policy may
make it a useful introduction to the labyrinth of British politics for students of
colonial history. For all of us, this book will be a pointed reminder that the
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The Journal of American History
state of British politics in the 1760s was so unsettled that even a wellconnected, skillful politician with a clear program for imperial reorganization,
apparently acceptable to both King and Commons, was unable to have it
enacted in time to save the empire.
TIDEWATER COMMUNITY COLLEGE
CAROL LYNN H. KNIGHT
The Emergence of North Carolina's Revolutionary State Government. By
Robert L. Ganyard. (Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural
Resources, 1978. vii + 104 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, and bibliographical
essay. Paper, $1.50. )
Robert L. Ganyard's monograph is one of a projected sixteen-volume series
dealing with the era of the American Revolution in North Carolina. Although
Ganyard has relied heavily upon his outstanding 1963 doctoral dissertation, he
has updated the bibliography to include significant recent research. The book
should be of interest to the teacher, student, and general reader of history
alike.
The work begins with an excellent synthesis of the era of royal government
in North Carolina, concluding with the ill-fated Regulator uprising that was a
reaction both to domination of local government by an eastern-controlled
legislature and to widespread public corruption. The study then develops a fine
analysis of the circumstances out of which a revolutionary political
organization developed in the form of congresses, committees, and councils.
The rapid progress of the revolutionary impulse is seen in a poignant letter
written by Royal Governor Josiah Martin on April 7, 1775, in which he observed "that Government is here as absolutely prostrate as impotent, and that
nothing but the shadow of it is left."
Ganyard has developed an especially effective interpretation and narrative
that links struggles over development of a state constitution with earlier
Regulator grievances and, by implication, the bitter debates that would echo in
Philadelphia in 1787. In the case of North Carolina, demands for a "simple
Democracy" that came from Orange and Mecklenberg counties (in the heart of
earlier Regulator territory) confronted the more conservative stance of two
political giants of their day--North Carolinian William Hooper and a political
philosopher from Massachusetts, John Adams. The struggle's result, the North
Carolina Constitution of 1776, was a compromise document. For all of its
shortcomings, the new government "nevertheless established the foundation
upon which greater democracy could build in the nineteenth century. It was,
indeed, all that could have been expected given the conditions, traditions, and
experience out of which it emerged."
MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY
JAMES K. HUHTA
The Philosophy of the American Revolution. By Morton White. (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1978. xii + 299 pp. Notes and index. $15.95.)
Morton White's far-reaching intent is to "analyze the epistemology,
metaphysics, philosophical theology, and ethics upon which the
revolutionaries rested their claim to independence." To do so he devotes a
chapter or two each to explicating such key terms in the Declaration of Independence as "self-evident" and "unalienable," tracing their history in