Annabel Patterson. Nobody's Perfect: A New Whig Interpretation of History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. ix + 288 pp. $27.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-300-09288-2.
Reviewed by B. J. Weinstein (Magdalene College, University of Cambridge)
Published on H-Albion (April, 2004)
Annabel Patterson's Nobody's Perfect throws down a challenge to the prevailing historiographical orthodoxy that the "whig interpretation of history" is both "archaic and procedurally mistaken" (p. 1). It does this by attempting to re-establish the whig interpretation of politics in the 1760s, 70s, and 80s--precisely the context in which the whig approach was so effectively attacked by Sir Lewis Namier. At the heart of Patterson's position is her belief that history is a success story. She claims, for instance, that she is "deeply reassured" by the metanarrative that portrays all of English history as the fundamentally progressive story of the triumph of constitutional liberty and representative institutions (p. 3). This view, entirely consistent with the one advocated by Patterson in her Early Modern Liberalism (1997), is the essential outcome (though one might argue that it is actually a precondition) of the whig interpretation, and Patterson hopes to revitalize it by modifying four of its conventional premises.
First, Patterson re-defines "whig" as "a term, if not synonymous, than certainly cognate, with 'liberal'" (pp. 17-18). It is hoped by Patterson that this far less partisan (though analytically rather blunt and worryingly "presentist") understanding of what is meant by "whig" will free her argument from the confusions inherent in late-Georgian political fractiousness. Second, Patterson disputes the conventional whig view that the historical progress of liberty has unfolded at a smooth and steady rate. Instead, she claims that the advancement of liberal principles has taken place according to a "one step backward, two steps forward" dynamic. In other words, history's great liberal achievements tend to have happened during or just after times of reaction and repression. Third, Patterson acknowledges that, in each historical context, there are conservative figures whose actions should be treated as equally principled to those of their whig adversaries. By granting principle to conservatism, Patterson hopes to obviate Butterfield's famous criticism of whig double-standards. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Patterson re-orients the whig interpretation along humanist lines rather than idealist ones. Thus the book's title, Nobody's Perfect, alludes to a central weakness of the conventional whig interpretation: namely, its partisan idealization of certain historical figures (Lord William Russell, Algernon Sydney, Joseph Addison, and C. J. Fox, to name just a few) at the expense of historical veracity and psychological credibility. According to Patterson, it was precisely this weakness that precipitated the very first Tory attack on the whig view (Hume's History of England). Thus Patterson hopes to demonstrate that while the principled behavior of individual "whigs" was responsible for many of the legal and political freedoms that we enjoy today, each of the individuals to whom we owe these freedoms also acted inconsistently and at times gave in to unprincipled or self-interested motivations.
In true whig fashion, Patterson's argument is made through detailed consideration of the lives and works of a handful of "great men." Chapters 1 and 2 tell the story of John Almon's heroic, deeply subversive, but fundamentally Miltonic fight against Mansfield's libel law. In considering Almon, Patterson places her readers in a Wilkite milieu, but we remain shielded from the larger social developments that fed popular radicalism. Patterson's gaze is focused tightly upon Almon's personal role in producing the Letter Concerning Libels. From Almon's radical fight against an unjust law, we are taken, via chapter 3, to an analysis of Burke's (again) Miltonic case for appeasing the American colonists in On Conciliation. In this and the following chapter, Patterson presents Burke as a man whose American Revolution-era politics should be recognizable today as familiar to our current liberalism, and who was himself conscious of the similarity of his liberalism to that promoted by Marvell and Milton in the previous century. In a further effort to re-enforce the historical continuity of whig thought, Patterson examines whig responses to a 1776 edition of Marvell's Works, and finds that these attest to the continued resonance of "Revolution principles." Through Thomas Erskine, who was among the subscribers to the 1776 edition, Joshua Reynolds, and William Wordsworth, Patterson presents us with three figures who acted brilliantly and heroically on behalf of "Revolution principles," but who, as the title forecasts, were imperfect in their commitment to these principles. Erskine is portrayed as perhaps the most principled of the three, and yet he also commits the most stunning act of hypocrisy.
Each chapter is capable of standing on its own as a self-contained argument, and two in particular (concerning Reynolds and Wordsworth) feel slightly out of place. At the same time, it would be very unfair to claim that Patterson treats each of her subjects (themes or individual persons) in isolation. Some, especially Thomas Erskine, John Almon, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, and Edmund Burke, appear and re-appear throughout the book in separate chapters and different contexts. A handful of themes and debates, such as the struggle to re-conceptualize libel law, are likewise returned to again and again in separate chapters and are considered from a range of different perspectives. This creates a wonderfully integrated and multilayered narrative.
Patterson should be applauded for re-introducing the remarkable careers of Almon and Erskine. Moreover, her masterly knowledge of Milton brings whole new dimensions of Burke's On Conciliation to life, and her analysis of the libel law controversy is continually enlightening. Ultimately, however, Patterson's larger ambitions are simply not supported in this book (if they are supportable at all). Although Patterson is convincing when arguing that "whig" reformers often acted on principle alone, she is much less successful at illustrating the historical continuity and essential similarity of "whig" principles. For someone who is interested in reviving the motivational powers of ideas, she seems to be particularly prone to glossing over the exceptional ideological vibrancy and heterogeneity of the context under consideration. It is particularly hard to swallow, for instance, Patterson's claim that Burke and Paine belong to the same tradition, and that Burke's Reflections should simply be understood as a moment of weakness (nobody's perfect) upon which a desire for self-advancement overtook true principles. Moreover, it is ironic, given Patterson's humanist perspective, that her book tends to rationalize many of the most glaring personal and ideological inconsistencies of its figures. This criticism is especially pertinent to Patterson's strangely brief treatment of Erskine's notorious flip-flop over Paine. Finally, if Patterson truly believes that eighteenth-century historiography is still unduly influenced by Namierite ideophobia, how does she explain the immense amount of scholarship that has been produced on civic humanism's influence in the era of the American Revolution?
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Citation:
B. J. Weinstein. Review of Patterson, Annabel, Nobody's Perfect: A New Whig Interpretation of History.
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
April, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9239
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