What the 18th Century Can Teach the 21st
Britain had a revolution too—slower and quieter than America’s. Did the British do it better?
TL;DR
- The current state of American democracy, with an overreaching executive and constrained legislature, mirrors the crisis Britain faced in the 1770s.
- 18th-century Britain, under King George III, suffered from a similar imbalance of power, rotten boroughs, and excessive royal patronage.
- Key figures like the Duke of Richmond and Thomas Paine recognized the need to establish the legislature as a counterweight to the monarch.
- Britain's path to reform was gradual, involving legislation to control the Civil List (reducing patronage) and a long struggle for universal male suffrage.
- Edmund Burke's Establishment Act of 1782 reformed the Civil List, while suffrage reform, championed by Richmond and later Pitt and Grey, culminated in the Reform Act of 1832 and subsequent acts.
- The concept of representation evolved, requiring the invention of geographical districts and census-taking for electoral purposes.
- Representation is viewed as an evolving technology that needs redesigning as conditions change, with reforms like the secret ballot and MP salaries improving its function.
- Restoring American representation requires measures such as limiting political spending, preventing gerrymandering, expanding the House, and ensuring transparency.
- The long-term British approach, though different from the American constitutional model, has achieved relative stability in its constitutional monarchy, raising questions about which system better controls the executive.
- King Charles III's address to Congress highlighted the shared inheritance of the British Enlightenment and the principle of collective deliberation over individual will.