What Did It Mean to be “Enlightened” in Eighteenth Century Britain?
by Sir Isaac Newton had revolutionized scientific thought with his Laws of Physics. Surely if there would be laws governing nature, there would be laws governing people and society as well. It was Voltaire including his ideas in the seminal ‘Letters concerning the English nation’ that multiplied Newton’s impact on the enlightenment.
Paine was a committed republican whose writings had an influence not only in Britain but contributed to the American and French Revolutions. Paine wanted representative democracies and an end to monarchy, aristocracy and the Christian Church. He also proposed progressive taxation to pay for a welfare state. Amid his proposals was educating children, and those parents that did not send them to school would not get child benefit. Adults would also be educated if they needed it. Thomas Paine was regarded as a threat to the status quo; for he wrote to the poor and the ordinary people and implied they had the right to choose instead of doing as they were told. Paine had made his republican beliefs clear in the pamphlet Common Sense that galvanized support for American independence but failed to bring a republic to his native Britain. George III was trying to push the royal prerogatives as far as his could which is the reason for American rebellion and dissent in Britain. The Americans used the Bill of Rights (passed after the Glorious Revolution) as the basis of their independence declaration and not Paine or Rousseau. As well as George Washington he knew five other American presidents either as friends or enemies.
To be enlightened meant aiming to reform or abolish institutions that were either completely irrational or irrational in parts. In eighteenth century Britain a prime example would be the movement to achieve parliamentary reform. Parliament was certainly in need of reform, with uncontested seats; electoral bribery, rotten boroughs and a severely restricted property based franchise. This movement originated in the governing elite rather than popular agitation but found it difficult to push reform through Parliament (universal suffrage was achieved in 1928). For instance Pitt’s proposed reforms to scrap the smallest boroughs and move their seats to London and the larger towns was heavily defeated, a rare defeat for Pitt (the Younger). Pitt also failed to abolish the slave trade and gain a political settlement in Ireland, he could not always persuade his supporters to vote with him.
The Enlightenment in Britain aimed to reduce religion and superstition, it did not succeed immediately but the most obvious result was the growth of free masonry. Enlightenment did continue the trend of increasing secularization certainly amongst the educated and the middle classes. In the end the old religions were not replaced by rational religion, people either believed or they did not. The Church of England remained the established church whilst Non – Conformists and Roman Catholics were barred from state jobs.
Enlightenment spread the idea of progress, that history shows how far people have progressed and can progress. In Britain the monarchy and the Church of England remained intact, education was not as Paine had wanted (or Rousseau suggested) extended to all children. Enlightenment ideas did not remove the monarchy from Britain but Paine played a key role in the American Revolution that established the United States as an agnostic republic. Another legacy of the Enlightenment was the much greater amount of knowledge available such as Hume’s History of England and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the start of economics and sociology as subjects dates back to then.
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