A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

404 Ch. 1 1 • Dynastic Rivalries and Politics

the use of lemon juice to counter scurvy, an illness caused by a vitamin C
deficiency.
As the British naval supremacy established the basis for the expansion of
commerce and empire, there were few decisive naval confrontations in the
eighteenth century. “Do you know what a naval battle is?” asked a French
minister. “The fleets maneuver, come to grips, fire a few shots, and then
each retreats... and the sea remains as salty as it was before.” The cost of
full-fledged battles seemed too high; ships were enormously expensive to
build and maintain. Fifteen times more British sailors died of disease
between 1774 and 1780 than succumbed to battle wounds.

Political Change in Great Britain

In England, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had put an end to fifty years

of social and political turmoil. The Bill of Rights of 1689 guaranteed Parlia­

ment’s right to approve taxation and prohibited the monarch from suspend­

ing or dispensing with laws. Parliament also maintained control of military

funding and the size of the army. Only with the consent of Parliament could

a standing army be raised in peacetime (even though this in itself was tech­

nically unconstitutional and the House of Commons had to annually approve

funding). Thus, the political struggles of the seventeenth century had

demonstrated that the king had to work with Parliament in governing the

nation. In turn, the state served as a guarantor of rights of property and

patronage. The rights of Parliament and the elective nature of the House of

Commons, even if based on an extremely narrow electoral franchise, distin­

guished British political life from that of its continental rivals.

The period of “aristocratic consensus” that followed the Glorious Revo­

lution was not as free from political contention as the term suggests. But it

brought major changes in British political life. The interests of wealthy

property owners were represented in the House of Commons, which grad­

ually became a far more important political forum than the House of Lords,

which only represented peers. It also became more difficult for the king to

manage the House of Commons.

Political differences between Tories and Whigs (see Chapter 6) became

more consistent. The former were now clearly identified with the preroga­

tives of the throne, the latter with the rights of Parliament. Whigs believed

that the role of Parliament was to defend liberty, property, and the rule of

law and thereby preserve the British constitution against possible abuses

of power by the throne. In the words of the Irish-born political theorist

Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the British “mixed constitution” (which bal­

anced the institutions of monarchy, the House of Lords, and the House of

Commons), stood as an “isthmus between arbitrary power and anarchy.”

During this period, there emerged a sense that opposition within Parlia­

ment to government policies was an intrinsic part of a political process in