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

Challenges to Established Authority 411

went to the East Indies with good intentions,” the younger Walpole said,
adding sarcastically that ‘‘it really looks as if we intended to finish the con­
quest of the world during the next campaign.”
The lure of commercial profit and empire thus helped define British nation­
alism. As we have seen, the financial community of investors in London
closely followed not only the vicissitudes of the economy but the ups and
downs of British warfare. A good many financiers had, after all, loaned
money to their state and therefore eagerly watched what was done with it.
Foreign and colonial trade often depended on naval protection, further link­
ing their interests to the Union Jack, the flag of Great Britain. The state itself
depended on expanding commercial activity for tax revenue. Representatives
of economic interest groups and lobbies made contacts in the London finan­
cial community and in government circles to put forward their views, for
example, on excise and customs taxes. New patriotic societies, some of them
drawing ordinary people into the wave of nationalist enthusiasm, sprang up.
The generally harmonious relationship between the landed elite and the
commercial community was a source of social and political stability and of
rising British nationalism. They joined together in the pursuit of empire.
Nobles and gentry benefited from the expansion of state activity, diversify­
ing their investments with loans to the crown. Unlike the continental pow­
ers, in Britain all subjects paid taxes. This afforded all social groups the
sense of being Britons. At the same time (in contrast to the case in France),
improved communications and the development of a national market aided
the process of national integration in Britain.
Their commitment to the nation also enabled the British elite, proud of
their freedoms and their country’s more decentralized form of government,
to accept a stronger state apparatus without complaining about infringe­
ments on their liberty. Thus, they did not feel the need for constitutional
guarantees (based upon equality before the law) against arbitrary tyranny.
The stronger state did not diminish the status of British landowners, and it
in no way infringed on their personal freedoms within civil society.
Anglo-Irish, Scottish, and Welsh landowners became more integrated
into a national British elite, as the increasing intermarriage among these
groups indicated. Many Scots, though hardly all, began to see themselves
as British, just as fewer English people considered Scots or Welsh to be out­
siders who were potentially disloyal to the crown, views they continued to
hold, however, of the Catholic Irish. The prerogatives of Parliament notwith­
standing, the British monarchy and its army and navy became increasingly
revered and celebrated as a rallying point for the nation.

Challenges to Established Authority

In the 1760s and 1770s, movements for reform emerged in several coun­

tries. In Britain, “liberty” became the watchword of political opposition to