| Description |
Because retrospective accounts of any armed conflict tend to favor the victor, relatively little has been written of the British perspective on the American Revolution. A close review of the trends in public opinion during the crisis, however, reveals sharp and deep divisions within English society, ranging from resentment of the rebellion to active, outspoken support of colonial independence. Equally divergent is the degree to which the various opinions were verbalized. This thesis will use a matrix grid system to categorize British public opinion on; the American question. Our examination will focus on three major interest groups as well as twelve prominent writers who flourished in the years corresponding to the American crisis. Those factions whose opinion will be examined are the merchant class, the common public, and the politicians in Parliament and the authors to be considered include William Blake, James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Robert Bums, William Cowper, George Crabbe, Edward Gibbon, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Gray, Samuel Johnson, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Tobias Smollett. The study evaluates the opinion adopted by each person or group in the debate between the ideology of the American rebellion and the British government's colonialism, and we pay particular attention to the degree to which that opinion was verbalized and promoted to others. In so doing, we see evidences both of how these authors swayed public opinion in the crisis as well as how their popularity was affected by it. If the collective public opinion of the British electorate ultimately defined Parliament's policy toward the American colonies, including the final decision to grant independence, then the goal of this thesis is to discover which groups or individual writers had the greatest influence in determining that public opinion. Our methodology for this survey will be to first consider the manifestations of general trends in public opinion available for the three focus groups (merchant, common, and politician), and then to consider evidences of the political opinion for each featured individual writer. Evaluations of authors survey their published works, private letters, personal writings, second-hand accounts, and any other evidences that suggest a political stance on the American conflict. |
