000			01881nam a2200193Ia 4500
999			_c12883 _d12883
005			20220225162701.0
008			200202s9999 xx 000 0 und d
082			_a320.5 BRI 2nd ed.
100			_aBrinton, Crane
245		0	_aEnglish political thought in the Nineteenth century
250			_a2nd ed.
260			_aLondon
260			_bErnest Benn
260			_c1954
300			_a312p.
520			_aTHIS book was undertaken over twenty ycars ago, at the suggestion of Professor Harold J. Laski, who was then rather under the influence of Acton and Maitland than of Marx and Lenin. date confess that I am today in general agreement with myselt two decades ago. On going over the text I have indecd been struck with an inevitable series of attacks of esprit d'escalier. I think I could say some things now better, more clecarly, than I said them then. I should like to revise some snap judgments, notably the one in which I equate Mr. Churchill-the Churchill of the 1920's, it is true with the unprofitable Brougham. But second thoughts are not always wiser than first thoughts, and they are almost always duller, more cluttered. I do not think I should be justified in trying to alter this book, which is here reprinted in its original form. No doubt the book shows its age. I cannot claim that it was written with any remarkable prescience. The disasters and the triumphs of the last war are not foreshadowed, nor do the outlines of the great revolution by consent of the nineteen-forties come out clearly in my analysis of the political thought of nineteenth-century Britain. I do not think the semi-socialist Britain of today will appear an unnatural development trom the Britain of these pages but neither do I think it will appear an inevitable develop- ment from the political ideas here analysed.
650			_aIdeology
942			_cB _2ddc