This study challenges the conventional polarities used to describe British politics of the 1790s; Pitt versus Fox, Burke versus Paine, Church versus Dissent, ruling class versus working class, Jacobin versus anti-Jacobin. Such polarities were sedulously promoted by Pitt's wartime government, which applied 'Jacobin' shamelessly to all its critics and opponents, and thus foreshadowed the McCarthyite tactic of guilt by association. The author seeks to make the less strident but more persuasive contemporary voices again audible. He takes seriously those who questioned the necessity for Burke's crusade to destroy the French republic, and who deplored Britain's alliance with the partitioners of Poland.

STUART ANDREWS has written four other books on the eighteenth century, the most recent being The Rediscovery of America (1998). Besides teaching, he has worked as a librarian, as the editor of a professional journal, as a school inspector and as a freelance lecturer. He has also been Headmaster of Norwich School and of Clifton College, and is currently Chairman of the Trustees and Managers of the Mendip and Wells Museum.