Jose Baptista de Sousa - Holland House and Portugal, 1793-1840: English Whiggery and the Constitutional Cause in Iberia

Holland House and Portugal

Holland House and Portugal

English Whiggery and the Constitutional Cause in Iberia

Jos Baptista de Sousa

To my grandmother, Mimi,

&

my mother, Maria Elvira

CONTENTS

The salon at Holland House, presided over by the formidable Lady Holland herself, is well known as a major institution in British political and cultural history. It is rightly regarded as at least as important as the rival salons of Dorothea Lieven and the Duchess of Dino. Anecdotes abound for example, the occasion when Lady Holland sent a note to T. B. Macaulay asking him not to dominate the conversation. But the conversation then flagged and Lady Holland was forced to send another note to Macaulay which read Please do dominate the conversation Mr. Macaulay. The salon was at its most influential in the 1820s and 1830s, with Lord and Lady Holland Lord Holland was the nephew of Charles James Fox seen as the guardians of the pure traditions of English Whiggery.

Perhaps the most important element in the Whig tradition was a belief in the importance of aristocracy, literally the rule of the best. The role of a properly enlightened aristocracy was to place strict limits on the powers of absolutist-inclined monarchs and to provide leadership to the rest of society to protect it from the allure of demagogues and extreme radicals. The institutional embodiment of these principles was, of course, a parliament, but a parliament consisting of two chambers with the upper chamber largely composed of hereditary peers. In some respects, Whiggery was an ideology rooted in the England of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Long years of exclusion from office, coupled with a recognition that significant social and economic change was occurring, added a new dimension to the strategy a readiness to enrol the new middle classes as junior partners in a sort of progressive coalition. Above all, this found expression in the Reform Bill of 1832. Whigs believed in religious toleration and were often somewhat sceptical about conventional religious beliefs; many were Freemasons. Within fairly broad limits, they believed in a free press and the rule of law. Although not completely identical, Whigs might be regarded as the precursors of later Liberals.

But Holland House stood for something more; it had a significant international dimension. In short, Lord and Lady Holland wanted to promote the development of societies and political systems based upon their own principles elsewhere in the world. Spain and Portugal and to some extent South America were of special interest to them. It is this that forms the main theme of Jos de Sousas book. The Hollands could claim to be particularly well informed about Spain and Portugal, having made two extensive tours of the Peninsula. They made their journeys during the particularly interesting times of the Napoleonic Wars. On both occasions the Hollands kept diaries, works that provide a major source for this book.

In some respects at least, Portugal might appear an attractive possibility for the adoption of Whig/Liberal ideas. The links between England and Portugal were strong and long-standing. English crusaders had helped to expel the Moors from Lisbon and a treaty between the two countries dating to the fourteenth century was still valid. Symbols of the alliance were the marriages of Philippa of Lancaster into the Portuguese Royal House and later the marriage of Catherine of Braganza to Charles II of England. In some English circles, the drinking of port wine was seen as a patriotic duty. Above all, England and Portugal were seagoing countries that came to look outwards from Europe, to the Atlantic, to the Indian Ocean and beyond. Both were challenged by powerful neighbours England by France and Portugal by Spain. It was always in the common interest of England and Portugal to prevent any close alliance or union between France and Spain.

But did a common interest mean that England and Portugal could develop on similar lines? It was true that, in common with many other European countries, both had developed early forms of parliaments in the Middle Ages and the early Cortes was a major source of interest to Lord Holland. Yet divergences emerged and these seemed to increase over the years. England adopted Protestantism while Portugal committed itself to a particularly stifling version of the Counter-Reformation. Whereas the English Parliament grew from strength to strength, ultimately deciding who should be king and on what terms, the Portuguese Cortes withered and died. Perhaps the Portuguese were too successful; their empire brought so much wealth to the Crown that there was no need to go cap in hand to any representative body. With a few exceptions, the Portuguese nobility and clergy had little interest in constitutional issues, and a thriving commercial middle class so important to the Whig model was notably absent.

There had been attempts to modernize Portugal in the past, but these had been in the shape of reforms imposed from above upon a reluctant population. In other words, the main instrument of change had been Enlightened Despotism, embodied in the figure of Pombal. One of the phenomena that caused most intellectual difficulty for Whigs like Holland was to decide whether the merits of such a despotism outweighed their shortcomings. By and large they approved of the objectives of such despots but deplored their methods. They also noted that any improvements tended to be short-lived; when the despot fell, his reforms were quickly discarded.

The Hollands knew enough to appreciate that it would not be easy to sow the seeds of Liberalism on the somewhat stony ground of Portugal, but this did not deter them from trying. Lord Holland was ready to offer advice on constitutional matters to the Portuguese, the Spaniards and the Brazilians. His advice was essentially pragmatic; constitutional arrangements, ideally based on a bicameral system of representation, must take account of the traditions and realities of the countries concerned. This contrasted sharply with advice based on abstract principles, whether those of the French Revolution or those of Jeremy Bentham. It must be admitted that, by and large, Hollands advice was not listened to. Perhaps the story of constitutional government in Spain and Portugal and in South America might have been happier if his ideas had been more influential.