David M. Thompson - Nonconformity in the Nineteenth Century

Edited by

DAVID M. THOMPSON

The history of English Protestant Nonconformity in the twentieth century has been mainly one of decline: nevertheless there can be little doubt about its contribution to the birth of modern Britain. Lord Palmerstons remark that in the long run English politics will follow the consciences of the Dissenters has often been quoted. But a claim for the Nonconformist contribution must rest on a broader and firmer basis than this. That is what this book tries to do.

It is not a substitute for the good modern general history of the Free Churches in the nineteenth century which still remains to be written. For reasons of space it is confined to England, thus omitting the important aspects of Nonconformity in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. As it is a book of extracts the narrative and analysis are necessarily sketchy, being little more than a commentary. But I hope that, by indicating the variety of material available, it will provide a starting point for those who want to explore Nonconformist history.

Something should be said about the principles governing the selection of passages. As always in a book of this kind the main problem is one of length. Some extracts have had to be substantially abbreviated, for example, parliamentary speeches; yet too much abbreviation destroys the flow of argument presented. Other extracts would have been delightful and illuminating; but they were too short to be coherent on their own, whilst to have placed them in context would have introduced much material of marginal relevance. Many extracts are of a similar genrethe description of a placeand it has been very difficult to choose only one or two of these. A similar problem is the temptation to include a number of extracts from one sourcethe writings of Mark Rutherford, for example. Thus some attractive pieces have been omitted to leave space for less appealing extracts on topics which would otherwise have remained untouched. Other topics were matters of discussion throughout the period, but to avoid repetition one extract from a particular date must suffice. There is a particular problem in the use of fiction. Should extracts be included because they represent attitudes to Dissent, regardless of whether the author had any actual experience of Dissent, or should extracts only be included if we know that the author knew what he was talking about? Generally I have adopted the second alternative, and this may mean that the book under-represents those attitudes critical of Dissent in the nineteenth century. Finally, I have had to omit reference to some topics which are closely related to Nonconformitythe development of free thought, for example. This is an important omission, because it begs the question of how far the Nonconformist spirit is simply Christian; but I can only plead that to tackle this question in detail would have distorted the rest of the book and to raise it superficially would have been a distraction. All this simply reinforces the point that much work remains to be done on nineteenth-century Nonconformity.