ABSTRACT
Charles Adderley (1814–1905) became Conservative MP for North Staffordshire in 1841. A strong Anglican with a reputation as a progressive landowner, he also acquired an interest in colonial affairs and helped to found the Colonial Reform Society in 1849, promoting self-government in colonies settled by British emigrants. In 1858, Derby appointed Adderley Vice-President of the Education Committee of the Privy Council. In 1866, Adderley became Under-Secretary for the Colonies in Derby’s third government. In his Letter to the Rt Hon Benjamin Disraeli MP on the Present Relations of England with the Colonies (1867), Adderley discussed the progress of colonial freedom.
In 1867, Adderley also published Europe Incapable of American Democracy outlining his view of constitutional development. Providential progress was fundamental to Adderley’s belief. Linear advancement was evidence of God’s plan in the constant onward movement of human affairs.
On this foundation, Adderley placed three working principles. First, that constitutional advancement moved through distinct stages, as defined by Aristotle and Polybius. These were monarchy, rule by one person; oligarchy or aristocracy, government by a select few; and democracy, government by the people. This mirrored the stadial development of civilisation proposed by Scottish Enlightenment philosophers such as John Millar, tracing the advance of society from agricultural communities, to feudal societies and finally commercial societies; the progress from rudeness to refinement. For Adderley, the advance from monarchy to aristocracy and then democracy related to the scale and density of the human population. The larger and denser human settlements became the greater the requirement to evolve systems of government.
Second, Adderley saw this constitutional development possessing a clear geographical impetus. As exemplified in Confucianism and legalism, Asia was the historical root of autocracy and despotism, while Europe was the constitutional birthplace of aristocracy, and America the home of democracy. The progressive advance of political economy had a clear Westward direction. However, Africa, for Adderley, was not a consideration because it appeared to be cut off from the mainstream of history. It was the French philosopher Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755) who, in his Persian Letters (1721) and the Spirit of the Laws (1748), proposed that Asia, because of its climate and geography, naturally acquired an Oriental genius for servitude, while Europe, with its greater geographic diversity and more temperate climate, acquired a greater Occidental spirit of freedom. Oriental inertia was distinguished from European dynamism. Upon this scheme Adderley grafted the land mass of America as the natural home of democratic habits and attitudes.
Third, another type of government could not wholly replace the constitutional foundations of a continent. All forms of Asian government retained features of despotism, resistant to aristocracy and democracy. All aristocratic European governments ultimately defied absolute monarchy and pure democracy. Systems of government changed. Revolutions occurred. However, the fundamental nature of indigenous political practice and habit always eventually reasserted itself, reinforced by religious belief. This amplified the theocratic principle prevalent in Asia, the chiefly hierarchical forms of religion in Europe, and the religious universalism of North America.
The purpose of Adderley’s analysis was to repudiate those contemporary British radicals who cited the example of American democracy as a model for constitutional change in Britain, and to counter writers, such as Matthew Arnold and Alexis de Tocqueville, who lamented the irresistible triumph of democracy over other forms of government. Britain, Adderley asserted, was incapable of embracing pure democracy. Only by the study of their own distinctive history and particular institutions, not by seeking their substitution by other forms of government, could the British safeguard the onward progress of their constitution.
