ABSTRACT
The phrase Liberal Toryism should be used with care. It is seductive, but misleading, to see the suicide of Castlereagh and the resignations of Sidmouth and Vansittart in 1822-23 as initiating a new, more enlightened form of Tory government. Lord Liverpool II had not reconstructed his ministry to that end. Rather he was concerned about the number of defeats the government had suffered in the Commons in 1820-21. He also knew that few of his experienced ministers in the Commons were effective performers. William Huskisson, though only in a minor office, was already widely recognised as Liverpool's key adviser on economic policy. The liberal Tories lived in a period of revolutionary political, social and economic change and sought to achieve a practical balance between the conservatives who instinctively opposed change. And the radicals who wanted to pull down the established order and construct a new one based on theoretical principles, including equality of representation if not of property.
