ABSTRACT
In present-day politics, it makes a great difference to all concerned whether a given proposal is identified as liberal, progressive, social-democratic or 'Red'. Still greater is the impact of such terms as 'Bolshevik', 'Fascist', 'neo-Nazi'. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars both France and Great Britain were thought by many experts to be close to national bankruptcy. British landowners, encouraged to extend their plantings of grain during the long Napoleonic siege, faced a drastic fall in prices when peace came. In western Europe, however, other pressures, often characterized by variations upon the theme of Catholic-liberal accommodation we have observed in the United Kingdom, began to cast doubt on the permanence of the Restoration's solemnly proclaimed alliance between throne and altar. A revolutionary tradition, inspiring to some, terrifying to others, has been a factor in every revolution to occur in Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as it could not have been in 1789.
