ABSTRACT
It has indeed become universally accepted by historians of eighteenth-century Britain that in the system of politics under the Whig Oligarchy, and thereafter down to the time of the Younger Pitt, these 'independent' members were an essential working component. The Georgian House of Commons may be compared to a roughly cubic structure made up of a variety of movable blocks, each block painted in one or the other of the two primary party colours, Whig or Tory. Any account of British eighteenth-century politics would be seriously incomplete without taking note of two further elements, namely, the parliamentary interest-groups and the extra-parliamentary pressure-groups which were active in every main phase. No ministry in 1720-1750 periods could afford to ignore the views of the two biggest commercial pressure-groups in the Commons, the East India and West India interests. One glaring lacuna in the popular, extra-parliamentary political activity of the Walpole era was a truly radical campaign for political reform itself.
